Partnerships can be huge force multipliers for a business, and they can extend them out to regions where they don't have a physical presence.
Media 7: How has your professional journey evolved over time, and what lessons have you learned along the way?
Adam Cason: My professional journey has been an interesting one, since I started out focusing heavily on hands-on technical work, and then gradually over time moved more and more onto the commercial and the business side. Keeping the technical aspects of the business front-and-centre is something that I've been able to hang on to still, which keeps things fun. I’m fortunate to have the opportunity to interact with technology at a fairly deep level on a day-to-day basis. Having that kind of connection has let me stay grounded in what actually matters.
Beyond that, I’ve learned to hang on to a sense of curiosity as much as possible. That's one of the big drivers of innovation, especially in the enterprise security space, where we're going up against attackers who are equally curious and equally innovative in finding ways to exploit systems that we rely on as a society. To stay ahead of that, as an information security community, we need to have that same sense of curiosity, exploration, and experimentation in the types of technology we develop and consider for the future.
M7: How does Futurex maintain provision of innovative standard compliance and data encryption solution?
AC: For us, following the instructions mandated by the compliance standards is the easy part. The challenge, where we focus a lot of our energy from a corporate perspective, is around developing technology and architecture that fits into the compliance picture while also allowing businesses to focus on what they do best.
When you talk to a corporation or a government organization, maintaining good information security is a critical portion of their responsibility, but that's not their sole reason for existing. They're serving their customers, they’re manufacturing their widgets, they’re providing services to their constituencies. Much of Futurex’s focus has been around developing technology that allows them to maintain focus on that. Thus, they don't have to worry about security as much. They don't have to spend as much time, money, and energy on the maintenance of those security technologies. Their technology is just supposed to work, and we put a lot of our developmental energy towards that.
M7: How do you stay up-to-date with the latest trends and advancements in the information security and how do you apply this knowledge to the work at Futurex?
AC: A lot of Futurex’s work is driven by regulatory standards, whether it's FIPS 140-3, Level 3, or PCI HSM in the payments industry. We do quite a bit of work to help advance the state of the industry by, contributing to the various standards bodies, offering our guidance and advocating on behalf of our customers and partners. We aim to drive growth in those standards to meet the next generation of data security needs and keep our industry’s technology far ahead of the attackers.
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The decision for any company to develop and prioritize a partnership model really is a unique one.
M7: Would you like to brief us about Futurex’s own cloud systems, VirtuCrypt and its benefits?
AC: Absolutely. The areas Futurex focuses on as a company are HSMs or hardware security modules for payments and general-purpose use cases and enterprise key management servers. Both of those areas were traditionally handled using on-premises hardware appliances and servers that customers would deploy and manage from their own data centres. In recent years, however, that has changed.
With our VirtuCrypt offering, we offer this same technology through a SaaS model, where we maintain data centres around the world from which we deliver services. Organizations that are looking to push enterprise workloads into public cloud providers ,now have a way through our VirtuCrypt offering, to connect those into enterprise security technology that traditionally required physical devices.
This technology is particularly useful in the payments industry, where financial services organizations worldwide are seeking ways to move to the cloud. Until Futurex began offering its VirtuCrypt cloud payment HSM service, there really was no easy-to-use method to do that.
M7: Futurex committed to providing exceptional customer service. Can you describe how you prioritize customer needs and expectation while balancing the need of the organization?
AC: A lot of what Futurex does for customers involves custom development, and balancing the unique and specific needs of an individual customer alongside the needs of our overall customer base, as well as Futurex’s strategic priorities, is a delicate art. When we talk about our product roadmap, we are very deliberate in how we mix feedback and guidance from our customers and partners, along with our own strategic goals, as well as where we see the industry heading.
M7: What are some of the common challenges or risks associated with the forming of strategic alliance or partnership? And how does your company mitigate to those risk?
AC: Partnerships can be huge force multipliers for a businesses, and they can extend them out to regions where they don't have a physical presence. They can also help them get into new verticals and really do a lot to drive growth. They can also help them extend the utility of their technology through solution integrations. The decision for any company to develop and prioritize a partnership model really is a unique one. They must make it very deliberately because partners are an extension of their brand. If you have partners in the field representing your brand, the end customer views them essentially as your company, in a way. Managing that risk carefully and making sure your brand is being represented in a positive way is one of the critical challenges, and opportunities, that any organization considering a channel and technology partner ecosystem must face.
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With the rise of Big Data, information about consumer behavior can be correlated across sources to build an incredibly detailed picture of someone or a group of people, which poses security challenges.
M7: Data is considered the king of the market. What role does data analytics play in modern information security systems and how can it be used to improve security and prevent attacks?
AC: When we look at data analytics in 2023 and beyond, a big challenge that society as a whole faces, is for the individual consumer. With the rise of Big Data, information about consumer behavior can be correlated across sources to build an incredibly detailed picture of someone or a group of people, which poses security challenges. For companies collecting and using this data, being diligent in their handling is critical.
You're also seeing a big drive for business-to-business organizations that promote integration between different technologies. A popular security measure in recent years has been sandboxing different applications. But what happens if you use a third-party service to connect to those independent or formerly independent sandboxes, that could pose a risk, even as it provides incredible utility. That in particular is something that we, as an industry, are going to have to address, because it's not going to become less significant as world becomes more integrated and globalized.
M7: What new innovations Futurex is likely to develop in the near future, and how will they benefit other industries?
AC: When we look at Innovation across the industry and what Futurex has on our own roadmap, one of the most common topics we hear from our customers is that “encryption is wonderful, key management is wonderful, but it's really difficult to use”.
An enterprise organization may have hundreds of different applications spread throughout their technology ecosystem. This can be very difficult to manage. One of the things we're focusing on right now is educating the market on how they can consolidate their cryptographic sprawl.
This consolidation is for both cost savings and operational efficiencies but is also important from a security standpoint. If you're dealing with hundreds of different cryptographic use-cases and you've got a single team of purpose-designated individuals managing that, that's going to be a lot better than each department, group, or business unit managing their own security. Centralizing cryptography, while also making it available to a wider group of application owners, is something that we'll see continue to grow, not just with Futurex offerings but with the industry as a whole.