Post-McAfee Cybersecurity – Gee Rittenhouse, Skyhigh Security

This is texturing TV. Hey everyone, welcome to a text job TV interviewer. Another text on TV interview.

I'm really happy to have our next guest on here. I've been looking forward to having them on this is let me introduce you to g writtenhouse g is the CEO of sky high security sky high security. Who are they?

You say good question. She's gonna tell us all about it as well as his own background. Hey Gee, welcome to text strong TV.

Thanks so much for the kind invitation. My pleasure. So gee, why don't we start with your background?

And then let's let's answer the question who is Sky High security for those who are not familiar. Yeah. Well, so I I grew up through the tech world have a PhD in electrical engineering and computer science.

I've always loved Tech but equally important is how Tech really helps companies social Etc. I really like the impact of technology as well as the technology itself. And when you combine those two things inevitably your career ends up in security because of all the Innovation that happens there and of course the ability to help others from that.

It's absolutely and look I don't want to embarrass you but you've held positions all the way back to Bell Labs, which is sort of you know, that's royalty in the tech world, right? That's the the Genesis of so much we do in Tech today. In addition.

You've held several executive positions at Cisco including in the cyber security team there and then of course you you've been with Sky High now pretty much since Sky High I was launched. Just about a hundred days ago. Yes.

That's true. All right a fast hundred days. Well a hundred days is great.

It's whenever a new Administration comes in in Washington right that the the Failure or success of that Administration is often set in that first 100 days. I sometimes the same helps children in startup and you know the computer World G, but we haven't given him that the Sky High Genesis if you will, why don't you share that if you don't mind with the audience? Sure.

So from that those Cisco security days a lot of security although new moves into the cloud the approach maybe a bit updated and whatnot still kind of follows some basic principles around protecting data through intercepting packets and flows and things like that and about 10 years ago with really the introduction of sass applications and whatnot. You quickly realize that there's no kind of path to interrupt something or to put a box in there. And so for example, if I took a file out of my cloud email and stuck it in a cloud storage application, like how do you prevent that from happening?

And so a technology was built at that time called a I would access service broker and sky high security was one of the key enablers of that and quite frankly were one of the inventors of this industry and from those early days. They got acquired by a larger company McAfee and earlier this year. We spun that out along with the rest of this Cloud security portfolio that now has forms the Genesis of sky high security.

And so while we're new as a company the origins of the company actually go back about a decade in Cloud native security for the modern Enterprise. Absolutely, and that's really the important thing. I want people to understand here.

Is that Sky High might be a new name to them, but this is a tried and true. Foundation of of security and Security Solutions that you're now building on and yes, you know, it's something it's not like taking a a flyer on some new startup that just raised an a round or something like that right now. So we were about a hundred days in as you sit here and look back on those hundred days Jay.

I guess the question is have you achieved what you thought you would be able to do in a hundred days. What what else is out there? What's the next big?

Kind of marks on the roadmap or the horizon. Yeah, it's actually the team has been able to really accomplish a considerable amount more than I thought we would be able to do when you stand up a new company. There's a lot of just basic blocking and tackling but the leadership team has really cleared a path to growth and Market entry that was much faster than I gave myself credit for in those early days.

The second thing that has happened is the brand and the name resonates with our customers. There's so many times like Sky High you're back what happened over those last few years? We're so glad you're back in the market.

And so there's a tremendous amount of excitement around the company and in the brand and what we're doing, and then finally I I realized more than ever. How important the problem we're trying to solve for our customers is when when you think about data security when you think about Insider threats and all these things there's a lot of technology that comes to mind and a lot of acronyms and our customers struggle with with these things and you realize that just having basic posture basic policy basic things like this to start and have that easy to adopt. It's just so powerful.

And and so I we recognize the problem facing the industry, but I didn't anticipate the market reaction to it and just the excitement around the the company and our offerings. Yeah, well look we both been in the security World a long time and there was there was a long time in security where security had a fight for attention had a fight for Budget how to you know, we were very much after thought. We weren't even part of the it organization and still aren't in a lot of organizations, right, but certainly my In my world anyway where I sit?

Security is ascended right security is truly top of the food chain now with so many organizations because for not great reasons, right because we're seeing whether it's you know with Cloud native and software Supply chains and that's bombs and all of that stuff coming out of government as well and nation state activities. And for all the wrong reasons security is as more important than it ever was. Yeah, I would say actually for the right reasons security is but at its core security is basically a data problem and at its core data is that at the core of security and for a modern Enterprise data is the heart of that modern Enterprise and so Enterprises now think of their operations through that lens of data.

So how do how to compute on it in the most reliable cost-effective way how to introduce it to their customers and provide value to the customers and then of course security is just one of many different attributes surrounding that data for of course the reasons that you mentioned but I think what has many people Focus on this new world as being different in the intensity and the volume of the attacks and as a result security is a primary concern, but I actually think about it in the lens through the lens of that data is the most valuable asset of a company nowadays and securing that data is one of many functions that any modern Enterprise has to do for that whether through the threats that you mentioned or unintentional consequences that people, you know, leaving their credentials out there or clicking on our link or something. It's just the modern Enterprise and so I think security has risen and it's stature just because of the value of the things that we protect. A great a great look, you know you made a great Point.

She we to paraphrase an old politician or an old political campaign. It's all about the data stupid. Right?

We forgot that almost in the industry. We got so hung up with compliance and and said the applications and the cloud it is all about the data and when we talk about the data, it's about data protection. Gee, I'd love to do this this whole nother interview actually to talk about later and dated security.

Let's pick it up then for now though for people who want to hear more about Sky High. Where can we send them? com.

You can interact with the portfolio. See what we're doing. We'd love to have you.

Hey. Congratulations on your first 100 days. We're going to have you back soon.

We will continue this conversation right to it. All right. Thank you.

Hey. That you written has CEO sky high security check them out. We're gonna take a break on textrum.

We'll be back in a moment.