RSAC 2024: Security That Tips the Scale in Favor of Defenders

Craig Connors, VP and CTO of Cisco Security, joins Dark Reading's Terry Sweeney at News Desk during RSA Conference to discuss how companies can modernize their security strategy to better defend their highly distributed and rapidly evolving networks, users, and their data. He’s got advice for how companies can modernize their defenses in a highly distributed, rapidly evolving landscape. Connors dissects the role that AI plays here, and how it’s turbo-charged Cisco’s own Hypershield data center platform to stay ahead of emerging threats. And he talks about what Cisco’s recent acquisition of Splunk means to the company and it customers.

Craig Connors is currently VP and CTO for the Cisco Security Business Group, with a focus on driving security innovation since joining Cisco in 2023. Previously, Craig was with VMWare where he had multiple roles: as the VP and GM for the SASE Business, as the CTO for Service Provider and Edge BU, and as CTO for the SD-WAN and SASE at VMware.

Craig also served as the Chief Architect for VMware’s SD-WAN, both before and after VMware’s acquisition of VeloCloud. Prior to VeloCloud, Craig had his first tenure with Cisco, working in the Corporate Development Technology Group's Advanced Development Team. Prior to his first tenure with Cisco, Craig spent time as a Principal Engineer and Software Development Manager for Talari Networks. His programming work prior to Talari Networks was centered in the online gaming space which is what led him to networking. Craig is a veteran of the United States Army and holds a BS in Computer Science from North Carolina State University. He has 19 issued patents in the networking and security domains.