Are you getting ready for the upcoming Black Hat USA 2024 event, an internationally recognized cybersecurity event providing the most technical and relevant information security research, now in its 27th year. The event is quickly approaching, taking place August 3-8, 2024, returning to the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, NV with a 6-day program.
Ahead of the show, VMblog received an exclusive interview with Uy Huynh, Vice President of Solution Engineering at Island, a pioneer and category leader in enterprise browsers. Make sure to add them to your MUST SEE list.
VMblog: Before we get into it, can you give us a quick overview of the company? What should folks know?
Uy Huynh: Island is the creator of the Enterprise Browser, which embeds advanced security, IT, network controls, data protections and application access into the browsing experience users expect. The company is based in Dallas, with research and development in Tel Aviv, and it’s led by enterprise security and software technology veterans who are reimagining the future of work for the world’s largest, most dynamic enterprises in all major verticals and segments.
VMblog: Black Hat is known for its energetic and interactive booths. What unique experiences or demonstrations do you have planned to engage attendees at your booth? What will you be showing off at the show this year?
Huynh: Attendees will experience the benefits of the enterprise browser firsthand and see how we’re approaching security in a very different way, essentially making the browser the good guy when it comes to protecting your data-all without impacting the user experience. Attendees will see that it looks and feels just like the consumer browsers we’re all used to, but it meets an organization’s core security needs, with control, visibility, and governance all built into the browser itself, keeping sensitive data fundamentally secure across all devices, anywhere.
VMblog: Is this your first time sponsoring Black Hat? If not, how many times have you sponsored before? And, what keeps you coming back?
Huynh: We’re a returning sponsor. Since coming out of stealth in February 2022 with our official product launch, this has been a critical event for us to attend. The security professionals who attend Black Hat are curious and excited to learn new things and see trends in action. That spirit very much aligns with what Island is all about, and I think we’ve barely scratched the surface in terms of our engagement with this community.
VMblog: What is your message to Black Hat attendees coming out to the show this year? If they take back one message about your company, what should it be?
Huynh: Organizations of all sizes-including some of the world’s leading enterprises-have completely modernized the way they secure and enable work by changing one simple thing: Adopting the Island Enterprise Browser in place of traditional consumer browsers.
No more backhauling traffic, maintaining servers, or tolerating trade offs between security and user experience. Your people simply open the browser, log in and safely get to work.
VMblog: Black Hat attendees are known for being security professionals at the forefront of the industry. What specific challenges do you anticipate they’ll be facing, and how will your solutions help them overcome those challenges?
Huynh: The pace of tech innovation and adoption has increased significantly-and it’s made security professionals’ jobs that much harder. Think about an organization and all the different groups and lines of business that comprise it. Often, those different groups act autonomously, implementing new SaaS products, for example, without official approval from IT or security simply because web applications can be so easy to install. Suddenly, that application can access company data, and you’ve opened up your organization to potential exposures, incidents and data loss vectors and no one really knows about it, which means it’s highly likely no controls or data governance policies are in place. That’s a huge problem hiding in plain sight.
The Island Enterprise Browser can mitigate all of this by providing the controls to manage which applications can access data. You can suddenly say, “I don’t want any data moving outside of these boundaries.” You have that much more visibility and control, which is critical in today’s cloud-first world.
VMblog: What are some of the key takeaways of your solution that Black Hat attendees should be aware of?
Huynh: In addition to the benefits I detailed above, attendees should know this is real. The Enterprise Browser is having a real, tangible impact in organizations across sectors and geographies, including nationwide banks, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, universities, global hotel chains and even government bodies. They’re all using Island to make work fundamentally secure and productive.
VMblog: The market is a crowded space. What is it about your company and technology that sets you apart from the competition? What are your differentiators?
Huynh: We’ve been doing this longer than anybody else, and that just gives us velocity of innovation. Our leadership grew up in the cybersecurity space, and we know the pain points inside and out. The Enterprise Browser is built on a very simple and stable foundation. This, combined with our industry expertise, gives us the ability to innovate much faster for our customers based on their various needs, and we can do so without impacting the user experience. That matters because if the user experience isn’t great, your technology is never going to be as impactful as it could be.
I also like to highlight the fact that we’re incredibly focused on service and support. Can you say that about your consumer browser? We have a whole team responsible for making sure the browser works, so we’re not going to leave you to fend for yourself-or simply tell you to go “Google it.”
VMblog: Is your company launching anything new at the show? Without giving too much away, can you give us a sneak peek?
Huynh: We’re launching new stuff all the time, and one of the things that our customers really enjoy about us is that we’re iterating net-new functionality and features almost on a bi-weekly cadence. Oftentimes the new things are small, but we have immediate delivery for our customers so they can benefit from these new productivity enhancements or security enhancements without waiting for a new release. Attendees can come to our booth to see these innovations for themselves.
VMblog: What are some of the top priorities security leaders should be considering for 2024?
Huynh: Leaders should be focused on three key priorities, which are very much interconnected:
- Having a SaaS strategy and understanding the security implications of SaaS.
- Having a clear sense of where all their data resides, which gets increasingly difficult to manage and secure with SaaS adoption if you don’t have a good handle on it.
- Having a good handle on who and what can access that data. This is especially important in today’s “work from anywhere on any device” world.
VMblog: Looking ahead, what excites you most about the future of cybersecurity, and how do you see your company playing a role in shaping it?
Huynh: The opportunity we have for disruption and constantly reshaping how things get done. That’s central to Island-getting organizations to think beyond the status quo. It’s not about taking what you’ve been doing for 25 years and making it a little better. We’re fundamentally reimagining the role of the web browser in enterprise environments. We are leading the disruption with an innovation that represents a significant breakthrough in enterprise security and IT management. And when you have the largest banks and hospitals among the organizations using it, that proves this is real, and the future is really exciting.
I’m also excited about the fact that we’re proving cybersecurity doesn’t have to be the function of “no,” and the end user doesn’t have to get a terrible experience. Security can actually enhance the end user experience when you strike that balance of providing ambient security and enabling users to do their jobs.
VMblog: Beyond your specific offerings, what valuable cybersecurity knowledge or insights can you share with Black Hat attendees visiting your booth?
Huynh: In addition to what I mentioned above, attendees can learn the bigger picture implications of implementing the enterprise browser, like reducing tech debt-a huge issue for many organizations right now. The enterprise browser provides an avenue for accessing all of your SaaS and web applications, protecting your data, and getting visibility across your entire environment. Then you layer on controls. And when you do that, you begin to identify overlaps with your existing architecture, and can then think about where you could retire some of that existing tech debt. The enterprise browser can provide a better path, and we are constantly exploring what that looks like with our customers.
VMblog: Does your company have any speaking slots at Black Hat? If so, can you tell us more about those sessions so people can get them on their schedules?
Huynh: Bradon Rogers, who leads Island’s customer relationships as Head of Presales, Customer Success and Product Marketing, will be speaking on Wednesday, Aug. 7 at 1:30 p.m. Details on his session, “The Enterprise Browser: Sometimes Changing One Thing Changes Everything,” can be found here.
VMblog: As a show sponsor, do you have any tips for attendees to better prepare for the conference?
Huynh: Have an agenda before you head to Black Hat, just like you would if you were headed to Disney World. There’s so much to see and you can’t do it all. Think about what you want to learn more about for your job and your company but do leave time for exploring the things that are truly disruptive and surprising. There will be so many startups trying new and different things-visit the ones with great backing and customer references.
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