Coalition Of Cybersecurity Leaders Launch Open Cybersecurity Schema Framework (OCSF)

Cloud Coalition Of Cybersecurity Leaders Launch Open Cybersecurity Schema Framework (OCSF) Tony Bradley Senior Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. I cover all things tech and the impact tech has on everyday life. New! Follow this author to stay notified about their latest stories.

Got it! Aug 10, 2022, 06:42pm EDT | New! Click on the conversation bubble to join the conversation Got it! Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin A coalition of cybersecurity and technology leaders announced the Open Cybersecurity Schema . . .

[+] Framework (OCSF) project at Black Hat USA 2022. getty Cybersecurity is challenging and it’s a constantly moving target. Organizations struggle to defend a sprawling attack surface against a constantly expanding threat landscape.

One thing that makes cybersecurity more difficult is that the array of tools organizations rely on often speak their own language—referring to the same things with unique or proprietary terminology. The Open Cybersecurity Schema Framework (OCSF) project—unveiled today at Black Hat 2022—plans to change that. The OCSF project was initiated by a partnership between Splunk and AWS, which built on the ICD Schema developed at Symantec—now part of Broadcom.

There are now 15 additional members, including some of the biggest names in technology and cybersecurity: Cloudflare, CrowdStrike, DTEX, IBM Security, IronNet, JupiterOne, Okta, Palo Alto Networks, Rapid7, Salesforce, Securonix, Sumo Logic, Tanium, Trend Micro, and ZScaler. Cybersecurity “Rosetta Stone” Security teams today need some sort of “Rosetta Stone” to translate and cross-reference information. Effective cybersecurity involves coordination of a variety of tools and platforms—and significant effort to normalize data across these multiple sources to try and compile a comprehensive, holistic view of the environment.

A press release announcing the OCSF explains, “The OCSF is an open standard that can be adopted in any environment, application, or solution provider and fits with existing security standards and processes. As cybersecurity solution providers incorporate OCSF standards into their products, security data normalization will become simpler and less burdensome for security teams. OCSF adoption will enable security teams to increase focus on analyzing data, identifying threats and defending their organizations from cyberattacks.

” Perspectives on OCSF “The exponential growth of the threat landscape, and related proliferation of data and signals, is the biggest obstacle for security teams stopping today’s cyberattacks. The only way to keep up is to unify the data and band together,” asserts Rob Jenks, Senior Vice President, Corporate Strategy at Tanium . “OCSF is exactly the kind of initiative that will enable disparate data to be combined and organizations to work together to more efficiently stop attackers before they cause irreversible damage.

” MORE FOR YOU Western Digital’s Journey To Build Business Resiliency Through Cloud And ERP Transformation Amazon Climate Pledge: Two Years In And Going Strong Microsoft Takes First Steps To Finally Kill The Password Vikram Rao, Chief Trust Officer at Salesforce , shared, “Every company is facing the imperative to digital, fast. But building a security posture to meet internet-scale levels of digital trust can be a major challenge. New standards like OCSF reduce complexity for security teams, empowering them to focus on more impactful work like threat analysis and attack prevention.

” “The premise of OCSF is to help our customers extract greater value from the enormous amount of data they sift through on a daily basis, providing clarity in their cybersecurity environment — all while stopping cyberattacks faster and more effectively. By adding support for OCSF with the CrowdStrike Falcon platform, we will be making it easier for our customers to stop breaches,” said Michael Sentonas, chief technology officer at CrowdStrike . “Most importantly, the mission of OCSF aligns with the CrowdXDR Alliance mission, which is to standardize data sharing across the industry to enrich XDR detections for organizations and help them speed up their threat detection and response efforts.

” “The challenge of normalizing data from numerous sources has been a top security challenge for as long as I’ve been in the industry,” said Patrick Coughlin, Global Vice President, Security Market at Splunk . “For far too long, security leaders have spent too much time trying to integrate point solutions while missing key pieces of the puzzle. By collaborating with some of the industry’s best and brightest, CISOs will reduce integration debt and significantly increase visibility into their entire attack surface.

It’s been a long-time coming, and there’s still a lot of work to do, but with collaboration from the broader industry, I think we’ll start to see the payoff pretty quickly. ” The Future of OCSF Lisa Plaggemier, Executive Director of the National Cybersecurity Alliance , stated, “Incapability between vendors has long been pointed to by the private sector as one of the biggest hurdles to enabling collaboration between stakeholders. While the jury is still out on the effectiveness of the OCSF, if it does accomplish its primary goal—removing operational barriers between the vendors involved—it could prove to be a significant catalyst in jumpstarting more tangible collaboration moving forward across the industry.

” I find this news encouraging. I have maintained for the last decade that we need to improve the ways we share information and collaborate between tools and vendors. I believe it is a crucial part of improving cybersecurity and our ability to effectively defend against emerging threats.

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