S2E12: VMworld Episode - Transformation, Cybercrime And Survival

Episode Summary

In this special VMworld episode of Don’t Break the Bank, we talk with Jennifer Manry, Vice President of the Global Industries Group at VMware, and Tom Kellermann, Head of Cybersecurity Strategy at VMware. Jennifer and Tom discuss guarding against cybersecurity breaches and ways to create better and safer customer experiences as part of the drive of Digital Business Transformation.

Episode Notes

3 Takeaways:

• Nonpublic market information, like planned mergers and acquisitions and market strategies, are now being specifically targeted by cybercriminals as high value targets.
• Customers see cybersecurity as a competitive issue. They are increasingly investing in proactive security measures like DevSecOps and looking for greater collaboration with information security teams, operations teams and development teams to do security by design - to make it even more difficult for cyber exploits to happen.
• Promote your CISO to report directly to your CEO. They should have a separate security budget from the IT budget and should have veto authority over what the CIO does with regard to anything that would exacerbate the attack surface and allow for island hopping or destructive attacks to occur.

Key Quotes:

• "When you want to get to true business and digital transformation, it's really inextricably linked to high-quality cyber protection, and the need for tight collaboration between all the teams that run these organizations is really critical.” - Jennifer
• "Cybercriminals are more likely to try and commandeer the digital transformation of the institution to use it against their constituency rather than just burglarize the institution as a whole. This shift is important because cybercriminals want to misuse the trust in the company, in the brand, to attack the company’s constituency.” - Tom
• "Cyber teams need almost a blank check to keep pace with how frequent and fast the pace of change is with criminals and how sophisticated and differing their various approaches to exploits are.” - Jennifer
• “This is a dramatic governance issue in this sector when you have your CSO reporting to your CIO, because from an American football perspective, it's like having your defensive coordinator report to your offensive coordinator. It's upside down.” - Tom
• “This level of investment funding, the level of intensity of focus from the cyber teams, all the way up to the CEO, is likely going to be something permanent. And I think there are lots of investments that teams can do to outfit themselves better with the kinds of technology they need to be able to do behavioral analytics or threat hunting with. I don't see a time where cybercriminals are like, ‘ah, you got me. There's no money left in this.’” - Jennifer

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Links

Jennifer Manry LinkedIn

Tom Kellermann LinkedIn

Tom Kellermann Twitter

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About the Hosts

Matthew O'Neill is a husband, dad, geek and Industry Managing Director, Advanced Technology Group in the Office of the CTO at VMware.

You can find Matthew on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Brian Hayes is an audiophile, dad, builder of sheds, maker of mirth, world traveller and EMEA Financial Services Industry Lead at VMware.

You can find Brian on LinkedIn.

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