Q&A w/ Nasdaq, Forescout & CrowdStrike
Twitter: @spokedylan
Dylan James: I recently sat down with Julie Cullivan, CIO, Forescout and Mike Carpenter, President Global Sales & Field Ops, CrowdStrike. Here’s a recap of our discussion.
Welcome to both of you, it’s great to have you with us. To kick things off, Julie, what’s the partnership you see in CrowdStrike and what kind of values does that bring to Forescout and Forescout’s customers?
Julie Cullivan: We’re really excited about our partnership with CrowdStrike. Forescout knows that our customers want the ability to orchestrate across their security tool investments. When you combine Forescout’s comprehensive network connected device visibility and control capabilities, with CrowdStrike’s next-generation endpoint threat intelligence, our customers can reduce their mean time to detect and respond to advanced threats very quickly.
Dylan: Fantastic. Mike, anything you want to add?
Mike Carpenter: I just think it’s the right combination of two great technologies. One approaching it from the network and one approaching it from the endpoint. Bringing these together is where I think the market needs to go. Companies need to start working together. We need to leverage our core competencies to deliver game-changing technology. It’s what I think we’ve done here.
Dylan: What’s the one thing that organizations can do to have a stronger security posture?
Julie: It’s really about visibility. Device visibility, device intelligence. Not just physical devices, virtual devices too, anything connected to your network. That’s number one because if you can’t see it, you can’t protect it.
Mike: You can’t be governed by fear. You have to be willing to make changes. New technology has come out. Innovations. Being able to leverage the cloud, being able to leverage new partnerships. Having the opportunity to move off of fossilized tech. Take advantage of where the market’s gone. And I think that’s one of the most important things. You can put your blinders on and keep doing what you’ve always been doing, but it hasn’t been working, right?
Dylan: Right. Julie, how is the CIO evolving to just more than traditional IT?
Julie: I think the CIO role has been evolving for some time. For a long time, CIOs had to be more and more focused on teaming with the business to deliver whatever the business outcomes needed to be by leveraging technology. But I think what has changed is the element of risk management that the CIO needs to bring to the organization in terms of making sure that they’re protecting the organization in any way that they need to, while helping enable those great business outcomes that the company wants.
Dylan: Mike, with the evolving role of the CIO, do you think that requires visibility at the board level of a company? Do you need a CIO or do you need a cybersecurity expert sitting on the board, ensuring these topics are discussed at that level?
Mike: Yeah, I definitely think we’ve seen that transition happen in the past 20 years or so and it started out in this industry. Previously, we knew we were heading to a security meeting when we got in the elevator and went down to the basement, right? And now it’s a board-level discussion. Most companies are putting cybersecurity experts on their board and their CIOs are taking responsibility. We see what’s happened when companies are breached and their CIO, CSO, and CEO all had to resign. It’s really important.
Julie: I recently joined a public company board. One of the reasons was my technical background but also my cybersecurity background. They wanted to bring that type of experience into their board makeup. It’s become very real.
Dylan: Big thanks to both of you.