“If you want to go quickly, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together.”
This African proverb couldn’t ring truer for the cybersecurity industry. By working collectively, with a strong sense of teamwork, we can achieve far more than fighting cybercrime as individual vendors.
But, only by improving our approach and sharing threat intelligence more comprehensively, and by expanding the pool of participants who contribute to (and benefit from) this sharing and collaboration, will cybersecurity vendors continue to drive up costs for attackers, and make lasting, impactful change.
In the spirit of that approach to working together, in 2017 Sophos joined the Cyber Threat Alliance, an organization dedicated to breaking down the barriers that, for years, stymied any chance for competitors in the information security industry to collaborate with one another. The CTA has succeeded far beyond its initial mandate to serve as a repository of shared threat intelligence and a place to resolve differences, and has become a sort of UN to the cybersecurity industry.
Through our partnership with the CTA, Sophos can better protect our customers, thanks to the early warnings and data exchange between vendors, made possible by the alliance. Sophos also shares the burden of protecting the other vendors’ customers by contributing our own threat intel.