ESG Blogs

This video series has already featured a discussion with Christophe Bertrand talking generally about the data protection market. In this video, part of ESG's 360 Video Series, Christophe focuses specifically on explaining the key points about one of the most significant contemporary DP issues - that is, the recently implemented European GDPR (or General Data Protection Regulation). He covers how it intersects with the topic of compliance, how its impact is essentially often global, and how it poses many questions in terms of execution and rigidity. He closes by speculating on the likely imminent increase in the number of Data Protection Officer roles - and explains why they would be needed.

Salesforce has become pervasive as the cloud-based CRM solution of choice in many enterprises, yet its backup, restoration, archiving, and management of data in general can be complex and expensive. We recently met with a very interesting player in this space: Odaseva. The company offers a Salesforce-only third-party solution that builds on the Salesforce APIs to deliver more predictable and robust SLAs for data-management-as-a-service, including some new capabilities focused on meeting the GDPR challenges.  

Check out this new video interview I did with Dave Littman from TruthinIT. This week, Dave and I discussed data protection and GDPR. Every week, we will cover a new topic on the Data Protection Channel of ThruthinIT.

The General Data Protection Rule is only a few days away, with many organizations bracing for impact in Europe and around the world. In this video, John McKnight and I discuss GDPR and its consequences. 

According to ESG research, 11% of organizations say they are completely prepared for the GDPR deadline on May 25, 33% are mostly prepared, and 44% are somewhat prepared.

I’ve spent a good amount of time speaking with CISOs over the past month and plan to write up a report about what I’m learning sometime after the RSA Security Conference. In the meantime, it’s become crystal clear to me that CISOs are becoming more and more proactive in their jobs in a few areas including:

Each year, ESG surveys around 700 cybersecurity and IT professionals as part of its annual IT spending intentions research. In this year’s survey, ESG asked respondents several questions about GDPR readiness. Here’s what we found out:

1. While 11% of organizations are completely prepared for GDPR (i.e., would be ready if it went into effect tomorrow), 33% say they are mostly prepared (i.e., most work done but some tasks left to accomplish), and 44% claim they are somewhat prepared (i.e., organization has identified all the steps to meet the GDPR deadline but are early in the process of completing all tasks).

ESG recently completed our annual IT spending intentions research in which the study gauged not only spending plans, but top of mind IT and cybersecurity considerations for economic buyers. With strengthening cybersecurity tools and process being the most important IT meta-trend, and cybersecurity the largest area of projected incremental spend, this video blog explores the dynamics that are driving cybersecurity priorities, including: 

The global cybersecurity skills shortage won’t ease anytime soon. In fact, there’s ample evidence to suggest that things are getting worse (more on this point soon). So, what can organizations do to bridge the skills gap? Rely on service providers for help. 

Over the past few weeks, dozens of people have reached out to me with their cybersecurity predictions for 2018. Some prophecies are fairly obvious (ransomware will continue in 2018) while at the other extreme, some people are pushing doomsday forecasts aimed at garnering press hits (i.e., the US will suffer a cyber-attack in 2018 that knocks out the power grid for a substantial amount of time).