As the cloud infrastructure revolution continues, it brings with it both rewards and challenges. While some segments in enterprise are able to adjust with minimal strain, some require considerable tweaking, and still others are undergoing a total paradigm shift. Security and threat detection is an area where the old virus detection and firewalls are failing to protect companies’ increasingly large data stores. Data protection companies now have to dive deep to avert threats at the level of the data itself.

Marcus Brown, VP of Corporate Development at Digital Guardian, spoke about the new cyber security challenges. He told Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Paul Gillin (@pgillin), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during the HPE Big Data Conference. “The parameter is dissolved, and we live in this very dispersed world where everyone is everywhere and work and home, and everything’s mixed together,” he said. “That makes the firewall not enough in an organization, because people are outside the firewall.”

Stealing data …

Brown said that 90 percent of breaches are made by people looking to steal data — they include nation-states, criminal organizations and hacktivists. He said the people in these organizations are highly skilled and work tirelessly to get past security with the aim of stealing your data or intellectual property in order to monetize it in some way.

… And steeling data

Brown talked about how Digital Guardian uses HPE’s IDOL (Intelligent Data Operating Layer) solution to enable content inspection. “You have to understand which data is sensitive in order to protect it. That’s the key first step,” he said, adding that its necessary to protect data without slowing down business processes for the good guys. “But as soon as someone starts doing something malicious like taking the jet fighter design and putting it up on Dropbox, we want to stop that.”

He said the use of sensors at the data level offers a much more targeted and granular security model than traditional firewalls. He added that Digital Guardian will be working with HPE on encryption in the future.

Brown stated that data protection is the fastest-growing segment in cyber security today.

Watch the completed video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the HPE Big Data Conference.

Photo by SiliconANGLE