Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Mike Potts, CEO of Lancope (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: If you were starting a company today, what kind of open problems would you be leaning towards?

Mike Potts: I think the market is starving for some automation and folks that can bring it in. In other words, whatever can be done to take security intelligence and make that more predictive with a high degree of accuracy that can quickly discern good from bad. Even in service firms, there are only so many people who can handle some of these complex challenges. We inevitably have more and more managed service providers. I think there’s a great focus and opportunity in trying to deliver this technology that can benefit masses versus a user at a time. I think predictive analytics and also cloud-based service offerings are areas that I look at as an investor in a couple of different venture funds.

Sramana Mitra: Anything else that you want to share?

Mike Potts: I don’t really have anything else except just a general comment going back to what we were talking about earlier. I really think we have seen just the tip of the iceberg on the types of threats we need to be concerned with. We went through an era that was very challenged by financial loss and monetary compromises. What we’re seeing right now in the type of extortion that’s going on – that even entertainment is seeing – is there is this long shelf life on the type of information that is being taken right now. We have only begun to see what’s going to happen and solve a few of these with some of these executives who are held at ransom to not release certain information on their state of health or extra-marital affairs. This is going to wreak havoc, not only on the employee population, but also on the companies that have been compromised.

Sramana Mitra: One other question that I just thought of is you are in Atlanta, right?

Mike Potts: That’s right.

Sramana Mitra: It seems like there is a bit of security startup hub developing in the Atlants area. Is that a correct observation?

Mike Potts: I think that’s a very good observation. Much of the security ecosystem started around a company called Internet Security Systems.

Sramana Mitra: I remember that. IBM bought the company.

Mike Potts: That’s correct. That gave birth to so many other companies in the security space. Lancope was an outcome of one of those security companies from ISS, as was AirDefense.

Sramana Mitra: There are a lot of startups operating in Atlanta right now that are working on various security problems.

Mike Potts: That’s correct.

Sramana Mitra: Very good. Thank you for sharing your insights.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Mike Potts, CEO of Lancope
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