Today, Cisco Investments published the second edition of the CISO Survival Guide to Emerging Trends from the Startup Ecosystem. Connie and I were delighted to contribute on behalf of Forgepoint Capital, alongside Norwest Venture Partners and YL Ventures.

The security industry is rapidly evolving due to significant changes impacting the modern organization. For this report, we polled leading CISOs and deconstructed four major trends in cybersecurity, looking at critical use cases, spending patterns, and promising start-ups.

The four trends include:

• SASE: While still early in its adoption, practically all respondents (98%) see clear benefits of SASE and are committed to directing future spend towards it.
• Privacy and Compliance: Data access control is the top privacy concern for almost half (44%) of CISOs.
• DevSecOps: Nearly all CISOs (93%) say bringing a governance focus into app development is a challenge.
• Automation: Network asset management is ripe for automation as more than half of CISOs (60%) say network assets are more difficult to inventory than identity, application, endpoint or mobile assets.

It was a lot of fun hearing real-life experiences from CISOs and their recommendations for evaluating, implementing and investing in these four strategic areas. Thanks to Cisco for having us. We hope you enjoy the read.