Blogs

Our personal and professional lives are reliant on technology. But the sensitive data we share and store online is more vulnerable to cyberthreats than ever before. From credit card numbers and medical records to private messages and intellectual property, encrypting data is essential to safeguard our information from prying eyes and unauthorized access. Without encryption, we risk exposing our most valuable assets to malicious actors who seek to exploit our online vulnerabilities.

Since returning from RSA Conference 2023, I've collected my thoughts from the massive sensory input that comes from this four-day, 625-vendor, 700-speaker cybersecurity conference. Upwards of 45,000 people attended this year's RSA Conference—a massive increase over last year's 26,000 attendees.

Taking inspiration from the words of Helen Keller, "Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much," the theme for RSA Conference 2023 is "Stronger Together."

On International Women's Day, I'm proud to celebrate nearly one year of our Women in Cybersecurity series. We launched the series to connect women in the industry and to spotlight their stories with hopes to increase representation in the field. It's been a great year of interviews with security experts and leaders, including company founders, CEOs, researchers, and CISOs, sharing their stories, tips, and resources. 

If you haven't already, I hope you check out the series as every episode is informative and inspiring. My hope was to make the content available in anyone's preferred format; you can read the blog posts, watch the short videos for highlights, and listen to the full audio recordings of the interviews, and I hope you have as much fun hearing these stories as we had doing these shows! Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss a show since there is much more to come!

Here are some of my personal experiences along with key takeaways and highlights from the shows. 

This episode of Women in Cybersecurity features the amazing Tanya Janca, founder and CEO of the We Hack Purple Community author of Alice and Bob Learn Application Security. Tanya is a powerhouse in the application security community, so I was thrilled to talk to her about her passion for sharing knowledge and techniques to advance our field.

New tools are proliferating to secure data wherever it lives. Six data security trends—ranging from AI washing to new data security platforms—are in the forefront for 2023.

Identity's place in the attack chain is driving the shift of identity responsibility from IT operations teams to security teams to look into passwordless, digital IDs, platforms, and more.

Encryption is a foundational element of cybersecurity. Organizations should implement encryption to counter the ever-growing threat of data breaches.

I’m honored to be a part of the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) as lead analyst for observability, IT operations, and sustainability in IT.  Previously, I was publisher and VP of market insights for infrastructure at ESG’s parent organization, TechTarget. In that role, I worked with hundreds of IT vendors’ leadership teams helping them leverage original market insights to improve their go-to-market results. Throughout that time, one consistent observation I had was that the content and insights that came from Enterprise Strategy Group were both more insightful and higher performing than content that came from other analyst groups -- big ones you’ve heard of -- because ESG always brought “the bigger truth” to light. And that truth was being illuminated by industry heavyweights -- people like Jon Oltsik and Adam Demattia -- who are amongst the smartest and most effective people I’ve ever worked with in their respective domains. 

OK, I do love double meanings….

In this case, it came in the form of Hurricane Nicole, which hit Florida during the recent Ingram Micro ONE event in Orlando, where solution providers, vendors, and industry leaders, either in-person at the Gaylord Palms Resort, or virtually, explored what's next in technology, and how Ingram Micro is transforming to better support the complex ecosystem of IT vendors, IT partners, and their joint customers.