NETWORKING & SECURITY / April 30, 2019 / Blakely Thomas-Aguilar
CIOs everywhere say IT security is a top 2019 priority. This focus on cybersecurity isn’t new. In fact, IT leaders have fought this fight since the first computer joined an enterprise network. Today, however, the cybersecurity landscape is more dangerous than ever, with catastrophic breaches costing $600 billion a year globally.
The reality is that the traditional security approach isn’t working. An attacker must only be lucky once. IT must be perfect every time—an impossible feat as environments become more dispersed and complex. Fortunately, IT security leaders are changing the game, embracing a new approach that turns the cybersecurity tide in favor of businesses. Hear from six of those visionary IT leaders who lead security transformation in their businesses.
1. Serge Bourdage, VP and Account Executive, Advanced Solutions
“At Advanced Solutions, our vision for a secure cloud environment is one where our clients can feel comfortable about where their workload goes and not have to worry about whether or not they are meeting provincial policy. It is up to me and my team to ensure we have the tools and the rigor in place with the technology backing that to keep them safe and protect them from themselves.”
2. Brian Lancaster, VP of IT, Nebraska Medicine
“If you look at today’s environment, cybersecurity is the top priority of our organization. The ROI associated with our NSX deployment is upwards of $30 million, not just in safeguarding us from a breach, but also from the efficiencies we’ve gained from virtualizing the network in our EMR environment,” says Lancaster. “VMware gives us more time and budget to support innovation.”
3. Christopher Frenz, Assistant Vice President of Information Security and Infrastructure, Interfaith Medical Center
“Anything we do to improve security ultimately impacts patient safety, and we trust VMware to provide us with effective tools for securing virtual environments,” says Frenz. “If we didn’t have solutions that work together so effectively such as AppDefense, vSphere, and NSX Data Center, it would be far more difficult and more expensive for us to keep patients and data safe and secure.”
4. Amy Hysell, CIO, Arizona Federal Credit Union
“It’s fine to be able to identify a data breach, but by then it’s too late,” says Hysell. “With VMware NSX, we can contain a breach and minimize the impact rather than letting it go and doing forensics later to determine what happened. And from a data governance perspective, we have much more visibility, so it’s much easier to conduct risk assessments.”
5. Rory Peacock, Deputy Executive Director, Region 11
“The number of attacks on our environment is extremely high. With the sensitive type of information we have and the data center and resources we have, there are thousands of attacks daily. We’d been taken down before, and since implementing NSX, we’ve been attacked the exact same way, and it didn’t take us down, and quite honestly, nobody even knew we were attacked.”
6. Ramon Lewis, Assistant General Manager, Infrastructure and Operations, NCB Jamaica
“With respect to the Caribbean in general, we’re seeing the industry being under threat. We have to go and transform how we do business by reinventing our core underlying business practices at the same time trying to find different ways to serve our customers, so they’re more delighted when they interact with the bank.”