“If somebody offers you an amazing opportunity but you are not sure you can do it, say yes – then learn how to do it later.” — Richard Branson
If necessity is the mother of invention, then the cybersecurity community hasn’t been doing a very good job of listening to mom. Our industry is rife with complexity, rising costs, and let’s face it – failing efficacy. We spend millions upon millions of dollars on security kit, and yet the size and scale of critical data breaches continues to grow. We argue about the reasons, and who could have done more or spent more, or hired better staff; but in the end we’re all just living in a giant glass house, rock in hand. As a realist, this is disappointing on a number of levels.
I believe we are at an inflection point in the history of the industry. We stand on the precipice of a great divide. The strategies and outcomes of yesterday are no longer valid. Things have to change, evolve, and frankly grow up. Hyperbole aside, the cyber security community must realize things have to change dramatically. There is urgency in this moment.
Rising budgets have suddenly hit a brick wall, as a global economic full-stop has forced the re-evaluation of spending and priorities. And yet, we can’t just say we’re going to ignore safety and data security. So now what?
This is where I believe we, collectively, have an opportunity. Security leaders and their peers in technology are struggling to solve problems in their own individual domains, but therein is an opportunity. Security can’t just be something we add on as a step in the assembly line. It has to be foundational, fundamental, and pervasive in our companies and strategies.
Enterprise IT leaders have three key priorities. Connect, protect, and optimize. Connecting people, offices, applications, and business processes is key to agility and resiliency in times of turmoil. Protecting the right things, with proportionality, while allowing creativity and agility is something that has alluded cyber security professionals since day one. And of course let’s not forget that this whole thing has to be continuously optimized, so that today’s strategy and delivery models evolve as our businesses do whether it’s in times of expansion or contraction.
If you buy into my line of thinking, you already know what’s coming next.
Most of your traditional security vendors aren’t set up to operate this way. They sell you each of these three critical pieces in silos, in ways that don’t work together well. It’s a two-thousand-piece puzzle where each 10 piece section is made by a different manufacturer without any regard to the others. And the worst part is you’re the one who has to put it together and make it great.
When I spent time understanding how Lightstream operates, the opportunity became clear. Connect, protect, optimize as a service platform in a manner that abstracts the delivery method from the business outcome. When the world went to cloud computing, we didn’t keep asking who made the chipset or the hard drive – we just added CPU and storage and expected it to work. Why doesn’t your IT strategy behave this way? Well … it can.
I’m joining Lightstream to add my knowledge and experience to help them continue to build out what is a world-class service platform that’s focused on delivering business outcomes as a partner to enterprise CFOs and technology leaders alike. When you can achieve security outcomes, save on your bottom line, and be more effective – that’s nirvana. That’s what we’re focused on. I’d love to tell you about it.