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The Cyber Threat Alliance (CTA) added two new members to its roster on Oct. 25, expanding the number of vendors participating in the cyber-security threat intelligence sharing group.
Sophos and Saint Security are now joining the CTA and will work alongside existing members Check Point Software Technologies, Cisco, Fortinet, McAfee, Palo Alto Networks, Symantec, IntSights, Rapid7, Reversing Labs, RSA Security, SK Infosec, and Telefónica’s ElevenPaths.
Leading the CTA is the group’s President and CEO Michael Daniel, who had previously spent the last two decades of his career working for the U.S. government. In a video interview with eWEEK, Daniel explains what the mission of the CTO is all about and why sharing threat intelligence is also a good business move for participating vendors.
Daniel said that the CTA is an effort to actually stop talking about security information sharing and instead to start sharing information on a much bigger scale.
“The Cyber Threat Alliance (CTA) is a consortium of cyber-security companies that is focused on enabling them to share threat intelligence at speed and at scale, ” Daniel said.
By sharing information, Daniel said CTA members are better able to protect their own respective customers, as each member gets access to data, they might not otherwise have. While some cyber-security vendors have viewed threat intelligence data as a proprietary asset that can help them to differentiate against other vendors, Daniel said that sharing information is actually a better way to compete.
“The point of CTA is not that we want to decrease competition, in fact we actually want to enhance competition,” Daniel said. “We want to change how competition occurs.”
As such, rather than vendors competing on proprietary threat intelligence information, Daniel wants security vendors to compete on how they use information. His hope is that the CTA and its information sharing efforts will serve to raise the level of cyber-security across the industry.
“Threat intelligence is becoming a commodity whether we like it or not,” Daniel said. “So the industry needs to adapt to the changing environment and in doing so, vendors can actually move up the value chain.”
Watch the full video interview with Michael Daniel, President and CEO of CTA above.
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at eWEEK and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.