by T.J. Minichillo
[This is the first of a 4-part series about what it means to be truly resilient in the cyber security industry]
As RSA’s 2021 virtual conference got underway today, Keyavi Data received top honors in three categories at the 9th annual Global Infosec Awards: Cybersecurity Startup of the Year, Hot Company in Data Security and Self-protecting Data Security. https://keyavidata.com/cybersecurity-trailblazer-keyavi-data-wins-three-coveted-global-infosec-awards-during-rsa-conference-2021.
We swept these three categories for solving what was once an insurmountable, age-old problem in cybersecurity based on one premise – that data can’t protect itself. Now it does! The judges at Cyber Defense Magazine recognized how game-changing our technology really is and that it represents an enormous, evolutionary step for the entire cybersecurity industry. We’re proud Keyavi is the only company in the world to have not only reached, but surpassed, a previously unattainable goal for universal data security by infusing every piece of data with self-protection, intelligence and self-awareness into data itself.
We want to share our success and help you become a cyber crime-fighting hero within your own organization.
How?
First, by opening your mind to reimagine the unimaginable. The preconceived notion that data can’t protect itself, and that we’ve solved this very problem, is still impossible for many people to grasp. Usually their first reaction is, “You can’t possibly have done that!”
But we did. We made the impossible possible. Now data CAN protect itself. It no longer has to be contained to be protected from cyber criminals or accidental loss. Now, data itself IS the elegant, simple fortress. This is the panacea that the world has dreamed about for a long time. Now it’s reality. And it changes everything!
Ask anyone logging into RSA’s conference over the next few days for their definition of cyber resilience and you’re likely to hear:
- It’s about how well a business can withstand a massive onslaught of cyber attacks
- It’s about building higher security walls and deeper moats to contain data
- It’s about having the latest technologies to chase after data once it’s already in the wild
For years, infosec professionals encouraged organizations to build as many walls around their assets as possible to prevent the inevitable data breach. To them, this defensive posture defined ‘cyber resilience.’
The C-suite, meanwhile, found itself paying more money to harden walls around its crown jewels, insuring more against a potential breach, and hiring more specialists to operate a myriad of ‘respond-and-defend’ security tools.
It’s high time we dispelled the old notions of what cyber resilience should be.
It isn’t about putting up sky-high walls to stave off hordes of attackers. Those walls, no matter how high or how thick, won’t defend against adversaries who manage with greater frequency and sophistication to penetrate networks and steal data without anyone detecting the intrusion, sometimes for years.
Nor is it about piling on the most advanced tools onto your tech stack in the hopes of making your business more secure.
True cyber resilience means something entirely different.
It’s about solving the problem of leaky data right from the get-go by completely re-thinking your strategy for securing data. And it’s about helping a business grow by providing visibility into how data is used, how it interacts with your customers, your ecosystem and operations.
Instead of data being a business risk, data can now be a contributor to business growth. When your executives realize that data is now completely controllable, wherever it goes, forever, you’ll be the hero – and everyone will sleep better at night. No one will have to worry whether their data is vulnerable to a breach or accidental loss. It’s now intelligent. It’s self-aware. It’s self-protecting. It can flow freely as it was meant to flow, uninterrupted yet completely secure in a way that is both elegant and simple to execute.
So, stop playing defense – a historically disruptive, expensive process that relies on complex controls to implement and manage yet never fully insulates an organization from losing data because threats continually evolve.
Instead, start thinking offense. Reimagine a data-centric strategy that enables your organization to operate at peak efficiency while keeping information assets safe from unauthorized access – no matter where data goes, where it’s stored, who has it or for how long. It’s an offense that infuses data itself with self-protection, intelligence and self-awareness in an elegant and simple way, without having to rely on porous external tools to protect data from bad actors or chase it down after a breach.
That impossibility isn’t a pipe dream. It’s real. And it’s here now, at Keyavi Data.
If you’re curious about the value of a self-protecting, intelligent and self-aware data strategy for your organization, let’s start a one-on-one conversation Schedule a Meeting – Keyavi Data.
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Up next in this four-part series, how resilient data security can be both elegant AND simple.
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T.J. Minichillo is Keyavi’s chief information security officer (CISO) and VP of cyber threat & intelligence. He is a nationally renowned cybersecurity and intelligence expert, helping to detect and thwart many of the world’s significant cyber threats. He has held strategic intelligence roles in financial services, the military and energy, including global head of threat intelligence at both National Grid and Morgan Stanley, deputy director at Citigroup’s Cyber Intelligence Center, chief cyber intelligence officer at Merrill Lynch, and senior intelligence special agent at the Department of Defense. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.
