It’s a simple question that takes little time to answer: should security software company iSight Security have an exit strategy? Over the past two years, the San Mateo-based firm has increasingly displayed the potential for rapid growth while losing money. We got to talking with company CEO Ted Johns about some of the shakeups.
— Moderator Joshua de La Rosa (@NoWillYouQ) is the CTO of ECCio, a collaborative security platform. Cillian Thomas (@aesarama) is Cofounder and Partner at All Star Business Ventures. Amna Farooq (@Yiaqeeq) is the founding editor of Information In Motion and is a global co-chair of the Information Security Summit.
Our panelists:
Ted Johns, CEO iSight Security
The slowdown in growth
Ted Johns is CEO of iSight Security, and in 2015 brought its field wide scale intrusion detection system to consumer devices. In 2018 iSight released its advanced Insider Threat Policy product that brings proactive threat detection to corporate devices. The company said the “millennial habit of constantly connecting to a connected network has made data security less of a focus than ever,” thus increasing the likelihood that corporate systems will fall prey to insider threats.
Its strategy in 2019
In 2019, more than ever, businesses need to invest in reliable, scalable security technology to protect sensitive information. According to Johns, in 2019, the issue is the lack of visibility in corporate data while the latest emerging threats in the industry have identified solutions to address this issue.
Johns believes there’s a disconnect between where companies’ technology is and the requirement of their employees. He says the best way to not only up your game, but learn from the people you have to meet is to adopt continual learning and continuous improvement programs at all levels of your organization, including the management team.
“You can protect a billion dollars in intellectual property but if the organization is weak at the end-user level, those values and assets end up around in your data,” Johns explained, adding that most corporations are neither building or maintaining relationships in the employee communities, but rather “they’re trying to force everyone in the process to go on their journey.”