What The Security Industry Can Learn From The Halo Video Games

The security industry could learn a lot from the Halo video games, Art Gilliland, senior vice president and general manager of HP enterprise security products and self-professed avid Halo player, said in a keynote at the 2015 RSA Conference in San Francisco.

In 2001, when the game first launched to rave reviews, it was a much different game than the most recent version, Halo 5: Guardians, expected in October. Each new iteration brought with it new features and "really cool additions," from how the game appeared to new functionalities, he said.

"Even though the core and the heart of the game is the same, it's pretty radically different," Gilliland said.

"If you think about the security game, there's an old school game that’s the heart of what we need to do every day. Then there's the new school game that’s how we need to adopt it because, candidly, the security game has changed," he said. 

Gillliland said, just like in Halo, there are things the industry can learn from both the "old school" versions and the newest upcoming release. Citing a recent cyber risk report, Gilliland said 44 percent of vulnerabilities found are 2 to 4 years old. While a lot of innovation has come to the security industry, Gilliland argued that statistics like that show the need to also remember the "old school" basics of security prevention and detection.

"We talk a lot about the advanced threats and new zero days, but I think what we should be learning from the old school of security is that we still have a lot to learn about how we execute and operate this," Gilliland said.