From Cloudbleed, to Petya, to WannaCry – each major cybersecurity attack of 2017 has exposed new vulnerabilities in corporations and governments with one scary fact: everyone's data is potentially at risk.

With the digital storage of personal data growing as the norm across every industry, data security officers and CIOs are facing the harsh reality that cyberattacks are no longer rare events, but instead are an inevitability. To get ahead, data security personnel must abandon the view that a major cyberattack is rare, and adopt a stance of readiness that assumes an attack is imminent – it is no longer a question of if, but when.

Kurt Long, CEO of FairWarning, sat down with Inside Counsel to discuss the major trends they represent, and how data security officers can best prepare to counter them in the coming months and years. Long has more than a decade of experience helping companies protect their assets by cultivating a human right to privacy in their workforces through a focus on technological and people-based security solutions.