SolarWinds security chief calls for tighter cyber laws
The first cyber chief to fight an effort by the US Securities and Exchange Commission to hold him personally responsible for a massive Russian hack has called on global regulators to pass tougher cyber security laws.
Tim Brown, chief information security officer at SolarWinds, faced a landmark lawsuit that accused him and the company of misleading investors by not disclosing “known risks” and inaccurately representing the company’s security measures.
Speaking to the Financial Times in his first interview since the complaint was largely thrown out by a federal court in July, Brown warned that global cyber regulations are still “in flux”, which “absolutely adds stress across the globe” on cyber chiefs.
“When you don’t have rules to follow, it’s very hard to follow them,” said Brown. “Very few security people would ever do something that wasn’t right, but you just have to tell us what’s right in order to do it,” he added.
SolarWinds was a little known Austin-based IT supply chain company until it was breached by Russian hackers as part of a sprawling espionage campaign in 2020.
