Helping security vendors grow value, relationships, and customers. Former Hacker, FBI & DoD Operative, Author, Advisor, CISO, People & Culture Enthusiast.

I speak, train, and advise on everything I know on how to make organisations be less vulnerable, both in terms of better handling risks, but also, fundamentally, how to introduce a lot less of them in the first place. 

Get in touch if you'd like to hear some thought provoking ideas on how we can do security differently, and the missed commercial opportunities for businesses and security vendors alike.

If the tech-focused "cyber" department was a person. Hear me out:

-Most people generally annoyed by them.
-No concept of business or economics.
-No accountability.
-Desire to feel important but can't communicate logically or measurably as to how they improve outcomes.
-Blames others for failures.
-Survives mostly by being very loud and people accommodating some of their demands to make them go away.
-Confident they are right but most people can't make sense of what they are saying.
-Want billions spent on problems in ways that benefit them, but the problems only get worse when they do.
-Refuses to look at what actually causes the problems, and often actively distracts from those causes.
-Absolutely intolerant of solutions or approaches that aren't part of their narrow ideology. 

And most important of all: Things get better when people stop listening to them and focus on old fashioned common sense fundamentals instead.

Am I wrong? 

(Yes, I triggered a lot of people with this one, but the real leaders who look look at the problem holistically and are trying to change their orgs rather than grow a firefighting department know what I'm talking about.)

Greg van der Gaast

I help organisations be better so they need less “cybersecurity”. Former hacker turned FBI & DoD operative, author, advisor, CISO, Public Speaker & car enthusiast.

Things I did not have on my 2026 LinkedIn bingo card: DMs informing me that yoga is a gateway to demonic possession.

That's me safe.

Ah LinkedIn, how I love you.

Ah that popular cybersecurity saying: "Security is like powerful brakes on a sports car. They don't slow you down, they allow you to go faster!" 

Except it isn't, at all.

“IT Security is like the brakes of your car. And the brakes are there to let you go faster. None of us would drive fast without brakes.” There’s a pop

Open article: Stop Calling Security "the Brakes" by Greg van der Gaast • 3 min read

Check this out.

This is not helpful. And ChatGPT actually went on explaining exactly why and I couldn't agree more. Will post more over the coming days.

Let's turn endpoint visibility and control upside down... so that it's right side up.

I've been asked to answer 12 questions about the importance of real-time endpoint visibility and control and wanted to share my answers. 

Predictably in cyberland (sigh), all the questions were about how it can help us react to fast-moving fancy threats with absolutely no thought about how it could help us improve the org so it isn't vulnerable in the first place.

If the latter seems like a good idea to you (you know, fixing the actual problem), then this is for you.

Hope you find it helpful.

1. How has the cybersecurity threat landscape evolved to make real-time endpoint visibility a critical need? I don’t think the evolving threat landsca

Open article: Answering Questions on the Importance of Real-Time Endpoint Visibility and Control by Greg van der Gaast • 6 min read

Answering Questions on the Importance of Real-Time Endpoint Visibility and Control

I changed our logo, or rather our motto, to say "We Love Your Success".

You see it used to say "Obsessed with the Bottom Line". Because the idea of security as a cost centre is ridiculous to me. Security issues are defects in process and technology, eliminating them doesn't just stop vulnerabilities from existing in the first place, it tends to make IT operate leaner, cut costs, increase capacity, agility, and more. 

So much so that we don't base ROI on arbitrary reductions in risk, but on money saved, money that's being spent today. We've never had customer ROI be less than 1,000%, and the risk reduction is a free side-effect.

But that's money. My biggest lesson from 2025 is that there's something more powerful. Success. It's not just about streamlining things, but also about empowering people, enabling their vision, making things possible, making individuals stand out, and make everyone love working better. 

It improves things at a personal level as well as a business level. It gets people excited and that gets them on board and motivated for change. And that means our clients' transformations, and their success (as well as ours) can be even greater.

We want to help organisations operate better so they have fewer defects (vulnerabilities) so they don't need to slow down and spend a fortune mitigating more and more with "cyber". We want security through better business, and we want to power that through every individual's success.

It works and we'd love to show you how.

https://lnkd.in/ewH-DnUp

Most organisations have LOTS of security issues. But actually have far fewer problems to solve than they think. 

Cause Convergence is a critical concept to understand if organisations are to avoid spending vast resources firefighting recurring problems rather than finding and addressing a much smaller number of underlying issues that drive lasting change.

Following up from our article discussing how to use security tools to trace down root causes rather than forever fight their symptoms, I wanted to exp

Open article: What Is Cause Convergence? by Greg van der Gaast • 5 min read

Our own statistics, every trend, shows us things are getting worse, and more expensive. The unsustainability is undeniable. At what point do we cut our losses? 

My thoughts on what needs to happen and why I've chosen to go in a direction very different to the industry's. 

In the hope that it may help others.

Let's think about it, shall we? We spend more every year on tools, platforms, services, and frameworks, yet the scale, frequency, and impact of breach

Open article: Rebooting Cybersecurity - Is it Time to Start Over? by Greg van der Gaast • 5 min read

Rebooting Cybersecurity - Is it Time to Start Over?

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