GEC NEWS WIREWhat is the relevance of GBM’s new whitepaper in today’s security market? Tell us more about it.
We, at GBM, has always delved into the impact that any emerging technology has on security; Be it the cloud, virtualization, data center consolidation, big data analytics etc. Through the 6th Annual security survey we have attempted to look into security from a different angle. The whitepaper, titled The Evolution of GCC Enterprises: Are they ready for the next generation? was based on the survey that polled over 1400 people based in the Gulf Region. The survey individually targeted Generations X, Y and Z to understand the varying digital behavior among these generations and subsequently, the capabilities of today’s companies to provide a secured and mobile work environment. We tried to reflect on how this would impact modern enterprises and what it would mean to companies who are planning to retain the millennials. We found some good things as well as worrying things.
If you have to highlight any one aspect of the survey that was completely unexpected, what would that be?
Many of the findings were in line with what we expected; but the most striking result was the confidence level of gen x and y in their organization’s ability to detect and prevent threats. The answers were completely extreme. Gen X had more confidence in their organization’s security infrastructure. This may be due to the fact that they are the key enforcers of the policy, hence in a much more confident position. The millennials were less confident and they demanded that there should be more awareness and training for users. This is a huge area where the organizations need to evolve.
What is the basic security awareness message that the whitepaper sends across?
We have to realize one thing that there is nothing like zero compromise. The compromise could be small or big but there is no way that it can be prevented. It is not about prevention anymore, but more about moving the budgets and resources towards detection and response techniques. It has to be a cycle. Organizations need to make higher investments in security threat intelligence. We are also emphasizing on the need to prioritize. In the past, organizations used to spend enormously on protecting everything. But organizations need to realize that it is ok to be compromised on some areas but you cannot be compromised on some critical data or applications.
How will GBM go to market with its partners in 2018?
There will not be any change in our go to market strategy, but there will be evolutions, especially around cloud security. We are evolving our framework and technology to serve the customers who are planning to move their data and workload from public to private cloud and vice versa. Other focus area would be application development. We are not app developers, bust sometimes the compromise comes from the way an application was written. There is a lot of work that we are doing to come up with technologies to audit applications and suggest recommendations.
We would also be heavily focusing on SOC. There is a growing interest among enterprises to have security operation center to make sure that they have an end-to-end visibility and full control of their infrastructure. Our newly launched go to market program with IBM is also strongly making its way into the organizations and we have started some great implementations and we are going to build on this.
