One on One with FireEye's Dave DeWalt

CEO Opens up on the Future of Threat Protection
One on One with FireEye's Dave DeWalt

Two years ago, FireEye was just another privately held, up-and-coming security vendor in Silicon Valley.

Today, the company is a rapidly growing, publicly traded global entity, with more than 2,000 employees operating in 40 countries. With the high-profile acquisition of security services company Mandiant earlier this year, FireEye cemented its new position as a full-service, major player in the new security marketplace.

CEO Dave DeWalt has been the energetic, outspoken leader smack in the middle of this growth, and he is the perfect individual to kick off Information Security Media Group's new Executive Sessions series of interviews with the industry's top executives.

A Silicon Valley veteran who previously was CEO of security pioneer McAfee, DeWalt has watched the security marketplace - and the threat landscape - come of age. Conventional security solutions are no longer sufficient in this new age of targeted attacks and polymorphic malware, he argues. The old "defense-in-depth" security model is broken, he says, and it's his job to persuade organizations to invest in a new security model that focuses on using threat intelligence to identify and block advanced cyber-attacks before they result in a breach.

"We're showing clients that billions of dollars of damage is occurring," DeWalt says. "And it's a tough conversation, telling them they've spent a lot of money on defense-in-depth that isn't working - they have to change. If they don't change, they're risking their company."

In this first installment of an exclusive, three-part interview, DeWalt discusses:

  • How FireEye has evolved;
  • What's wrong with traditional security solutions;
  • How to persuade organizations to invest in the new security model.

In part two, DeWalt talks about the evolution of the security marketplace, and in part three explains how the threat landscape is shaping up for 2015.

DeWalt has served as FireEye's CEO since November 2012 and as chairman of the board since May 2012. Prior to joining FireEye, he served as president, CEO and director of McAfee Inc. from April 2007 until February 2011, when McAfee was acquired by Intel Corp. He served as president of McAfee, a wholly owned subsidiary of Intel, from February 2011 to August 2011. From December 2003 to March 2007, DeWalt held various positions at EMC Corp., a developer and provider of information infrastructure technology and solutions. Before EMC, he served as president and CEO of Documentum Inc. from July 2001 to December 2003, and he held other senior executive positions at Documentum from August 1999 to July 2001.




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