Tech Insights: Interview with David Gibson, Varonis

In our new Tech Insights series, we quiz industry leaders to get their views of what the year ahead holds for the IT world. Today we speak with David Gibson, Vice President of Marketing, Varonis.

What do you see as the single biggest challenge facing the ICT industry in the year ahead, and why?

Much attention is paid to the role of cybercriminals, but the far more common threat begins with well-intentioned employees. According to a new survey, 71% of employees believe they have access to company data they should not be able to see, and 54% characterise that access as frequent or very frequent. Only 22% of employees say their organisation is able to tell them what happened to lost data, files or emails, indicating a lack of internal monitoring.

The lack of detective controls and the failure of companies to create and enforce a least-privilege model for confidential or sensitive data will lead to highly publicised breaches and loss of critical data.

What emerging trends or developing technologies may influence or change the way the ICT industry will do business in 2015, and why?

It’s best to assume that whatever network you’re on, there’s probably already something or someone present that represents a threat - but a threat to what? Once inside, do they have free reign to find the most sensitive information?

With automated controls, organisations can efficiently implement and maintain a least-privilege model, audit data access, spot abuse and identify stale data. In 2015, IT will be able to make an impact by putting stronger policies in place requiring continuous monitoring and stricter access controls.

What are your customers demanding of you more today than five years ago, and how will you meet these requirements in 2015?

Forward-thinking customers are also starting to ask how they can get more value out of their unstructured, human-generated data. They want to be able to search it and analyse it more easily, as well as access it more flexibly.

Varonis can monitor, manage and protect human-generated data in critical file systems, email, intranets and file shares, while at the same time helping organisations get more value out of their data, increasing employee productivity and reducing costs, and we have proven that we can do it at scale.

Do you expect to face an increasing burden from new legislation and regulations? How will your company tackle this?

We see increased regulation as an opportunity for organisations to improve their capabilities to conduct business in the digital age. Early in 2014, after the Target breach, there was some support in the US Congress for a national law that would establish a single set of rules for alerting consumers when their personal information has been exposed.

Unfortunately, the idea has not advanced any further, but more progress has been made in Europe. The EU Data Protection Regulation (DPR) would require consumers to be promptly alerted. Will the DPR finally be approved in 2015? It’s still possible, although some of its tougher requirements - right to be forgotten and heavy fines for non-compliance - will likely be relaxed.

In any case, data-security laws are moving in the direction of greater consumer safeguards. The final results will have a strong influence on consumer confidence in global companies.

David Gibson is Vice President of Marketing for Varonis, responsible for building brand awareness, aligning product functionality with market demand and driving sales through marketing, education and direct pre- and post-sales efforts. Since joining Varonis, he has held positions as sales engineer, sales engineer manager and director of technical marketing.