InfoSecurity ’19: Thoughts from the Show Floor

Earlier this month we were in London for InfoSecurity ’19. Here are some thoughts and highlights from this large industry event.

It was a great opportunity to introduce AlgoSec to IT security professionals, and we were happy to talk to many existing customers at the event. There was no shortage of interesting discussion around this year’s theme, ‘Complexity, Risk & Resilience,’ and this was something we engaged with on the booth and in our presentations.

This year’s theme is at the core of our solution, and we demonstrated how we bring a business-driven approach to network security policy management within complex processes and ecosystems, reducing risk and building resilience into challenging enterprise environments.

Cloud Security Challenges

Cloud security management was a key topic for us at the event. We shared the results of our cloud security survey with the Cloud Security Alliance, which confirms that the same issues that are at the heart of network management are also there in the cloud, and organizations need to find ways to manage and automate these.

This was the focus of one of our presentations at the event:  Our Director of Product Management, Avivi Siman-Tov gave a session, titled: Taming the Storm Clouds: Managing Network Security Across the Hybrid & Multi-Cloud Estate. Avivi explained that security is the main concern for organizations adopting the cloud, and manual management methods are adding to the issues businesses face when they deploy applications and resources in cloud environments. 

Avivi explained that this is relatively easy to solve with an automated system. Having a technical solution in place to overcome the human factor is key in avoiding errors & misconfigurations, and therefore outages and leaks. This is particularly important in large organizations, where cloud environments can be particularly complex. It can become difficult to know who should be responsible when things go wrong, and AlgoSec helps to gain control in this situation by automating many essential changes, eliminating misconfigurations.

Implementing an Effective Microsegmentation Strategy

Another trend that we heard a lot of discussion around was microsegmentation. People we spoke to at the show understood it as a concept, but it’s a lot harder to execute it and implement it on the network using technology.

And Product Manager Dania Ben Peretz spoke on those two subjects at the event in her session, Protecting Your Network’s Precious Jewels with Micro-Segmentation. Dania explained how Miro-segmentation can help to protect data, and how it should be implemented in enterprise networks.

Once an attacker has penetrated a network, they can easily move laterally to areas where sensitive and business critical data & applications are held. With microsegmentation, the network is divided into zones, and the smaller these segments the tighter the security, and this is the best practice for network security. Of course, there’s always a trade-off; you need to do what fits your organization best, but the smaller you can make the zones the better.

Talking AlgoSec

We were pleased to meet the editorial teams from some of the leading security publications in the UK, InfoSecurity and SC Magazine, and US based Info Security Media Group (ISMG). We spent some time speaking to them about what we were bringing to the show. Take a look at our panel discussion with InfoSecurity Magazine,  my interview with the official Infosecurity ’19 videographers, ISMG and SC Magazine.

We had a great time watching our mentalist show, as Ron First explained the human factor in hot security topics in his amazing and animated style. Ron used the art of illusion to demonstrate cloud security challenges, and how microsegmentation can protect even the most complex of networks. We also had fun with our Security – Business alignment game, and handed out some cool prizes to the lucky winners.

With InfoSecurity ‘19 wrapped up, we’d like to say thanks to the AlgoSec team for their tireless efforts speaking to thousands of visitors, and we look forward to what next year’s show will bring.