The Red Herrings of Cybersecurity Blog Series – Blog 1 of 4

The longer you’re in the cybersecurity business, the more you realize that some of the things you learned early on as ground truths were red herrings. Allow me to elaborate.

As the head of security strategy here at Lightstream, my job is to innovate and think ahead of the demand curve. I take this job very seriously, which is why I’ve been re-evaluating some of the things I held true in previous roles. There are three things I want to address over the next four posts, and I hope this reveals a little about how I’m thinking and perhaps provides some groundwork for good dialogue.

First, the three red herrings I want to discuss. These apply specifically to the delivery of security services in the form of an MSSP – and while these three things may be applicable elsewhere, that’s not what I’m addressing in this series.

1. Faster deployments are somehow better;
2. Complex services are more effective;
3. Vendors taking over your tools is a good idea.

Let me break these three things down so you can get a sense of the high level here, and then over the next few posts, I’ll share my thoughts and how I have arrived there.

At my last company, there was a very odd metric we put on all of our marketing literature – the time to deploy our product. It made sense at the time. We told customers we could get the product installed in about 2 minutes and that as soon as they signed up for our service, they’d be off and going in that short timeframe. That all sounded good until I observed a few of these deployments. Have you ever tried to install a security product in 2 minutes? If you have, then you will probably agree with me that the only thing you get in those 2 minutes is a stock vanilla deployment with virtually no contextual understanding or customization. To translate that into an outcome – low value, and a potential disaster by breaking something.

Complexity has always been the archenemy of everything in technology. The more complex a deployment becomes, the more difficult it is to understand it. Hence it will be difficult to fix and secure. I don’t believe this is disputable. So why is it that so many security services vendors build slide after slide in their presentation to explain their overly complex systems and processes? The answer is simple – the buyer has come to believe that if they don’t understand it, then it must be advanced. It’s like the Arthur C. Clarke quote: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” My friends, don’t buy magic; it’s rarely real in the end.

Finally, let’s talk about those RFPs you’re sending out. If you’ve purchased a set of tools and failed to implement them properly – whether you figure this out on day three or three hundred is immaterial – asking someone else to take your operation over is a terrible idea. The likely outcome is what we in the industry refer to as: “your mess, for less.” I promise you there is no value here. You get what you pay for, and “cheap” is not the same thing as “less expensive.” There’s a lot to unpack here. I’ll save my thoughts for the full post; however, I wanted to seed this in your mind for now.

So now you have it – my thoughts on the three most important red herrings cybersecurity services vendors put forth that I believe you should avoid. In the next three blog posts, I’ll unpack each and perhaps leave you with something to think over. A better way forward, perhaps.