(L-R) Mike Nezri - CTO, and Michael Cohen - Director, North America, at the CYBONET stand, RSA Conference 2018, San Francisco, 16-20 April
Last week, CYBONET attended RSA 2018 in San Francisco for the second consecutive year. The annual security conference hosted over 40,000 attendees and offered the opportunity to be exposed to a broad spectrum of approaches, concerns and solutions to the evolving threat landscape.
Mike Nezri, CTO, and Michael Cohen, Director for North America, took full advantage of these opportunities at RSA. They met with current CYBONET partners, forged relationships with potential new distributors and resellers, and engaged with a wide range of professionals from the global security community.
The week at RSA highlighted a number of key topics and trends:
GDPR
With the enforcement of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) a mere month away, discussion continues across organizations of all sizes – and resellers, distributors and end customers alike – asking what will enforcement look like; which companies will be targeted first; how quick and punitive will the initial activities be?
Hearing about the road to GDPR compliance from large enterprises versus smaller Managed Service Providers (MSPs) managing 20-50 user environments, one thing was clear; regardless of the amount of planning and preparation, the overwhelming consensus is that achieving compliance with the GDPR is a wait and see process – with the details to be decided in the courts.
IoT and Network Visibility
This year, like last, there was a lot of interest in better management of Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity, even within smaller network environments. As networks adapt to an IoT world and the deluge of data that this brings with it, there was widespread agreement that IoT vulnerabilities will be a core area of focus for years to come.
Cost of Multiple Solutions
With the cross-vertical, global nature of RSA participants, it was apparent that organizations in general – and small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) in particular – are struggling to balance the costs associated with deploying multiple solutions across the network with their benefits and the resources at their disposal. As threats and compliance frameworks evolve, the challenge of clearly defining Return on Investment (ROI) in the context of all of the available technologies on the market weighs heavy on decision makers at these organizations.
MSPs and MSSPs
In conversations with MSPs servicing SMB customers, a recurring theme was that MSPs that have not historically invested in a security practice are recognizing that they no longer have a choice in the matter. Whether they are providing security services or not, their customers’ expectations are that deeper security services are a given for any recurring IT services contract. These days, there is no such thing as an MSP that doesn’t do security.
Overall, our team gained many insights from CYBONET’s attendance at RSA 2018, and were excited to demo the updated Cybowall solution at the conference. We are also looking forward to being back at RSA next year!