The Power of “Yes”

by Sanjay Beri, CEO of Netskope

Shadow IT is a big deal. The problem is clear: People want their apps so they can go fast. IT needs to attest that the company’s systems and data are secure and compliant.

Everybody seems to have a Shadow IT solution these days. The problem is they’re all focused on blocking stuff. But blocking is so old school. Nobody wants to be in the blocking business these days. It’s counter to the efficiency and progress that the cloud brings.

IT and security leaders are smarter than that. Many of you are at the forefront of cloud adoption and want to lead your organization through this strategic shift.

Rather than say “no”, we at Netskope recommend saying “yes.” More specifically, we recommend “yes, and.” It’s a pretty powerful concept!

Try it out:

“Yes, you can use that useful app, and I’m going to set a very precise policy that will mitigate our risk.”

“Yes, music company people, use Content Management apps to share content with your rock stars, promoters, and partners. And I’m going to make sure that only those authorized can share files outside of the company.”

“Yes, developer of oncology solutions, you can use that Collaboration tool that will help your projects run smoothly. And I’m going to alert our risk officer if anybody in the clinical division uploads images that may make us non-compliant with HIPAA.”

“Yes, major e-commerce company, you can use your CRM. And I’m going to make sure that our Call Center employees outside of the U.S. aren’t downloading customer information.”

You can say “yes” when you can deeply inspect apps and answer the key questions – who’s taking what action in what app, when, from where, sharing with whom, sending to where, downloading what content, uploading what content, editing what object or field…and whether any of it is anomalous.

And you can say “yes” when you can set policies at a very precise and granular level, and ENFORCE them in real-time before bad stuff happens.

If you can do those things, you can take a “yes, and” approach. As a cloud-forward technology leader in your company, this is the most powerful statement you can make.

If you happen to be at Gartner Symposium and ITxpo, come see Netskope in the Emerging Technology Pavilion, booth ET19, to talk more about the power of “yes, and” and attend this session where you’ll hear not one, but three, of Netskope’s customers talk about how they are letting users go rogue and how they’re doing it safely so the business can go fast, with confidence.

And if you can’t see us at the event, be sure to check us out at www.netskope.com. Learn more about Netskope’s deep analytics and real-time policy enforcement platform. It lets you say “yes, and.”