A Wrap Up of InfoSec Europe

It’s been a busy week at InfoSec Europe, the security event held at Earl’s Court in Kensington, London. The show continues to bring together some of the best and brightest minds in security, and that’s reflected by the level of conversations that we’ve had. Day after day, the crowds were running at a constant high, and we worked tirelessly to make sure that every guest got the answers they needed.

It was a great honor to meet Deputy Chief of Mission Barbara Stephenson for the US Embassy in London. She has been working to build ties between European and US businesses, and she came by to the Palo Alto Networks booth to discuss the state of network security and learn about what we do. We talked about the nature of the problem that businesses face in protecting against modern malware, and the concepts behind the next-generation firewall, and I can report that the Deputy Ambassador is exceptionally well-informed about computer security.

In conversation with some of the show attendees, I noticed a number of important trends. The first is that many companies are not talking about what they need to add to make their environment more secure, but rather what they can remove, starting with their traditional firewall.   Typically the conversation about simplifying an environment revolves around cost reduction, but at the show, many people talked about how an excess of complexity led to problematic security compromises. In order to make their security program more effective, they needed to get a better handle on visibility and control, and that was precisely the reason they wanted to get a better understanding of what the next-generation firewall can do.

A second trend I noticed was the number of discussions that we had around mobility. It’s interesting because many talks had two components – how to get more users on the network, and how to keep unwanted devices off the network. The discussion around the use of GlobalProtect with the next-generation firewall led to conversations that ranged around security, compliance, and remote access. This has been coming up as a popular topic with our customers, and I highly recommend watching Nir Zuk and Rich Mogull of Securosis discuss mobility and consumerization from our recent webcast.

Third, there was a lot of talk about being preemptive rather than reactive to new threats. For example, I talked to a number of attendees about the difference between behavioral-based malware detection and signature-based detection, and the time delta between patient zero and protection. WildFire closes the gap providing continuous system for malware detection and corrective action, and I had many good talks with people who wanted to see how it works.

Thanks to all of you who came by to visit us this year. If you missed this event, feel free to drop us a line and we’ll set up a 1 on 1 conversation with you. Even though we had a great turn out this year, next year promises to be even better, and we look forward to seeing you there.