Building a Pervasive Email Security Strategy Through Platform Integration

A company’s platform is its secret sauce. According to Paul Sowden, senior director of engineering, architecture and technology at Mimecast, 90 to 95% of every technology company has a similar foundation that includes basics like active directory and encrypted storage, but the last five to 10% is unique to that organization’s domain, such as integration of cybersecurity for the finance industry. “A multi-tenant cloud-based solution should be reused in many different ways – there’s little difference between creating a safe user experience whether someone is clicking on a link in an email, or clicking on a link in a browser,” said John Walsh, SVP of engineering for Mimecast. Thinking of these basic functionalities is like a Lego building block, Walsh believes, and they can either be broken down into smaller pieces or built into larger pieces to create simple, scalable integrations. But as cybercriminals launch new attacks and continually find new ways to penetrate security environments, startups can spring up to address these new routes in; 2017 saw more than $4 billion in venture capital funding go to new cybersecurity firms, followed by waves of consolidation in the security market in 2019. However, when security vendors offer a multitude of tools that originated from consolidation – as opposed to what’s known as a home-grown solution – fragmentation can arise, exacerbated by vendor sprawl, and by buying versus building.