The proliferation of endpoints and a fluid network enabled by cloud computing have expanded both the entry points and payoff for hackers prying at business data in the modern market. But while companies have prioritized transformations in storage and processing, many are slow to adopt safety practices to protect the workloads they’re modernizing.

Matt Kozloski (pictured), vice president of professional services at Winslow Technology Group LLC, spoke with Stu Miniman (@stu), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the recent VTUG Winter Warmer event in Foxborough, Massachusetts. They discussed the state of cybersecurity and how Winslow Technology Group is helping enterprise customers stay protected.

[Editor’s note: The following answers have been condensed for clarity.]

Tell us your background [and] how security fits in.

Kozloski: My background is in supporting enterprise environments. Winslow is a reseller of products, and we also do services, which is my role there. In a way, services is Winslow’s product. We can do a gap assessment comprehensive analysis and then figure out where you’re deficient in awareness training or [if] that firewall is not effective.

How are we doing [with cybersecurity] as an industry?

Kozloski: The way that technology is integrated into everyone’s lives is incredibly complicated. We rely on it a lot more, and it gives more opportunity for hackers to do bad things. You have to think of cybersecurity as people, policies, [and] the technology in place. One of the most common ways that malware gets into organizations is through a phishing attack. That’s all social engineering — not exactly the most high-tech thing around.

A lot of organizations are taking the right steps that they need to in their budgeting and preparing for incidents. But a lot still are just not taking the right steps to protect themselves and their organization’s information.

I hear sometimes that it’s not a question of if you will be hacked, but how soon you’ll find out that you have been hacked. Is it that dire?

Kozloski: People are doing well in that they’re actually talking about it now [and] doing things like awareness training. It’s become part of what people consider, even in mergers and acquisitions: “Are they secure?” We have an almost zero-trust policy on the inside of the network too, not just on the perimeter.

What would you like to see from the vendor ecosystem?

Kozloski: I’d like to see some standardizations around the way products work with each other. There’s a lot going on, from network monitoring and deep analysis to different technologies on the end points themselves. A framework for all these products to talk to each other would allow cybersecurity consultants and engineers to see all of this without being locked into some proprietary system.

This year I want to do more investigation [into] cybersecurity as it relates to containers and how enterprise environments can secure containerized apps.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the VTUG Winter Warmer event.

Photo: SiliconANGLE