In The Modern Security Landscape, People Are The New Perimeter

Matthew Moynahan is the CEO of Forcepoint, the global human-centric cybersecurity company transforming the digital enterprise, about “Managing the insider threat when no one is inside” on Forbes’s pages.

“If any CEO asked their CISO two months ago what it would take to enable 100% of their workforce to work remotely, they’d likely have received an answer like “Give me a year and $10 million, and I’ll see what we can do.” Yet, seemingly overnight, CISOs were able to make it happen. To their credit, the urgency of the moment created change at a rate not thought possible by enterprises typically hobbled by red tape.

For the first time in modern business, CISOs aren’t working within templated security programs. While initial transformations started to alter security, COVID-19 completely dismantled it by introducing a work-from-home environment. The “edge” originally encompassed internet of things devices, but now it means any place someone does their work.

CISOs have been given a wake-up call and now understand they were living with a false sense of security. They’Re realizing true security is not about building a perimeter within four walls or through a specific piece of hardware, software or device — it’s about people. People are the new, true perimeter in this era of the commoditizing IT stack. And visibility into the behavior of people and data, wherever they are, has never been more critical.”

Details