Blogs

Secure access service edge (SASE) has continued to garner significant interest in the market due to the need to ensure that security and networking strategies and technologies are aligned to better address the increasingly distributed nature of the modern enterprise. In this video, Bob Laliberte and I discuss some of the different vendor approaches to SASE, the balance between platforms and best-of-breed approaches, and the organizational issues users must consider with regards to SASE.

In my last blog post, I described how the market for eXtended Detection and Response (XDR) is evolving and how CISOs should approach this new and promising technology. It was good and useful information, if I do say so myself, but it didn't directly address the question of why security professionals should care about XDR in the first place.

So, here’s the thing – regardless of how complex or simple IT is to manage and to run, it’s still all-too-often the aegis of just the IT department; and that’s especially true of data lakes, marts, or warehouses, call them what you will. That’s not to say regular non-IT users can’t and don’t consume the valuable outputs from these endeavors (of course they do, that’s the point), but anything new is invariably only achieved with the necessary involvement of highly trained and skilled help – DBAs, system administrators—IT personnel of some sort.

In ESG's 2021 Technology Spending Intentions Survey, when asked whether IT leadership has gotten any pressure from business executives to increase employee monitoring at any point stemming back to the outset of the pandemic, nearly half (48%) of senior IT decision makers responded in the affirmative.

The Influx of Digital Efforts

2020 was a challenging year for people and business alike. As we look to 2021 and the future, businesses have shifted and ramped up the focus on digital transformation initiatives. These initiatives are emerging from the need for a remote workforce and increased digital marketing and sales efforts, fueled in part by an influx in budget from reduced travel. This more digital mindset means more customers are looking online to experience everything from shopping to virtual travel to social events and more—and companies are scrambling to accelerate their digital transformation efforts to meet the need.

Antiquated management philosophies that connected successful work with hours in an office are being proven to be erroneous. In fact, ESG's 2021 Technology Spending Intentions Survey highlighted that 72% or organizations are becoming more pro-work-from-home and 44% of respondents would prefer to keep as many employees as possible working remotely as long as possible. As a result, we are seeing the pressure being turned on for IT pros who are being asked to increase employee monitoring. 

Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) continues to be a growth area for many businesses and business lines. This is largely due to the simplified approach for driving and deploying new digital business initiatives. In fact, HCI can often be a simpler way to kick off new initiatives with no impact to core IT organizations within the business. For this reason, HCI deployments are seeing growth that enables business units to rapidly stand up new projects without impacting IT.

In my continuing video blog series on Modern Email Security, I have had the opportunity to talk with many of the leading innovators tackling some of the toughest challenges in email security. The email threat landscape has been quite volatile over the past year, with so many criminals leveraging the human fear associated with the pandemic to fool unsuspecting users into handing over credentials and sensitive data.