On Thursday, February 26^th, the WTIA held 2015’s first IT Security series event at host and member company, KPMG. Moderator, Reid Okimoto, Managing Director at KPMG, led panelists Akshay Aggarwal, Co-Founder of Déjà vu Security, Benjamin Caudill, Founder of Rhino Security Labs, Kerri Murphy, Manager at KPMG, and Lee Pallat, Director of Cloud Strategy at Stratacore, on the topic of privacy of the cloud.

To start the evening off, over 45 attendees participated in a partner-seeking networking game. Winners, Starsky and Hutch, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Hall and Oates, walked away with Mission Ridge lift tickets, copies of Jordan Ellenberg’s How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking and a couple of trademark orange WTIA scarfs.

Privacy of the cloud is a very concerning issue for people on a both a business and personal level. The panel began by discussing how the cloud first emerged into the business world and how it has changed the business landscape.

“Every new business these days launches in the cloud and stays there for a significant portion of their early existence,” said Pallat.

Speakers agreed that many benefits accompanied storing data in the cloud and the convenience of having that infrastructure available to everyone. Caudill added, “marketing and sales definitely benefits, but again, from security perspective, there is a downside there. The corporate world as a whole has both the opportunity and challenge of resources to better protect your data and make yourself a bigger target.”

When asked about safety and privacy best practices, Aggarwal said, “be an informed consumer; service providers do not make that easy to do. Educate yourself on the dos and don’ts to make yourself a less hot target than the guy next to you.”

“There are these human elements that we are losing when we are giving that information to technology, so that scares me,” said Murphy when addressing fears in closing comments.

On the upside, panelists noted how the government has grown increasingly more involved in taking responsibility for privacy. Pallet said, “we will see emerging legislation around that (security/privacy) and as more breeches occur and more is exposed, I think we will see a shift.”

Thank you to all who attended last night’s event, our moderator and panelists, and our host KPMG. In March we kick off gaming month, we look forward to seeing more members at our next event!