Blogs

A ZDNet article yesterday brought to my attention today just how far Microsoft has moved the needle to becoming a cybersecurity services provider. Increasingly, cloud providers are entering this market and Microsoft has started off by providing the most important services to cloud customers. Cloud has become a ubiquitous infrastructure and buyers are demanding cloud security monitoring and alerting. In fact, 40% of respondents to a recent ESG cybersecurity services study state that these services are must-haves from managed security services providers (MSSPs). In this instance, Microsoft can be considered an MSSP as it offers many of the services in this market.

Microsoft is making great strides in adding cybersecurity services to its arsenal. In April, it introduced the managed threat hunting service called Threat Experts on Demand as part of the Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) service for customers with subscriptions such as Windows 10 Enterprise E5 and the Microsoft 365 bundle, giving enterprise customers access to top Microsoft security experts when they need help working through a tough threat. Last September, the company launched its Azure Sentinel cloud-SIEM, enabling data collection across the enterprise and detection of unknown and advanced threats utilizing Microsoft’s threat intelligence telemetry, which is significant in quantity and is made actionable by the company’s artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) and threat hunting capabilities. These ingredients enable faster response to incidents, but not all enterprises have the resources to dig deep into these tools on their own. Now with Threat Experts on Demand, Microsoft assists the enterprise to make sense of the most challenging threats. 

As 2019 winds down, security analysts like me tend to compile a list of industry predictions. I’m still working on a comprehensive list, but I’m extremely confident that we are about to see some unprecedented changes in enterprise security technology. These changes are already happening behind the scenes, but they will become much more visible in 2020 and beyond.

With only 12 months in a year and hundreds or thousands of important topics to educate people on, how are people ever going to cut through it all and hear about how important cybersecurity is? With cyber breach stories running in virtually every news media outlet weekly, is cybersecurity just becoming background noise in our busy lives?

A couple of weeks ago, a company called Pensando came out of stealth mode in NYC. It was formed from what the chairman of the company, John Chambers, is coining “a different kind of 20 somethings.” Indeed this is not a typical Silicon Valley, hoodie and sneakers wearing 20 year olds' startup, but rather one that has founders with 20 something years of delivering innovative and disruptive technologies time and time again (think Andiamo, Insieme etc.). They are all ex-Cisco senior executives, Mario Mazzola, Prem Jain, Luca Cafiero, and Soni Jiandani, colloquially referred to as “MPLS.”

Before you panic, I have not lost my command of the English language. I know the title of this blog is grammatically imperfect; but it is also entirely intentional. Hitachi (the overall company) has had dual intentions from the very beginning of its existence over a century ago…not only to develop and produce valuable products and services, but also to find ways of “powering good” (that’s the modern vernacular) in society. Both of its “dual bottom lines” were on full display at Hitachi Vantara’s Next conference last week in Vegas.

Hitachi NEXT this year had a new feel about it. Sure, there was some great tech, which we will get to in a minute, but speaking with the attendees and the executives, there was an element of excitement in the air. Hitachi Vantara has already had great tech, but this year, with new innovations for the data center, the cloud, and data ops, there is much more to Hitachi Vantara than in years past.

I had the opportunity to attend the live Made By Google '19 event in New York City on October 15, 2019.

Given the pace of change and innovation in the market it is fascinating to attend these events and get a firsthand look at the technology. As a consumer, it is easy to get excited about the latest gadgets, but businesses have traditionally been accustomed to technology lifecycles that are measured and accounted for in years--often 3, 5, and even 10 year increments. Innovators like Google are moving at a pace that is difficult to digest, never mind consume for mainstream businesses.  

Commvault GO is taking place this week in Denver and I am attending the event with a couple of ESG colleagues.   

The company is vastly different from the one we saw last year, to say the least: New leadership, a significant acquisition under its belt (its first actually), a new backup service, and a roadmap full of goodies for end-users. Commvault is not changing, it has already changed. The company is actively morphing into its next phase of evolution which will come with some adjustments to its go to market.  

McAfee chose “time” as the overarching theme of its 2019 MPower conference, held the week of October 2 in Las Vegas. The idea of the theme being that time is central to everything we do in the cybersecurity industry. Attackers look to increase dwell time while security teams try to reduce mean time to detect (MTTD) and mean time to response (MTTR). For what it's worth, I felt that my time attending was well-spent. McAfee’s always done a good job focusing its message and approach for these types of events, and this year was no different. The major announcements focused on cloud and analytics, with a bit of open architectures and partnerships included as well – all top of mind priorities for security practitioners.

Are you aware that October is national cybersecurity awareness month? If you aren’t, you’re not alone. There’s lots of cybersecurity awareness activities in DC, some states, and universities, but it’s all but ignored by the industry at large.