Cloud Unfiltered Podcast, Ep 22: Security Matters, with Bryan Doerr

You are officially forgiven if data breach headlines don’t surprise you anymore.

I mean honestly, can there be anything scarier than a hacker having access to all the data we each have stored with Equifax?

Equifax?!

They’ve got my SSN, my address, my driver’s license, and all my credit card numbers. They know where I’ve worked for my entire professional life, where I went to college, and they know my bank balance. Shoot, they probably know what I had for lunch today and whether my cat is due for a checkup. It’s all information that I’d have preferred to keep out of the hands of hackers (well, most of it anyway–I’m proud of my alma mater and open about my cat care practices), but now they have it, and all I can do is hope that they’re too lazy to do anything with my tiny little part of the data goldmine they helped themselves to. Too overwhelmed by the sheer volume of the windfall at their disposal to be able to exploit it thoroughly.

I do not love that that is what it has come to.

And it makes me wonder: Are these companies just completely reckless with our data? Are they not even trying to protect it because the cost of doing it right would be prohibitive?

This week’s guest on Cloud Unfiltered is Bryan Doerr, the former CEO of Observable Networks (acquired by Cisco in July of this year), and he’s got some awfully interesting things to say about information security. First off, he says that companies today are up against tremendous challenges when it comes to protecting data. He sees the vulnerabilities in their systems, he understands how the stakes have risen for hackers, and he’s not at all surprised that these breaches are happening. Not so much because the companies getting hacked being irresponsible—but because it’s an inherently tough game, and there are a lot of ways to make mistakes when you’re playing it.

That part of the discussion alone is worth tuning in for, but in addition to his data-breach riff, Bryan also touches on:

What startup life was like and what happened that finally allowed Observable Networks to break from the crowd

How Stealthwatch Cloud uses behavior anomaly detection to protect data

How the motivations behind cyberattacks have changed

Which steps you should be taking to protect your personal information at home

How you can access a 60-day free trial of Stealthwatch Cloud

See the video podcast on our YouTube page, or listen to the audio version on iTunes. And if you like what you hear, we invite you to subscribe to our channel so you don’t miss any of the other exciting podcasts we have scheduled over the next several months.