A letter from our CISO, Rex Booth

Like many of you, I’ve been in the cyber domain for what feels like a long time. Long enough to remember when a compromise of your company was considered catastrophic. It was a shameful moment, to be hidden from public knowledge at all costs. When I was at Mandiant in the early teens, many of our clients swore us to secrecy lest word get out that they were vulnerable to the focused aggressions of a nation state. It now seems almost quaint that such an obvious conclusion would need to be hidden.
 
Thankfully, the ensuing years have removed much of that shame. The mantra of “it’s not a matter of if, but when” has become commonplace.  We all fight against such events and are reluctant to embrace the eventuality, but our CEOs and boards are increasingly aware that this is just another business risk that needs to be managed.
 
But there are two elements of a compromise that can still resurrect that sense of shame and bring lasting negative consequences to a CISO and their company.
 
The first is your ability to recover.  
 
It’s one thing to suffer a compromise. But if and when it happens, you need to demonstrate your readiness to recover and minimize the impact. The longer you linger in a down state, the faster forgiveness and sympathy disappears.
 
The second is the perception of negligence.  
 
The market and our stakeholders may understand the difficulty of withstanding a concerted effort to breach our defenses. But if a post-breach analysis shows we failed to address known vulnerabilities or implement basic controls, our credibility plummets, and the reputation of our company and ourselves can suffer a lasting impact.
 
The emergence of AI makes both elements more challenging. AI is expanding our collective tech footprint at a speed we’ve never seen before, potentially exposing us to both the recovery and negligence risks in unexpected ways. Maintaining visibility and appropriate control – all while enabling the tremendous promise it brings – is the challenge of our careers. This is the moment that will delineate those of us who can strike the right balance between security and enablement and those who retreat to old, restrictive models.
 
We can’t do this alone. Exciting technology is emerging to manage the exponential growth of identities, supporting adaptive identity programs that provide visibility and control needed to ensure the appropriate use of AI. Ultimately the CISO shouldn’t just be a preventive function, but an aspirational one as well, allowing the creative and augmenting power of AI to flourish in ways that minimize risk. 

As we navigate this pivotal moment in our industry, the tools we choose will define our ability to balance innovation with security. At SailPoint, we are committed to equipping CISOs with adaptive identity solutions needed to manage the complexities of AI and beyond. Together, we can embrace the future with confidence, ensuring that security becomes a catalyst for growth rather than an operational constraint.