Cybersecurity 'needs to be job one' for companies: OpenText CEO

The CEO of Canadian software company OpenText says companies need to get more serious about cybersecurity.

“For a lot of companies security is not job one today, and it needs to be job one,” Mark Barrenechea told BNN Bloomberg Wednesday. “Above the fold in the paper, every day, is another major breach. Security needs to be job one.”

Security breaches have thrust several companies into the spotlight this year, including Bank of Montreal and CIBC’s Simplii Financial, which both disclosed in late May that hackers may have accessed thousands of customers’ data.

Barrenechea – who was in Toronto Wednesday as the company hosted its Enterprise 2018 tech conference – said companies can’t risk being exposed and must actively combat potential security threats.

“We use the analogy that security is like the immune system: You have to assume the bad people are already inside,” he said. “[Databases are] a comprehensive, complete system and, you have to go after it holistically.”

Facebook was at the centre of 2018’s most prominent data scandal. Data firm Cambridge Analytica revealed in March that the social media platform exposed millions of users’ data to aid Donald Trump’s 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.

That was enough for OpenText to pull the plug on Facebook, according to a strategy first outlined by Barrenechea on the company’s corporate blog in April.

“We didn’t feel that we could have our customers trust us if we asked them to give us their data via Facebook, and Facebook turned around and sold it to others and used it against them,” Barrenechea said. “We thought that was a bad policy. So, we stood up and we simply turned it off.”