CIO Influence Interview with Ben Oster, VP of Product Management at WatchGuard Technologies

Ben Oster, VP of Product Management at WatchGuard Technologies, discusses his approach to security product management in this short catch-up:

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Hello Ben, please share your experience and lessons in your journey to becoming the VP of Product Management at WatchGuard Technologies.

When I started in product management, I realized very early that the best way to solve any problem is to try your best to understand the issue and then phone a friend to make sure they understand the problem the same way. When we are building products and looking for the job to be done by the thing that we’ve set out to build, we have to make sure that we’re approaching the outcome with a well-rounded view of the actual ask or problem. Working at WatchGuard has given me an incredible opportunity to not just work with but also learn from world-class product leaders from all over the world. This has reminded me, and sometimes humbled me, to listen first and act second. I’ve never been more sure that we need more voices, not fewer, when we’re working to solve these huge problems that businesses face today.

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WatchGuard Technologies has been a leader in cybersecurity innovation. Can you share insights about WatchGuard’s product development and how the company maintains a competitive edge?

At WatchGuard, we understand that organizations are facing an increasingly complex threat landscape. We also know that organizations worldwide are dealing with a talent shortage of skilled cybersecurity professionals. We firmly believe that the future of security is unified and managed. And in a world in which complexity is woven throughout every aspect of the threat landscape, we believe simplicity is the answer.

To address these industry challenges, our unified approach to security delivers multiple powerful products and services that interact intelligently to cover the entire threat surface. WatchGuard’s network, endpoint, MFA, and Wi-Fi security solutions combine to provide the comprehensive security that managed service providers (MSPs) need to protect their clients’ business environments, users, and devices.

Our Unified Security Platform architecture provides a single platform for elevating modern security delivery. It helps MSPs tackle today’s most pressing security challenges and those of tomorrow by providing a platform that is comprehensive yet seamlessly integrated, intelligent yet simple, and optimized for easy deployment and management within any security delivery model. Our platform approach enables MSPs to deliver powerful security services for every threat vector with increased scale and velocity, while supporting operational efficiencies and greater profitability

How do you ensure synergies between different product lines to maximize overall company performance?

WatchGuard solutions are designed to ensure synergy and empower MSPs to deliver world-class security that improves operational efficiency and enables business growth.

Our Unified Security Platform architecture re-envisions cybersecurity technology so that it is powerful and simple to use for any sized business. WatchGuard Cloud, the centralized management interface for our Unified Security Platform, provides a “single pane of glass” experience for administration, operational automation, deep visibility, and advanced reporting across WatchGuard’s product portfolio. Built from the ground up to support and enable MSPs, it allows IT solution providers to deliver enterprise-grade security services for businesses of any size while eliminating infrastructure costs, accelerating customer acquisition, delivering infinite scalability via multi-tier, multi-tenant capabilities, and minimizing time spent on reporting and operational tasks.

Additionally, WatchGuard’s ThreatSync XDR solution, which is included as part of our Unified Security Platform architecture, empowers modern security teams with a centralized incident intelligence tool that consolidates security and offers extended detection and response capabilities. With ThreatSync, security teams can accelerate threat detection and response, ensuring a robust defense against evolving cyber threats.

Our Unified Security Platform replaces the old patchwork security approach that has led to rising management burdens and diminished protection against current and evolving future threats. The platform elements come together to elevate and harmonize the security delivery experience, radically simplifying how MSPs protect customers while enabling rapid, efficient, and profitable growth.

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What are the biggest challenges the cybersecurity industry faces today, and what are the possible product solutions to mitigate the security challenges?

The cybersecurity industry has dealt with several persistent challenges. Among the most pressing is the lack of skilled cybersecurity professionals available to help companies address their security needs. This issue has become so pervasive that companies must adapt to address the challenge rather than try to solve it themselves, and the best way to adapt is to outsource security to MSPs. In turn, for MSPs to meet this demand, they must rely on a vendor that understands their specific business needs and is dedicated to offering enterprise-grade security, rather than one that merely dabbles in it.

Another challenge is the more complex IT environments created by the post-pandemic world. Hybrid operation is here to stay, which means adopting solutions that protect enterprises and users across a variety of scenarios, both inside and outside the perimeter of the enterprise. This means implementing consolidated solutions so that users are not dealing with increased complexity and bearing the costs of bringing disparate solutions together.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are transforming cybersecurity. How is WatchGuard Technologies leveraging these technologies to enhance its security offerings?

WatchGuard is continually looking at ways to integrate emerging technologies like AI into our Unified Security Platform offerings. Most recently, WatchGuard launched ThreatSync+ NDR, a new innovation that automates and simplifies continuous monitoring, detection, and remediation of threats using an advanced AI detection engine. Uniquely suited for businesses of any size, this open XDR solution delivers visibility into east/west and north/south network traffic that was previously only available to large enterprises with the resources to manage their own security operations center (SOC).

ThreatSync+ NDR’s advanced AI detection engine uses specialized AI models to detect cyber threats like ransomware, vulnerability-based attacks, supply chain attacks, and more. It monitors 24×7 for attacks that get through perimeter defenses. Its NDR capabilities are uniquely capable of detecting unfolding attack stages, including command and control calls, lateral movement in the network, reconnaissance scans done on networks and subnets, data-staging movement in the network, malware and encryption packages being deployed in the network, and data exfiltration. ThreatSync+ NDR simplifies the delivery of world-class, AI-based security to any organization, offering greater protection against the evolving threat landscape.

Additionally, WatchGuard recently launched WatchGuard MDR, a 24/7 cybersecurity service purpose-built to make MDR more accessible to MSPs working with businesses of any size to address soaring demand for managed cybersecurity delivery. WatchGuard MDR offers industry-leading endpoint security monitoring, threat hunting, attack detection, investigation, and containment with guided recommendations to remediate affected assets and improve a customer’s overall security posture. Powered by cutting-edge AI cybersecurity technologies, the service is fully managed by an elite team of cybersecurity experts from WatchGuard’s modern SOC from the cloud. It provides 24/7 support to MSPs and their customers to elevate their overall cyber resiliency and minimize the time to detect and time to respond in case of compromise.

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In your opinion, what qualities are essential for leadership in the cybersecurity industry?

For me, the biggest key is being able to know that you don’t know. By that, I mean that we have to stay flexible in our response to a given scenario as we’ve built great teams around us that we can leverage. I’ve seen many leaders who are assured they have the answer and drive everyone to that single-focused outcome. In cybersecurity, I believe the field changes too quickly to lean on the best ideas in the room. Being able to flexibly pursue outcomes based on your team adopting a unified focus on the best direction toward achieving that outcome keeps us all moving forward. I think this is key in product management as we’re all working toward the same predictive goal, but I believe it directly applies to the entire cybersecurity space. Things move so quickly, and we can all use a little help.

Looking ahead, what emerging trends do you believe will shape the future of cybersecurity, and how is WatchGuard Technologies preparing to address them?

AI will continue to significantly impact the cybersecurity industry and we expect to see this impact in the following ways:

• AI will be increasingly used by cybercriminals, driving up the volume and sophistication of threats. For example, one can see AI being used to create even more sophisticated, targeted phishing campaigns at scale that are highly efficient.
• AI is already at the foundation of security solutions like XDR, which is built into WatchGuard’s Unified Security Platform framework. XDR uses AI effectively to detect threats and automate responses, thus increasing the efficiency of security we deliver to MSPs. As we add more telemetry – not only correlating endpoint and network events, but events from other network devices and from identity solutions – the higher the use of AI. We are very excited by the possibilities here and we have an excellent team to leverage these capabilities.
• Finally, we believe AI can be used to do our day-to-day jobs more efficiently. While the emergence of AI has felt revolutionary, these day-to-day impacts may seem evolutionary. For example, both we and our partners can use AI to better understand our customers’ challenges and use that information to improve how we offer our services.

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