Ever-Evolving Enterprise Security Landscape

By Mike Dauber, General Partner, Amplify Partners

Mike Dauber, General Partner, Amplify Partners

How has the enterprise security startup shaped the trend in the current business? Do you see any significant impact with the introduction of new trends in the companies that utilize enterprise security set-up?

Ensuring security deployments with minimal business disruption is a challenging task. Since security concerns are the emerging threat to a company; technology and its security leaders should analyze to improve the organization’s business goals. Taking a note on the history of the data breach, the phase when the Target Breach was roughly discovered around 2010, to the approximate time around the Equifax Breach, most of the CISO’s identified themselves in the ‘best-of-breed phase.’ It was that phase where they were focused and defended the network and the company from the data theft, which meant having 30-40 different kinds of vendors in some cases. However, the process has evolved over the last eight to nine years, making the CISO’s and CIO’s realize that security posture is indeed untenable since most of the companies did not follow any cohesive solutions that resulted in spending a lot of time to overcome the security vulnerabilities.

The enterprise landscape is currently witnessing different trends, first, where start-ups come in and explore the security world, and the second trend works towards new ideas which did not exist before or which has to be created in future. Some years ago the firms which did not contain an email solution and could not protect themselves against phishing, later saw an explosion of anti-phishing attack technology. As a result, a lot of companies came up with different solutions to counter major phishing attacks in their entities.

Scenarios did exist when either there was a new threat vector that never existed before or at other times when there was a new fundamental infrastructure. We did observe that in the last couple of years there has been a reduction in a number of emerging companies in the security landscape that took on the existing incumbents for traditional solutions. Even the previous Rivest Shamir Adleman (RSA) sign-outs went down in the total number of company presentations. This conveniently relates to the next-generation security firms that require a go-to-market-model which reduces the dependency on traditional solutions as well as helps them be successful in the industry.

"An organization should become the development markers, and at the same time understand the process of developing a product"

With a decade-long experience in the enterprise security landscape, how do you specifically decide on your portfolios?

To choose a portfolio that stands out amongst our peers, our firm emphasizes on two factors. The most important factor of our company is the prominence of industry knowledge of the founder. Does the company go beyond basics and impart something innovative and novel? The second significant factor revolves around the enablement of any other capabilities in addition to the security aspect. Does the concept in the design of secure computing systems provide other capabilities than security? This tool has the potential to simplify networks and run the function at a very meager amount and that makes the company more secure. The last factor which our company looks upon is about the organizations that carry sales reorientations to CISO or security organizations and approach things differently.

What are the efforts you contributed as an individual to make your organization a great place?

The simple yet powerful factor for an organization to succeed is to nurture a productive team. An investor of a company should grow with the team, and make it better every day by involving in recruitment as well as in multiple levels of organizations especially in the start-ups and small businesses. The success of the company also depends on the founder’s skills and competencies. An organization should become the development markers, and at the same time understand the process of developing a product. Their focal point should always be the customer’s interests so that the firm gets the right feedback from them and hence, successfully grow their business. Another most critical factor is the business strategy that aligns us with the different go to market models. So it is incredibly essential for a firm to get tightly connected with other companies and work closely with them.

How is the enterprise security landscape changing and what will it look like in the future? What is the best piece of advice would you give to the start-ups to expand the business and generate more profits?

Soon the business industry will adapt to the transformations in the system, as in, how developers and security companies work together. Since the market is evolving at a faster pace, security is seen as a threat component to many developers. But the future is going to witness a lot of changes around how developers, security companies, and security personnel will work together in a company. Coming to the second part of the question, firms should look forward and find a way for security to be native intelligent workflows. Along with that, the founders should spend time innovatively on the go-to-market-model for a positive outcome in their business venture.

Read Also

The Responsibilities of an Information Security Leader

The Responsibilities of an Information Security Leader

Joshua Cloud, Director of Information Security, NFI Industries
The ABCDs of Security: An Investor Perspective

The ABCDs of Security: An Investor Perspective

Mark Fernandes, Managing Director, Sierra Ventures
5 Challenges Facing Start-Ups in 2018

5 Challenges Facing Start-Ups in 2018

Ronen Nir, General Partner at Viola Ventures

Weekly Brief