Page 92 - Cyber Defense eMagazine January 2023

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but we remain hopeful that things will turn around by 2024. People will begin investing in startups again
that are innovating in this space. We may see a lot of private equity or mergers and acquisition continue
to drive the security space. There will be a definite shift in how people are looking at this chessboard. I
want to offer simple advice for businesses in the new year, especially in a downturned economy. Be a
good steward of the capital you have in front of you. I think many companies got into the habit - due to
investors and plentiful cash at low-interest rates - of thinking that you can always get another round of
funding. In a bear market, you realize that's not a possibility, so you must go back to the fundamentals of
business. Be profitable, and focus on incrementally growing the business. Support the investments
you’ve made and focus on optimizing your processes that can keep the pipeline busy without over-
complicating it all. For example, with free-flowing cash, a lot of people were like, 'Let's go, attack 25
different markets!' Instead, focus on the core markets your business does really well. I think people were
really getting a bit over their skis and trying to do too much at once. In 2023, the market will see
businesses taking more of an iterative approach to building out the business, its markets and products.
Every year is a good year to build on solid fundamentals, and 2023 will be a year for organizations to be
smart, and not get over their skis. One of the biggest trends that will absolutely continue into 2023 is the
decentralization of the traditional corporate headquarters. We have emerged from the pandemic into a
new working reality which is that the best people live where they want to live. This has led businesses to
the compromise of creating a place where they can work and be contributing to the company's goals but
also, they can be happy and have a fulfilling personal life. I think that the cliche work-life balance that so
many people have struggled with for so long has finally gotten to a place where it feels attainable with a
decentralized workplace. No one wants a job where they occasionally get to have a life, too. I think that's
a fair expectation. There are also other benefits to being decentralized, especially when you look at the
distribution of people in city centers, traffic is horrible and it's not great for the environment. People being
able to work from wherever they happen to be, but still have opportunities for occasional on-site or human
interaction is the future. People want their time to be spent in meaningful ways, not just filling seats in the
office between eight and 6 p.m. I don't think that's a reality. We have the technology to have productive
conversations and get a lot of work done. In the end, I think that's better for the economy and the planet.
It's why we've always been a remote-first business - because as a company that sells a SaaS solution,
we don't need to physically be in the same location to build our product.”

Surya Varanasi, CTO, StorCentric

1.) The ransomware threat will continue to grow and become increasingly aggressive – not just from a
commercial standpoint, but from a nation-state warfare perspective as well. Verizon’s 2022 Data Breach
Investigations Report, reminded us how this past year illustrated, “... how one key supply chain incident
can lead to wide ranging consequences. Compromising the right partner is a force multiplier for threat
actors. Unlike a financially motivated actor, nation-state threat actors may skip the breach altogether, and
opt to simply keep the access to leverage at a later time.” For this reason, channel solutions providers
and end users will prioritize data storage solutions that can deliver the most reliable, real-world proven
protection and security. Features such as lockdown mode, file fingerprinting, asset serialization, metadata
authentication, private blockchain and robust data verification algorithms, will transition from nice-to-have,
to must-have, while immutability will become a ubiquitous data storage feature. Solutions that do not offer
these attributes and more won’t come even close to making it onto any organization’s short-list.

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