Cybersecurity needs to be a company wide issue: Veeam CEO

Cybersecurity is on the top of mind for every IT and cybersecurity leader but it needs to be an issue for every other executive in an organisation.

Anand Eswaran, CEO at Veeam spoke to Digital Nation during the 2022 VeeamOn conference in Las Vegas about how it is imperative that businesses make cybersecurity a top priority.

He said, “It's alarming how few companies have a defined process. But what happens when ransomware attacks happen and how do you go about it?

“Given the increased incidence of ransomware right now, what I see with all the companies I've worked with and interact with even before I came to the US, the company's strategy for ransomware has become a real priority.”

As many employees work from home due to the pandemic, security has become a priority for organisational boards.

“This is a similar thing out there and by extension, many different aspects of security become a board priority. That's why you saw the emergence of the chief information security officers (CISO) and now every company the board expects most companies to essentially have the entire security process in place,” Eswaran said.

“This is not just to say are we secure and are we not going to get breached? But rather do we have the right governance models in place?”

When companies are developing code they need to assess whether there is enough governance processes, Eswaran explained.

“All of those topics are coming out in a big way and those are board driven right now so the CISO may well report inside the company, but the CISO as far as I'm seeing in public companies, is a dotted line to report to the board as well at this point in time,” he said.

Openness with cyberattacks

As ransomware and cybersecurity attacks have become more common, leaders are willing to talk about them according to Shiva Pillay, general manager and SVP APJ at Veeam. 

“It’s not a new thing, it is something we're now talking about more openly because it used to be a secret. My background was security and you would only talk about [cybersecurity] when it was bad but now it’s a common occurrence. That's probably the biggest challenge customer facing,” he told Digital Nation.

Pillay highlighted the fact that enterprise customers usually have a lot more technology and savviness around how they solve their cybersecurity issues.

“But the ones that are getting attacked are the small to medium and midsize, they don't necessarily have a great solution in place. In that respect, the IT manager and IT security managers are the same person and where we fit is that spot solving that problem in the complex world,” he added.

Cybersecurity has evolved to where more organisations and leaders are aware of attacks, Anthony Spiteri, senior global technologist at Veeam said the key thing to understand is the prevalence of attackers and the increased sophistication of attacks.

He said, “I've talked before about the phishing attempts on email, and they're a clickable attack, but there are now zero click exploits that are coming into play.

"The reality is that everyone is going to get hit at some point. So how do you then recover from it? How do you make sure you have backups? How do you have a tool set to be able to get your business back up and running?"

Athina Mallis attended VeeamON as a guest of Veeam.