Polaris Alpha, a Parsons Company, has been named an honoree of a 2019 CSO50 Award from IDG’s CSO. This prestigious honor is bestowed upon a select group of organizations that have demonstrated that their security initiatives have created outstanding business value and thought leadership for their companies. The award will be presented at the CSO50 Conference + Awards held on April 8-10, 2019, in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Polaris Alpha earned the award with its transformative approach to corporate security practices. Over the span of several months, the company’s integrated network security team adopted a standard Department of Defense (DoD)/Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) model and applied it to the processes used by the company to defend its corporate network. The adoption of the newer model shifted the network defense team’s work from reactive to proactive. The team moved away from a tools-based approach and began to think of the defense network as an ecosystem, allowing engineers to detect indicators of compromise to address internal threats and external adversarial activity, thwarting those risks before a need to respond arose.
“If you’re in a reactive stance, it’s already too late,” said Eric Schlesinger, Chief Information Security Officer for Polaris Alpha. “Our strategy transformed the way we do business. Because we are not relying solely on purchased tools, we are actively decreasing corporate risk while increasing our security posture.”
The new network defense model has proven so successful, it is being adopted as part of the workforce structure inside Parsons’ corporate security team.
“This year’s class of CSO50 award winners raise the bar on security innovation,” said Amy Bennett, executive editor, CSO. “While delivering business value and demonstrating thought leadership are the metrics on which they are measured, the greater value is in the peer-to-peer sharing of ideas across a range of industries, across company sizes, for-profit and not-for-profit, public and private. The magic really happens on the stage at the CSO50 conference when these projects are brought to life in presentations and panel discussions. It is an honor to give them the recognition they deserve.”
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