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Security Today Q&A with Jon Oltsik, principal analyst at

Enterprise Strategy Group

By Todd Weller, VP, Corporate Development, Hexis Cyber Solutions

This past February, Hexis hosted the 2015 USA Exchange conference in Las Vegas, which was
a day and a half of cybersecurity workshops, discussion around industry trends, and networking.
The keynote speaker was Enterprise Strategy Group principal analyst Jon Oltsik, and we caught
up with him to get his take on where the security market is today.

Hexis Cyber Solutions: What is the current perception of advanced security solutions such as
security automation tools; are companies still shying away from advanced solutions or are they
beginning to embrace machine-guided technologies?

Jon Oltisk: The perception really all depends on the type of industry the organization operates
in. For example, financial services companies and defense contractors are more aggressive
when it comes to investing in cybersecurity solutions. This is mainly true because of the fact
that, historically, these industries have been under attack the most. Additional factors that add to
this aggressive nature in adopting advanced cybersecurity solutions is the need to protect
intellectual property and maintain a certain level of regulatory compliance. At the same time,
financial services companies and defense contractors are more experienced in the field of
analytics as a whole, therefore lending to the ease of managing security analytics tools and
technologies. By better understanding the complex nature of leveraging data analytics to better
secure network infrastructure and the endpoint, these industries are capable of being able to
better triage incidents in a more effective manner. Companies in other industries lack the
experience and therefore don’t trust a solution that can be machine-guided.

Hexis Cyber Solutions: What is the biggest problem that IT security professionals face today?

Jon Oltsik: As we can all attest, the threat landscape has changed significantly; because it is
more sophisticated and attacks are more frequent, the landscape demands a certain skillset and
overall philosophy when it comes to security. In the past, we focused more on preventing things
that could happen, instead of recognizing that things will happen. Through this change, our
mentality has evolved and is better personified as a “hunter state of mind.” This means that
we’re spending more time detecting and responding to malicious things that could be
happening; we’re being smarter about our security posture and finding ways to better protect
our data. The hunter mentality is not one that is easily achieved, mainly because there are
certain skills that are unique and hard to acquire. Instead of being forced to shell out big bucks
on skillsets that only certain individuals carry (think malware analysts, forensics investigators
and threat intelligence researchers) there are intelligent solutions out there that can handle the
investigation and analysis for you. Hexis Cyber Solutions is a great example of a company that
is accurately increasing the data collection process and analysis to get security workers closer
to isolating and remediating the problem.

45 Cyber Warnings E-Magazine – March 2015 Edition
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