Security should be simple and OpenText is striving to create a comprehensive security portfolio that serves individuals and organizations of all sizes, according to Geoff Bibby, senior vice president of cybersecurity marketing and strategy at OpenText.
The company recently completed its $6 billion acquisition of British software company Micro Focus—the largest in its history. Bibby spoke at RSA with Bill Brenner, vice president of content strategy at Cyberrisk Alliance and Security Weekly.
The acquisition included four Micro Focus enterprise brands: Fortify, NetIQ, ArcSight, and Voltage.
The strategy is to address all security needs and serve the whole continuum--from the individual user wanting endpoint and backup protection--up to enterprise data security, data privacy, or app security with smarter information management. “We also believe there’s a real need for smarter security,’’ Bibby said, which he defined as simplified security.
That means being able to get the whole breadth of security offerings an organization needs under one umbrella, he added. In an SMB or MSP case, for example, OpenText can take newly-acquired consumer-focused products like Webroot and Carbonite and make them available through a single pane of glass for partners to consume.
The role of AI in security
While the concept of AI is very exciting, it should force companies to have a policy framework in place to understand how it will be allowed in their organization’s dev environments, Bibby said.
OpenText has been using machine learning for a long time to improve its libraries and policy controls looking for unwanted mail, he said. “It’s something that we’re going to take in stride and deliver to our customers for consumption when they want it.’’
But Bibby stressed that companies need to “meet AI where it is now” and there needs to be “a lot of policy safeguards before it’s really ready for all ingestion in everything we do.”
Threat intelligence is an example of an area where OpenText’s existing products could become a lot stronger with AI, he said, but it is still early days for customers using AI, Bibby added.
Utilizing new offerings
OpenText is already planning how it will leverage its new brands. For example, OpenText will pair Voltage’s file analysis suite with its legacy product, Documentum.
It could be useful for doing a quick scan of Documentum’s environment to see if there is any sensitive information there, he said, and then utilizing Voltage’s data security offering with it, “so that if you do actually detect something, you’re able to act on it.”
This could include encrypting the data or quarantining it.
In related news, OpenText’s 2023 Cybersecurity Threat Report revealed some good news: malware infection rates are on the decline. Its Webroot-protected Windows endpoints saw a year-over-year decrease for the last three years, dropping by 16.7% between 2019 and 2020, and by 58% from 2020 to 2021. The decline in infections continued from 2021 to 2022, but at a slower pace, according to the report.
OpenText attributed the decline to the ongoing migration from Windows 7 to newer Windows versions, as well as improved blocking rates from BrightCloud, and attackers’ changing behavior.
By Esther Shein
