OpenText exec: Know where your data is

A focused approach to protecting assets, smarter budget allocation and cross-department collaboration are best practices that seem to apply more or less equally to physical and logical security, according to insights from Anthony Di Bello.

Di Bello, vice-president, strategic development for OpenText, was one of the speakers at Enterprise World, the company’s user conference, held in Toronto in July. In an interview with Canadian Security, Di Bello provided his perspective on approaches to data protection.

Waterloo, Ont.-based OpenText develops enterprise information management software. Di Bello came to OpenText in 2017 when the company acquired Guidance Software, maker of forensic security software, where Di Bello served as senior director of products.

“Where a lot of security vendors are focused on building a better perimeter or securing devices, our ultimate goal is getting the security lens as close to data that should be protected as possible,” he said. “We shouldn’t be watching the devices, we should be watching the data.”

His advice to customers? “Know where the data is, know where it shouldn’t be and clean up your enterprise. As a security person, the better I understand where data should be and how it should be used, the more focused I can be in my efforts to secure the enterprise. Otherwise I have to secure everything equally, and there’s not enough budget and time in the world to execute on that kind of strategy.”

These lessons are hitting home for many enterprises, he said. Five or six years ago, there was more of a shotgun approach to IT spending and some enterprises were “just buying everything.” Today, it is more focused and more effective. There is also a greater degree of collaboration between departments. Increasingly, everyone is a security professional today, including HR, legal and even PR. “They’re really all risk folks,” he said.

This story was featured in the Summer 2019 edition of Canadian Security magazine.