Gary Orenstein, CCO
Gary Orenstein is the chief customer officer at Bitwarden leading the go to market efforts across customer success, marketing, and sales. Before Bitwarden, Gary served in executive marketing and product roles at enterprise infrastructure companies Yellowbrick Data and SingleStore, and flash memory pioneer, Fusion-io which went public during his tenure there. Earlier in his career he led marketing at Compellent which after its IPO was acquired by Dell. Gary holds a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College and a master’s in business administration from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Areas of expertise
Federal cybersecurity policy
Password and secrets management
Passwordless technology
Vulnerability and incident response
Social engineering attacks and how to prepare your team to stay safe
Identity and access management
Microsoft Says State-Sponsored Attackers Accessed Senior Leaders' Emails
“Companies should prioritize educating employees on the benefits of robust passwords and 2FA, as well as the hallmarks of social engineering attacks, malicious links and attachments, and the dangers of insecure password sharing,” said Gary Orenstein, chief customer officer at credential management provider Bitwarden, in an email to TechRepublic.
“Build awareness into the culture of the organization through simulations or interactive modules to instill better security habits and reinforce a resilient cybersecurity posture.”
New Developer Tools Are Necessary to Boost Passkey Adoption
If tools can make implementing passkeys simpler, then developers and website owners can benefit from the easier security mechanism, says Gary Orenstein, chief customer officer at Bitwarden.
"If they can have a higher successful login rate, great, more time in the app. If they can reduce password resets, great, more time in the app," he says. "A lot of the problems that developers have had to deal with as an industry in the past with traditional login-password mechanisms are getting streamlined to where that becomes just just less problematic than it may have been in the past."
50 Most Common Passwords of 2024—Are Yours on the List?
“If a password is frequently reused or easy to guess, bad actors can more easily gain access to email, banking and social media accounts, resulting in identity theft and financial loss,” says Gary Orenstein of Bitwarden, a popular password manager.
“Recent examples, like the Microsoft and 23andMe breaches, illustrate the consequences of weak password use, with attackers employing password-spraying and credential-stuffing attacks using easily guessed or reused credentials respectively.”
Could Terraform Return to Open Source Under IBM’s Ownership?
“There’s no question that HashiCorp knew something like this was going to happen when they made the license change. The quintessential question is how to maintain a combination of an open source business model with the ability to provide a commercial service, and there’s no right answer for it — it’s somewhat existential,” Gary Orenstein, chief customer officer at password-protection provider Bitwarden, told The New Stack. “So, I think HashiCorp certainly knew this was going to happen and therefore probably had from the outset ‘said we’re, you know, we’re going to be as aggressive as we can be legally with this because they made a decision that we’re doing this benefit of the company at this point, and you have to enforce it.’”
Why the market’s most-regulated companies need military-grade cybersecurity
While military-grade cybersecurity offers robust defenses, the human element remains critical, and regulated industries must balance advanced technologies with effective personnel management and comprehensive employee education to protect against ever-evolving cyber threats, said Gary Orenstein, chief customer officer at Bitwarden.
“Ultimately it comes down to the people,” Orenstein said. “Most breaches are drawn back to an employee who doesn’t have the right habits. I don’t think it’s an option anymore for people to skirt this, because the consequences are too drastic.”
Background check firm MC2’s breach a cause for concern, experts say
“I think one of the reasons people need to be concerned is that they can now easily prioritize high-value targets,” Gary Orenstein, chief customer officer at Bitwarden, told us. “What happens now, with the adversary, is they know a current email address of a high value target, and they can just start launching phishing campaigns or trying credential stuffing attacks,” Orenstein said. “If they got one password somewhere, does that password also work on other websites, or do variations of that password also work on other websites?”