Conversations with Chief Innovators Ep 5: SecureG

Welcome to Conversations with Chief Innovators, where our CEO Pat Sheridan discusses innovation in business with transformational leaders across industries. In the fifth episode, we bring you Mike Denning, Founder and CEO of SecureG.

Watch the full episode below:

Mike Denning has been steering organizations through tech revolutions since the dawn of the dot-com era.

From working on the DNS infrastructure to running the security business for Verizon, Mike’s work has influenced organizations of all sizes across industries. He is now the founder and CEO of SecureG, a cybersecurity company providing next-generation, certificate-based security for critical infrastructure. Mike is also a Principal at Blu Ventures, where he built the security practice from the ground up.

VC, startups, enterprises — Mike is a true industry veteran with a holistic understanding of today’s tech ecosystem. I recently sat down with him to talk about business innovation. Here are a few excerpts from our conversation.

1. What are your thoughts on the state of the cybersecurity industry?

Cybersecurity is still a very fractured market, and spending on cybersecurity as a percentage of total IT spend is still relatively small (10-13%). I think there’s a specific reason for that. Traditional IT investing is a lot like golf. Your target is stationary, and if you practice, you can get good at it.

But cybersecurity is more like baseball, where you have an actual, sophisticated adversary who’s trying to get you out. You don’t know what’s coming, where it’s coming, and even if you are among the best in the world, you’re only successful three times out of 10.

2. Which industry dynamics at present have your attention?

To become an innovative company, you should take a wider aperture, start with macro trends, and then map it back to your core competency. These are not flash-in-the-pan developments, but fundamental changes to how we communicate, live, work, and move in the future.

One such major macro trend is how we connect. I think about the use cases that could potentially be available once you have ultra-reliability, low-latency communications, and higher throughput.

3. How has the role of CISO (Chief Information Security Officer) evolved over the past few years?

The role of CISO is definitely evolving. In the past five years, several startups have focused on speed and creating a “magic elixir dashboard” that will solve all their problems. Forward-leaning CISOs take a more proactive approach. They start with understanding their resources, attack surface, environment, processes, and people.

Proactive CISOs don’t just think about putting up walls for protection but also about the user experience of the security framework. They look at the impact on different categories of users — internal employees, contractors, external users, partners, etc.

So many cybersecurity breaches are caused by stale, legacy, default passwords or compromised privileges. The best companies aim to develop a deep understanding of their environment, enable technologies that allow people to do their job, and monitor anomalous activity.

4. As a principal at Blu Ventures, what are some of the indicators you look for in venture investing?

Venture investing is essentially pattern recognition, where you use your experience to identify market opportunities. There are five T’s we pay attention to at Blu Ventures:

• Terms— What are the financial and non-financial terms of investment?
• Technology— How solid, mature, and scalable is the technology?
• TAM (total addressable market)— The total market into which the company can sell its products or services.
• Traction— How are customers reacting to the product/service?
• Team— The most important factor; does the team have the right expertise and passion for solving the problem?

5. What’s your advice for executives transitioning to more innovation-centric roles?

Focus on the customer. I use the term very broadly as it can be internal (employees, partners) or external (clients, contractors). Everything starts with the customer who is willing to separate their hard-earned money and give it to your company. And so whatever role you play within that organization, make sure you’re doing it in the context of the customer.

Also, go deep into your relationships. Investment in relationships dramatically accelerates everything else in the business. It gets you to the point where you can have honest, candid conversations about moving the business forward.

Catch the complete conversation here and view more of my interviews with innovators here.