Virtualization and cloud computing have become an integral part of every organization's IT infrastructure. What are SafeNet's strengths in this market? How can you improve?

Over the past year, SafeNet made a series of significant, cloud-focused moves, and that will continue under my leadership. We launched ProtectV this past summer to offer data protection in virtualized environments which, in addition to encrypting VMs, enables centralized authentication key management, and isolation of sensitive data. We also launched SafeNet Authentication Service, a pure cloud, strong authentication platform. As the Gartner-recognized leader in the authentication market, SafeNet offers an easy to use and deploy “authentication as a service” model, that until now had really only been delivered by start-ups. All of these moves are in the interest of giving organizations the same type of network control that they had with on-premise hosting environments.

As you say, cloud computing is absolutely now a critical part of how people operate. SafeNet will continue to innovate in this area, sharpen our focus on data protection for cloud and virtual environments and deliver solutions that serve as an enabler for organizations, not an obstacle, when it comes to migrating to the cloud.

What do you expect to be the most significant challenge that SafeNet will face within the next five years?

The biggest obstacle is the ever-changing threat vector profile. While the industry is cognizant of the changes, the real challenge is going being recognition and staying one step ahead of the threat profile. The computing industry is massively changing. Cloud computing is a prime example. However, organizations continue to view security as an obstacle rather than an enabler to their business and tend to rely on past security frameworks. Right now, in my view, there is a real resistance to change in terms of how people approach information security.


There is widespread acknowledgment that a perimeter only approach is a dated one, and yet organizations continue to invest in it, as opposed to adapting and focusing more resources on protecting the data itself. People are generally aware that it is not very difficult for an unauthorized user to penetrate a corporate network, but they are not yet fully grasping the idea that every network breach must not be a full-scale breach of security.

What we’re trying to do is usher in a new era, in which the focus is on enabling the “secure breach,” in which security measures are designed intelligently around the acceptance that unauthorized users may well already be inside the network. Breaches don’t have to cause the same type of damage they’ve caused in the past; not if the valuable information is protected by encryption. You simply need to know what the hackers may be after and why, and deploy your resources accordingly. SafeNet’s data protection philosophy revolves around this idea. I believe that this is the direction the industry is taking, particularly as more and more information is being migrated to the cloud. People are talking about this idea, but are only now beginning to deploy their resources accordingly.