Karen Buffo is the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) at MixMode. In this role, she is responsible for product, solution, account-based marketing, customer programs, brand and creative, communications, analyst relations, field and channel marketing and enablement. Prior to MixMode, Buffo was the CMO of Anomali and the CMO of Symantec, a Division of Broadcom and held several leadership roles during her tenure at Oracle. She is a recognized industry keynote speaker, mentor, and contributor to the Cybersecurity community.
About Locked Shields 2024
Locked Shields is an annual event organized by the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defense Centre of Excellence (CCDCOE). It brings together thousands of cybersecurity professionals from over 40 nations to test their skills in a simulated cyber crisis. This year, over 4,000 participants joined forces, forming a virtual “global defense team” to protect Berylia, a hypothetical nation of strategic importance
This year’s event held April 22-25, 2024, mirrored the chilling reality of a global cyberattack with the potential to cripple national infrastructure, encompassing everything from supply chain disruptions to disinformation campaigns. Cybersecurity experts from government, military and private sectors around the globe converged for the largest unclassified live-fire cyber defense exercise in the world, to test and improve international collaboration, technical skills, and strategic policymaking in a real-time warfare scenario. At this year’s premier cyber defense exercise, a simulation of coordinated cyber-attacks targeted critical infrastructure, financial institutions and government agencies resulting in breached data, DDoS attacks, disruption of communications as well as sophisticated exploits that took control of power plants and water treatment facilities. Cyber experts grappled with the ensuing chaos—all within a controlled environment designed to test and refine their skills.
Why Locked Shields is Key to Cyber Defense
As cyber-attacks increase in frequency and complexity, exercises like Locked Shields are vital for giving our nation’s defenders from around the world the experience needed to effectively safeguard critical systems and infrastructure. Locked Shields provides a crucial platform for:
- Testing Defenses: Teams face complex, multi-layered attacks that mimic real-world scenarios. This allows military, government and private sectors to stress-test their people, processes and technologies, collaborate more effectively and refine their cyber defense strategies to defend an entire nation’s networks and critical services.
- Fostering Collaboration: Nations with diverse expertise work together, building communication channels and promoting international cooperation in the face of cyber threats. This promotes the sharing of threat intelligence, defense tactics and lessons learned in a trusted environment, all key to cyber defense.
- Raising Awareness: Locked Shields highlights the importance of cybersecurity preparedness for both governments and the general public. It helps identify potential gaps in security capabilities and enables cross-border resilience, so we are better prepared for emerging cyber threats.
- Sharpened Skills: Participants gain practical experience in incident response, threat hunting, and crisis management to help defenders gain the required experience to protect against cutting-edge cyber threats.
- Improved Coordination: Teams learn to collaborate effectively with international partners, combining technical skills with strategic, legal and communication expertise to foster a unified global response to cyber threats.
- Benchmarking Capabilities: Nations can assess their cyber defense posture compared to others, identifying areas for improvement.
- Increasing Cyber Resilience: Ultimately, the rigorous Locked Shields scenarios enhance national, organizational and cross-border resilience. Working together in the live-fire attacks, participants become better prepared for emerging threats.
MixMode’s Participation
For the second consecutive year, MixMode was proud to participate in the prestigious Locked Shields cybersecurity exercise. The immediate deployment of our advanced AI Platform aimed to provide accelerated detection and analysis against sophisticated adversaries. At Locked Shields 2024, MixMode, AI technologies assisted human teams in several key areas including:
- Real-time Threat Detection: Powered by 3rd wave AI, the MixMode Platform continuously monitored exercise network traffic and logs to identify potential malicious activity and anomalies in real-time.
- Threat Analysis: When threats were detected, MixMode AI rapidly prioritized alerts, correlated disparate data points and provided cybersecurity experts with actionable enriched threat intelligence to aid in investigation and response.
- Threat Hunting: MixMode’s self-supervised AI platform empowered analysts to hunt for undiscovered threats and suspicious activity patterns across the exercise networks, enhancing visibility, efficiency and effectiveness.
Throughout the exercise, MixMode operated as a force multiplier, increasing the overall capacity, speed and consistency of cyber defense activities. The lessons learned will be invaluable to defending the world’s critical systems and infrastructure and will be instrumental in MixMode’s mission to continually innovate our advanced AI capabilities for global cyber defense.
MixMode’s Commitment to Cyber Defense
As depicted in this year’s Locked Shields exercise, the growing complexity of protecting our critical infrastructure and overall national security from today’s sophisticated adversaries is more important than ever. As the leader in delivering advanced AI cybersecurity solutions, MixMode is committed to delivering solutions that will aid in the defense of our nation’s infrastructure.
The MixMode Platform is a third-wave AI threat detection solution, purpose-built to detect known and novel attacks in real-time and at scale to counter the evolving cyber threat landscape effectively. Key capabilities include unparalleled threat detection, attack prioritization, advanced threat hunting, and improved response times critical to safeguarding critical infrastructure and maintaining our national security. Learn more about how MixMode is helping to defend our Nation’s infrastructure. Locked Shields 2024 served as a powerful reminder that cybersecurity is a global issue requiring global responsibility. This annual event plays a vital role in keeping the digital world safe by fostering collaboration, testing defenses, and raising awareness. MixMode looks forward to continuing our participation in these significant events and having the opportunity to collaborate across nations to defend national IT systems and critical infrastructure under real-time attacks.
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