GCA: Empowering the Posse

By Megan Stifel


Phew! RSA has come to a close. It was a great week for GCA – the most immediate representation of that was our receipt of the SC Media Editor’s Choice Award. It’s obvious to say the award reflects recognition of GCA’s work over our almost five-year existence. It’s important to state a critical piece of our success to date and more importantly our work to come: people.

This year RSA’s theme was the human element. That phrase can manifest itself in many ways. As a first principle, for GCA, it’s important to remember that people built the Internet and that means we can change it. We can make it more secure and trustworthy. But to do so we need to work together.

There are many ways to work together. Public-private partnership is one of the buzz phrases that for years has overtaken working together in cybersecurity. For us though, it is not enough. We believe that it is critical to unite the global community toward the common goal of a more secure cyber ecosystem.

Unity recognizes a common objective but also acknowledges that many pieces can be required to reach it. This week our engagement at RSA focused on uniting the many pieces. And we were not alone. DHS/CISA launched its “Cybersecurity Has a Posse” campaign this week during RSA; and a retired senior national security leader reminded a group of us that technology and policy can help to address cybersecurity risk, but ultimately it often comes down to relationships that drive solutions to hard problems.

GCA leverages the human element to implement cybersecurity best practices. We equip the sometimes overlooked posse members to join the effort to eradicate cyber risk. While our solutions may be technical in application, their success depends on human support. Help us empower the posse.

The author, Megan Stifel, is the Executive Director, Americas, at the Global Cyber Alliance. You can follow Megan on Twitter and connect with her on LinkedIn.