VMware Security Connect Focused on Redefining Security, Increasing Threats
"There's an opportunity for our partners to get engaged," the company said.
![Security shield on digital background Security shield on digital background](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt10e444bce2d36aa8/bltd109f543b4468155/65244fd137a1655c9c19b783/Cybersecurity-Arcserve.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
Shutterstock
According to VMware’s report, 81% of respondents have suffered a breach in the past year, with four out of five breaches considered material. Yet, security professionals have underestimated the likelihood of a material breach. Only 56% say they fear a material breach in the next year, and just over one-third have updated their security policy and approach to mitigate the risk.
“The move to remote working has increased the number of attacks,” said Patrick Morley, SVP and GM of VMware’s security business unit. “It’s increased the sophistication of those attacks, and it’s challenging security and IT professionals to really see and understand what’s happening across their organizations as everyone has moved to remote.”
A resurgence of ransomware and remote work are creating an unpredictable attack surface, according to VMware. Seventy-six percent of respondents said attack volumes had increased. And most pointed to employees working from home as the cause.
Furthermore, 79% said attacks had become more sophisticated. Cloud-based attacks were the most frequently experienced attack type in the past year, whereas the leading breach causes were third-party apps and ransomware.
“Perhaps even more interesting is for organizations that have been breached, on average, they see not just one during the past year, but 2.35,” Morley said. “So they’re getting in and coming back for more.”
Cloud-first security strategies are now universal, VMware said. Ninety-eight percent of respondents already use or plan to use a cloud-first security strategy. But the move to cloud has expanded the threat surface.
Nearly two-thirds agree they need to view security differently now that the attack surface has expanded. Furthermore, 43% said they plan to build more security into their infrastructure and apps, and reduce the number of point solutions.
Rick McElroy is principal cybersecurity strategist at VMware.
“The race to adopt cloud technology since the start of the pandemic has created a once-in-a-generation chance for business leaders to rethink their approach to cybersecurity,” he said. “Legacy security systems are no longer sufficient. Organizations need protection that extends beyond endpoints to workloads to better secure data and applications. As attacker sophistication and security threats become more prevalent, we must empower defenders to detect and stop attacks, as well as implement security stacks built for a cloud-first world.”
Applications and workloads are viewed as the most vulnerable points on the data journey by chief experience officers (CxOs). Some 63% agree they need better visibility over data and apps in order to preempt attacks. Furthermore, 60% of respondents shared that their senior leadership team feel increasingly worried about bringing new applications to market because of the growing threat and damage of cyberattacks.
In addition, security concerns are holding back adoption of artificial intelligence (AI). The next frontier for business innovation may be AI, but more than half of CxOs say that security concerns are holding them back from embracing AI and machine learning (ML).
Tom Gillis is senior vice president and general manager of VMware’s networking and security business unit.
“One of the things we understand very, very well about security is that no matter what you do at the perimeter, somehow, someway, the bad guys are going to get in, whether it’s an exotic attack like SolarWinds, which was one of the most cleverly designed attacks I’ve seen in my career, or a more pedestrian situation where oops, I’ve got a version of the Apache Struts and it’s unpatched, which is what happened at one of those big, high-profile breaches at a credit-rating agency. The point is, attackers are going to find a way to get a foothold in your data center.”
VMware also announced its work with Zoom to enable a better and more secure collaboration experience for hybrid work environments. The effort delivers interoperability between the recently announced VMware Anywhere Workspace and Zoom’s collaboration platform to further improve ease of use, application and network performance and security.
Craig Connors is vice president and CTO of VMware’s service provider and edge business unit.
“This partnership with Zoom allows us to give better security from end to end, from the user and the device across the network, all the way to the application, optimized performance using VMware Dynamic Multi-Path Optimization, and real-time insights using edge network intelligence so they can both find issues, and then pinpoint them and resolve them as soon as possible,” he said.
Brendan Ittelson is Zoom‘s CTO.
“As companies begin to reopen their physical offices, an increasingly hybrid work model is very likely,” he said. “As such, enterprises will have to plan for both scenarios – employees working remotely, and also many employees back in the office. The unified experience that VMware can provide for Zoom environments can help make employees more productive and IT more effective and efficient.”
Connors said service providers play an important role in VMware reaching customers globally.
“Another important aspect to the partner community is service providers,” he said. “The vast majority of our WAN infrastructure that we deliver at VMware, we still deliver through the service provider channel. And so being able to offer not just our own offerings, for instance security, but being able to enable our service providers to deliver them as a service to their end customer is a key strategy for us to reach the global customer base.”
Connors said service providers play an important role in VMware reaching customers globally.
“Another important aspect to the partner community is service providers,” he said. “The vast majority of our WAN infrastructure that we deliver at VMware, we still deliver through the service provider channel. And so being able to offer not just our own offerings, for instance security, but being able to enable our service providers to deliver them as a service to their end customer is a key strategy for us to reach the global customer base.”
VMWARE SECURITY CONNECT — A new VMware security report shows a lack of urgency among security professionals despite the ongoing surge in material breaches.
The global security insights report was released during Thursday’s VMware Security Connect 2021. The report is based on an online survey of more than 3,500 CIOs, CTOs and CISOs in December 2020 from across the globe.
VMware also unveiled a new collaboration with Zoom.
The theme of Security Connect 2021 is redefining security. VMware’s vision is to make security simpler, faster and smarter. About 90% of VMware’s business transacts with partners.
More Opportunity for VMware Partners
Patrick Morley is senior vice president and general manager of VMware’s security business unit. He said the company’s partners play a significant role in redefining security.
VMware’s Patrick Morley
“There’s an opportunity for our partners to get engaged with the whole portfolio that we’re talking about,” he said. “And what we’ve seen is that you had a traditional group of partners that were very security-focused, and then you had broader-based business partners out there who are providing products and services to companies across the whole IT spectrum. Those organizations are all doing security now. VMware’s ability to partner with them, and to give them more products and capabilities to help their customers, is part of the strategy.”
One of the important communities that VMware services on the partner side is incident responders, Morley said.
“We have hundreds of incident responders that use our technologies to help go in and deal with breaches,” he said. “Back to the complexity and what we’re seeing right now, last quarter we saw a 100% increase in the number of breaches that our partners are involved in. That’s 100% on a quarter-over-quarter basis. We’ve never seen that. So security is so important right now for partners.”
Dell Technologies will spin off its ownership of VMware later this year.
Scroll through our slideshow above for more highlights from Security Connect.
About the Author(s)
You May Also Like