Glenn Hazard is CEO and chairman of the board at Xceedium. A seasoned executive with more than 30 years of experience in the technology industry, Hazard brings to Xceedium a strong record having served as CEO at both venture-funded and publicly-held companies. At Xceedium, he is responsible for driving global strategy and growing Xceedium by capitalizing on its unique product offerings and its strong blue-chip commercial and federal government customer base.

In the following interview, Glenn Hazard, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board for Xceedium discusses 1:1 with Rake Narang, editor-in-chief of Network Products Guide, security threats, insider threats and data breaches, zero trust access controls, and the WikiLeaks incident.

Rake Narang: What types of security threats are on the rise? Why should organizations be particularly concerned about access controls?

Glenn Hazard: Insider threats are on the rise. Insider breaches are a result of an individual – usually a current or former employee, vendor or contractor – with improper access controls.

The scary truth is many government agencies and organizations haven’t invested in adequate technology to manage insider threats. As a result, they’re falling victim to unnecessary breaches. WikiLeaks is a perfect example of a breach that could have been prevented with proper access controls.

Access controls are critical to fighting insider threats. Least privilege and roll-based access controls, logging and policy enforcement technology all help detect malicious insider activity before it’s too late.

Rake Narang: How does Xceedium’s GateKeeper Zero Trust Access Control solution work?

Glenn Hazard: GateKeeper protects government agencies and enterprises from insider threats. It’s the only solution available today that controls, contains and audits the activity of privileged users regardless of whether they originated from inside or outside of the network.

GateKeeper ensures that users are only permitted access to systems that are expressly allowed or whitelisted. The underlying theme of its zero trust model – trust no one.

Using unique access methods and patent-pending technologies, GateKeeper compartmentalizes and contains privileged users, mitigating the insider threat. It then monitors, alerts, remediates, logs, records and reports on all of their activities inside the critical IT infrastructure.

Rake Narang: The WikiLeaks incident rocked headlines earlier this year. How could it have been prevented with zero trust access controls? How do you see the security products evolving 2-3 years from today?

Glenn Hazard: The simple and unfortunate truth is WikiLeaks could have been prevented with zero trust access controls. Without such controls, system admins can easily pass background checks, gain clearances and access highly confidential company and customer data.

That needs to change. Companies need to move to a zero trust model to enforce written policy with technology.

Companies can’t expect people to pay attention to memos or follow employee handbooks. After all, it only took one bad seed for WikiLeaks to occur.

WikiLeaks sounded an alarm and in the next several years, we’ll see security products evolve, making access control a priority.

Company: Xceedium

2214 Rock Hill Road, Suite 100
Herndon, VA 20170

Founded in: 2000
CEO: Glenn Hazard
Products and Services: GateKeeper is Xceedium’s flagship solution. GateKeeper is a zero trust access control solution that controls, contains and audits the activity of privileged users, whether they originate from inside or outside of the network.
Company’s Goals: Xceedium’s goal is to bring a greater level of awareness to the zero trust security model. Xceedium works with hundreds of government agencies and enterprises to deploy zero trust access controls containing all of the elements needed to safeguard critical IT infrastructures and confidential customer data from harmful data breaches.