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We sat down for a virtual Q&A with Drew Del Matto, CFO of Netskope, to get his thoughts and advice for C-level executives who are navigating concerns for their workforce and ongoing business.
Question: How will COVID-19 change the conversation with executive teams and their boards of directors?
Drew Del Matto: Boards are focused on governance and they have a multitude of concerns, including employees, customers, and shareholders. Safety of employees is obviously paramount. As it relates to customers, boards and executives need to ensure that they’re accounting for new risks related to the new reality of a remote workforce and more cloud usage. These risks range from how customers interface with the company, its products or services, or how the customers’ sensitive data is treated. C-level executives are also focused on ensuring the ongoing continuity and velocity of the business. It’s now obvious that remote connectivity is an accepted way of doing business. COVID-19 has shined a light on this and it will likely encourage longer-term remote work habits as well. Companies now need to ensure people (and only the right people) have the required, ongoing connectivity and access to what they need to do their work. This requires a new security architecture as applications, data, and the network need to be secured beyond the world of physical data centers. This is a curveball to the world of old perimeters, and a catalyst for driving the increased digitization and use of cloud, primarily via business applications. COVID-19 effectively catalyzes enterprise migration to the cloud.
Question: What role should security be playing in executive boards in planning for this shift to remote work?
Drew Del Matto: From a governance point of view, the board and management have the responsibility to assess the situation, drive the business, and ensure that they’ve evaluated and properly addressed the business, cyber, and cloud risks. The silver lining is that everyone has been hyper-focused on IT and assessing cyber risk as a result of the many data breaches over the last several years. However, companies were focused on hard perimeters, which means physical worksites and physical data centers. People are now working everywhere, and this crisis shines a bright lig