Cloud Stocks: Medallia Banks on Acquisitions

According to a recent report by Market Research Future, the global customer experience management market is estimated to grow at 22% CAGR to reach $18 billion by 2023. Earlier this year, Palo Alto-based Medallia (NYSE: MDLA), a leading player in the industry, went public. Its stock has had a tumultuous run so far. But the company isn’t too worried as it continues to consolidate in the industry with several acquisitions.

Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: LogRhythm CTO and Chief Product Officer Chris Petersen (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Give me a couple of examples of use cases where major problems can be solved by automation.

Chris Petersen: I’ll give you a more detailed example around phishing. Phishing is something that all organizations contend with. Social engineering, which is another form of phishing, is still one of the most common ways in which a bad actor is able to compromise a target.

Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: LogRhythm CTO and Chief Product Officer Chris Petersen (Part 1)

This interview delves into the Security Technology Operations space.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as to LogRhythm.

Chris Petersen: I’m the Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder of LogRhythm. LogRhythm is a cyber security company. Our mission is to help enterprises and organizations protect themselves from cyber threats.

Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Ondrej Vlcek, CEO of Avast (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: I’m going to ask you one last question. As you’re sitting in your vantage point, what are some open problems that you could point new entrepreneurs to go try to solve?

Ondrej Vlcek: We only scratched the surface of AI. AI is obvious. Many of the jobs that we have today will become obsolete because of AI. They are already becoming obsolete.

Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Ondrej Vlcek, CEO of Avast (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What else do you want to highlight in this conversation?

Ondrej Vlcek: I saw the article that you wrote about three years ago when you were interviewing our previous CEO. That was a pretty thorough interview on various parts of our history. This was written four years ago. Maybe it will be good to give you some updates.

Sramana Mitra: Absolutely.

Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Ondrej Vlcek, CEO of Avast (Part 3)

Ondrej Vlcek: To do security properly is not cheap. All these vendors might be creating great coffee makers or toasters, but they have no experience in building software.

What they typically do is reuse something that is publicly available and hire some people. The end product is very poor when it comes to security quality. This is not feasible in the long term.

Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Ondrej Vlcek, CEO of Avast (Part 2)

Ondrej Vlcek: There’s also something called spear-phishing. Spear-phishing is targeted phishing that is sent to a specific individual with a handcrafted individual which includes details from the personal life of the person or some kind of project or product that person is working on. It could also be something that makes the entire message much more credible.

At the end of the day, the odds of the victim clicking is higher. The problem with spear-phishing is that it has been difficult and expensive to conduct. You would have to do some kind of research and study. You have to craft the message so that it comes across as genuine.

Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Ondrej Vlcek, CEO of Avast (Part 1)

In this edition of the TLCS interview series, we discuss the immense vulnerabilities in B2C security.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience briefly to Avast. We’ve covered the company before and we’ll put that in context. From your perspective, do provide a little bit of summary and also a bit about yourself.