Shifting mindset to take on the toughest cybersecurity challenges.

I wrote on LinkedIn last July about how excited I was to be back at Microsoft, and now eight months into my second tenure, this reintroduction to the company has exceeded my expectations. It’s been so energizing to be surrounded by passionate, creative, and tenacious people who are living the company mission by bringing their best every day and are dedicated to making the world safer and more productive for all.

By embracing a Growth Mindset that is the core value of today’s Microsoft, I have been on a journey to adopt a ‘learn it all’ attitude to absorb as much as I can from meeting with colleagues, partners, and customers. From these discussions, I have learned an incredible amount that has shaped my thinking about how to approach the difficult challenges ahead.?

One of the most interesting discoveries for me, and something vastly different to the data space and many other areas of technology, is that although there are many companies working to innovate and compete within cybersecurity, we are all on the same team. Cybersecurity really is a team sport, and there are many more good people than bad, so for us to succeed, it’s important that all the good people work together. The key to any successful team, however, is that they subscribe to the same philosophy and approach to win. If we can all begin to adopt a similar mindset, then any steps forward we take individually will collectively make a significant difference in how we protect entire organizations and critical infrastructure from advanced threats. The question is, what is the mindset that we all need to adopt?

From experience, I know that adopting the right mindset can be extremely effective both personally and professionally, and the more I thought through this and looked at the road ahead for my role and Microsoft’s potential to positively make a dent in this unsolvable problem, one idea resonated clearly. I developed a thesis on how I believe shifting our mentality towards an Infinite Mindset can significantly reshape the cybersecurity landscape. Let me explain.

The pace of technical innovation over the last 10 years has been staggering, and as businesses take advantage of that innovation, so too have bad actors.?However, it feels like we have constantly been in a state of catching up, when where we consistently need to be is ahead. But the reality is, the tactics bad actors use today could look very different tomorrow. And what they do tomorrow could look very different next week. With the current approach, we are continuing to find ourselves behind. We need this shift in mindset.

A professor out of NYU named James P?Carse , came up with this really interesting theory of how the world works, which was recently popularized by Simon Sinek . Carse?theorized there are two types of games…finite games and infinite games. Finite games have known rules, clearly identified players, and a clear winner in the end. Just think about a game like chess. The rules are well understood, it’s played by millions of people around the world, and there is no debate on what winning the game looks like. Infinite games are quite different. There are no agreed-upon rules, players can be known or even unknown, and “winning” is as much about -- staying in the game. Cybersecurity is an infinite game. The bad guys aren’t playing by any rules. There is no such thing as a level playing field when a state actor decides to target a business.?And as much as they would like, no one industry vendor can claim to have ‘solved’ security with their solution that addresses just one piece of the puzzle.

Today, too many businesses and security teams have a finite mindset, but this is not a winner take all game. We have to think bigger. We have to think differently – especially when it comes to cybersecurity where the pace of innovation, complexity and competition can sometimes be breathtaking. I believe for us at Microsoft and across the industry, we have to approach cybersecurity with an Infinite Mindset. In this constantly changing game, we have to bet big on the use of intelligence, AI and automation to create a virtuous cycle of signal, to evolve and respond faster to bad actors and events.

This notion of an Infinite Mindset is what we are now living and breathing every day at Microsoft. We know that there are infinite lines of legacy code and future code to secure. There are infinite threats and bad actors we need to protect our customers from. And there is an infinite amount of signal our customers must process across their infrastructure. Cybersecurity is an infinite game, and that is why we must have that Infinite Mindset to tilt the game board in our favor.

We are applying this mindset not only to drive our own innovation, but to inspire the industry, and there is already some groundbreaking work being done. We have more to share over the coming months, including the start of a new security conference on March 28th we are calling Microsoft Secure . I encourage you all to attend, and I’m particularly excited about the opportunities you will have to hear about what an AI-powered future means for cybersecurity.?

Now, more than any point in history, we have an opportunity to drive meaningful change towards how we protect the world around us. As an industry, we are focused, resourceful, and committed to solving some of the toughest problems we face today. Looking ahead, I will be posting more regularly on LinkedIn to share my thoughts on how adopting the right mindset, an Infinite Mindset, we can make significant progress together, and I look forward to continuing this journey with you all.?