What Executives Get Wrong About Cybersecurity

If you think the biggest cybersecurity threat most businesses face is credit card theft and the most important part of the solution is better prevention technology, think again.

- Stuart E. Madnick

Cyberattacks are in the news. All kinds of organizations — ranging from Target Corp., Yahoo Inc., Sony Pictures Entertainment, and Bangladesh Bank to the Democratic National Committee in the United States — have fallen victim to them in recent years. To gain a better understanding of cybersecurity threats — and what executives should do to better protect their companies — MIT Sloan Management Review sought out cybersecurity expert Stuart E. Madnick.

Madnick has been studying computer security for a long time. He coauthored his first book on the subject in 1979 and today is the director of MIT’s Interdisciplinary Consortium for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity (IC)³, a consortium that brings together academic researchers, companies, and government experts. Madnick, who is the John Norris Maguire (1960) Professor of Information Technologies in the MIT Sloan School of Management and a professor of engineering systems at the MIT School of Engineering, spoke about trends in cybersecurity recently with MIT Sloan Management Review editorial director Martha E. Mangelsdorf. What follows is an edited and condensed version of their conversation.

MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW: Why did the MIT cybersecurity consortium you lead choose to focus on the nation’s critical infrastructure?