Here is What We’re Thankful for This Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is the perfect opportunity to focus on, well, being thankful. 

It’s a time to reflect on the bounty we experience each day, and to stop and say thank you. True, it’s also the perfect time to stuff ourselves silly with cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie, but at heart, it’s about remembering the good over the course of the year and taking a moment to express gratitude. 

With these good vibes in mind, we bring you “Here is What We’re Thankful for This Thanksgiving”, a round up of some of the things our in-house experts are most thankful for this season.

Here’s what they had to say:

• Shay Siksik, VP Customer Experience

“I’m thankful to Gartner for raising awareness of the Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) framework and for the fact that companies have started to apply this model and are seeing improved posture because of it. It’s something that’s long overdue. I’m also thankful for Threat Intelligence providers that notify organizations when there are indicators of exposures or breaches. This is an important step in creating a more aligned ecosystem wherein critical information is quickly shared, free of charge.”

• Natalie Sahan, Customer-Facing Security Analyst

“I am thankful to the EU for spending a lot of time and effort on this year’s “AI Act”. It’s super important to regulate AI systems and understand the risks they introduce. This is especially true in the cyber realm, and all of its many possibilities for abuse. Now I’m waiting for that act to be implemented and for similar laws in other countries around the globe. Maybe in 2024??”

• Hezi Nagar, EMS Team Lead 

“I’m grateful for all the dedicated cyber professionals across the globe who lose sleep protecting their networks, implementing upgrades, patching vulnerabilities, addressing exposures, and remediating breaches. May we all get more more in the coming year, my friends!”

• Batya Steinherz, Lead Content Strategist

“I’m thankful that ‘Exposures, Exposed!’ is reaching so many cybersecurity professionals every week, helping them navigate the ever-changing landscape of cyber exposures. And I’m especially grateful for all our in-house experts who continue to contribute to this important endeavor.”

• Maya Malevich, Head of Product Marketing

“I’m thankful for the CTEM framework, as it surpasses the limitations of EDR and XDR (Endpoint Detection and Response and Extended Detection and Response, respectively). EDR was once considered a hero, and when it began to fall short XDR came along to detect blind spots in protecting email, endpoint, server, and cloud workload. But CTEM’s holistic approach is so much more comprehensive and continuous, providing on ongoing and panoramic view of cyber threats.”

• Rinat Villeval, Manager of Technical Enablement

“I’m grateful for new and innovative training methods, and all the new courses that make cybersecurity learning enjoyable. There have never been more options for expanding and deepening your cybersecurity knowledge, especially where the latest container and cloud security challenges are concerned. For example check out this great resource for Docker training. It just makes learning easy and enjoyable. I’m indebted to the fantastic organizations that make this continued learning possible.”

• Mike Heredia, VP Sales EMEA

​​“I’m thankful for the vulnerabilities in 2023 that carried high CVSS scores, but still didn’t cause too much damage like October’s overhyped Curl vulnerability. CVSS is an important tool for determining which vulnerabilities to remediate first – BUT it’s only one piece of a much larger vulnerability management puzzle. I’m grateful  that organizations have started to use multiple sources of information to assess and prioritize vulnerabilities.”

• Shahar Solomon, Customer Success Team Leader 

“I’m incredibly grateful for my ability to pinpoint cloud resources that have excessive permissions that have never even been utilized. This ability to uncover dormant privileges within a cloud infrastructure is a gift. Excess permissions might seem harmless, yet they hold the potential for catastrophic breaches.“

• Boaz Gorodissky, Chief Technical Officer and Co-Founder

“I’m grateful for a growing awareness on the part of executives, that they need to recognize the importance of their responsibility and the role they play when it comes to cybersecurity. Especially this year, we have seen CEOs and other top leaders take greater responsibility (and sometimes, even the fall) where cybersecurity is concerned. Cyber touches every aspect of the business and it’s encouraging to see it getting the attention it deserves.”

• Geremy Charbit, Customer Success Manager 

“I’m grateful that CVE-2023-44487 affecting HTTP/2 protocol was disclosed by Cloudflare, Google, and Amazon AWS, allowing for timely mitigation of potential large-scale DDoS attacks.” 

• Matt Quinn, Technical Director, Northern Europe

“I’m thankful for the remediation efficiency that the XM Cyber platform brings to our clients. This leaves them more time for them to share time with friends and family, and less time wasted on fixing “dead end” misconfigurations!”

The Bottom Line

The cyber world often gets associated with doom and gloom – but if you peer just a bit deeper, there’s actually a whole lot to be grateful for. So amid the turkey, football games, and inevitable heartburn, we’re going to take a moment to reflect on the advancements and achievements all around us. Here’s to a Thanksgiving filled with abundance!