What Topics Will You Be Covering At Forrester?

I cover Zero Trust, MDR (managed detection and response), digital identity, and e-signature. My primary market is EMEA, but I will collaborate extensively with my colleagues across the pond. As a starting point, I will explore the following areas:

  • The role of asset management in IAM (identity and access management) and Zero Trust
  • Challenges to Zero Trust adoption in Europe
  • The impact of geography and culture on managed services solutions delivery
  • The intersection of e-signature and digital identity and what it means for the ecosystem

I will also be exploring security operations and how to create a unified risk management approach for complex organizations.

Tell Us About Yourself!

I studied computer networks and have worked in managed services, consulting, and was most recently global security manager at a semiconductor company. The bulk of my career has been in offensive security, software development, and information security management. I live in Munich, Germany, and I have worked in a number of regions.

I am quite interested in interdisciplinary studies, as oftentimes a different lens yields new perspectives that you might otherwise have missed.

I like weight lifting, traveling, reading (fiction), and listening to all kinds of music.

How’d You Get Interested In Security?

I forgot my phone’s PIN and learned that how I eventually unlocked my phone was a very rudimentary brute force attack. I later learned that these things could be automated, and here I am.

What Are The Key Issues In Security Right Now?

Cybersecurity has been getting a lot of buzz —for better or for worse. In my view, organizations are trying to leapfrog fundamental security practices and instead focus on things such as zero-days.

Another issue is cloud security. The cloud has obvious benefits, and organizations have been rapidly adopting it, but there is a tendency to attempt to lift and shift on-premises security strategies and replicate them in the cloud, and this is often not ideal.

On a related note, security tends to lag behind IT with regard to technology adoption, which creates a cultural and technological disconnect.

Finding practical approaches and cutting through the marketing buzz will go a long way in creating a more secure world.