San Francisco Tech Students Have Great Opportunities To Help Local Companies
The recent cyber attack of Sony Pictures was one of the worst in corporate history and just another indication of the need for information security analysts, which has never been greater in San Francisco. With the Sony breach possibly becoming the most damaging ever, businesses are relying on security compliance companies such as HyTrust, whose partners include tech giants: Intel, McAfee and Cisco. Eric Chiu, Co-founder, President of HyTrust says the current business environment is a great opportunity for security professionals in San Francisco.
What is your background and education?
"I graduated in engineering from UC Berkeley, and took a different path -- I went on to investment banking and then joined a top-tier venture capital fund, Brentwood Venture Capital (now Redpoint Ventures) as an associate. This was during the late 90s. It was the time of Internet and software and I was immediately drawn to the entrepreneurial environment. So I then joined a company I funded called mySimon which was in the comparison shopping space and later bought by CNET Networks. From then I was hooked on start-ups and was part of two other start-ups before co-founding HyTrust."
Can you briefly explain what type of services HyTrust offers?
"HyTrust delivers the essential real-time control, security, administrative account monitoring, logging and compliance assurance necessary to enable the benefits of cloud adoption and virtualization of critical workloads through HyTrust CloudControl. In addition, HyTrust DataControl provides cloud encryption and key management which helps organizations lock down virtual machines and their data so they remain secure throughout their lifecycle—from creation until they are securely decommissioned—easily and automatically. These two products are adopted by leading enterprises like Visa, Bank of America, Honeywell, Experian, and Johnson & Johnson to enable faster cloud adoption without compromising security and availability."
What advice can you share with people interested in a career in information security?
"Information security is constantly changing given the rise of new platforms and technologies as well as new threats and attacks. This is a great opportunity for security professionals; however, I would encourage everyone interested in information security to make sure that they are always thinking about the business problem that they are solving and not just 'cool technology' or esoteric ways an attacker can compromise a system. In the end, companies need to sell products that solve business problems in order to be successful."
Randy Yagi is a freelance writer covering all things San Francisco. In 2012, he was awarded a Media Fellowship from Stanford University. His work can be found on Examiner.com Examiner.com.