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I hate to admit it, but I am the quintessential example of someone that is a nightmare for whoever is in charge of securing the applications and data at the company where I am employed.
My iPhone and Mac are chock-full of applications that I rely on to get my job done as a product marketer. I use Evernote to collect and organize my thoughts, Things to manage my tasks, Writer Pro to create text heavy documents, and both Box and Dropbox to store content. Most of my applications work seamlessly across my iPhone and Mac, which is great as it helps me be more productive. I use the same 10 or 11 apps on a daily basis and I am constantly trying out new apps. I don’t think I am alone as more and more employees are not only bringing their own devices to work, but they are also deploying their own applications.
So what is the problem? How am I a nightmare to our IT department or more specifically, the folks that are responsible for cloud security? It turns out that the IT department at my previous company did not sanction most of the applications I used. It is not that they disallowed them; it just so happens that my apps were not the standard IT sanctioned ones such as Microsoft Office 365. Was there an inherent risk involved when I used these applications? Is there now a risk now that I am taking these applications with me to my new employer Netskope?
The simple answer is yes! The risk is very high that bad things could happen. What if I deploy an app that IT does not know about and that app has a security flaw or a breach occurs. With all the recent news around Heartbleed, iCloud hacking, and Shellshock, security teams have a tough enough time securing infrastructure they control so securing infrastructure they don’t know about is a fool’s errand.
This is where Netskope comes into play. Netskope provides organizations with the visibility they need to uncover all cloud apps, whether sanctioned or not. Netskope reports on potential cloud security risks of each application and also provides the tools to control how applications are used and data is shared at a very granular level without forcing IT to choose between block vs. allow. The result is users get to continue using applications and IT gets the visibility and control needed to ensure a secure infrastructure. Netskope truly eliminates the catch-22 between enabling the cloud and being secure.
I am happy to say that today is my first day as a Netskope employee. I spent the last 12 years at Riverbed Technology where I was a member of the pioneering team that introduced WAN optimization to the market. I joined Riverbed early on as I saw the potential that a groundbreaking technology had to solve a big problem that had yet to be solved and a problem that I had experienced first hand. It was an awesome experience to introduce such an impactful solution to the market.
Netskope has a similar opportunity with an innovative technology that is destined to have a tremendous impact on the world of cloud security and Shadow IT. I am looking forward to spearheading the product marketing efforts and enabling companies and their employees to adopt the cloud with confidence.
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