The cybersecurity profession is characterized by the stress of growing threats, pressure to get boardroom-level attention (before breach headlines do), and a need for constant training and education. This annual study uncovers the perspectives of the committed individuals on the information security career path to understand the challenges of this important field.
As part of his ongoing research around modern email security, Senior Analyst Dave Gruber will be speaking with leaders from several email security solution providers about the current email threat landscape and strategies to defend against them.
Understand SOAPA, its future, and the benefits to cybersecurity professionals.
Vice President, Analyst Services and Senior Analyst Doug Cahill draws upon more than 25 years of industry experience across a broad range of cloud, host, and network-based products and markets to lead the Enterprise Strategy Group's analyst team.
Prior to joining Enterprise Strategy Group, Doug held executive leadership positions at cloud and endpoint security firms where he launched market leading products and established strategic partnerships. Over the course of his career Doug has served in product management, marketing, and business development roles for storage management, networking, and database vendors, and started his career in IT as a business analyst.
Doug has written for Dark Reading and The Cipher Brief and has been quoted in CyberTrend, The Wall Street Journal, CRN, Network World and other publications.
Doug's Page
Research Coverage
Cyber-risk Management, Security Operations, Managed Security Services
Jon Oltsik is a senior principal analyst, an fellow, and the founder of the firm’s cybersecurity service. With over 35 years of technology industry experience, Jon is widely recognized as an expert in all aspects of cybersecurity and is often called upon to help customers understand a CISO's perspective and strategies. Jon focuses on areas such as cyber-risk management, security operations, and all things related to CISOs.
Jon was named one of the top 100 cybersecurity influencers for 2015 by Onalytica and is active as a committee member of the Cybersecurity Canon, a project dedicated to identifying a list of must-read books for all cybersecurity practitioners.
Often quoted in the business and technical press, Jon is also engaged in cybersecurity issues, legislation, and technology discussions within the US government.
Jon's Page
Research Coverage
Endpoint Security, Application Security, Email Security, MDR
Senior Analyst Dave Gruber covers endpoint security, application security, email security, and MDR for Enterprise Strategy Group, where he helps product marketing and management leaders develop winning strategies in these highly competitive markets.
Prior to ESG, Dave held executive leadership roles at successful endpoint and application security companies, most recently as the VP of Product Marketing at Carbon Black through its IPO and as VP of Products at Black Duck Software (acquired by Synopsys) where he led product marketing and product management.
In his current analyst role, Dave researches CISOs’ and security teams’ most pressing needs, working together with endpoint, application, and email security vendors to develop successful product and go-to-market strategies, positioning, and messaging. Building on a strong technical background with early roles in enterprise application development, Dave became interested in figuring out why some products were more successful than others, which eventually led him to senior roles in software product management and product marketing.
Dave holds a BS in Computer Science from the University of Maine.
Dave's Page
Senior Analyst John Grady covers network security for Enterprise Strategy Group. John leverages over 15 years of IT vendor and analyst experience to help clients identify and quantify key market trends to facilitate data-driven business decisions.
Prior to the Enterprise Strategy Group, John spent four years at Symantec, where he was responsible for developing market insights in support of product, go-to-market, and executive stakeholders. Previous to that, John worked as an analyst covering network, web, and email protection, leading initial research initiatives on then-emerging areas such as advanced threat prevention and DDoS. As an analyst, he has also focused on infrastructure channels, assessing and advising on the go-to-market strategies of IT vendors, especially from an indirect perspective.
John has written for Dark Reading and has been quoted in Network World, CSO, eWeek, and TechTarget, among other publications. He holds a B.A. in History from Providence College in Providence, Rhode Island.
Senior Analyst Melinda Marks covers application and cloud security for the Enterprise Strategy Group, helping organizations scale safely while adopting faster cloud-native development cycles. Her coverage area includes cloud-native application protection platforms, cloud workload protection, cloud security posture management, DevSecOps, and application security, including web application security testing (SAST, DAST, IAST, SCA) and API security.
With more than 20 years of experience in tech marketing and strategy, Melinda is passionate about conveying product value and differentiation and driving revenue. Most recently, she was chief marketing and strategy officer for Soluble, a startup focused on automating application security testing for developers (acquired by Lacework). She was also VP of Marketing at Armorblox, VP of Marketing at Styra, and head of marketing for StackRox (acquired by Red Hat). Her experience includes running competitive/market intelligence and product marketing teams at Tenable and running global communications for four years at Qualys. She also spent many years at VMware, where she built its original customer reference program, led product PR, and was on the core VMworld planning team since the first VMworld.
Melinda is a Synopsys Outreach Foundation board member. She has a bachelor’s degree in English from U.C. Berkeley.
Melinda's Page
Senior Analyst Jack Poller covers Identity and Data Security, drawing upon more than 25 years of industry experience across a broad range of systems, storage, networking, and cloud-based products and markets.
Prior to joining the Enterprise Strategy Group, Jack held marketing and marketing consulting positions at storage and networking startups. Jack’s formative years in the industry were spent as a software and hardware engineer, developing multiprocessor workstations and servers, 3D graphics, storage, and networking systems. He holds bachelor degrees in Applied Math and Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University, and an MBA from the Leavy School of Business at Santa Clara University.
Jack's Page
