First line of defense, last line of defense, and evidence of defense for cloud security.

Thank you to Steve Zalewski, ex-CISO of Levi Strauss and Advisor to Invi Grid Inc. for this fireside chat with our Founder Yogita Parulekar to tease out interesting insights as to why the problem of not getting cloud right still persists and has only become more dangerous, why we need a paradigm shift in solving this problem, how this problem manifests itself differently in Fortune 500 enterprises, Mid-Market companies and for innovative SMEs, and lastly how InviGrid sees itself actually solving this problem once and for all.

It is a fairly long 36 mins conversation so here are the key highlights. You can watch the full video here. 

What is the problem with cloud configurations? And why does it need to be solved now?

• Getting secure, scalable cloud right at the speed at which business wants is hard

• As a result, problem of cloud misconfigurations continues

• Remediating these infrastructure mistakes when revenue generating apps are already running on it is not just difficult but also many times impossible.

• The pressure to innovate and go to market fast, while staying lean, is greater than ever before, as AI is supposed to make things faster, more efficient - heard of 3 person unicorn startup expectation?! We also know that AI is in the cloud and AI feeds on data. All of this pressure and the inherent risks involved means mistakes will be made and will be costlier than ever before.

How do you describe the problem from a risk perspective, technical perspective and business perspective?

• Misconfigurations dramatically increase breach and scalability risk

• Disconnected, error prone processes create a lot of technical debt that is costly to fix 

• Affects business’s ability to adopt new technologies and scale rapidly thereby directly impacting revenue and customer needs. 

What is the difference between securing a company, protecting a company and enabling the business by security? 

• Sadly securing the company is associated with adding friction and slowing business down and hence security always takes a back seat

• Adding just the right amount of guardrails is about protecting the business when businesses take risks, isn’t that what business is all about, taking risks?

• Enabling the business is the holy grail, it happens when security is seamlessly embedded in the very processes that are building the systems that support innovation and go to market without adding time and friction, it happens when security is invisible, it is automatically taken care of. This is what we aim for at InviGrid, to enable businesses to innovate confidently.

What is the brutal truth we are addressing? Given this brutal truth, is InviGrid helping the CISO or owning the problem for the CISO?

• The brutal truth is that security and security by design is hard, it takes time and careful planning that innovators don’t have the time for and investors are not willing to prioritize for. 

• Today’s solutions are helping the CISO getting visibility into the problem of cloud misconfigurations. InviGrid on the other hand is owning the problem and solving the hard problem of secure by design cloud. 

How is the problem different for the Fortune 500, for Mid-Market companies and for SMEs who may work with MSPs and MSSPs? How do we summarize InviGrid’s value proposition for each of these market segments?

• For Fortune 500 we make them agile and competitive again. Fortune 500 companies can and will, especially if they are heavily regulated, throw resources at a problem, but simply adding people and n-number of disconnected tools that need joining together, only creates a “broken-bridge” problem that slows them down, creates sprawl and escalates costs quickly. For Fortune 500 we embrace their sprawl and fix the broken bridge or rebuild quickly one workload or business unit at a time to keep them agile and competitive again in this innovation economy.

• For Mid Market companies we are their growth partner. These companies may have adopted cloud when they were tiny, did not have expert cloud or security resources. Now they are growing rapidly and need their cloud workloads to scale. InviGrid makes this happen with rapid remediations and rearchitecting.

• For SMEs we are their go-to-market partner. InviGrid’s rapid day zero secure and compliant provisioning means automation and expertise at their fingertips. 

Where do we see InviGrid in 12-18 months? What is InviGrid’s key differentiator?

• InviGrid fulfills cloud’s promise of speed and security. 

• For CTOs and developers, we see InviGrid in the hands of all innovators who want to focus on business and not worry about infrastructure and security.

•  For CIOs and CISOs, InviGrid is your first line of defense, your last line of defense, and your evidence of defense for cloud security.

Learn how Cloud Architects, Cloud Operations, and Cloud Security can use InviGrid to confidently and quickly build secure well-architected clouds day zero. Email us at info@invigrid.com.