Mimecast is an AI-powered, API-enabled connected Human Risk Management platform, purpose-built to protect organizations from the spectrum of cyber threats.
Leslie Nielsen, EVP & CISO, shares the details on Mimecast and what it’s like to work there.
In this Video
We discuss:
- Details about Mimecast and what they do
- Use cases / Customer Examples
- The latest at Mimecast
- What attracted Leslie to Mimecast
- The culture at Mimecast
- Why now is an ideal time to join Mimecast
Video Transcript
Keith: Leslie thanks so much for joining us.
Leslie: Oh Keith thanks so much. I really, I, I love and I’m passionate about cybersecurity and I’m just so fortunate to be a cybersecurity leader at a premier cybersecurity company. So, love to talk about it.
Keith: Yeah I’m excited to talk to you because Mimecast is one of the anchor tech companies in the Boston tech scene in this robust cybersecurity industry. So let’s talk about Mimecast for people that aren’t familiar with the company. What does the company do?
Leslie: Gosh you know we like literally defined email security 24 years ago. And, and, and I do mean literally not figuratively right? So sometimes those words get you know mixed up. But, you know back in the early 2000s it was a little bit of the wild wild west on the internet and there weren’t products that could protect and they could see what was going on. And then the bad people you know were coming out and doing worse and worse. So, you know 24 years ago defined email security you know built it out and now we’re working on the human and the agentic risk side. So, AI is the new realm and it’s coming out, and how do you see what’s going on on your network? How do you have that visibility? How do you let the good stuff through and make sure that the bad stuff isn’t you know leaking out or getting in? But, a really exciting time to be in cybersecurity and software development.
Keith: So who are the typical customers for Mimecast?
Leslie: Gosh we, we have over 40,000 customers globally. There’s, I’m sure there’s a country we’re not in, but we are in most countries. I would say easily 80 to 90% of the world’s population of countries. The private sector, public sector, we do just about everything. Anyone that has a business that is connected through email, collaboration tools, has people working on technology projects, we are a security service provider for them.
Keith: Now there’s so much going on in the world of cybersecurity especially with the advancement of AI. So what’s the latest at Mimecast?
Leslie: Oh my gosh, so we, we made a brilliant acquisition a couple of years back now. The company was called Code42, their product’s called Insider and it’s Incydr. And Insider is just that: it helps you protect against insider risk, and that’s either malicious or benign, right? Somebody can you know click and make a mistake. So it was kind of that final piece of the puzzle, you know we were protecting the stack, we were protecting collaboration etc., we were protecting email, but it was that last piece around data loss prevention, data leakage prevention, and it just perfectly fit into what was going on with AI. So we have visibility into generative AI if somebody’s doing unsanctioned use, if somebody’s uploading information they shouldn’t. And we also have the ability, you know we talk about human risk management platform, well agents look just like human risk you know when you’re looking at agentic software running on your network. And we have the ability to have visibility into that, help monitor and help protect the company because sometimes people are moving pretty fast and writing stuff and putting it on and getting it going and maybe not having all the guardrails and controls in mind. So sometimes you have to be a little bit reactive on your detecting and responding and that’s what Insider does.
Keith: Okay so you’re the EVP and CISO of Mimecast. You joined last year. What brought you to the company?
Leslie: Oh man I, I, it just… This is the sixth company I’ve had the honor of being the chief information security officer for and I’ll wax a little bit philosophical. So there years ago some very rich brilliant person made some comment about most kids in elementary school will be doing a job that doesn’t exist right, you know when they get older. Well chief information security officer did not exist even when I was in high school or college right? It came along after that. So, I was just really fortunate to find it as a niche. I like getting in tinkering with things understanding the broad stack and the business of what’s going on and then having the opportunity to come to a company with such a history and it just had, it’s just a noble effort. Going out helping protect companies helping protect people because there are so many bad actors on the internet. You know what we say is there are no good neighborhoods on the internet. So once you’re on you’re kind of in a bad neighborhood and that’s what we’re there to do to kind of put that fence up and help you out.
Keith: All right well since joining the company what’s the culture like what’s the day-to-day environment at Mimecast like?
Leslie: Oh you know it’s, it’s good and I do like the size of the company. You know that two to two and a half thousand people you you kind of know most of the people you definitely know all the orgs. Very collaborative people lean in if you want to get something done you’re eventually going to find the right person you know jump on our collaboration tool and you know start a chat group chat and people lean in “Oh you should talk to so and so you should talk to so and so.” And gosh I think I’m coming up on eight months and I’ve just learned so much and so many people. We have some great offices, great snacks, you know I’ll throw it in right? But good places to collaborate to talk through to whiteboard to think about some of the big problems because there are a lot of big problems. Things like people embedding white text in emails that are actually trying to access chatbots and get people to upload people’s calendars and such like right? So we, we see just with, we have visibility into tens of thousands of emails a second and it’s just there’s very few things we don’t see right? So you’re seeing a lot of the innovative stuff that’s happening on the bad guy side and it gives you that chance to be you know kind of the good guy and helping out.
Keith: Now top tier talent regardless of market conditions they always have different opportunities that they can pursue. So why should Mimecast be on the radar for job seekers?
Leslie: Oh gosh if, if, if, if you want to be on the cutting edge if you want to look at really big problems that not everybody gets a chance to see if you want to look across a broad spectrum of different threat intelligence different threat actors and things that are going on. I mean this is the place. If you, if you just have a keen interest in what can go wrong on the internet and how you can help defend and help protect we’re the right place to be.
Keith: Well if you are interested in exploring opportunities at Mimecast you need to go to their company page on VentureFizz which has all their job listings there. Go to venturefizz.com/mimecast and you’ll see their job listings. Leslie thanks so much for taking the time to walk us through all the details on the company.
Leslie: Keith thank you so much it’s been great talking with you.