RSA 2016: A Seismic Week in Security

As the RSA Conference team gears up for their 25th  year anniversary gala I’m proud to say that my 16 years  in the information security industry has provided me the opportunity to participate at various levels, including a run as the GM of the RSA Conference in 2014 - one of the most contested times the industry has faced. 

My career has recently brought me to a great company, Mimecast, and we’re well positioned to not only transform how companies approach email security and data protection for “always on” email communications via the cloud, Mimecast is also well positioned to transform the Information Security industry as a whole.

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A lot has happened at Mimecast since the last RSA Conference – we’ve become a public company, trading on NASDAQ. And, we’ve grown: we’ve added thousands of new customers and their employees, and we’ve expanded our global business, adding more employees, taking us to over 600 people with me being one of the new Mimecasters.

In that time, the security industry has also changed – some good, as we all continue to innovate and challenge each other as white hats to help organizations advance their approach to protect the public and private sectors from the individuals, groups and nation-states that attack the fabric of commerce, PII, and corporate “crown jewels”.  Some bad as we are all reminded daily about the new threats, breaches and attacks impacting organizations of all sizes, in all industries as well as all corners of the world. The safety of data is a mainstream issue, with public bodies, companies and individuals focussing on their own security agenda like never before.

Which is why RSA 2016 is going to be another great week for cyber-security thought leaders as we come together to share the strategies, techniques and new technologies needed to better protect our ourselves, our families, employees, and organizations in 2016.

This week Mimecast will not only be exhibiting at RSA Conference, booth #2438, we also will be doing our part to educate and share our perspective on the key security trends we are seeing across our cloud security service. Our position is a unique one since we handle the emails of over 16,000 customers at a clip of 180 million emails per day allowing our Mimecast security experts to see the latest threats that are impacting the global economy each and every day. And…as I’ve always promised when leading the marketing teams of the many great companies I’ve been honored to be part of Mimecast will not only present our solutions but we’ll do it in the context of education and insight of the very attacks that our experts track.  We’ll also be presenting best practices, actionable intelligence and ways that go beyond Mimecast solutions to help solve one of the most pressing problems the industry faces – email security.

An example of this actionable intelligence is our recently launched global study, Mimecast Business Email Threat Report 2016: Email Security Uncovered, which we’ll be discussing and sharing the results of at RSA this week. It highlights the critical risks created by relying on service, like Office 365, for mission critical services such as email.

Every year the RSA Conference proves to be a great week for education, reuniting with friends, big deals and for the security industry as a whole. I’ll be engaging with as many people as I can to discuss key trends that will help define how we collectively can revolutionize our approach to cyber-security.  We have to make greater gains against the adversaries who have out-paced all of us over the years. The team at Mimecast will be posting  perspectives on what’s occupying everyone’s minds on this blog, our Twitter feed, as well as our LinkedIn and Facebook pages.

I’ll be presenting my thoughts and views on what I see/hear this week via this blog and via Twitter @alexebender. I also look forward to reading everyone’s perspective so that I can continue to learn from the best minds in the industry.