Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Leo Taddeo, Chief Security Officer, Cryptzone (Part 3)

Leo Taddeo: The second challenge I think a lot of them are facing is the complexity requirement and the specialization of the IT security staff that they need. CISOs in every private enterprise and in every government agency out there are competing for the same talent. They’re competing for the same experts. The lack of these experts and the cost of these experts is driving up security cost. It’s bringing security down because the turnover in security personnel reduces the security posture for an enterprise. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Leo Taddeo, Chief Security Officer, Cryptzone (Part 2)

Leo Taddeo: Our approach is that it’s very difficult to protect user credentials, and so the philosophy behind the software-defined perimeter is not only to do a very robust authentication of the user through attributes on the machine and other verifiable attributes, but also to prevent that user from going beyond the resources that they have legitimate access to. That, in effect, prevents critical stages of every attack that we’ve seen in the last 10 years. The attacker needs to move from an unprotected part of the network into a more sensitive part of the network. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Leo Taddeo, Chief Security Officer, Cryptzone (Part 1)

This discussion starts with perimeter security, and expands into a broader study of CISO priorities.

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

Leo Taddeo: I’m the Chief Security Officer of Cryptzone. Cryptzone is a technology company providing security software to small and large enterprises and a number of organisations in between from financials to manufacturers. We provide security software in the form of an enterprise gateway called AppGate and two other data loss prevention products: Security Sheriff and Compliance Sheriff. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Blackbaud CTO Mary Beth Westmoreland (Part 4)

Mary Beth Westmoreland: We want to be open and we want to help and enable it, but we may not always be the best provider of those programs and services. I can give you 500 different use cases about the missions of these wonderful organizations that we serve whether it be on the ground in Africa where the only connection they have is via cell service, or working with some of the poverty-driven institutions.

How do you leverage an ERP system to deliver food in areas that are underserved? I work with some of these entrepreneurs. I was just attending the Forbes Women Summit where the 30 Under 30 are women who are doing some amazing things around non-profits and driving impact through programs. I talked to them about how we want to help and enable via our platforms and make something like that happen. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Blackbaud CTO Mary Beth Westmoreland (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Talk to me about a use case and workflow as it pertains to mobile.

Mary Beth Westmoreland: As an arts and cultural organization, I’m like an aquarium. I might want to check people into the aquarium. I may want to have a special event where I’m soliciting major gifts from a subset of the population in my community. I may be out at a community event and I may want to solicit a gift to someone I just met. Mobile can help in all three of those different use cases. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Blackbaud CTO Mary Beth Westmoreland (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: I heard two things in what you said so far. One is an increasing role of data and analytics. Secondly, an increasing role of mobilizing the workflow.

Mary Beth Westmoreland: Correct. Another thing that I would say is openness. We want to create an ecosystem. At Blackbaud, we don’t feel like we have to be the one-stop shop for everything even though we kind of are. We have beautiful comprehensive solutions. What we want to do is enable innovation through our cloud so that people who have a passion in a specific area can develop something different. The trend there is to leverage the openness of the cloud to do more things.

Sramana Mitra: I’m going to start double-clicking down into a couple of things. Before we do that, can you give me a little bit of an understanding of your customer base? I imagine you work with the alumni associations of different schools or development offices of the different universities. >>>

From an EIR Experiment to a Fast Growth SaaS Company: Joe Kinsella, Founder and CTO of CloudHealth (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: How much did you do in 2014?

Joe Kinsella: We don’t disclose our revenue numbers.

Sramana Mitra: How many customers did you close in 2014?

Joe Kinsella: We went from nine customers in 2013 to around 60 in 2014. It grew to 300 in 2015 and we’re 600 plus now.

Sramana Mitra: What is your pricing model?

Joe Kinsella: It’s a percentage of spend. Companies consume cloud infrastructure. We needed some way to approximate the complexity of what we do for >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Blackbaud CTO Mary Beth Westmoreland (Part 1)

Blackbaud is a SaaS company that caters to the philanthropic segment—helping non-profits manage their donor management workflows. This interview explores the trends and evolutions of the sector.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to Blackbaud and yourself.

Mary Beth Westmoreland: I’m Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of Product Development at Blackbaud. Blackbaud has actually been around for quite some time. We’re the leading provider of software and services for the global philanthropic community. A big chunk of that is the non-profit space. We’ve grown our customer base by about 15% and our stock price by about 70% over the past two years. We’re a growing company. We serve more than 35,000 customers today in the philanthropic space and also the consumers. >>>