Reflections on Oktane14

Last week, I had the opportunity to participate at our partner Okta’s annual customer event, Oktane14. It was a fantastic event focused on the future of cloud and mobile in the enterprise.First, I want to congratulate Frederic and Todd for building an exciting company and product.  I remember interacting with Frederic in the early days of Okta, when Egnyte was a young company also charting its own course. As both Egnyte and Okta have grown, our paths have crossed, and Okta’s solution has been a solid complement to what Egnyte provides. We have many common customers and continue to partner in the marketplace.

Attendees at Oktane14 included architects, security experts and executives alike, trying to navigate the new enterprise IT landscape. While the world of cloud and mobility has created massive threats for the enterprise, managing and overcoming these risks creates unprecedented opportunity for productivity and cost savingsIn addition to meeting with customers and attendees at our booth, I had the pleasure of leading a breakout session on the major security threats that enterprises face today. I believe four critical categories of threats have emerged over the course of the last few years, and my session was devoted to explaining these threats in detail and providing the audience with a framework to navigate this new landscape.Here’s a quick snapshot of my session and the threat groups that I discussed:

UsersThere is little doubt that user behavior has been a major source of concern for IT. By bringing personal devices into work and adopting consumer cloud services, users have ushered a new class of threats into the enterprise.CloudAs IT tries to address the unsanctioned use of consumer cloud services by offering secure, enterprise-grade solutions, it becomes apparent that not all “enterprise” solutions are the same. How secure a solution needs to be often depends on the company and industry segment.GovernmentBefore the startling revelations by Edward Snowden, none of us could have imagined that government agencies could pose such a threat to data privacy. How vulnerable is enterprise data now to this type of threat?HackersWith new technologies emerging daily, the level of connectedness between devices, clouds and enterprise systems is unprecedented. This has created an opportunity for hackers to exploit enterprise systems unlike ever before, and we have seen several high-profile breaches in the last few months.I welcome you to review the final presentation when Okta posts it on their site soon, and rest assured that both Okta and Egnyte will be working away to put the enterprise in a safer and more productive place.