The Security Market's Biggest Challenge

/**/ /**/

The biggest challenge facing the security market today may not be outdated servers or public cloud -- it just may be end users.

’The biggest problem[s] I see are users. So, you’ve got really, really complicated computer systems. It’s not [their] job to maintain a computer system,’ said Alex Jordan, senior scientist at Waltham-Mass.-based Raytheon BBN.

’We need better tools, we need better strategies,’ he said.

’In most of the attacks that we’ve all read about, eventually how they occur -- it comes out -- is [that it] was one weak link, whether it was through human error or something like that, oftentimes that’s what it is,’ said Pwnie Express CEO Paul Paget.

Corey Thomas, CEO of Boston-based Rapid7, agreed that there is too much focus on technology in the security space, and not on the overarching flaws in how businesses approach security.

’It’s a foundational issue,’ said Thomas. ’We build infrastructure and applications, and we use applications that don’t have security built into them, so it starts at that level.’

Thomas said that innovation is important, of course, but it doesn’t mean anything ’if you don’t have the people and the processes and the skill sets to use the technology well. And that, in too many organizations, is an afterthought,’ he said.

PUBLISHED MAY 28, 2015