As security becomes increasingly important, companies such as Illumio, a Silicon Valley-based enterprise data center and cloud computing security company, have their work cut out for them. And much of their work involves thinking like a hacker.

“We’ve applied the tools that hackers use to our products,” said Alan Cohen, chief commercial officer and board member at Illumio. “You have to look holistically at your compute environment and say, ‘What are the pathways to get there?’”

Cohen spoke with Stu Miniman (@stu) and Dave Vellante (@dvellante), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE media team, during Nutanix NEXT 2016. He said that Illumio regularly discovers policy violations that could be the result of human error or “cyber incursions.”

The expanding role of chief security officer

To help reduce these incursions, companies should expand the role of the Chief Security Officer (CSO). Traditionally, the CSO isn’t involved in board meetings. Maybe he or she should be.

“At board meetings they talk about risk,” said Cohen. “Cyber is an important risk variable that can completely botch [an operation]. Boards have to understand the financial and business risk of what a cyber incursion could do.”

Cohen advised companies to identify their highest value assets and create a risk management plan. “You can’t secure what you can’t see,” he said. “If you don’t know that certain data exists, you can’t protect it.”

Watch the entire interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the Nutanix .NEXT Conference 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE