These days there is a lot of talk about migrating up the stack; businesses are abandoning data centers and moving to cloud to focus on applications higher up the stack; vendors want to get out of plumbing and into up-the-stack software as a service. Some smart vendors don’t just want to move up the stack, but across it, as in from data to security and back, for instance.

DataGravity Inc. Founder and CEO Paula Long said that data and security pros and vendors must break the silence between them and start collaborating. She told Stu Miniman (@stu), host of theCUBE*, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, these two areas of IT have much to gain from cross-pollinating.

“It’s sort of ridiculous that when you talk to security people, they know nothing about data — that’s kind of an overstatement, but not untrue,” she said. “And you talk to the data people, and they know nothing about security.”

Rethinking the restore point

Long said that data intelligence can help companies make better decisions about what to do in the event of a security breach and as prevention as well. “Time is great, but events are better. You really want to be able to take a snapshot of what’s going on when something is about to get into trouble,” she explained.

She said that pinpointing the moment a breach happened and restoring to just before that event is often a better move “because restore from a backup is one way to do it, but you’re going to lose a lot of data.”

Allied forces against new cyber crime

Cyber hacking is not just for kicks anymore and is increasingly monetizing, Long said. To fend off the new threats, security has to cover more ground more aggressively.

“The vendors more than ever are coming together to work together, to provide APIs to each other, so you can cover that full surface,” she said. “No one company can solve the problem, but as the companies start to work together, you’re going to have a much better defense — and some offense.”

*Disclosure: Some segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE are sponsored by different organizations. However, none of those organizations have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.

Watch the full video interview below:

Photo by SiliconANGLE