IN THE BOARDROOM™ with...

Mr. Mark Wood
Product Manager
Cloud Security
Dell SecureWorks
www.secureworks.com

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Thank you for joining us today, Mark. One will read at www.dell.com/secureworks that Dell, “...listens to customers and delivers innovative technology and services that give them the power to do more. Recognized as an industry leader by top analysts, Dell SecureWorks provides world-class information security services to help organizations of all sizes protect their IT assets, comply with regulations and reduce security costs. Please give us an overview of the solutions Secureworks brings to market.

Mark Wood: Dell SecureWorks provides thousands of customers with managed security services, security and risk consulting, and threat intelligence to combat current and emerging cyber threats. We offer a wide range of information security and compliance services, including SIM On-Demand, Log Monitoring and Retention, IPS/IDS, Firewall Management, Web Application Firewall, Host IPS, Vulnerability Management, Web Application Scanning, Security & Risk Consulting, and Threat Intelligence Services. To meet organizations’ requests for flexible security solutions, we deliver a wide range of services and integrated options, including full outsourcing, co-management, monitoring and reporting only, and on-demand software-as-a-service.

But our security event monitoring and correlation capabilities really lie at the heart of our value proposition. Our purpose-built security platform enables us to filter, correlate and analyze more than 29 billion events across our global customer base every day. We’re also well known for our Counter Threat Unit research team, which includes some of the most experienced security experts in the industry. We use our correlation algorithms and our skilled staff to identify threat activity on customer networks as benign or hostile and to assign a level of severity to the hostile activity. The net is that if we call you, you know it’s worth your immediate attention and if we don’t, you know you can sleep easier.

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Are there any new solutions or services you’d like to talk about?

Mark Wood: My job is to help us extend our managed security service capabilities into our customers’ cloud environments. Our customers are moving their applications and data to clouds – private clouds in many cases, public or hybrid cloud solutions in others. This doesn’t just mean doing what we do for traditional datacenters, but in a cloud environment, it also means changing what services we deliver and how we deliver them. For example, we are increasing the emphasis on application-level and data-level security, emplacing a wider variety of virtual security instrumentation, and extending our management portal to support some self-service on-demand modes.

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: What are your key target markets and what is your perspective on the market drivers for Secureworks solutions at this challenging economic time?

Mark Wood: We’re a horizontal solution, so we add value to a number of different vertical segments as well as customers ranging from small to large. Cloud service providers are better able to leverage scarce resources, such as trained security professionals, than many individual organizations are, and this yield economic benefits which can be passed on to buyers. Unless you’re a large company or in a specific industry like Intelligence, security personnel are increasingly difficult to hire and difficult to retain. As an MSSP, we can leverage our talented group of security engineers across a number of different customers, making it more cost effective and easier for our customers to get the kind of coverage they need. Cost reduction continues to be a key market driver.

This is particularly true when it comes to cloud. The primary market drivers for cloud adoption continue to be increased agility and reduced cost. From a security perspective, the leveraged security skill set story is particularly appealing for cloud environments.

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Are there 1 or 2 success stories or “wins” you would like to talk about?

Mark Wood: For privacy and security reasons, we do not name customers or discuss the specific security services we are providing them. So unless customers instruct us otherwise, we refrain from bragging about our newest customer wins. However, we will brag our about our services, awards and our CTU research team, which is one of the most reputable teams in the business. Dell SecureWorks is a five-time winner of the SC Magazine Readers Choice Awards for Best Managed Security Service, has been named a “Leader” by the 2012 Forrester Wave and is positioned in the Gartner “Leaders Quadrant.”

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: We understand that you will be participating on a cloud security panel at the first annual Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA) Forecast event (http://www.opendatacenteralliance.org/forecast2012). May we have a sneak preview regarding the topics and trends you’ll be discussing?

Mark Wood: We have a list of topics we’ve been fine tuning that covers the entire spectrum of cloud security, from the business-oriented kind of topics like “What’s really holding us back from more widespread cloud adoption” to the more technical “Which security technologies are really effective fits?” And with Chris Hoff as the moderator, I’m sure it’ll be a fast-paced and compelling discussion.

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Thanks again for joining us today, Mark.