Gordon Cowan entered the cyber resilience field driven by problem-solving and a passion for technology. His focus at Cybrilliance involves identifying and fixing data resilience loopholes. Cybrilliance contributes to data lifecycle solutions, emphasizing almost instant data recovery from cyber incidents. “End user value” in cybersecurity means constant access to deep data insights, aligning with Cybrilliance’s approach. Staying updated relies on partnerships and tech innovation. Collaboration with tech providers ensures harmony, and a holistic approach evaluates and recommends solutions for data discovery protection and recovery. Cybrilliance’s strategies ensure wider data visibility while maintaining high security. The resilience of each partner solution, selected by Cybrilliance, is assessed through a stringent testing process.
The Cybrilliance Hub offers recognized cyber resilience products. Looking ahead, Gordon envisions global advancement and plans to educate IT teams on addressing risks. Adapting strategies to evolving threats and encouraging resilience is crucial for success. Stay connected with Cybrilliance for some of the best ways to implement and use specific cyber resilience tools.
Alignment with Cybrilliance’s Passion
We started the interview by asking Gordon, what motivated you to pursue a career in cyber resilience, and how does “Cybrilliance’s” passion for cyber resilience resonate with your professional goals?
Gordon replied: “I’ve built my career on identifying problems to solve, and I’ve always had a keen interest in technology. So, after a long service of bringing the insurance sector into more profitable alignment for modern needs, it occurred to me that the business of data security could also be advanced. I set my sights on helping to stop business data life-cycles and operations being compromised by cyber-attacks. I guess the simplest way to put it is that I look for data resilience loopholes and how to fix them – identify innovative vendors and then distribute those solutions.”
Contributions to Data Lifecycle Solutions
The Worlds Times: Can you provide examples where you actively contribute to the discovery, protection, or recovery phases of a data lifecycle solution?
Gordon replied: “Without having resilience tools in place it’s not currently possible to continue business as normal when you’re hit by a ransomware attack. We focus on providing clever technology that adds to existing security tools, and advances data protection and near real-time recovery if anything happens. Cybrilliance clients benefit from knowing exactly what data they have, how it is being used, and where it is being shared. They are also able to have the confidence that if data is stolen it cannot be accessed. This offers assurance that they can continue business operations during recovery.”
Aligning with Cybrilliance’s Approach
The Worlds Times: In the context of cyber-security, what does “end user value” mean to you, and how do you believe it aligns with “Cybrilliance’s” approach?
Gordon replied: “It’s about having constant access to real-time deep data insights which empowers users with meaningful and actionable intelligence directly from their own organizational activities. They are better protected against threats and able to respond effectively to any cyber incident. This holistic approach brings a more resilient and secure digital ecosystem for end-users.
We also keep up with changing realities and enlist external intelligence to ensure that what we’re doing provides our clients with value. Our analyst partner, Synergy Six Degrees provides us with independent reports across the markets that we operate within. You may have seen an example of this in our recent “Is 3-2-1 fit for Purpose?” analysis into the traditional methods and costs used to retain and recover data.”
Navigating the Dynamic Landscape
The Worlds Times: How do you stay updated on the latest trends and innovations in cyber resilience, and how would you contribute to keeping “Cybrilliance” at the forefront of the industry?
Gordon replied: “We are driven by two key pillars: strategic partnerships and technology innovation.
Partnerships with leading cyber-security vendors, industry associations, and regulatory bodies provide us with invaluable access to the latest threat intelligence, emerging technologies, and regulatory updates. Staying well connected with the cyber-security ecosystem means that we have constantly evolving knowledge, exceptional ways to protect our own organization as well as our client’s businesses.
For technology innovation we’re always looking for new and powerful solutions to integrate with our cyber resilience portfolio. However, it is not often we find a product that impresses us so much that we go on to recommend it.”
Approach to Unbiased Recommendations
The Worlds Times: Given “Cybrilliance’s” role as the global master distributor, how would you approach making unbiased recommendations for technology provider offerings to clients?
Gordon replied: “We’re here to protect our clients by providing advice and access to verified cyber resilience tools. Everything we recommend has been subjected to intense vendor evaluations. By simulating real-world cyber-attacks, we assess the solution’s resilience against various threats. Our goal is to gain insights into any data security loopholes, vulnerabilities or shortcomings in a solution’s ability to prevent and mitigate cyber threats.”
Collaborative Success
The Worlds Times: Can you share an experience where you successfully collaborated with technology providers to enhance the resilience and effectiveness of a cyber- security solution?
Gordon replied: “Yes, I can. We engaged with the engineering teams from resilience tool providers, NeuShield and Actifile to ensure that their respective expertise worked
together properly. During tests we found that a few conflicts were happening when both were deployed in the same environment. We collaborated to resolve the conflicts and now the duo work in harmony to provide robust cyber resilience in terms of data identification, real-time data and device protection and recovery.”
Holistic Approach to Data Resilience
The Worlds Times: “Cybrilliance” emphasizes the entire data lifecycle. How do you ensure a holistic approach when evaluating and recommending solutions for data discovery, protection, and recovery?
Gordon replied: “The holistic approach covers business continuity and data integrity. We do this by protecting our client’s data life-cycles, which minimizes the impact of incidents and resumes normal operations swiftly. It’s a comprehensive process which starts with a detailed data discovery analysis. We also identify the types and locations of data within an organization, as well as who has been accessing it. The data is then classified by sensitivity and assigned a monetary value. From there we then recommend the right protection and recovery technologies for our clients.
The options we recommend are based on ways to enhance data security. This can include the most secure data encryption, data loss prevention and access control policies, along with monitoring data flow through applications and hardware to identify and mitigate potential security threats. This proactive approach significantly improves an organization’s data security stance, safeguarding against various threats.
We also emphasize organizational resilience by providing real-time data protection, rapid data and device recovery in minutes in situations like ransomware and data compromise attacks. Cybrilliance’s approach also adds value to normal operations, providing instant roll-back recovery of data and operating systems when errors are found with patching and configuration updates.”
Strategies for Enhancing Data Visibility
The Worlds Times: What strategies would you employ to ensure wider visibility, protection, and access of client data while maintaining a high level of security?
Gordon replied: “That it is a mistake to think that everything can be achieved solely with cyber-security tools. We’re constantly encouraging organizations to spend more time focusing on cyber resilience.
Our clients benefit from a Data Security Platform that delivers the discovery, visibility, and protection of all their data – complemented with active data protection and instant recovery.
Cybrilliance can also integrate the warranty protection offered by a leading insurance company. This coverage is designed to help mitigate the financial risks and liabilities incurred when an organization suffers a cyber-incident.”
Assessing Cyber-Security Resilience
The Worlds Times: How do you assess the resilience of a cyber-security solution, and what factors do you consider when determining its effectiveness in real-world scenarios?
Gordon replied: “Our product selection process requires that the vendors we take on must prove their product functionality. We insist that the product value addresses an immediate benefit for the functionality required by business today. This is often missing in existing cyber product stacks.”
Envisioning Contribution to the Brilliance Hub
The Worlds Times: “Cybrilliance” talks about the Brilliance Hub for cyber resilience excellence. How do you envision contributing to and leveraging this hub to enhance the overall cyber resilience landscape?
Gordon replied: “The Cybrilliance Hub offers recognized cyber resilience products and services that have data at their core. Contributors to the Cybrilliance Hub address multiple use cases in cyber resilience such as: data visibility, protection, recovery, privacy, and compliance.
Data privacy is critical today as governments tighten regulations – such as the India Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023, the European GDPR, and all other global governmental data protection requirements.”
Future Vision and Personal Contribution
The Worlds Times: How do you see the company changing in two years, and how do you see yourself creating that change?
Gordon replied: “Data incidents happen every day. So, our plan is to advance our global mission and help all kinds of businesses stay operational in the event of that happening. We will also be adding more workshops and webinars to help IT teams realize not only where they might still be at risk, but also that there are simple ways to address those risks.”
Dynamic Threat Landscape
The Worlds Times: Given the dynamic nature of cyber-security threats, how do you prioritize and adapt your strategies to ensure the continuous improvement of resilience measures for clients?
Gordon replied: “It’s true that cyber-security threats are constantly evolving. Encouraging companies to be more resilient to known threats, as well as being ready to defend against the unknown emerging threats, is our priority. The cyber resilience solutions we offer are delivered by vendors that are continually developing their products, adapting to anticipated future malware vectors.”
Closing Thoughts
The Worlds Times: Would you like to say anything else to our viewers?
“Yes. Staying competitive in your sector is tough. Promoting that you are more resilient can enhance your position in your marketplace.
Here are three questions to help get to a more secure data standpoint: can you truly monitor where all your data is, who is using it and how, and what it would take to recover all your data in terms of cost and time?
Better ways to manage a data incident already exist. We’re here to help show organizations how they can better protect their data, as well as help them stay in business should there be an actual incident,” Gordon concluded.
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