Katie Nickels of Red Canary at MITER ATT&CK

The announcer

Cybersecurity is notorious for its complexity and, often, its inaccessibility to anyone but the pros who do it for a living.

So it makes sense that someone took it with a passion for communication and education to illuminate some of the hottest topics in the field — someone like Katie Nickels.

• Nickels originally wanted to be a journalist before landing in the field of cyber-threat intelligence. He first rose to prominence in the security community as the threat intelligence lead for MITER ATT&CK, a framework that describes the stages of a typical cyberattack.
• Following its public release in 2015, ATT&CK has been widely adopted by security vendors and CISOs. That’s because it gave the cyber defense profession a universal language, something that was sorely lacking.
• Nickels played a key role in making ATT&CK widely understood and in raising awareness about it, members of the security community told me. He was a big part of “getting ATT&CK out there for the world,” according to current ATT&CK chief Adam Pennington.
• Although Nickels wasn’t one of the creators of ATT&CK, “he had such an impact that he became, to some people, the face of it,” Dragos co-founder and CEO Robert Lee told me.

Nickels continues the work of making cyberthreat intelligence more accessible and useful as director of intelligence at Red Canary.

• “We try not to accept what everyone else is doing in threat intelligence as the best thing,” he told me.
• For example, Nickels said his team doesn’t start out assuming the actions of national threat actors, such as China or Russia, are a priority for customers. Instead, “we’re looking at what we actually see in environments,” he said.
• That led to unique discoveries, such as a cluster of attack activity the team dubbed “Raspberry Robin,” which included a worm typically delivered via a USB drive.
• Nickels also stood out among many of his peers in the security community by sharing “some of the insider secrets of threat intelligence” through a series of Medium posts, Ryan Kovar told me of Splunk. Meanwhile, he has taught the SANS Institute course on cyber-threat intelligence since 2019.

Ultimately, “you’ll have a hard time finding anyone in cyberthreat intelligence that was not learned from Katie Nickels,” said Proofpoint’s Selena Larson.

Read the full profile on Nickels here.

— Kyle Alspach (email | nervous)

A MESSAGE FROM CNCF

ArgoCon, which will take place September 16 – 21 in San Francisco and is virtual, will foster collaboration and discussion for audiences at all levels on the Argo Project, which consists of four projects: Argo CD, Argo Workflows, Argo Rollouts, and Argo Events. Register today to learn in person or virtually from practitioners about project pitfalls and best practices.

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A tale of two clouds

Western Digital makes flash storage devices and spinning hard drives — yes, remember those? — and its data center products could be a useful sign of how cloud computing operators are thinking about their capital expenditures. WD management spoke at a Goldman Sachs conference in San Francisco on Monday, and offered a bleak view.

Executives said pricing for flash storage fell at the fastest rate in 10 to 15 years, a significant turnaround since the company reported earnings in early August. CEO David Goeckeler was tight-lipped about the data center need, describing hyperscalers as cautious about their purchases.

“And in China it continues to be challenging,” Goeckeler said. “We have not seen any sign of any return to China. So it really continues to be a tough market.

WD storage sales aren’t a perfect proxy for the health of the data center chip market, but after a growing number of signs of weakness emerged last week, too, it’s another indication that all is not well – even in China.

At the same conference, Nvidia CFO Colette Kress told the audience that China’s hyperscalers are suffering from significant “economic issues in the country, possibly some of which are related to the COVID lockdowns … but [also] other economic challenges.”

Elsewhere in the world, Kress says, it’s a bit of a different story. Demand from US hyperscalers Nvidia says is “quite strong” and graphics chips known for Nvidia remain scarce. Kress says they’ve sold out in many new areas, and logistics and distribution and overall volume remain lacking.

— Max A. Cherney (email | nervous)

Enterprise customer experience

The mandate is clear. Modern businesses need to provide a seamless, technology-enabled, end-to-end customer experience across their organizations: to always be ready, regardless of time or platform, to meet customer needs immediately and provide human connection. This requires eliminating silos, increasing automation and analytics and ensuring that the front end and the back end are aligned to deliver a positive experience for your customers and your team. But how do you achieve this in today’s digital landscape?

At this virtual Protocol event on Sept. 19, we’ll examine the tech tools and tricks and real-life strategies companies are using to build the CX tech ecosystem and prepare for an increasingly customer-first future. Please join Protocol Enterprise’s Aisha Counts in conversation with Lara Caimi, chief customer officer, ServiceNow; Glenn Weinstein, chief customer officer, Twilio; and Clara Shih, chief executive officer, Service Cloud, Salesforce.

RSVP here.

A MESSAGE FROM CNCF

ArgoCon, which will take place September 16 – 21 in San Francisco and is virtual, will foster collaboration and discussion for audiences at all levels on the Argo Project, which consists of four projects: Argo CD, Argo Workflows, Argo Rollouts, and Argo Events. Register today to learn in person or virtually from practitioners about project pitfalls and best practices.

Register to attend: In person | Virtual