Charting the Course to a More Secure Digital Ecosystem: Recap of Beyond Security 2023
Contributed by Calhoun McKinney, Senior Director, Product Business Management, Cybersecurity at TD SYNNEX
Last month, some of the most brilliant and insightful minds in security and networking gathered in beautiful Scottsdale, Ariz. for TD SYNNEX Beyond Security 2023. Beyond Security is our signature annual conference, bringing together customer and vendor partners from around North America to collaborate and explore the top security and networking solutions in an interactive environment, all in an effort to build our collective advanced technology practices.
We structured the conference to empower our partners to customize their event experience with a theme of “Chart Your Course”. This format offered our attendees more than 41,000 agenda combinations. Attendees had the opportunity throughout the week to explore best practices with their peers, discover emerging trends, share insights and forge valuable connections — certainly a busy, yet effective, couple of days!
Let’s recap some of the highlights and takeaways from the event.
Exploring Emerging Trends Through Expert Perspectives
Throughout the event, our general sessions were packed with expert keynotes, industry leaders and diverse panels that gave a deep dive into emerging security trends. Our speakers highlighted the importance of innovation and adaptation with the goal of arming our attendees to navigate the application, data and cloud security space. As our SVP of CyberSolv, Jessica McDowell put it,
“As the rest of technology continues to evolve, security will always be there as the constant.”
We couldn’t have had two better keynote speakers than day one keynote Sounil Yu, CISO and head of research at JupiterOne and day two keynote Dr. Moo Cooper, a trailblazing engineer of the famed Mars Rover ‘Perseverance’ Mission for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab.
I loved this analogy from Sounil about how cybersecurity isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution and it’s critical to find the right security model for your business:
“If I asked how to find the bathroom in this conference, you wouldn’t pull out Google Maps; it’s a great tool but it’s the wrong model to use in this scenario. Likewise, if I asked how to get to Paris, you wouldn’t show me this hotel map.”
Dr. Cooper’s passion for her curiosity and expertise with planet Mars was infectious. She reminded us that so many of life’s wonderful discoveries were simply the product of asking “what would happen if…” or “I wonder if…” It’s critical that we don’t lose that sense of wonder and experimentation in order to solve problems.
Combatting New Challenges Like the Misuse of Artificial Intelligence
Identifying, mitigating and resolving attacks in 2023 has evolved so much from how we used to protect organizations even just a few years ago. VPNs and two-factor authentication are certainly helpful in today’s hybrid working environment, but those alone are not enough. Simply put, the old way doesn’t cut it and more robust technologies like Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) are becoming more prevalent to solve new challenges, like protecting IoT-connected environments and battling the misuse of AI.
AI was certainly the hot topic of Beyond Security 2023; in fact, from our event survey, 43% of our audience found AI to be the topic they enjoyed most. In a similar vein, 44% of our audience identified AI as the topic they’d like to learn about most in the year ahead.
As identified by our PBM team, bad actors and hackers are getting more creative in how they use AI to do the hard work for them: smarter and more convincing emails, realistic chatbots, dataset poisoning, better malware, password-guessing and human deepfake impersonations, all with the goal of gaining access to data for manipulation.
Throughout the event, our speakers gave helpful advice when it came to AI, like being more proactive in training AI systems to have more accurate information (garbage in, garbage out). We’re also all responsible for becoming students of the game and learning about new AI advancements. JD Jack of Google may have said it best when he compared it to a football analogy:
“[Where we’re at with AI] is like we’re on the first drive of the first quarter and it’s going pretty well. However, we’re a long way from the final whistle at the end of the 4th quarter.”
AI is a powerful tool that is built to work with humans to make our lives easier, but in the wrong hands, it can be dangerous.
Empowerment, Enablement and Growth through Services and Solutions
Building a robust security practice isn’t possible without the services, training and enablement to fuel it. Conversations at the event revealed varying pain points and priorities from our customers, which was complemented perfectly with our sessions that highlighted the diverse range of services we offer to support our partners’ business.
Customers are looking to meet an ever-evolving list of customer demands and need to scale their security practice; together, we explored how TD SYNNEX can bridge those gaps through our tailored services solutions. From flexible financing to logistics to lifecycle management, a little bit of services can go a long way in building a security practice.
I loved listening in to our Product Business Management (PBM) team discuss emerging trends post-pandemic and how TD SYNNEX can help them solve their customer challenges:
“We are FINALLY seeing the impact of pandemic device influx having a direct impact to current network infrastructures, whether it be due to return-to-office policies or students being back in the classroom. Aside from being able to withstand a high device capacity, new wireless networks need mobile connectivity through 5G services as well as protocol automation to ensure that customers have flexible Wi-Fi anywhere and can resolve connectivity issues automatically.”
Americas CFO David Jordan took the main stage to give his insight on the state of the security and how TD SYNNEX has the flexible financing solutions to help make any project a reality. We’re currently experiencing 12% projected year-over-year growth in the security category while global IT spend as a whole will increase around 5%, with three factors driving the market:
- Remote and hybrid work
- Transition from Virtual Private Networks to Zero Trust Network Access
- A shift to cloud-based delivery models.
We’re in this Together: Putting Yourself in the Shoes of a Hacker
Navigating the cybersecurity landscape alone is impossible. Beyond Security fostered immense collaboration and sparked many meaningful relationships between peers. At TD SYNNEX, our partners are at the core of our success and Beyond Security gave us an opportunity to demonstrate our commitment to their growth and success. By having such a well-rounded group of attendees and speakers, we got a holistic view of varying experiences on how we can collectively combat cybercrime.
Our speakers did a masterful job of highlighting the growing vulnerabilities and how hackers are exploiting those gaps. VMware Field CISO Fawaz Rasheed put it this way:
“Attackers of all kinds are intelligent. They stay unidentified as long as possible and then attack where you indicate you’re most vulnerable.”
He went on to liken cyberattacks to physical pickpockets. On the London Underground, signs were posted to “beware of pickpockets.” Upon reading the signs, tourists often touch the pocket where they are keeping their valuables, giving pickpockets a clear indication of where they’re most vulnerable. Cyber attackers often do the same: they infiltrate an organization’s system, undetected, and identify vulnerabilities.
At TD SYNNEX, we have a one-of-a-kind Cyber Range in Gilbert, Ariz. that gives our partners a real-time hacking simulation so that we can show, in real-time, what an attack looks like. Brett Scott, director of security solutions development and head of the Cyber Range, gave an overview of what to expect in the Cyber Range experience and how we fight alongside partners in this space. Brett noted that the TD SYNNEX Cyber Range is one of the most attacked places in the entire United States.
Preparing for 2024
As we wrap Beyond Security 2023 and begin preparations for 2024, we couldn’t be more thankful for the insightful speakers, engaged attendees, helpful vendors and our brilliant staff for making this event such a resounding success. We received so much positive feedback from our partners for providing a targeted, meaningful experience. Our shared vision of creating a safer digital world will allow us to stay on top of emerging trends and empower our partners with the tools and resources they may need in the year ahead.
Be sure to check out our photos from the event and a fun video recap. If you’d like to engage more with our CyberSolv team or receive additional information on your cybersecurity and network practice, contact our team.
We’re looking forward to another year of charting our course together and securing a bright future in the ever-evolving world of cybersecurity and networking.
