Golden SaaS Age, Edge Computing, Cisco/Splunk – Allie Mellen, Theresa Lanowitz, Yoni Shohet, Chris Goettl – ESW #333
We ALL use SaaS. It has become ubiquitous in both our personal and professional lives. Somehow, the SaaS Security market has only recently began to emerge. Today's interview with Yoni Shohet, co-founder and CEO of Valence Security, aims to understand why it has taken so long for SaaS Security products to come to market, what that market currently looks like, and what a SaaS Security product actually does.
The concept of Edge computing has evolved over the years and now has a distinct role alongside public cloud. Theresa Lanowitz, from AT&T Cybersecurity, and Chris Goettl from Ivanti join us to discuss what edge computing means for the market and for cybersecurity. Specifically, we'll discuss how:
- Strong use cases in the market today for edge computing
- Security's role in edge computing, as a relative newcomer to part of the broader planning process
- Edge computing requires new thinking about security because of its distributed nature
This segment is sponsored by AT&T Cybersecurity. Visit https://securityweekly.com/attcybersecurity to learn more about them!
This week, we changed things up a bit for the news segment and Allie Mellen joins us as a surprise guest host! We discuss Cisco's Splunk acquisition and what it means for Splunk customers, and "The Blob" - Allie's term describing the negative forces responsible for much of the overhyped marketing, silly trends, and substandard products we see in the industry.
Segment Resources: Allie's blog on Cisco/Splunk: https://www.forrester.com/blogs/splunk-is-good-for-cisco-but-cisco-needs-to-convince-splunk-customers-that-cisco-is-good-for-them/ Allie's blog on The Blob: https://www.forrester.com/blogs/the-blob-is-poisoning-the-security-industry/
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Full Audio
Segments
1. SaaS Security in the Golden Age of SaaS – Yoni Shohet – ESW #333
We ALL use SaaS. It has become ubiquitous in both our personal and professional lives. Somehow, the SaaS Security market has only recently began to emerge. Today's interview with Yoni Shohet, co-founder and CEO of Valence Security, aims to understand why it has taken so long for SaaS Security products to come to market, what that market currently looks like, and what a SaaS Security product actually does.
Announcements
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Guest

Yoni Shohet is a seasoned entrepreneur, with a successful track record in the Israeli cybersecurity landscape. Yoni received his BSc in Mathematics at the age of 19, and completed his service in the Israel Defense Forces as a cybersecurity team leader and project manager at one of Israel’s most esteemed military intelligence units. Valence is the second cybersecurity startup Yoni has founded, following his time as CEO and co-founder of SCADAfence, a pioneer in industrial IoT cybersecurity.
Host

2. Security’s Role in Edge Computing Today – Theresa Lanowitz, Chris Goettl – ESW #333
The concept of Edge computing has evolved over the years and now has a distinct role alongside public cloud. Theresa Lanowitz, from AT&T Cybersecurity, and Chris Goettl from Ivanti join us to discuss what edge computing means for the market and for cybersecurity. Specifically, we'll discuss how:
- Strong use cases in the market today for edge computing
- Security's role in edge computing, as a relative newcomer to part of the broader planning process
- Edge computing requires new thinking about security because of its distributed nature
This segment is sponsored by AT&T Cybersecurity. Visit https://securityweekly.com/attcybersecurity to learn more about them!
Announcements
You can now find us on Instagram! Follow us for highlight reels, giveaway announcements, and more at SecWeekly.
Guests

Theresa Lanowitz is a proven global influencer on the trends and emerging technology poised to help today’s enterprises succeed. Formerly an industry analyst at Gartner, Theresa was at the forefront of establishing the firm’s application quality ecosystem and was a champion of application security technology. She also created and launched the Gartner Application & Innovation Solutions Summit, a premier conference for application and software engineers. Her professional career began as a software developer at McDonnell Douglas, where she worked on the C-17 military transport plane and held a US Department of Defense Top Secret security clearance. She also held positions as a product manager for Borland International Software—where she launched the iconic Java integrated development environment, JBuilder—and, Sun Microsystems—where she led strategic marketing for the Jini project – a precursor to IoT (Internet of Things). Throughout her career, Theresa has been a trusted advisor to some of the most innovative and influential companies and executives in the world.

Chris Goettl is the Vice President of Product Management for security products at Ivanti. Chris has over 15 years of experience working in IT, where he supports and implements security solutions for Ivanti customers and guides the security strategy and vision for Ivanti security products. He is also a security evangelist speaking at security events globally where he gives guidance around modern cyber threats and how to combat them effectively. Chris hosts a monthly webinar focusing on Patch Tuesday and security vulnerabilities, and frequently blogs about security topics. You can find bylines and commentary from Chris in notable security news sources like SC Magazine, Redmond Magazine, ComputerWorld, ThreatPost, Help Net Security, and more.
Hosts

3. Splunk Acquisition and The Blob with Allie Mellen – ESW #333
This week, we changed things up a bit for the news segment and Allie Mellen joins us as a surprise guest host! We discuss Cisco's Splunk acquisition and what it means for Splunk customers, and "The Blob" - Allie's term describing the negative forces responsible for much of the overhyped marketing, silly trends, and substandard products we see in the industry.
Segment Resources: Allie's blog on Cisco/Splunk: https://www.forrester.com/blogs/splunk-is-good-for-cisco-but-cisco-needs-to-convince-splunk-customers-that-cisco-is-good-for-them/ Allie's blog on The Blob: https://www.forrester.com/blogs/the-blob-is-poisoning-the-security-industry/
Announcements
Join our Discord channel to chat with us throughout the live show today! Visit securityweekly.com/discord to receive an invite and become part of our community.
Guest

Allie Mellen is a Forrester analyst covering security operations, nation-state threats, and the use of automation, machine learning, and AI in security tools. She has been in the technology industry for over a decade in various engineering roles: doing research at MIT, running her own engineering consultancy, and being a hacker before finally becoming a security practitioner. She now advises Fortune 500 CISOs and security teams on their detection and response practice and frequently speaks at industry-leading events and with the press.
Hosts

- 1. FUNDING: Dragos Raises an Additional $74M in Series D Round
- 2. FUNDING: Israeli cyber firm Legit Security raises $40 million in private funding
- 3. FUNDING: Announcing Alcion’s Series A and General Availability of Our AI-driven Backup-as-a-Service Platform
$21M Series A, led by Veeam. This is an interesting one. So the primary two founders, Niraj Tolia and Vaibhav Kamra sold their previous company, Kasten, to Veeam in late 2020. Kasten made a Kubernetes backup and disaster recovery product.
It seems that Kasten's two founders have spun out of Veeam, but are primarily funded by them, suggesting that the new company, Alcion, will also be eventually acquired by Veeam. The new company is also backup-focused, but on Microsoft 365 this time, rather than containers.
- 4. FUNDING: European cyber insurance startup Stoïk raises $10.7 million and expands to Germany
- 5. FUNDING: Rocket.Chat Raises US$10M in Series A Bridge Funding
- 6. FUNDING: Discern Security Raises $3M in Seed Funding
- 7. ACQUISITIONS: WatchGuard Acquires CyGlass – CyGlass
- 8. ACQUISITIONS: GlassWire Joins Forces with Domotz!
- 9. ACQUISITION RUMORS: Palo Alto Networks in advanced negotiations to acquire Dig Security in $300-$400 million deal
- 10. NEW TOOLS: Sowing Chaos and Reaping Rewards in Confluence and Jira
- 11. NEW PRODUCTS: Introducing Semgrep Secrets
- 12. NEW PRODUCTS: runZero 4.0: Introducing the runZero Platform and our new Community Edition
- 13. ESSAYS: Finding Your Moat – mattjay
- 14. ESSAYS: The Compounding Power of Ideas
- 15. ESSAYS: CISOs are struggling to get cybersecurity budgets: Report
- 16. RESEARCH: When It Comes to Email Security, the Cloud You Pick Matters
- 17. RANT: Security awareness assessments actively harmful to security (from @cybergibbons on Twitter)
I'm not going to call out the particular vendor named in this rant, because I don't think this issue is unique to one vendor. The questions on this assessment are, at best, vague and confusing. At worst, I have to agree with the poster - they're actively harmful.
- 18. SQUIRREL: It’s not just you. LinkedIn has gotten really weird.
