Data-First Cloud Security with Normalyze’s Joe Gregory at RSA Conference 2024

This is Textron tv. Hey, everyone. We're back here.

Live at RSA. It's a boisterous, noisy crowd. It's, I don't know, it's gonna be 10 30 or so in the morning here in San Francisco.

As you can see behind us, people are streaming in and out the sessions, the keynotes and everything going on here. Security's tight this year, right? We've got canine dogs and metal detectors.

Uh, secretary of State, Anthony Blinken was here yesterday talking. I suspect that has something to do with it, but it's also, as it always is at RSA, a celebration of the security industry of the cyber industry. It's by the cyber industry for the cyber industry.

And if you're anyone in cyber, you hear at RSA. Speaking of anyone here in cyber, let me introduce you to our next guest. His name is Joe Gregory.

Joe is the head of customer Success at Normalize. We're gonna find out about Normalize and what a head of customer success does at a company like Normalize. But before we do that, Joe, first of all, welcome.

Thanks. Thank you here. Thanks for having me.

Tell us a little bit about your journey. How, how did you get to be head of customer success at Normalize? I had a relationship with, uh, er Diva, our CEO.

We worked together at Qualys. Uh, I was there for 10 years running their, uh, support function, uh, enabling customers through vulnerability management and, uh, really the full suite. Uh, and one of the challenges that our customers face that, um, was always a challenge was ultimately scoring risk and, and finding where to, to secure data.

So I had an opportunity to come over to Normalize where I could take things to the next level, help customers discover data they didn't know they had, so they're really focused on the right problems. Um, it's been a great experience so far. I've been there just about a year and a half.

Good for you. So, full confession. I also know Amer for many, many, many years.

Of course, I, I knew Philippe at Qualis for a long time, and that's probably where I said, I know you're from. We somewhere go. It was the Qualis connection.

And, you know, Amer, for those who don't know, Amer was the, uh, second in command to Qualys for many, many years and really responsible for a lot of the strategy. That's right. Go to market, uh, you know, execution there and then started normalize.

I, I remember when he started, I think I interviewed Amer Amer when he started, was it two years ago? Yeah. Yeah.

So not everyone out here though is gonna be familiar with Normalize. Joe, give us a little normalized background. Absolutely.

Um, so we are a data first, uh, cloud security company. We can, um, bring all of your data into one central, the pane of glass across your public clouds, AWS Google, Azure, um, SaaS applications, things Salesforce, ServiceNow, uh, Microsoft 365, as well as on-premise data, discovering, uh, what's in your environment, classifying that data, helping you understand where personal health information, financial records are, who has access to that data and, and what they're doing with that access. Um, identifying duplicate, stale data, dormant access, really helping folks clean up their environment, um, and prioritizing remediation around data, which is something that I think all teams have been desperate for absolute rather than around infrastructure, right?

Which is really my background. Well, You know, it, it's really a part of a bigger story that I've seen happening in not just security, but in technology maybe since COVID time, when, when things try to, you know, went that way, which is cited. We remember the primacy of data.

Mm-Hmm. Right. For a long time we were so focused on app and AppSec, for instance, and we were so focused on our infrastructure, you know, were, you want serverless on hybrid or public or whatever, and really at the end of the day, what's, what's the crown jewels, right?

It's the data. And if you don't have a good, and, um, my, my microphone's twisting, I'll be here, but if you don't have a good data, po data security posture, a good data security hygiene, a good plan around it, everything else is for naugh, right? And Access Governance is obviously a key to successful security program, but if you don't have your data labeled and you don't know where that data's coming from, there's really no effective way to implement lease privileged policy.

Um, especially across multiple platforms. It, it's very difficult for security admins to get ahold of, get a handle of. Yeah.

Um, and if you can't bring everything into one, one platform to look at data, then you're, you know, you're always chasing the most recent alerts. Um, and, and incident response teams are, you know, really overwhelmed. Uh, yep.

With that, I, I agree. So how does a company like Normalize stand out? You know, they'll probably be over 50,000 people here this week.

Oh, I forget how many hundreds of security vendors. What's Normalize doing that's news this week and that people back home should take note of? I Appreciate that.

Yeah. So, uh, one of the things that we've been able to do and normalize is, is architect our platform in a way that, um, your data never leaves your environment. So Normalize takes data security very seriously.

Uh, we ourselves one least privilege, we don't want to, to have access to your sensitive data. Um, and we're able to do that through partnerships with, with Snowflake, uh, as an example. Um, and really integrating with their native security prac, uh, uh, products to help with role-based access control data labeling.

And we're very tightly integrated with Snowflake, uh, doing the same, uh, with our SaaS deployment and, um, support for really any data storage app from, from, uh, Dropbox to, uh, yeah, Databricks, you name it. Folks have data. They need to know what's going on.

Um, and I think the theme everywhere is, is AI and LLMs. Um, and at the end of the day, that's still a data security problem, right? Um, you've gotta know what's going in to this technology and you've gotta understand really who's accessing what, because it, it kind of exploits all the weaknesses in your environment.

Something like a, a Microsoft copilot. Um, so you've gotta have a good handle on your data. Absolutely.

Um, I'm just wondering, it seems to be a, uh, people yelling back there. I'm not sure who or what it is, but Security's pretty tight. Yeah.

I don't think that's security, but something's going on. Yeah. Anyway, I'm not sure if it's coming out on our mic.

It probably not. These mics are pretty good. Um, Joe, what's been your impression so far here beyond security being pretty serious?

Of course. Yeah. Um, I, a lot of folks here for sure.

Um, definitely looks like it's gonna be one of the bigger events. I think, um, you know, data is definitely a theme, obviously, as is AI security. Mm-Hmm.

And, um, you know, trying to sift through the messaging and understand what folks can really do, I think is, is gonna be, uh, is gonna be key. Um, we've had a lot of interest, uh, and a lot of great meetings set up. So really looking forward to a, it's a busy event and um, it's gonna be an amazing week.

Let me ask you a question. People out there who are not here, almost by definition, they're out there. Um, how did they get to normalize?

How did they find out more what the website? ai, um, and we have a great selection of material there. We take a look at our architecture, understand how we can secure data, uh, with, with staying in your environment.

And, and we'd really like to talk to, to users of Snowflake. Um, we can really help there. Snowflake is a customer of ours as well.

And um, and we'd love to, uh, to have an opportunity to, to meet with you. Absolutely. Alright, Joe.

Yeah. I want to thank you for stopping by. Absolutely.

Hey man, I told you it goes quick time-wise. I'm having a little problem here with my microphone. We've got a, it's not a, a wardrobe mal.

Oh yeah. That's good equipment mal, f**k s**t. But we're live here at RSA.

We'll be back. Joe, keep up the great work here. Yes.

With the ammo for us. Will do. Thank you.

And, uh, stay tuned. We'll continue with our coverage in just a moment.