Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

The federal government continues to make progress towards Zero Trust (ZT) adoption. On May 12, 2021, President Biden signed Executive Order 14028 to improve the nation’s cybersecurity and protect federal government networks and on January 26, 2022, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released a Federal strategy to move the U.S. Government toward a Zero Trust approach to cybersecurity.

In January 2022, Netskope analyzed a destructive malware named WhisperGate, wiping files and corrupting disks during the aftermath of a geopolitical conflict in Ukraine. On February 24, the conflict escalated with Russian attacks in Ukraine, followed by a series of DDoS attacks against Ukrainian websites. On February 24, 2022, a new malware called HermeticWiper was found in hundreds of computers in Ukraine. HermeticWiper corrupts disks on infected systems, similar to WhisperGate.

If you work in networking or security, you have probably gotten used to the acronym stew that makes up the technology industry at times. By now you have surely heard the latest buzzword and what industry analysts have coined as security service edge (SSE). SSE is essentially the consolidation of Firewall-as-a-Service (FWaaS), secure web gateway (SWG), cloud access security broker, and Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) delivered as a cloud service.

In January 2022, Microsoft announced that Excel 4.0 macros will be restricted by default, as a measure to protect customers against malware based on XLM 4.0 macros. As a more aggressive measure, on February 07, 2022, Microsoft announced that they will start blocking VBA macros for files downloaded from the internet.

As security operations leaders, we are burdened with a large responsibility. The expectation is that we can respond to alerts as soon as possible and be able to investigate immediately. It sounds simple, but in today’s cyber threat landscape we are faced with growing threat vectors and a sheer volume increase in overall alerts or notifications. Failure to respond quickly enough or investigate the right areas could result in huge impacts to the organizations we are responsible for.

During the pandemic, collaboration apps such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom have played an important role in connecting the distributed workforce and helping organizations to cope with the so-called “new normal.” Even if we are finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel (and this time it’s a real light), the world won’t be exactly the same as it was before.

Today we are very excited to share that Netskope has been named a Leader in the 2022 Gartner ® Magic Quadrant ™ for Security Service Edge (SSE). This Magic Quadrant for SSE* is the first such SSE analysis of its kind, and I invite you to read the full SSE report (available here) to learn how Netskope was recognized for its completeness of vision and ability to execute.

For the past 20 years, I’ve served as CISO for companies across different sectors. In this role, I have shouldered responsibility for protecting each organization from a wide swath of rapidly developing cybersecurity threats. I have also learned firsthand how much stress security leaders face day-to-day. Recent conversations with my peers have shown stress in cybersecurity is an industry-wide problem. The CISO role is one of the most stressful in any organization.