F5 Network’s Agility 2017 conference, held recently in Barcelona, Spain, may have been brief, but the insights on offer certainly were plentiful. A prime example of this was my interview with Ben Gibson, the company’s chief marketing officer, which gave rise to a multitude of interesting topics to discuss. Continuing from part 1, where Gibson addressed how the industry at large had changed and why, the focus turned to what is often the weakest link when it comes to security within an organisation - people themselves.

Gibson split his outlook on how security can be dealt with as it pertains to people themselves into two, namely a technological perspective and a human one.  

Who are you?

Gibson explained that the technological answer securing a person’s access to a network comes down to identity. “The app may change, the data may change, the network may change but the person accessing them remains the same, and they should have access to a certain level of information that is appropriate,” he began. The good news is that there have certainly been numerous developments on the identity based security front. This has provided for an enabling function rather than a restrictive one, making it easier to access the right information at the right time based on who one is and the credentials one legitimately has.  

On the human side of the equation, Gibson stressed that those within any business need to understand their responsibility for whatever their role may be, and ensure that they are “a good shepherd of corporate data, whether it be customer data or business data.” Interestingly, as a glimpse of just how seriously security is being taken by many businesses, Gibson noted that one of the fastest rising leadership roles within companies today is the chief security officer.

Secrets of Success

Gibson also discussed the actual purpose of the F5 Agility event itself - to communicate with its customers, and how the event relates to what he believes is a secret of success for all companies.

“At the end of the day I believe that it is imperative to empower your individual customer to advance in his or her own career. I think that has been a secret of success for many very successful large technology companies that have done well, and for me that is part and parcel of our focus. Once companies and vendors in the technology space move the focus from just offering a product, to be about how they make their customers successful, it becomes a very different outside-in approach,” he elaborated.

In a somewhat similar vein, Gibson stressed that collaboration has come more to the fore. He elaborated that one of technologies that enabled a greater embracing of collaboration close to ten years ago was teleconferencing, which moved from making audio calls to telepresence. The latter aimed to create a realistic impression of many businesses people sitting around the same table together, even as they were scattered in different geographic locations. 

However, a more recent example of the fostering of collaboration in the tech world can be found in the application development space, as it pertains to the agile development of applications. “When you hear terms like ‘microservice architecture’, what that means is that an application is no longer this big monolithic thing that has to be built, but rather, different experts can be brought in to design their own part of the application and collaborate to build a complete app together, without requiring long development cycles.

Gibson noted that this means that companies can bring expertise on demand to develop a certain application. “Collaboration, and how teams come together, is much more fluid and more on demand now, versus establishing this monolithic team that always has to be together all the time. I think collaboration today is really about making development as easy as possible with the right people at the right time,” he added.

Soft is strong

What this means though is soft skills are becoming considerably more important.

“The number one skill is listening. It is an underappreciated art, whether you are in leadership, running a team or participating. The other component is empathy; empathy for colleague or someone that you may have an opposite opinion to,” he continued.

Harkening back to the secret of success, Gibson added that he believes that increasingly emotional quotient is a key metric of success for individuals in an organisation and in a successful business and personal life. “Smarts and IQ are always a good thing, but emotional intelligence, to me, how one listens and empathises with someone who has diverse points of view and diverse background, that to me is more of a key indicator of success,” he asserted.

This then means that educating the next generation of the workforce, is not going to be soley  focused on rote memorisation so as to achieve at tests, but rather inclusive of the development of social skills.

Even as the interview was a departure from the technicalities of the product announcements, and different to the future focus of the apps report, much like the F5 Agility event as a whole, Gibson certainly offered a variety of gems of insight to ponder and savour.