Working proactively to prevent threats

The In Focus mini-series examines more closely issues and topics of importance to federal agencies and contractors. Each month, Federal News Radio Custom Media Director Jason Fornicola speaks with key stakeholders to better understand challenges and opportunities. This month focuses on Federal Network Visibility and Analytics.

“The reality is that you can’t be reactive anymore,” Zulfikar Ramzan, chief technology officer for RSA, said on Federal News Radio’s In Focus. “A reactive posture is what gets you into trouble in the long run. Now the good news is that even though there are these zero day vulnerabilities and sophisticated attackers, at some point in the course of every attack, someone utilizes a known tool or some known piece of infrastructure simply because it’s too expensive for attackers to do everything fresh for the first time.”

Host

Jason Fornicola, Director of Custom Media, Federal News Radio

Jason Fornicola joined WTOP and Federal News Radio in February of 2014 as the Director of Custom Media, where he manages the stations’ sponsored and custom content initiatives. Fornicola provides clients with access to high-quality content consistent with the stations’ standard of excellence and works to solve clients’ needs through a multi-platform approach which includes on-air, digital, video and social media. His journalism and social media experience support the stations’ efforts to ensure the client message is conveyed in a way that will achieve their marketing campaign objectives.

Guest

Zulfikar Ramzan, Chief Technology Officer, RSA

Dr. Zulfikar Ramzan serves as the Chief Technology Officer of RSA, the Security Division of EMC. In this role, he is responsible for leading the development of the company’s technology strategy and bringing to market the innovations that help protect RSA customers from the growing number of advanced threats. Prior to joining RSA, Dr. Ramzan served as Chief Technology Officer of Elastica and, preceding that, as Chief Scientist of Sourcefire (acquired by Cisco in October 2013). Before joining Sourcefire via its acquisition of Immunet in 2010, he was Technical Director of Symantec’s Security Technology and Response division. In all of these roles, Dr. Ramzan has leveraged his expertise across numerous domains of cybersecurity and large scale data analytics to bring innovations to market that have protected customers from a large variety of threats to their information assets.

Dr. Ramzan has co-authored over 50 technical articles, and two books including Crimeware: Understanding New Attacks and Defenses, Addison-Wesley Professional, 2008. He also has over 50 granted patents. Dr. Ramzan was selected and served as General Chair of Crypto 2010, the premier conference in the field of Cryptography. Beyond that, he is a frequent public speaker and has briefed both numerous media outlets including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, and Reuters as well as members of the United States Congress on cyber-security trends and issues. Dr. Ramzan has produced a number of online videos on cybersecurity trends that have collectively been viewed over a million times and he has served as a guest faculty for the educational non-profit Khan Academy.

Dr. Ramzan holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His doctoral advisor was Professor Ronald L. Rivest, who co-founded RSA Data Security.

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