Educate the marketplace
Sometimes, nothing speaks more loudly than serious statistics. Last year was the worst year on record for security breaches. There were more than 2,100 incidents, exposing 822 million records and almost half involved the loss of password data.
Nevertheless, large companies often adopt a bunker mentality when it comes to breaches and small firms lack the knowledge and tools to mount an effective defense.
“I find it incredibly frustrating that companies don’t understand the extent to which they’ve been breached or violated,” DeWalt says. “They don’t want to believe that they could be a victim. Why work 100 years to develop a product only to have the Chinese steal it?”
DeWalt launched a major intelligence offensive to spur a paradigm shift and stop security by obscurity.
“My job was to convince the world that virtual machines were the answer to security problems, when 1,372 security companies were touting the merits of anti-virus software and traditional methods,” he says.
He acquired Mandiant in January, a competing cybersecurity and intelligence firm, and together, the duo has been releasing research reports that document the increasing sophistication and dogged persistence of cybercriminals. They’ve exposed zero-day attacks, where hackers exploit bugs in software products leaving vendors with zero days to come up with a fix. They’ve validated the growth of advanced persistent threats, where hackers target a specific company and use all means possible to break into its network.
And they’ve seized every opportunity to explain why traditional defenses don’t work. To prove his point, DeWalt has offered companies a no cost, risk-free way to try FireEye’s managed security solutions.
More than 1,200 companies recently tested its security suite and 97 percent of participants across 67 countries and 20 industries discovered previously undetected breaches. DeWalt is quick to point out that more than 90 percent of the test companies are now paying customers.
Prepare for growth
