Network Security, Vulnerability Management

Paul Lipman, CEO, Total Defense

With endless amounts of talks taking place at the end of the month in San Francisco, we caught up with Paul Lipman, CEO of Total Defense, to see what's on his radar for RSA Conference 2014.

What events will you be attending this year in San Francisco?

This year, I'm looking forward to attending the annual RSA Conference as well as AGC (Americas' Growth Capital) in San Francisco.

What influenced your decision to attend/not attend?

RSA is always a useful opportunity to take the pulse of the industry and network with peers across the security industry as well as with journalists. I find AGC to be a great opportunity to hear from emerging and innovative companies, and get a deeper dive and more interactive insight into the trends affecting the leading edge of our industry.

What do you anticipate the most as far as conference talks this year?

We will certainly see an increase in the amount of discussion around 'identifying and filling security gaps both internal and external.' There will also be in-depth discussions around data as both a monetary entity and as a target for criminals. These two go hand-in-hand as what criminals are after is access to information that they can use for profit, and they are willing to be patient and methodical if the value of the data is high.

Given the RSA/NSA news, what kind of impact do you feel this will have on the show this year?

There is tremendous interest within our customer base in data protection, compliance and comprehensive visibility into threats across the extended enterprise perimeter.  This is being driven, in large part, by both the decibel level around the NSA “revelations” and also by the latest news on the causes of the Target breach.  Security vendors are going to need to demonstrate their ability to help customers address these concerns in very concrete terms.  The move from simply offering protection (or the promise of protection) to offering true comprehensive visibility into security posture will be one of the most important trends at this year's show.

What are some pressing concerns/threats in the industry that you feel will be discussed this year?

We will certainly continue to hear pressing concerns surrounding the NSA's impact on overall security and data privacy and security. We will also continue to discuss the fallout of the recent retails data breaches at Target, Neiman Marcus etc… and the failure of traditional approaches to security - i.e. it is no longer enough to just secure the perimeter, but rather organizations will need to extend to continuous and correlated visibility across the entire extended perimeter. Organizations must take a more holistic approach to their security posture - and recognize that threats don't start and end at their network's edge.  In today's increasingly inter-connected and inter-dependent world, organizations must gain comprehensive visibility into their entire environment - which often times goes far beyond the network's edge.

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