Gartner Expert

John Watts

VP Analyst

John Watts provides insights on cybersecruity topics including network security, Security Service Edge (SSE), and Secure Access Service Edge (SASE). John also covers emerging topics such as the evolving cybersecurity threat landscape, zero trust strategy, and AI security topics including AI usage control (AI UC), AI agent security (e.g. OpenClaw and Anthropic CoWork), and frontier AI intiatives (e.g. Anthropic Glasswing and OpenAI Daybreak).

Previous experience

Prior to this, Mr. Watts built a security engineering and operations team from scratch focused on preventative security controls. He designed security solutions including network segmentation, intrusion prevention systems, cloud-based proxy controls, firewalls, enterprise mobility management, data loss prevention, identity and access management systems including SAML and OAuth/OpenID Connect, client and server antivirus, PCI and SOX compliance controls, and cloud security (SaaS and IaaS).

Professional background

Micron Technology, Sr. Manager IT/Lead Enterprise Security Architect, 12 years

Southwest Airlines, Software Architect, 4 years

Greenbrier and Russel, Senior Consultant, 3 years

Areas of coverage
  • Infrastructure Security

Education

B.B.A., Information Systems and International Business, Cum Laude, Baylor University

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Top Issues That I Help Clients Address

01

How do I plan and deploy zero trust technologies to the organization?

02

How do we respond to frontier AI such as Mythos in terms of increased patching and risk to our perimiter?

03

How to we evaluate, select, and deploy a SASE Platform or SSE provider (SWG, CASB, and ZTNA) for our organization?

04

How do we discover and control the use of AI with the organization?

05

How do we prepare and respond to the current threat landscape?