Trishul Baxi

Making trade-offs is crucial, but remember: if you consistently compromise your security posture, your governance becomes ineffective. Trade-offs often involve compensatory controls or time-based, temporary compromises within controlled environments that are agreed upon upfront. Aligning expectations with users, operations, product management teams, and the security team is essential. Transparent communication is key to ensuring these trade-offs are managed effectively.

Approach this activity with a problem-solving mindset. A 360-degree approach works well, allowing you to be transparent about barriers or training needs that aren't being addressed. Avoid blame or excuses—focus on constructive facts. Finally, stay open-minded and objective. Remember, it’s all about solving problems. While this approach is valuable, it’s important to acknowledge that it may not align with every personality type.

Understanding the reasons for resisting encryption is crucial, as there may be genuine limitations that you haven't yet considered. Encryption can introduce overhead in terms of payload, processing, performance, and specific governance requirements. Effective encryption isn’t limited to the application level; it should be considered across Layers 3-5 of the OSI model to ensure comprehensive security. Identifying potential choke points and collaborating to mitigate them is a productive way to move forward. I also find it helpful to use relatable arguments, such as: "Would you be comfortable with your bank details and personal information being exposed on the internet? If not, why should we expect our customers to be?"

While most cloud providers offer various encryption standards, the key is to ensure that the options you choose align with your organization's security standards and guidelines as set by your compliance teams. Avoid using encryption standards that do not conform to your internal security policies.

When telling a story to Management - 1. Keep it simple; avoid jargon. 2. Use bullet points (max 5). 3. Start with the solution and highlight the improvement. 4. Then explain the problem to capture attention. Example: - Upgrade MPLS bandwidth by 20% to improve performance. - Impact: Addresses performance issues at 5 sites. - Estimated cost: $1M. - Current issue: Poor performance affecting these sites.

Object storage offers a readily available repository for storing IoT data, leveraging backhaul connectivity from 5G and broadband telco services. All major cloud providers support object storage, making it an accessible solution for collecting and storing IoT data. Once collected, this data can be effectively analyzed, formatted, and transferred to other storage media. As an initial data store with variable tiers and pricing, object storage is a suitable fit for IoT applications.