The Wiz: Google Gears Up for Enterprise Security
July 15, 2024
This essay is the work of a dinobaby. Unlike some folks, no smart software improved my native ineptness.
Anyone remember this verse from “Ease on Down the Road,” from The Wiz, the hit musical from the 1970s? Here’s the passage:
‘Cause there may be times
When you think you lost your mind
And the steps you’re takin’
Leave you three, four steps behind
But the road you’re walking
Might be long sometimes
You just keep on trukin’
And you’ll just be fine, yeah
Why am I playing catchy tunes in my head on Monday, July 15, 2024? I just read “Google Near $23 Billion Deal for Cybersecurity Startup Wiz.” For years, I have been relating Israeli-developed cyber security technology to law enforcement and intelligence professionals. I try in each lecture to profile a firm, typically based in Tel Aviv or environs and staffed with former military professionals. I try to relate the functionality of the system to the particular case or matter I am discussing in my lecture.
The happy band is easin’ down the road. The Googlers have something new to sell. Does it work? Sure, get down. Boogie. Thanks, MSFT Copilot. Has your security created an opportunity for Google marketers?
That stopped in October 2023. A former Israeli intelligence officer told me, “The massacre was Israel’s 9/11. There was an intelligence failure.” I backed away form the Israeli security, cyber crime, and intelware systems. They did not work. If we flash forward to July 15, 2024, the marketing is back. The well-known NSO Group is hawking its technology at high-profile LE and intel conferences. Enhancements to existing systems arrive in the form of email newsletters at the pace of the pre-October 2023 missives.
However, I am maintaining a neutral and skeptical stance. There is the October 2023 event, the subsequent war, and the increasing agitation about tactics, weapons systems in use, and efficacy of digital safeguards.
Google does not share my concerns. That’s why the company is Google, and I am a dinobaby tracking cyber security from my small office in rural Kentucky. Google makes news. I make nothing as a marginalized dinobaby.
The Wiz tells the story of a young girl who wants to get her dog back after a storm carries the creature away. The young girl offs the evil witch and seeks the help of a comedian from Peoria, Illinois, to get back to her real life. The Wiz has a happy ending, and the quoted verse makes the point that the young girl, like the Google, has to keep taking steps even though the Information Highway may be long.
That’s what Google is doing. The company is buying security (which I want to point out is cut from the same cloth as the systems which failed to notice the October 2023 run up). Google has Mandiant. Google offers a free Dark Web scanning service. Now Google has Wiz.
What’s Wiz do? Like other Israeli security companies, it does the sort of thing intended to prevent events like October 2023’s attack. And like other aggressively marketed Israeli cyber technology companies’ capabilities, one has to ask, “Will Wiz work in an emerging and fluid threat environment?” This is an important question because of the failure of the in situ Israeli cyber security systems, disabled watch stations, and general blindness to social media signals about the October 2023 incident.
If one zips through the Wiz’s Web site, one can craft a description of what the firm purports to do; for example:
Wiz is a cloud security firm embodying capabilities associated with the Israeli military technology. The idea is to create a one-stop shop to secure cloud assets. The idea is to identify and mitigate risks. The system incorporates automated functions and graphic outputs. The company asserts that it can secure models used for smart software and enforce security policies automatically.
Does it work? I will leave that up to you and the bad actors who find novel methods to work around big, modern, automated security systems. Did you know that human error and old-fashioned methods like emails with links that deliver stealers work?
Can Google make the Mandiant Wiz combination work magic? Is Googzilla a modern day Wiz able to transport the little girl back to real life?
Google has paid a rumored $20 billion plus to deliver this reality.
I maintain my neutral and skeptical stance. I keep thinking about October 2023, the aftermath of a massive security failure, and the over-the-top presentations by Israeli cyber security vendors. If the stuff worked, why did October 2023 happen? Like most modern cyber security solutions, marketing to the people who desperately want a silver bullet or digital stake to pound through the heart of cyber risk produces sales.
I am not sure that sales, marketing, and assertions about automation work in what is an inherently insecure, fast-changing, and globally vulnerable environment.
But Google will keep on trukin’’ because Microsoft has created a heck of a marketing opportunity for the Google.
Stephen E Arnold, July 15, 2024
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One Response to “The Wiz: Google Gears Up for Enterprise Security”
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Are you looking for security software which corrects or prevents human error? I don’t see that coming any time soon.
And October 7 was made possible by multiple human errors, from the military chain of command ignoring the intelligence analyst who reviewed an intercept more than a year before, and said “this is a plan to start a war” (or words to that effect), to the soldiers who carried into IDF installations unsecured phones onto which Hamas had loaded spyware which allowed Hamas to control the phones’ cameras and microphones, to leaving listening/observation posts undefended, to…you get the idea.
Intelligence failure? Yes, many.
Security failure? Again, yes, many.
Human errors, all of them.
The Wiz has marketing hype? Who doesn’t?
Human’s are imperfect. Everything humans create is imperfect. Those are not reasons to stop trying to get it right.