In a climate of advanced security threats and breaches and increasingly complex regulatory environment, organizations now more than ever must remain vigilant in safeguarding their assets. A single breach can lead to significant losses, both in money and reputation, as proven by Equifax and Maersk. As a result, organizations and their business leaders today are proactively taking measures to address cybersecurity risks holistically to secure their information and reputation.
But are they doing enough?
SourceForge recently caught up with Peter Galvin, the Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer at Thales eSecurity, a leading provider of advanced data security solutions and services, to discuss the data security challenges today’s enterprises face, as well as the strategies organizations must implement to bolster security. Galvin also shares how Thales is empowering enterprises to protect and manage their data and critical assets.
Q: First and foremost, can you provide us with a brief background of Thales eSecurity (i.e. year founded, size, solutions, industries you serve, etc.)?
Peter Galvin, the Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer at Thales eSecurity
A: Founded in 1976, Thales eSecurity, a part of the Thales Group, has offices worldwide including Cambridge, U.K., Hong Kong, Plantation, Florida and San Jose, California. Thales Group has more than 64,000 employees globally with headquarters in Paris, France. We serve customers across healthcare, financial services, retail, government and everything in between.
A leader in the advanced data security solutions, Thales eSecurity provides everything an organization needs to protect and manage its data, identities and intellectual property. Further, we meet the regulatory compliance needs of our customers through encryption, advanced key management, tokenization, privileged-user control and high assurance solutions.
Q: What do you see as some of the biggest data security challenges facing modern enterprises today?
A: For the modern enterprise of today, data breaches have become the “new normal” – it’s not if, but when, a company will be breached. As organizations continue to embrace digital transformation, greater amounts of sensitive data are created, stored and transferred in digital form putting more data at risk.
When combined with the rise of cloud, mobile IoT devices and digital payments, a whole new generation of attack surfaces are vulnerable to hackers.
With the volume of data breaches likely to continue along its current trajectory and the increase of sensitive data being stored in the cloud, organizations need a comprehensive data security strategy. Also with new and more stringent compliance regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), it is critical for organizations to protect citizens’ data with technologies like encryption and tokenization. For example, organizations can avoid the 72-hour breach notification requirement if they suffered a breach but had implemented appropriate technical and organizational measures, such as encryption.
Q: Many are touting the benefits of adopting a multi-cloud strategy for enterprises, yet it cannot be denied that this new approach also creates some unique problems that organizations need to be proactive about, with security concerns ranking high on the list. In your opinion, how can enterprises manage data security in a multi-cloud environment without sacrificing business agility?
A: IDC estimates that nearly 80 percent of IT organizations are currently deploying, or are planning to implement, multi-cloud environments. To derive the greatest benefit and avoid some serious headaches, it’s important to find a consistent, integrated solution that will offer comprehensive data security.
Because cryptographic best practices discourage the extensive reuse of encryption keys, managing encryption keys in a multi-cloud environment can lead to operational challenges. However, new solutions like Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) or Key Management as a Service (KMaaS) allow organizations to control and manage their own keys across multiple clouds (and in some cases on-premises systems as well) all with a single point of control. This also allows for the separation of the keys from the data and provides control of the encryption keys to the user and not the cloud provider.
Q: Tell us about your data security products. How are you helping organizations protect and manage their data, assets, and identities?
A: Fundamentally, we provide our customers with security and trust in data wherever that data is created shared or stored, without compromising business agility. Thales eSecurity delivers the industry’s most comprehensive and advanced data security across devices, processes, platforms and environments, providing everything an organization needs to protect and manage its data, identities and intellectual property, and meet regulatory compliance – through encryption, advanced key management, tokenization, privileged user control and high assurance solutions.
Central to the protection of sensitive data is encryption, whether at rest or in motion. Even in the case of a data breach, if the data is encrypted it cannot be exploited unless decrypted with the appropriate key. Additionally, we offer Hardware Security Modules (HSM), data tokenization and masking solutions to secure card, mobile and online payments, as well as digital signing to authenticate sensitive electronic records and code using secure signatures.
Q: What does Thales eSecurity do differently from comparable data security solutions?
A: The core of today’s businesses, large and small regardless of industry, depends on comprehensive and reliable cybersecurity solutions. The rise of IoT, and the shift to the cloud and unprecedented amounts of data, all necessitate increasingly complex and adaptive security measures.
As a leader in advanced data security solutions, Thales ensures the data belonging to organizations is both secure and trusted in any environment – on-premises, in the cloud, in data centers or big data environments – without sacrificing business agility. For Thales, the proof is in our continuously growing customer and partner network – security professionals around the globe rely on Thales to confidently accelerate their organization’s digital transformation.
Q: In June last year, Thales eSecurity joined the Core Infrastructure Initiative (CII) founded and managed by The Linux Foundation. Why is it important for your organization to support and participate in this project and how are you contributing to it?
A: Thales has implemented open source building blocks both internally and externally for its customers for over two decades. Open source in general, and Linux in particular, are core to the delivery of modern products and systems, offering distinct utility, cost and performance advantages that Thales and our customers increasingly leverage to solve real-world problems, particularly in today’s connected world.
By joining CII, we bring our expertise and focus on security to strengthen core open source infrastructure. We also will work to eliminate security weaknesses that can often emerge from less well-maintained open source technology used in cloud, IoT, or internal infrastructure.
Q: What are some of the trends and technologies you see on the rise in the data security space, and how is Thales meeting these?
A: Organizations across the world are digitally transforming themselves and are embracing 4 main technologies: cloud, artificial intelligence, digital payments and IoT. If we just reflect on our day-to-day, we can see how these new technologies influence our lives from using a mobile device for a purchase at a retailer, scanning an electronic boarding pass, opening your hotel door with your phone or signing a document electronically.
As more and more devices become connected, security becomes critically important. Security needs to be integrated into all of these new technologies. For example, in the world of IoT, solutions from Thales are designed to authenticate IoT devices and, provide a “digital birth certificate” to ensure the device is authentic. As those devices collect and deliver data, Thales solutions encrypt the information to keep it confidential. Using these types of solutions organizations can ensure the integrity of IoT devices and data greatly enhance overall trust in their IoT business processes.
Q: What does the future hold for Thales eSecurity? Are you brewing up any new products or solutions?
A: Most recently, we announced a joint connected health solution with Device Authority for the authentication of IoT devices. We are also active in helping our customers protect their information as they move to the cloud. One of our cloud focused solutions is a SaaS offering for creating, controlling and managing keys across multiple clouds.
In addition, we’re focused on technology innovations to help drive advances in multiple key data security areas. For example, in the area of financial services, we continue to invent in the protection of mobile and digital payments. The payments industry is evolving rapidly with cybercurrencies, alternative payments and open APIs.
At Thales we continue to evolve our products to ensure these new payment types are protected. As organizations evolve and new technologies emerge, we will make sure our customers are ready to handle any new developments as we have been doing for more than 30 years.
About Thales eSecurity
Thales eSecurity is a recognized leading provider of advanced data security solutions and services for organizations across a wide range of industries. A part of Thales Group, a global technology leader, Thales eSecurity helps companies ensure their data is secure and protected no matter the environment. Their solutions cover encryption, advanced key management, tokenization, privileged user control and more.