Gabe Dimeglio is the GVP & GM of Rimini Protect™ with more than 20 years of experience in IT and security for private and public-sector organizations and expertise in strategic consulting services, risk analysis/risk mitigation and compliance.
In my role leading the development and delivery of Rimini Protect™, I’ve always been focused on addressing the unseen gaps in enterprise software security – areas where others aren’t paying enough attention. While many companies offer security tools that are available to the market, what they often lack is the expertise to ensure those tools are effective in addressing real-world vulnerabilities. That’s where we come in with Rimini Protect, available and more and more frequently utilized as service that provides organizations with tools and expertise to fight the bad guys.
Major challenge for the IT security industry
Looking at the industry, a major challenge we face today is the massive global skills gap in security. We’re talking about a shortage of 3 to 5 million professionals worldwide. Unfortunately, you can’t just fill this gap by developing a quick college program. It takes years of hands-on, practical experience – working across various security domains and understanding both business and IT perspectives – to truly become an expert in this field.
Our technology is evolving at breakneck speed, and keeping up with it, much less securing it, requires an even faster pace of skill development. This rapid change means that many organizations simply can’t keep up, and eventually, they may need to move toward managed services. It’s a more efficient way to achieve the scale needed to handle data security, device security, information security and privacy in a sustainable way.
We have thousands of clients, and with each of them, we approach security from an engineering and architectural perspective, often in areas beyond the scope of their service contract. But that’s how we work – reducing risks wherever we can and helping to ensure the platforms we support are as secure as possible.
What’s the most rewarding part of being in IT security?
One of the most rewarding parts of my job is seeing the real impact we have on businesses. In some cases, we’ve helped companies recover from ransomware attacks, not just by following the FBI’s best guidance, but by parachuting in to get businesses back up and running. I’ve seen it firsthand – we’ve had instances where we restored entire SAP infrastructures in a matter of hours. Not weeks, not months – hours. We bring up the core ERP systems, get the business systems running and ensure that each function is executing properly. Restoring a fully operational environment in less than a day is a testament to the dedication and expertise of our team.
At the end of the day, it’s not just about protecting data and systems. It’s about helping organizations keep their businesses running smoothly, even in the face of adversity. It’s about being a partner in their success, providing them with the peace of mind that no matter what happens, we’ve got their back.
I’ve been with Rimini Street for a long time, and the reason I love being here is because of the culture and the people. We’re a family. And that’s not just some corporate cliché—it’s the truth. We have a tight knit team of incredible, passionate individuals who treat our clients like family as well. We’re all in this together, and that makes a huge difference in how we deliver our services.
Our Apache Log4j Vulnerability Response
In the videos below, I describe two situations that demonstrate why our clients trust us to go above and beyond. The first video details our Apache Log4j vulnerability response (CVE-2021-44228). The vulnerability had a devastating impact on thousands of versions of applications that corporations rely on for their daily operations. Our team not only helped clients with at-risk software that we support, but we also took the extra step of providing guidance for software that we don’t support – and we did it in hours. Some software vendors didn’t have a fix for months.
Taking a Different Approach to Security
This video represents one of my favorite types of engagements. It highlights the simplicity of implementing Rimini Protect and how we worked hand-in-hand with a client to develop runbooks and recipes to customize protection.
