Security Bytes

If you are reading this, firstly Happy Holidays.

In this post I will explore my learnings from my 2 years at Tanium. I often get asked why am I at Tanium am this long. Simply put I believe in the mission and the outcomes Tanium is looking to and is delivering to customers each day. What is the purpose of technology if it can’t improve human lives. We live in a data driven world but in IT or in cybersecurity, we don’t have the data when we need it. If we do, its usually stale, seldom real time and takes hours to skim through.

Over the years I felt the best security technologies offered the most features. Well we have been made to believe that by the analysts that write those competitive reports. Company X is an outright leader in this 3 letter category coz it offers Features A, B C ,… and the list goes on. Turns out the most effective way to manage endpoints is have a real time connectivity to them. No matter how large the network is.

A communication architecture so fast that data gathering or change enforcement should take seconds. Once you have this foundational cybersecurity controls such as the CIS Top 18 Security Controls or the ASD’s Essential 8 become achievable and measurable. Even better than with products with more knobs and switches.

Think if it this way – when China built the largest high speed rail network in the world, they didn’t go about it by buying the fastest trains. They did so by laying the infrastructure to support those high speed trains. Reduced travel times are an outcome.

ImgSrc: Reddit

Endpoint management is no different. The faster and more frequently you can reach each endpoint, the better the outcomes become – being inventorying assets, enforcement of security controls, measuring deviations and vulnerabilities, patching, software updates, mitigating risk and above all responding to security incidents or breaches – many outcomes become a lot faster. While this has a significant impact on an organization via FTE and time savings, at a human level Tanium allows people to get back their time. Use it more productively than on mundane tasks that can simply be automated in 2022.

So what does this Tanium architecture enable

1. First – it enables a Google or Bing like experience when interacting with endpoints. Data for hundred thousand or even a MILLION nodes retrieved in seconds. Data that drives decisions, quantifies risk and gives situational awaremenss in real time.Importantly at the speed todays cybersecurity responses demand it
2. Second – it offers a scalable distribution and decentralized network for goods i.e. files, software, patches that can be controlled. One that’s lightweight and free of distribution centers.
3. Third – being a source of trust. One that makes all investments better