Zero Trust and Endpoint Security – Mario Espinoza, Illumio

This is Textron TV. The great pleasure being joined by Mario Espinosa. Mario is cheap product officer with alumio.

Welcome Mario. Thank you so much mates. I'm so happy to be with you today.

Good to have you so you've joined alumio recently. So let's look here a little bit about your background. I know you've been a text drawing TV before but folks a little bit know about you.

And of course if you want to give kind of an overview of alumio for folks that might not know them. Yeah, absolutely. So I joining with me a four month ago.

I'm super excited in the role of Chief product officers. So my role is to work with customers understanding their most fundamental cybersecurity challenges and then work with the team of Engineers to really find the best solution the most cost-effective solution to their cyber security needs. So I've been in this cyber security industry for a while.

So most recently. I was a Palo Alto networks when I when I held positions both in project management and engineering Where in a lot of things have happened at Palo Alto and semantic where you were before so you bring a wealth of experience? I'm sure as valuable to the lumio team.

You know, so we want to talk a little bit about innovation in the in the security space and I almost said network security but we kind of live in this world of software and network, you know and everything right security. What are your thoughts about? What do we need to be thinking about security Now that maybe is different than what we thought about it three four years ago.

Match up the world has changed. Dramatically from a technology perspective. So I think that the Innovations in cloud and Mobility have brought this hybrid world.

I will say the world is hybrid right now customers have both on premise infrastructure better. Also leveraging the cloud in Mobile endpoints more and more. Because of that the attack surface is bigger and bigger and right now the bridge I will say is inevitable.

You cannot stop the bridge. You have to assume the breach and you have to contain it. I typically say there are.

three eras or Generations in terms of cyber security number one was protection try to keep everything out. You try to have a perimeter right and defend that parameter. That was the era of the blue box right the the firewall.

That was good. But the attackers became smarter and smarter and they reached that perimeter. Then we went to the detection and response area, right?

So the the era of xdr what it say. Oh, I'm gonna chase this people very fast and try to stop them. That was good at that point in time, but it's not good enough anymore.

Today. We are spending billions and billions of dollars 170 billion dollars is projected to be spending cyber security and 2022 enriches are still gonna happen. So we need containment.

This is a year of containment. So in addition to trying to prevent trying to chase and detect and response you now have to have zero trust segmentation and this is what illumia does we help people you contain breaches so they don't become cyber disasters. See your trust segmentation is there to protect you as a layer of defense and most powerful layer of Defense.

It's a great year. You're the way you've described it to and You know a lot of conversations that I'm involved in are all about moving out of the response mode into a continuous or containment mode because it isn't if you will be hacked or if you'll be breached you you probably already have and you will it's just a fact of life. I mean things are all the software stack and environment the hybrid the cloud your environment, you know open source, you can name any any attack Vector that are outside of our control as well as some that are in and I think that's a big part of this our situation to Mario is it isn't just our stuff that we're we have to protect or watch for vulnerabilities and attack against it's it's all the services open source, all those things the environment that we're in so it's much more complex World, especially for Network.

It's Security Professionals, you know, really becoming cloud and in some way software Security Professionals, too. Yeah, I couldn't agree more image. So and and I think that something that is changing as well.

Is it type of attacks today? We see ransomware hitting people. At a tremendous space.

So according to ESG 76% of the companies were attacked and hit by ransomware despite all the Investments that we have. Also seen attacks in critical infrastructure, right? So you you heard attacks on on pipelines for example Energy company and and we're seeing more and more active actors.

So the breach is a reality and also because companies are hybrid because of the breach is higher than ever before. So some studies say that a breach in a hybrid environment is more expensive up to 600,000 more expensive that have reach in a non-hybrid environment. That's why illumio is driving is zero trust segmentation solution.

And we do that for your data center your premise we do that for your cloud and now we're so excited because we're announcing see your trusting meditation protection for the endpoint. The end point is the point where most of ransomware attacks are generated. The compromise starts there and the question is how you observe that see the risk immediately and you can apply policies and prevent this breach this ransomware or other type of attack from going from endpoint to end point and infecting your entire network and illumia.

Does that with an approach that is proactive because we segmented the environment before the attacks comes so zero trust is something that customers are searching more and more as a solution to to this type of attacks. I'm curious. So you cut your customers are kind of getting their head around zero trust was that mean for us?

How do we think about the zero trust, you know architecture for our security posture. How do you do that in a product company and it's in a security Product Company and in one way you listen to your customers you want to respond to needs and and that they have you also sometimes have to kind of think a point or two ahead and the future and say well, let's be where the ball is gonna be thrown. Right?

Let's build the product that they need today and in the next six 12 18 24 months, how do you help an organization like a product company? Get get into that mode of the next generation of security. I think it all starts with a constant dialogue with the customer and the customer is most interested in visibility.

They need to understand. What their infrastructure looks like and where this point where breaches can propagate lie. So for example customers will ask alumia.

Hey help me understand what are all my assets right? So my asset in the data center. In the cloud could be AWS gcp infrastructure as a service or platform as a service in my endpoints.

For example illumio gets visibility into both Windows and Mac endpoints. So we cover all the estate of the customers and we we work with them right so customer tell us hey, I need for example risk visibility. I need to know what my endpoints are and what are the flows of networking information between them so we can Define policies that prevent breaches from spreading from one endpoint to the other.

So it's all about that constant dialogue with the users. We involve them in early stages of our development. For example for endpoint.

We had a panel of users that interacted with us very early in the cycle and they tested prototype versions of our zero trust and segmentation product. So with that feedback quick feedback loop, we were able to achieve a solution that was addressing their needs in the most direct way. It's also important to work with them in terms of the Simplicity of the solution.

So usability is very important. So well illumio is doing is we're simplifying zero trust segmentation serial, trust segmentation is not a one-time effort. It's a multi-step effort.

So people will say hey, I want to protect my data center first. Then I want to protect my endpoints then I want to protect my cloud. So we walk with the customer through this journey of serious segmentation make it it's simple make it easier and manageable as they go through this journey.

Excellent. I'm curious. You know where we live in a security world where we're always do I buy from one company do I kind of build my own Patchwork of solutions from best to breed.

If you will kind of that strategy when it comes to zero trust and segmentation have to believe that you have some additional advantages of being able to do that in the cloud do that in the data center do that at end points, you know API security different layers. How does that manifest itself in the products? That Lumia is creating so customers want to have a company view of their environment.

They don't want to have 10 different solutions, you know cyber security has been very recently and to the changes in the economy recently that it is impacting all Industries. However, there's still want to consolidate vendors and they still want to manage this cybersecurity, but it's in the most efficient way. So in lumio brings that consolidation under a single console in single policy, so you don't have to rely on 10 different solutions for the different pieces of your infrastructure in Lumia will protect your endpoints with crsr segmentation your data center your cloud.

Your OT iot Network as well and other pieces of the infrastructure. So our approach is to cover all portions of the estate with a unified console and policy. Excellent.

So one of the question I'm always always kind of working on is How do we help security Engineers Security leaders csos? Evolved to be able to kind of wrap their arms around the software part of the world, right? Our organizations are creating applications integrating for third parties, you know that the stack and the data center is more than infrastructure software.

It's all it's you know, a tire containers and kubernetes and lots of interesting things. How does the lumio approach that part of how do we help our customers with dealing with environments that are more than just protocols and traffic? so cybersecurity in general but especially serotrasticmentation Mitch.

I will say is a team sport. So no single company can say hey, I can't protect the entire environment customers will have an array of Security Solutions or any install. And nobody wants to comment and sell yet another cyber security solution, right?

So what customers have told us over and over is leverage the existing infrastructure? integrate with that And give me Simplicity of visibility and policy definition of enforcement leveraging most of my system infrastructure. For example illumio endpoint that we just launched Leverage is the existing operating system capabilities.

For example the host firewall that is part of Mac OS or Windows and we instrument that and we make it easier for the user. We display the asset information the flow information in a simple and easy to use interface and then we do policy recommendations. So the user doesn't have to think hey, how do I protect my environment?

We'll say hey, this is the best in class type of policy. Do you want to apply it right? So with that policy recommendation Automation in leveraging the system infrastructure, we help the security practitioners to deal with this hybrid environment, right?

So we don't let them hanging and dealing with with many different solutions. We simplify that. It's getting complex on its own enough, right?

We don't need to compound the problem. Exactly certainly well tell us about so the end in Point Security Solution that's available. Now that should be now can people go to the website and you know, go get a demo or download a trial of it.

How do people get a hold of this? Absolutely. com and you're gonna see there are announcement and Link where you can try this solution.

You can request a trial and we'll help you test. It is very easy to test and it's it's a very easy interface and you can be up and running in minutes with zero trust segmentation. And I know Lumia works with a lot of large Enterprises.

So I imagine your endpoint solution is going to be pretty scalable as well. Without naming any particular company, I will say that the largest organization in the world have already adopted elumio. They're using in hundreds and hundreds of thousands of their hosts their their machines.

So we're very confident that in Lumia is gonna be very performant and scalable. Fantastic, well Mario, it's a pleasure talking with you. Hope you come back because this dialogue around zero trust and containment and kind of evolving our thinking around.

This is not over right where it's a journey we're all on together. So if we come back and tell some more what's happening with alumia in your customers. Thank you so much Mitch.

I'm so thankful for this opportunity of talking to you and enjoy a lot but also to your audience and as you said, this is just getting started. See your trust segmentation. Is it technology that is getting massive adoption right now.

com and take a look at our zero trust segmentation for the endpoint. Let me endpoint. Definitely check it out.

Thanks again Mario. We'll see you soon. Excellent.

Thank you.