Rainier Varilla
Principal Cybersecurity Technical Leader at IBM
Rainier Varilla is a passionate technical sales leader with over 30 years of experience leading, designing, and developing sound customer solutions. He has delivered C-Level business and technical advantages of IBM's software product portfolio, cloud offerings, and led cross-matrix sales and technical teams.
Rainier provides complete executive customer relationship management and takes full overall technical account ownership and services all facets of the technical pre-sale and post-sale cycles. Through his leadership, he has been pivotal in helping the top Fortune 100 customers in North America achieve success by developing solid technical strategies that align with business goals, reduce costs, increase revenue and create a competitive advantage. This includes leading the technical aspects of several multi-million dollar software transactions in customers including Harley-Davidson, 3M, Caterpillar, John Deere, Johnson Controls, Wells Fargo, Costco.
Rainier has recently featured in Onalytica's Who is Who in Cybersecurity report.
How did you get to become an expert in your key topics?
My career spans over 30 years with 22 of those years at my current company, so as you can imagine, I have seen technology change over the years. I started out as a dBase3 client-server developer for JCPenney. From there I held program developer positions writing in COBOL, RPG, PowerBuilder for Fortune 500 companies until 2000 when I started my path as a technology seller.
In my career, I was exposed to WebSphere Application Server (WAS), Social Collaboration solutions in LOTUS, and finally Security. As I gained experience in these technology domains, I also learned about their technical architecture and as well as the architectures that my clients have deployed. The one common thread that ties all my experiences, and hence how I became an SME, is Security.
Whether I was on a development project, helping architect a solution for customers, or working with various platform technologies, Security was always a concern. My experiences with people, processes, and technology shaped my passion for advocating security to whoever would listen.
What do you think the future holds in this space?
Threat actors have already started using AI to compromise systems, so technology companies specializing in Security need to do the same and do it better. Organizations need to be proactive. The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in an explosion for remote access to their company systems, and remote access will not diminish as companies transition to a hybrid work environment.
In addition, as companies increasingly rely on Blockchain technology, it’s trending towards a space where cybercrime can hideout. Blockchain will become a tool for cyber-criminals to expose organizations. Another trend the future holds is that someone else’s ransomware attack may become your problem. When ransomware hits a company, its partners and its supply chain become targets for similar ransomware attacks.
Lastly, you will hear the term Zero Trust, in more security-related conversations. This framework is critical as companies increase the number of endpoints within their network and expand their infrastructure to the cloud. Access to systems will be heavily scrutinized, challenging everyone seeking access. A Zero Trust framework will help manage those trusted relationships.
If a brand wanted to work with you, which activities would you be most interested in collaborating on?
What would be the best way for a brand to contact you?
They may connect with me on LinkedIn.
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