Organizations are increasingly moving applications to the cloud to better serve their customers, partners, and employees. The ability to quickly deploy applications to the cloud so employees, partners, and customers can connect to companies for business transactions and services gives organizations a competitive advantage. This makes maintaining security posture more important than ever, as  increasing the availability of products and services connected to company and customer data increases exposure to attacks. Cloud security posture management (CSPM) is key to mitigating security risk while enabling the use of innovative cloud technologies that drive better business results.

ESG On Location – VMware Explore 2022

Sporting a new name, the long anticipated in-person event, VMware Explore, was back this year with new innovation, new conversations, and a new theme, “Cloud Chaos.” The ESG analyst team was there, on location, and in this video, you will hear from me, as well as Mark Bowker, Bob Laliberte, Paul Nashawaty, and Kevin Rhone, on the most impressive announcements and insights from the event.

Check out the video and hope to see you in person at next year’s event.

There are many different cybersecurity categories, and it seems that a new category is created every minute. If you're paying attention to cloud security, you may have seen or heard about DSPM—data security posture management. 

This episode of Women in Cybersecurity features Wendy Thomas, President and CEO of Secureworks, a leading cybersecurity company that helps its global customers build effective cybersecurity programs with innovative technology and professional services. With a mathematical background in economics and finance, she found that the field of cybersecurity provides a rewarding trifecta: the opportunity to work globally across cultures and geographies, intellectually stimulating work using innovative technology; and the ability to make a positive impact.

Her leadership includes diversity and inclusion initiatives to reflect the global markets Secureworks serves, and she is an advocate for childhood cyber literacy, starting as early as elementary schools.

Don't miss her video below, and be sure to check out the full audio interview.

My colleague John Grady completed a new research report on Trends in Modern Application Protection. It covers how organizations are modernizing their application architectures and the challenges they are seeing in web application and API protection platforms. In this video, we discuss some of his findings on API security. Watch the video below to learn about:

• The growth of APIs
• Challenges and methods to secure them
• API incidents that organizations have experienced and their impacts
• Methods of remediating API coding errors and their effectiveness
• What to look for in an API protection platform

As ransomware actors have gained in experience and sophistication, they've adopted new tactics. Before encrypting your data, they exfiltrate it. This way, they can make you pay twice--first for an encryption key, and second, an extortion fee to prevent the attacker from publishing your sensitive data.

Data security encompasses the principles and practice of ensuring legitimate access and preventing unauthorized access to data to preserve the cybersecurity triad of confidentiality, integrity, and access (CIA). A data security platform that enables you to discover, classify, and protect your sensitive data can stop a ransomware attacker from data exfiltration and limit your exposure to extortion.

Easy-to-remember passwords are easy to crack. Strong passwords are hard to remember,
leading to password reuse and the risk of password compromise that causes multiple account takeovers. Passwords are risky business.

Multifactor authentication (MFA) is a way to combat the inherent weaknesses of passwords. Yet MFA is also susceptible to compromise. Passwordless authentication based on the FIDO standards and public key encryption is the new archetype for authentication, and is phishing- and compromise-resistant. 

first met Laurie when we worked together at Qualys, where she was a superstar sales leader who had a technical background. She got her start in tech support, moving into network engineering, and then into cybersecurity roles at VeriSign and SecureWorks. Then she worked at CVS doing vulnerability management before moving to Qualys, where she spent nearly nine years, including serving as Executive VP of Worldwide Field Operations. Now she heads up strategic alliances for Veracode. With her technical background and her understanding of customer needs, she is passionate about helping them solve their biggest cybersecurity challenges with effective solutions. 

Don't miss her video below, and be sure to check out the full audio interview.

This episode of Women in Cybersecurity features Arti Raman, the founder and CEO of Titaniam, an innovative data security company that helps organization protect their data even if they have been infiltrated.

Arti didn't start out in cybersecurity; her education was in economics and math, but when she worked at Agiliance in the area of Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) 12 years ago, she was drawn to solving security problems and decided to put her analytical background to use to solve challenging security problems. She then worked at Symantec, where she tackled enterprise cybersecurity challenges, such as data center security and isolating workloads. Today, she leads her own company, drawing from her past experience of running another successful startup before she got into cybersecurity. Don't miss her video below, and be sure to check out the full audio interview.

I recently recorded a couple of short videos with my colleague and Lead ESG Analyst, Mark Bowker where we had an informal conversation about trends in end-user computing (EUC) and how partners are adapting their go-to-market strategies to respond to their customer asks.