One of the highlights of Tufinnovate is the keynote session, and this year we welcomed Frank Abagnale to the virtual stage. Frank is a con man turned FBI agent and one of the most sought-after experts on forgery, embezzlement, identity theft, and secure documents.
Frank has been with the FBI for four decades and has spent the last 20 years working with technology companies to find weaknesses in their products before they go to market. How has crime changed since Frank forged his driver’s license at the age of 16? While crime itself has changed, Frank says, the criminal mind has not. Furthermore, advances in technology have actually made it easier to commit a crime. During his time as a con artist, the only social engineering tool he had was the telephone. Today, there are multiple tools a criminal can leverage to make their job easier.
The discussion turned to data breaches, and Frank had this to say: “Every breach occurs because someone at a company either does something they aren’t supposed to do or fails to do something they were supposed to do. Criminals don’t cause breaches, people do.” He stressed the importance of educating employees and that only education, not technology, can defeat social engineering.
What is Frank’s take on today’s principles of cybersecurity? He advises companies to develop technology that eliminates the individual. The weakest link is the human being, and the more you can do without the human being making decisions, the more secure you’ll be.
Did somebody say “automation”?
Tufin in 2020 and beyond
A Tufinnovate fan favorite, VP of Products Ofer Or presented the company’s vision for the remainder of 2020 and beyond.
Life during a pandemic has changed the way we work and the way we live. Naturally, changes of the same magnitude can be found in the cybersecurity arena. Many companies plan to permanently shift to remote work post-Covid. While remote work has many benefits, it does bring its share of problems: unmanaged PCs connected to your network, PCs shared with family members, and the inability to separate work and non-work networks.
Home is the new perimeter, and that means YOU are the CISO of your home.
Rapid infrastructure changes had to be made to enable remote workers to connect to all needed resources. These changes were not fully documented, implementation did not follow standard change processes and risk assessments, and this led to the significant probability of misconfigurations. As Ofer put it, “When in doubt, more access was given.”
With remote work – and its challenges – here to stay, combined with the increase in firewall rule change requests, there has never been a better time to adopt automation. Now more than ever, enterprises need a way to do things faster, with fewer resources, without compromising security.
Where do we go from here?
Ofer introduced Gartner’s concept of the “Everywhere Enterprise.” This theory enables remote work, expands the IT operating model, and exploits digital business opportunities. Tufin is building this model into its solutions by helping you manage your security policies – everywhere. Stay tuned as we roll out exciting features and functionalities that will help you meet the demands of the “Everywhere Enterprise.”
Thank you to all our customers and partners who attended Tufinnovate Americas, and a special thank you to our sponsors Fortinet, VMware, Infoblox, and Cisco. Tufinnovate EMEA takes places September 14-15.
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