(upbeat music) >> Welcome to this Cube conversation sponsored by Citrix. This is the third and final installment in the Citrix launchpad series. We're going to be talking about the launchpad series for work. Lisa Martin here with Dion Hinchcliffe, VP and principal analyst at Constellation research. Dion, welcome to the program. >> No, thanks Lisa. Great to be here. >> So we have seen a tremendous amount of change in the last 18, 19 months. You know, we saw this massive scatter to work from home a year and a half ago. Now we're in this sort of distributed environment. That's been persisting for a long time. Talk to me about, we're going to be talking about some of the things that Citrix is seeing and some of the things that they're doing to help individuals and teams, but give me your lens from Constellation's perspective. What are some of the major challenges with this distributed environment that you've seen? >> Sure. Well, so we've gone from this, you know, the world of work, the way that it was now, we're all very decentralized, you know, work from anywhere. Remote work is really dominating, you know, white collar types of activities in the workplace and workplaces that in our homes for most of us even today. But that started to change. Some people are going back. Although I just recently spoke to a panel of CIOs that says they have no plans anytime soon, but they're very aware that they need to have workable plans for when we start sending people back to the office and there's this big divide. How are we going to make sure that we have one common culture? We have a collaborative organization when, you know, a good percentage of our workers are in the office, but also maybe as much as half the organization is at home. And so, how to make processes seamless, how to make people collaborate and make sure there's equity and inclusion so that the people at home aren't left out and then people in the office, maybe you don't have an unfair advantage. So those are all the conversations. And of course, because this is a technology revolution, remote work was enabled by technology. We're literally looking at it again for this hybrid work, this, you know, this divided organization that we're going to have. >> You mentioned culture that's incredibly important, but also challenging to do with this distribution. I was looking at some research that Citrix provided, asking individuals from a productivity perspective, and two thirds said, hey, for our organizations that have given us more tools for collaboration and communication, yes, we are absolutely more productive. But the kicker is, the same amount of people, about two thirds that answered the survey said, we've now got about ten tools. So complexity is more challenging. It's harder to work individually. It's harder to work in teams. And so Citrix is really coming to the table here with the launchpad series for work, saying let's help these individuals and these teams, because as we, we think, and I'm sure you have insight Dion on this as well, this hybrid model that we're starting to see emerge is going to be persistent for a while. >> Yeah. For the foreseeable future. Cause we don't know what the future holds. So we'll have to hold the hybrid model as the primary model. And we may eventually go back to the way that we were. But for the next several years, there's going to be that. And so we're trying to wrap our arms around that. And I think that we're seeing with things like the Citrix announcements, a wave of responses saying, all right, let's really design properly for these changes. You know, we kind of just adapted quickly when everyone went to remote last year and now we're actually adding features to streamline, to reduce the friction, to simplify remote work, which does use, you have to use more applications. You have to switch between different things. You have to, you know, your employee experience in the digital world is just more cluttered and complicated, but it doesn't have to be. And so I, you know, we can look to some of these announcements for last year, I think address some of that. >> Let's break some of that down because to your point, it doesn't have to be complex complicated. It shouldn't be. Initially this scatter was, let's do everything we can to ensure that our teams and our people can be productive, can communicate, can collaborate. And now, since this is going to be persistent for quite some time, to your point, let's design for this distributed environment, this hybrid workforce of the future. Talk to me about the, one of the things that Citrix is doing with Citrix workspace, the app personalization, I can imagine as an individual contributor, but also as a team leader, the ability to customize this to the way that I work best is critical. >> And it really is, especially when you know, you have workers, you know, 18 or 19 months worth of new hires that you've never met. They don't really feel like, you know, this is maybe their organization. But if you allow them to shape it a little bit, make it contextual for them. So they don't just come into this cookie cutter digital experience that actually is kind of more meaningful for them. It makes it easier for them to get their job done and things are the way that they want them and where they want them. I think that makes a lot of sense. And so the app personalization announcements is important for remote workers in particular, but all workers to say, hey, can I start tailoring, you know, parts of my employee experience? So they make more sense for me. And I feel like I belong a little bit more. I think it's significant. >> It is. Let's talk about it from a security perspective though. We've seen massive changes in the security landscape in the last year and a half. We've seen some Citrix data that I was looking at, said between 2019 and 2020, ransomware up 435%, malware up 358%. And of course the weakest link being humans. Talk to me from a Citrix workspace perspective about some of the things that they've done to ensure that those security policies can be applied. >> Well, and the part that I really liked about the launchpad announcements around work in terms of security was this much more intelligent analysis. You know, one of the most frustrating things is you're trying to get work done remotely and maybe you're you're in crunch mode and all of a sudden the security system clamps down because they think you're doing something that, you know, you might be sharing information you shouldn't be and now you can't, get your deadline met. I really liked how the analytics inside the new security features really try to make sure they're applying intelligent analysis of behavior. And only when it's clear that a bad actor is in there doing something, then they can restrict access, protect information. And so I have no doubt they'll continue to evolve the product so that it's even even more effective in terms of how it can include or exclude bad actors from doing things inside your system. And so this is the kind of intelligence security increasingly based on AI type technologies that I think that will keep our workers productive, but clamp down on the much higher rate of that activity we see out there. Because we do have so many more endpoints there's a thousand or more times more endpoints in today's organizations because of remote work. >> Right. And one of the things that we've seen with ransomware, I mentioned those numbers that Citrix was sharing. It's gotten so much more personalized, so it's harder and harder to catch these things. One of the things that I found interesting, Dion, that from a secure collaboration perspective, that Citrix is saying is that, you know, we need to go, security needs to go beyond the devices and the endpoints and the apps that an employee is using, which of which we said, there are at least 10 apps that are being used today and it needs to actually be applied at a content level, the content creation level. Talk to me about your thoughts about that. >> I think that's exactly right. So if you know the profile of that worker and the types of things they normally do, and you see unusual behavior that is uncharacteristic to that worker, because you know their patterns, the types of content, the locations of that content that they might normally have access to. And if they're just accessing things, you know, periodically, that's usually not a problem. When they suddenly access a large volume of information and appear to be downloading it, those are the types of issues and especially of content they don't normally use for their work. Then you can intervene and take more intelligent actions as opposed to just trying to limit all content for example. So that knowledge workers can actually get access to all that great information in your IT systems. You can now give them access to it, but when clearly something, something bad is happening, the system automatically does it and steps in. >> I was looking at some of the data with respect to updates to Citrix analytics that it can now auto change permissions on shared files to read only, I think you alluded to this earlier, when it detects that excess sharing is going on. >> And, inappropriate access sharing. So sometimes it's okay for a worker to access, you know, documents. But the big fear is that a bad actor gets access. They get a USB key and they download a bunch of files and they get a whole bunch of IP or important knowledge. Well, when you have a system that's continually monitoring and you know, the unblinking gaze of Citrix security capabilities are looking at the patterns, not just the content alone or just the device alone, but at the, at the usage patterns and saying, I can make this read only because that's clearly the, you know, we don't want them to be able to download this because this activity is completely out of bounds or very unusual. >> Right. One of the things also that Citrix is doing is integrating with Microsoft teams. I was listening to a fun quiz show the other day that said, what were the top two apps downloaded in 2020? And I guessed one of them correctly, Tiktok though. I still don't know how to use it. And the second one was Zoom, and I'm sure Microsoft teams is way up there. I was looking at some stats that said, I think as of the spring of 2020, there were 145 million daily users of Microsoft teams. So that, from a collaboration perspective, something that a lot of folks are dependent on during the pandemic. And now within Teams, I can access Microsoft workspace? Citrix workspace. >> Yes. Well, and it's more significant than it sounds because there's a real hunger to find a center of gravity for the employee experience. What do I put that? Where should they be spending most of their time? Where should I be training them to focus most of their attention? And obviously workers collaborate a lot and Teams as part of Office 365, is a juggernaut? You know, the rise of it during the pandemic has been incredible. And just to show this, I have a digital workplace advisory board. Its companies who are heading, are the farthest along in designing digital employee experiences, and 31% of them said, this January, they're planning on centralizing the employee experience in Teams. Now, if you're a Citrix customer, you have workspace you go, how do I, I don't want to be left out. This announcement allows you to say, you can have the goodness of teams and its capabilities and the power of Citrix workspace, and you have them in one place and really creating a true center of gravity and simplifying and streamlining the employee experience. You don't have this fragmented pieces. Everything's right there in one place, in one pane of glass. And so I like this announcement. It brings Citrix up to parody with a lot of their competitors and actually eclipses several of them as well. So I really like to see this. >> So then from within teams, I can access Citrix workspace. I can share documents with team members and collaborate as well as that kind of the idea. >> Yes. That is the idea, and of course, they'll continue to evolve that, but now you can do your work in Citrix workspace and when documents are involved and you want to bring your team in, they're already right there inside that experience. >> That ability to streamline things, so critical, given the fact that we're still in this distributed environment, I'm sure families are still dealing with some, some amount of remote learning, or there's still distractions from the, do I live at work, do I work from home environment? One of the grips I really felt for when this happened, Dion, was the contact center. I thought these poor people, more people now with shorter and shorter fuses trying to get updates on whatever it was that they were, if they had something ordered and of course all the shipping delays. And the contact center of course went (blowing sound) scattered as well. And we've got people working from home, trying to do their jobs. Talk to me about some of those things that Citrix is doing to enable with Google, those contact center workers to have a good experience so that ultimately the employee experience is good, so is the customer experience? >> The contact center worker has the toughest of all of the different employee profiles I've seen, they have the most they have to learn, the most number of applications. They're typically not highly skilled workers. So they might only just have a, you know, high school education. Yet, they're being asked to cram all of these technologies, each one with a different employee experience, and they don't stay very long as a result of that. You might train them for two months before they're effective and they only stay for six months on average. And so, both businesses really want to be able to streamline onboarding and provisioning a and getting them set up and effective. And they want it too, if you want happy contact center workers making your customers happy and staying around. And so this announcements really allows you to deploy pre-configured Citrix workspaces on, on Chrome OS so that, you know, if you need to field a whole bunch of workers or you have a big dose say you're a relief company and you have a lot of disaster care workers. You can certainly this issue that these devices very easily, they're ready to go with their employee experience and all the right things in place so they can be effective with the least amount of effort. So I guess, it's a big step forward for a worker that is often neglected and underserved. >> Right. Definitely often neglected. And you, you brought up a good point there. And one of the things that, that peaked in my mind, as you talked about, you know, the onboarding experience, the retention, well, these contact center folks are the front lines to the customer. So from a brand reputation perspective, that's on the line, for companies in every industry where people with short fuses are dealing with contact center folks. So the ability to onboard them to give them a much more seamless experience is critical for the brand reputation, customer retention for every industry, I would imagine. >> Absolutely. Especially when you're setting up a contact center or you have a new product launching and you want, you know, you've got to bring, onboard all these new workers, you can do it, and they are going to have the least challenges. They're going to be ready to go right out of the box, be able to receive their package, with their device and their Citrix employee experience, ready to go. You know, just turn the machine on and they're off to the races. And that's the vision and that's the right one. So I was glad to see that as well. >> Yeah. Fantastic. One of the things also that Citrix did, the Citrix workspace app builder, so that Citrix workspace can now be a system of record for certain things like collaboration, surveys, maybe even COVID-19 information, that system of record. Talk to me about why that's so critical for the distributed worker. >> So we've had this, this longstanding challenge in that we've had our systems of record, you know, these are CRM systems, ERP, things like that, which we use to run our business. And then we've had our collaboration tools and they're separate, even though we're collaborating on sales deals and we're collaborating on our supply chain. And so like, the team's announcement was in the same game. We can say, let's close that gap between our systems of record and our collaboration tools. Well, this announcement says, all right, well, we still have these isolated systems of record. How can we streamline them to build and start connecting together a little bit so that we have processes that might cross all of those things, right? It's still going to order comes in from the CRM system. Then you can complete it in the, in the ERP system, you know, ordering that product for them. So they actually get it. You know, and that's probably overkill, that scenario for this particular example. But for example, collecting data from workers saying, let's build some forms and collect some data and then feed it to this process, or this system record. You can do it much more easily than before, before you would have to hire a development team or a contractor to develop another system that would integrate, you know, CRM or ERP or whatever. Now you can do it very quickly inside that builder. First simple, basic applications, and get a lot of the low hanging fruit off your plate and more automated inside of your Citrix workspace. >> And automation has been one of the keys that we've seen to streamlining worker productivity in the last 18 months. Another thing that I was looking at is, you know, the fact that we have so many different apps and we're constantly switching apps, context is constantly changing. Is this sort of system of record going to allow or reduce the amount of context switching that employees have to do? >> Yep. Almost all of these announcements have some flavor to that saying, can we start bringing more systems together in one place? So you're not switching between applications. You don't have different and disconnected sets of data that if you need to, and if they are disconnected, you can connect them, right. That's what the app builder announcement again is about saying, all right, if you're already, always using these three applications to do something, and you're switching between them, maybe you can just build something that connect them into one experience and, you know, maybe a low level of IT person, or even a business user can do that. That's the big trend right now. >> That's so important for that continued productivity, as things will continue to be a little bit unstable, I guess, for awhile. One more thing that I saw that Citrix is announcing is integrations with, Wrike I've been a Wrike user myself. I like to have program project management tools that I can utilize to keep track of projects, but they've done a number of integrations, one of them with Wrike Signature, which I thought was really cool. So for, to secure e-signature within Wrike, based on a program or a project that you're working on. Talk to me about some of the boosts to Wrike that they've done and how you think that's going to be influential in the employee experience. >> Well, first let's just say that the Wrike acquisition was a really important one for Citrix to go above just the basic digital workplace and simple systems of record. This is a really a mass collaboration tool for managing work itself. And so they're, this is taking Citrix up the stack in the more sophisticated work scenarios. And, and when you, we are in more sophisticated work scenarios, you want to be able to pull in different data sets. So, you know, they have the Citrix ShareFile support. You want to be able to bring in really important things like, you know, signing contracts or signing sales deals or mortgage applications, or all sorts of exciting things that actually run in your business. And so, Wrike Signatures, support's really important so that when you have key processes that involve people putting signatures on documents, you can just build collaborative work management flows that, that take all that into account without having to leave the experience. Everything's in one place as much as possible. And this is the big push and we need to have all these different systems. We don't have too many apps. What we have is too many touchpoints, so lets start combining some of these. And so the Wrike integrations, really help you do that. >> Well, and ultimately it seems like what Citrix is doing with the work launchpad series. All the announcements here is really helping workers to work how and where they want to work. Which is very similar to what we say when we're talking about the end user customer experience. When tech companies like Citrix say, we have to meet our customers where they are, it sounds like that's the same thing that's happening here. >> It is. And I would just add on top of that and to make it all safe. So you can bring all these systems together, work from anywhere, and you can feel confident that you're going to do so securely and safely. And it's that whole package I think that's really critical here. >> You're right, I'm glad you brought up that security. All right, Dion take out your crystal ball for me. As we wrap things up, you're saying, you know, going into the future, we're going to be moving from this distributed workforce to this hybrid. What are some of the things that you see as really critical happening in the next six to nine months? >> Well, there's a real push to say, we need to bring in all the workers that we've hired over the last year. Maybe not bringing them in, in person, but can we use these collaborative tools and technologies to bring them, hold them closer so they get to know us. And so, you know, things like, having Microsoft teams integrated right into your Citrix workspace makes it easier for you to collaborate with remote workers and inside any process wherever you are. So whether you're in the office or not, it should bring workers closer, especially those remote ones that are at risk of being left out as they move to hybrid work. And then it's really important. And so the things like the app builder are going to also allow building those connections. And I think that workers and businesses are really going to try and build those bridges, because the number one thing I'm hearing from business leaders and IT leaders is, is it, you know, we're worried about splitting into two different organizations, the ones that are remote and the ones that are in the office and any way that we can bring all of them together in an easy way, in a natural way, situate the digital employee experience so that we really back or back to one company, one common culture, everybody has equal access and equity to the employee experience. That's going to be really important. And I think that Citrix launchpad announcements around work really are a step, a major step in the right direction for that. There's still more things that have to be done and all, all vendors are working on that. But it's nice to see. I really liked what Citrix is doing here to move the ball forward towards where we're all going. >> It is nice to see, and those connections are critically important. I happen to be at an in-person event last week, and several folks had just had been hired during the pandemic and just got to meet some of their teams. So in terms of, of getting that cultural alignment, once again, this is a great step towards that. Dion thank you for joining me on the program, talking about the Citrix launchpad series for work, all the great new things that they're announcing and sharing with us as some of the things that you see coming down the pike. We appreciate your time. >> Thanks Lisa, for having me. >> For Dion Hinchcliffe. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching this Cube conversation. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Welcome to this CUBE conversation. I'm Dave Nicholson and we are recapping the Citrix launchpad series. This series presents announcements on LinkedIn live on a variety of subjects, specifically cloud, security, and work. Three topics that I think all of us are keenly aware of going through the last 18 months of the pandemic. Citrix has taken time to sort of regroup and look at ways that security can be improved so that it isn't a hindrance for members of staff, but instead offers a unified integrated way of dealing with security across all of the variety of situations we find ourselves in today. Everything from a mobile device in a cafe through actually working back in the office when we get the opportunity to, to accessing information on a company issued laptop in a home office, secured networks, unsecured networks, secured browsers, unsecured browsers, the permutations are nearly endless. So Citrix has taken an interesting point of view, starting from the perspective of zero trust, meaning everything must be authenticated. They apply contextualism to their strategies. So the context and the posture of the access, the device, the location, all of those matter so that security protocols are tailored to help enhance productivity and security instead of, again, being a hindrance. So I highly recommend you go to the Citrix launchpad site dedicated to security. Two senior Citrix execs, Tim and Joe, will go through great detail on the announcements, but let's recap a little bit from an overview perspective. The first is this idea of secure private access. You combine that with secure internet access, and now you have a package that allows this contextual security posture that can change and adapt based upon varying conditions. Additionally, they have announced a partnership with Google where all of these capabilities are built into the Chrome OS. So now you have a device level native support for these protocols. They're also talking about bot management as something that is critical to security, moving forward. Bots out fishing, you want to kill them. You don't want them getting into your system, but there are some bots that are okay that have poking around in your environment. So again, go into the details with Tim and Joe. Having said that, I am delighted to have a very special guest here. Friend of theCUBE, veteran of theCUBE, author, advisor, author of the book, Cyber Minds and Tech Executive, Shira Rubinoff, is going to join us in just a moment. (upbeat music) Hello, and welcome to this special CUBE conversation. I'm Dave Nicholson, and we are recapping the Citrix launchpad series with a focus on the topic of security. Now, whenever we're going to talk security on theCUBE, we have a CUBE veteran and smartest person on cybersecurity that we know, Shira Rubinoff. She's a cybersecurity executive author and advisor, specifically author of the excellent book on the subject, Cyber Minds. Shira, welcome back to theCUBE. >> Thank you. Pleasure to be here. >> How are you today? >> Doing great, always great to be on theCUBE and talk to you folks and certainly be part of something from Citrix. >> Well, that might be the last pleasant thing that we say, because we are surrounded by security threats. So are you ready to get serious? >> Oh, always with a smile, serious with a smile. >> So, one kind of overriding question that a lot of people have now, if you're an IT executive, you've experienced a complete change in the world from so many different angles, but how has the pandemic changed the way you think of security? What are the dynamics at play, things that are different now that we couldn't have anticipated maybe two or three years ago? >> Interesting question. Certainly, if we look at the scope and the ecosystem of the way that organizations operated, it was pretty much in the high 90% of people being in the office with just the few percentage being working from home. And that had to shift literally overnight to literally the flip side of it, having the multitude of the organization work from home, work remotely, and maybe the few people that had to be in the office were there. So all of a sudden organizations were left with this, how do we secure down our organization? How do we keep our employees safe? How do we keep our organization safe? How do we connect to the outside world? What do we do to maintain the proper cyber? That's call it cyber hygiene within an organization. And that's a topic that I talk about quite frequently. When you look at cybersecurity as a whole, we look at the cyber posture of an organization. We also have to break it down and say, what does an organization need to do to be fully cyber secure? So of course, the ongoing training and that had to shift as well. We have now training for the organization and employees, but also think about the consumers and who else is interacting with organizations. We have to switch how that is done. And that has to be ongoing in the global awareness, the cybersecurity of course is at top of mind. And then that would lead to us to zero trust. Zero trust is a massive, massive piece of cybersecurity need for organizations. We think about it as who needs the data is king. Whoever has the data, they rule the world. They own the organization, they do what they need to do. Zero trust, limited access, knowledge of who gets in, why they get in, the need to get in, and the need for that within organization. So zero trust is a very key component and Citrix is very focused on as well. We talk about updated security and patching and all that has to happen, think about remotely. So not only are we thinking about all these topics, we have to think about them going at warp speed with people that might be working remote, who also have other things they have to take care of. Maybe they're taking care of elderly parents, maybe they're having to watch their kids on zoom, making sure they're staying on zoom, and all sorts of things with school, and other maybe roommates who are working for other organizations, not having important information in the backgrounds of their zoom while they're having these important conversations with organizations. But also think about the multiple devices people are using. They may have an area that's set up properly in order to do their work, but then again, they have to be in another room at the same time. Oh, let me just grab my device. So the whole area of the multiple devices, the warp speed of working and not, let's call this pause. And this is one of the key elements that I would tell all organizations to stop and pause, to think about what you're doing before you do it. Give the headaches, but that was not interplayed when the height of the pandemic. The height of the pandemic, we were worried about what's going on? Need knowledge of information, where we're getting this information, downloading it, clicking on links. Then we're working at the same time, taking care of people. So all these things are happening simultaneously, leaving these open vectors for the tax surface to be that much more heightened for the bad actors to get in. >> So, you advise some of the largest companies in the world on this subject, and obviously you're not going to reveal any names or specifics, but as a general overall view from your perspective, how are we doing right now? Is the average large organization now sort of back on cruise control, having figured everything out for this new reality? On a scale of 1 to 10, how well are we executing against all of these changes? >> That's a great question. Let me talk about the global whole. I think organizations are actually doing really well. I think there was a quick ramp up to figure out how to get it done, but because of also the shift of sharing of information that some of these largest companies across the world, they came together to share information with bad actors, to share information about the tax, to share information about what to do if something happens, who's out there and buying together almost like a whole. So it wasn't each finger on its own. It's a hand as a whole looking at it from a stronger perspective. So I think that shift coupled with the fact of the knowledge and understanding of what companies needed to do in terms of locking down the organization, but also allowing and helping their employees, empowering them to get their work done, but get it done in a secure safe fashion. And I believe now, obviously, we all know, they obviously, but the ransomware attacks are now prevalent and they're becoming even more intense with the rise of 5G, a way that attacks could happen, the warp speed. We're now having to understand that being reactive is not enough, being proactive is something that is wonderful to see organizations are doing as well. It used to be okay, let's be reactive. If something happens, what do we do? Let's have a plan in place. But that's not good enough and we've seen that happen because these attacks are coming a warp speed. So the proactivity of these organizations that they've taken is applaudable in general. I can't talk for all the companies, but the ones that I've been consulting to and have interactions with, I'm pleasantly surprised and not surprised as well, that the way that they've taken their cyber posture so seriously, and where they focus in, not only on the organization as a whole, but their employees as individuals, what their needs are and being able to give them what they need to do their jobs well. >> Yeah, that makes sense. You can almost think of it like cybersecurity is a team sport and to the extent that all of that proactive work that an organization can do can be absolutely undermined if we don't do our parts as endpoints, as endpoint people. And when someone reads Cyber Minds, I think there's an undercurrent that I definitely sensed. And then when I looked more closely into your background, I realized that, yes, in fact, you do have a background in psychology. I want to shift to a question along that line, if you don't mind. Thinking about the psychology of people who have lived through the pandemic, this concept of our personal hygiene and our personal security has been in the forefront of our mind. As you leave the house, and there's hand sanitizer and masks and maybe gloves, we're very, very aware of this. How has that affected us from a cybersecurity team sport perspective? Has that made us better players on the field? What are your thoughts in that regard? >> I actually love that question. As we saw the pandemic heightened, everyone became hyper aware of their own personal, what's called cleanliness. And in terms of where they are, what they're doing, if they're masking, if they're putting on gloves, the sanitizers are everywhere, six feet apart. Everybody's thinking about that. It's a forefront. It became a way of life. And if you then do you shift that and you're saying, okay, let's look at the technology or the cybersecurity part of it, your own personal safety, your own personal cybersecurity. I think we failed a lot in that area. I think because of the fact, if you think about the human psychology and the pieces that people needed to know information, everybody was hungry for the latest and greatest information. What's going on? What are the stats? How many people? Just terrible, terrible pandemic with so many people getting sick. So many people dying and wanting to know, what is going on? what are the latest rule sets? What can I do? What else can I do to protect myself? What is my business doing? So we also had bad actors sending out the phishing attacks, heightened tremendously. There is information being sent out, click here for the latest here. This is Dr. Fauchi, his latest report. Everything going out there was not necessarily to help us, but to hurt us. And because of people's human psychology of thinking, I need to protect myself, so I need the information. The stop and pause is, is this the right information? Is this a safe place to go? But then there's also the other flip side of, if I'm not interacting, I'm not there. Think about the different generational people we have going on. Gen Z, millennials, all sorts of it. Everybody's all over social media. And everybody needs to and wants to have a presence there, certainly in this world. So putting out lots of information and being present was very critical 'cause people weren't in-person anymore. So people were interacting online, whether it being on social, whether it being telling people where they're going, what they're doing, what they're eating, what their favorite animal is, all sorts of things that they were doing. But they were giving over personal information that made have be utilized as passwords or ways to get to know somebody, to either do a spear phishing attack or any types of attacks to gather information to hurt, not just a personal to steal money or to steal someone's identity or to come in and hurt the company, but information was everywhere. So we were taking care of our personal cleanliness, but our cyber hygiene with our psychologies aspect of cybersecurity itself, I think took a big dive. And I think that people started becoming aware as these attack surfaces grew. There were also different types of attacks that were happening where phone calls were coming in and saying, somebody is breaking into your bank account. Just verify yourself, give me the last four digits. I need to know who you are. So playing on the human psyche of fear, somebody is trying to get you nervous. So what are you going to do? You're going to act quickly without thinking. Or all sorts of, I think we were talking earlier about extended warranties for different things. That also grew extensively, but how did they do that? They were gathering information, personal information to give you something you want. So if you're playing again on the human psychology of people, when people get what they want, they're more likely to give over something they may not give to somebody else anyway. And one of my biggest example or a strong example is back in the day with Candy Crush. If you think about that game, before you sign up for that game, you literally have to give over your kidney. You're giving over access to your camera, to your contacts. If you look back at the permissions you are giving, it's really unbelievable that everybody was clicking yes, because they wanted to play a game. So take that example and transfer that into real life. We were doing the same thing. So the importance of brushing up on that personal cyber hygiene and really understanding what people needed to do to heighten their own security themselves, less sharing on social, not giving over information that they shouldn't, not allowing a trusted source who isn't really a trusted source into it. Having strong zero trust, not just organizations, but for yourself was very important. >> Yeah now, did we, Chuck. Chuck's my producer. Did we get Shira's social security number and her date of birth? Shira, can you give us that? >> Sure, it's 555-55-5555. >> Excellent Aha, phishing attack. >> There you go, go for it. (laughs) >> So you think there could be a little bit of security fatigue that might come into play when we're thinking of living up to our responsibilities as those end points? >> I think there was just fatigue in general and people were tired of being locked in the house. People were tired of having everybody under the same roof all the time, 24/7. Trying to get work done, trying to get school done, taking care of people, what they needed to do, having groceries delivered, going into groceries, all the thoughts that they had to do that was just a way of life before that we all took for granted during the pandemic. It was just a whole shift. People were just antsy, jumpy. We needed to connect and we need to connect in any way we could. So all these open vectors became a problem that ended up hurting us rather than helping us. So this has been something that was a big mind shift as a pandemic continued. People started realizing what was going on and organizations took a good stand on educating the population and telling them, look, these are the things that are happening. This is what we need to do. Certainly a lot of the companies I'm working with did such a great job with that. Giving their employees the wherewithal of wanting to connect, but doing in a secure manner. Giving them the tools of what they needed to do personal, only also in their personal lives, not just for their work lives. So that was helpful too. And as we're coming out of it, hopefully continue to come completely out of it, we'll see the shift back into, let's take that stop and pause. Let's think what we're doing. >> Yeah, well, we are all looking back to whatever resemblance of normal we can get to. Shira, I can spend hours picking your brain on a variety of subjects. Unfortunately, we are coming to the end of our time together. Do you promise to come back? >> Certainly, a big fan of theCUBE. >> Well, fantastic. Shira Rubinoff, thank you so much for your time. This is Dave Nicholson with a very special CUBE conversation, signing out. Thanks for watching. >> Shira: Thank you too. (gentle music)

>>From Miami beach, Florida. It's the cube covering a Cronus global cyber summit 2019. Brought to you by Acronis. >>So Ron, welcome back to the keeps coverage of kronas cyber global cyber summit 2019. I'm John furrier here in Miami beach. Our next guest is Pat Hurley, vice president, general manager of the Americas in sales and customer relationships. Get Debbie Juan. Hey, thanks for having me. Welcome to Miami beach. Lovely place to have an event. So I hear ya. You got a lot of competition going on between the U S America's in the AMIA teens and it's very competitive group. >> The European team is very confident. I think we'll show them tomorrow what we're made of. We've been recruited very hard for some players that are Latin American. I think we'll show them a finger too. You've got a big soccer story there. We do. Yeah. We've, uh, we've got a few sports partnerships that we have across the globe. Uh, some of the first partnerships we had were actually within formula one. >>And we really try to correlate the story of the importance of, uh, data protection and cyber protection in the sporting industry because a lot of people don't think about the amount of data that's actually being generated in the space. A formula one car generates between, you know, two and three terabyte through three gigabytes of data on every lap, tons of telemetry devices that are kicked, collecting information from the car, from the road service, from the, the general environment. They're taking that data and then sending it back to the headquarter, analyzing it and making very small improvements to the car to make sure that they can qualify faster, run a faster lap, make the right type of angle into a turn, uh, which can really differentiate them from being, you know, first, second, third, 10th in a qualifying session. On the soccer side. We do have some partnerships with uh, arsenal, Manchester city, inter Milan, and we just signed a partnership as well with Liverpool. >>So we are very popping in that space here in the U S we have some other sports that we're big fans of. I'm personally a big Boston red Sox fan, being a Boston native and we do have a sports partnership with the red Sox, which has been an unbelievable partnership with them. And learning more about the use cases that they solve and using our technology has been really cool. >> You know, Patty, you bring up the sports thing and we were kidding before we on camera around the trading, you know how people do sports deals and they trade, you know, merchandise for consumer benefit or customer benefits. But really what is happening is sports teams encapsulate really the digital transformation in a nutshell because most sports franchises are, have been traditionally behind. But now with the consumerization of it and digital can go back to 2007 since the mobile phone. >>Really, I mean it's iPhone. Yeah. Since that time, sports and capsulates every aspect of it, consumer business fan experience. And it really has every, every, almost every element of what we see now as a global IOT problem opportunity. So it really encapsulates the use case of an integrated and and needed solution. Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you think about the amount of data that's, that's out there today and the fast way that it's growing, you know, the explosion of, uh, of data in the, in the world today, sports have different unique challenges. So obviously they have large fan bases that need to be able to access the data and understand what's going on with their favorite sports teams. Um, for us it's really, you know, these technology partnerships that we have with these guys, it runs through all these different areas of, you know, in many cases we didn't really understand that they were using it for. >>So, you know, the red Sox for example, they've got Fenway park and iconic stadium, you know, the Mecca of baseball. If you haven't been there yet, I suggest all your viewers that they go and check it out, give me a call, we'll try and get you set up there. But, um, you know, the, the, the experience that the fans have there is all around their data experienced there. Right? And it's not just baseball games. It could be hockey games that Fenway park, it could be a concert that they're having. A phone buys a lot of different events. These stadiums are open year round and the ability to move, share access, protect the data in that stadium is really important to how they're functioning as an organization. We talked to their I-Team quite regularly about how they're using our solutions. They're talking about uh, different aspects of artificial intelligence, different ways they can use our products and machine learning. >>Obviously with the new solutions that we have in the market today around cybersecurity or helping them to address other challenges that they face. Um, as an organization, these are realtime challenges in their physical locations, national security issues, terrorist attacks could happen. There are venues, there are public gathering places too. Absolutely. We announced our partnership with them back in may and I was shocked to hear them on the main stage announcing that they had this great partnership with the Kronos was talking about their unique cyber security needs. They started talking about drone technology and I'm thinking, all right, a drone flies in the stadium. Maybe at breaks and it falls on a player and we're paying $20 million for one of these pitchers to be out there on the Hill or an interest, a fan or maybe they're collecting some video data to then share it out. >>And that's red Sox IP. No, they're talking about cybersecurity threats in the sense that a drone, a remotely controlled device could come in and lightened incendiary device in the, in the stadium and that to them as a real security server. And that's frontline for the it guys. That's what keeps them up at night. Yeah. And that's really an attack take time. Oh yeah, absolutely. What are the use cases that are coming out of some of your customers, cause you guys have a unique integrated solution with a platform as an end to end component too. You have a holistic view on data, which is interesting and unique. People are kind of figuring this out, but you guys are ahead of the game. What are some of the use cases that you've seen in the field with customers that highlight the benefits of taking a holistic view of the data? >>Yeah, absolutely. So we look at it as kind of backups dead, right? We have, we've combined the old world of backup and disaster recovery with the new world of cybersecurity and we combine that to a term we're calling cyber protection because it really requires an end to end solution and a lot of different things need to be working properly to prevent these attacks from happening. Uh, you need to be very proactive in how you're going about that. We address it with what we call 'em, the Kronos cyber platform. And what this is, is a unique, multi-tiered multi-tenant offering that's designed specifically for service providers. We have just under 6,000 servers, providers actively selling our cyber protection solutions today and they use this for are for a multiple different aspects. And usually the beachhead has something like backup. Every company needs backup. It's more of a commodity type solutions, a lot of different players in the game out there, but they take it a step further, use that same backup technology to then do disaster recovery. >>They can do files, they can share, they can do monitoring. We have notary solutions based on blockchain technologies. Now, this whole suite of cybersecurity solutions, all of this is with a single pane of glass, one platform that of a service provider can go in and work with their customers and make sure that their data is protected, make sure that their physical machines are virtual machines, they're PCs, their Macs are all protected, that data's protected, it's secure, but it's also accessible, which is an important part of you can take your data wrapping a nice bow buried a hundred feet underground, but then you can't use it, right? So you want to be able to make sure that you can actually, uh, leverage the technology there. Um, we've seen explosive growth, especially in, in my market. I think the numbers are pretty crazy. It's something like 90% of the market today in the U S has served in some capacity by a service provider. >>And this could be a small to medium size business that's served by local service fire to those really big guys that are out there. Let's on with how large your target audience, you mentioned search probably multiple times when you're out selling your target persona, your target audience, and you're trying to reach into, so we touch, everybody know, you equate it to kind of what we do with the red Sox, right? You walk into that city and the 38,000 people that, well, some of those people are just, you know, regular Joe's, right? They, they go to work every day. They have a computer at home, they have a mobile device. They probably have multiple mobile devices. We protect that for them. We call them a consumer. Slash. Prosumers. We work at a lot of very large retail organizations. If you walk into some of those shops today, you'll be able to see our software on a shelf there. >>You work with one of those tech squads where they're starting to attach services to it and you get more of a complete offering there. We then scale up a little bit further to some OEM providers. You work with companies like Honeywell and Emerson that are manufacturing devices that embed our software on there. They white label it and deliver it out. These are connected devices. You think about the, you know the, the explosion of IOT devices in the market today. We're protecting that stuff as well. We work with very large enterprises, so some of the, the major players that you see in the manufacturing space are standing up standardizing on Acronis process control process automation vendors are using our Chronis and we can deliver the solution because of the way it's so flexible in a very consumable way for them. Those enterprises can actually act as a service provider for their employees so we can actually take our technology, deploy the layer in their infrastructure where they have complete control. >>They might not want to be in an Uber cloud, they might not want to work with Chrome OS data center. They want to have and hold that data. They want to make sure it's on site. We enable that type of functionality and then the fastest growing area for us is what I hit on earlier within the service provider community. We're recruiting hundreds of service providers every quarter. We've got some great partners here. Give you an example of a service provider. You mentioned the red size, I'm assuming is that a vendor that might be working within that organization, but still it sounds like that's a supplier to the red Sox. How, how broad is that definition? It gives us many points. Yeah, it's a really good point. So we work with hosting providers. Look, can be regional hosting providers to multinational hosting providers. Some of the very big names that you've, you're probably familiar with. >>We work with, uh, we work with, uh, telco providers who work with ISV providers or sorry, ISP providers, um, kind of regional telco providers that provide a myriad of different services all the way down to your kind of local mom and pop type service providers where you've got a small business, maybe they've got 30 to 50 employees, they're servicing probably 200 to 300 customers and they want to provide a very secure, safe, easy to use complete solution to their customers. Uh, those could be focused on certain verticals so they could be focused on healthcare, financial services, construction, et cetera. Um, we have some that are very niche within like dental services or chiropractice offices, small regional doctor's offices. Uh, and the, the beauty of that, and I was getting the partners earlier, is we have partnerships with companies like ConnectWise where those are tools that service providers are using on a very daily basis. >>So essentially the platform gives you that range and that's the typical typical platform. So you have that broad horizontally scalable capability and the domain expertise either be what solution from you guys or can ISV or someone within your ecosystem is that they get that. Right? Absolutely. And that's what really differentiates us is our ability to integrate into that plat, into our platform, into their platform and make those connections. So you don't need to learn 12, 14, 15 different technologies. You've got a small suite of offerings in a single pane of glass, very easy to use, very intuitive. Um, the integrations that we have with these partners like ConnectWise, like Ingram micro, really differentiate us because what they do is they provide open API capabilities. They provide software development kits where these partners can go ahead and build it the way they want to sell it. >>You know, it's interesting when the cloud came out and as on premise has changed to a much more agile dev ops kind of mindset that forced it to think like a service provider. I think like an operating system, it's an operating environment basically. So that service provides an interesting angle and I want to get your thoughts on this because I think this is where you guys have such a unique opportunity to just integrate solution because you could get into anything and you got ISV to back that up. So I guess the question I would have is for that enterprise that's out there that's looking to refactor and replatform their entire operation, or it could be a large enterprise, it has a huge IOT opportunity or challenge or a service provider is looking at having a solution. What's the pitch that you would give me if I'm the one of those customers? >>Say, Hey Pat, what's the pitch? So you need a, you need a trusted provider that's been in the business for a number of years that understands the data protection and security markets that Kronos has that brand. We've been doing this for about 16 years. We were founded in Singapore, we're headquartered out of Switzerland and we've got a lot of really smart guys in the back room. Was building good technologies that our partners were able to use. Um, we look at it a lot of different ways. I mentioned our go to market across a lot of different verticals and a lot of different um, kind of routes for those. The way we deliver our solution. It provides the flexibility for an enterprise to a classic reseller to um, you know, a VAR or a service, right? It's delivering services. It can be delivered to those guys how they want to consume it. >>So as an example, we may work with a smaller service provider that doesn't have any colo capabilities. We provide data centers so they could have a very quick turnkey solution, allows them to get up and running with their business, selling backup within minutes to their customers. We can also work with very large enterprises where we can deliver the complete platform to them and then they have complete control over it. We sprinkle in some professional services to make sure that we're giving them the support that they need and then they're running the service for themselves. What we've really seen in terms of a trend is that a lot of these VARs, we have about 4,500 of them in North America and they're starting to look at their businesses differently. Say, I gotta adapt or die here. I gotta figure out what my next business model is. >>How am I going to be the next one that's in the news flash that says, Hey, they've been acquired, or Hey Thoma Bravo made a big investment in me. Right? They need to convert to this services business or Kronos enables that transformation to happen. I mean, I can see you guys really making money for channel partners because they want solutions. They want to touch the customer, they want to maybe add something they could bring into it or have high service gross profits around services. Absolutely. So, yeah, our solution is unique in the sense that allows partners to sell multiple offerings to, you're getting an additional layer of stickiness providing multiple solutions to a customer. You're using the same technology, so your it team is very familiar with what they're using on a daily basis. Um, you're reducing the amount of churn for your customers because you're selling so much additional there that they're really stuck with you. >>That's a good thing. Uh, and beyond that, your increasing ARPU, average revenue per user is a key metric that all of our partners are looking at. And these guys are owner operators, right? They're business owners. They're looking at the bottom line. I mean, it's interesting the operating leverage around the consistent platform just lowers, it gives them software economic model. They can get more profit over time as they make that investment look at at the end of the day, channel partners care about a couple things, money, profit and customer happiness. Absolutely. And it helps to have them want to have a lot of one offs and a lot of, you know, training, you know, anything complicated, anything confusing, anything that requires a lot of resources, they're not going to like a, it's also great to have events like this where you're able to, to press the flesh with these guys and, and being face to face and understand their real world challenges that they're dealing with on a daily basis. >>How has the sport's a solution set that you've been involved in? How has that changed the culture of Acronis? Is that, has that, has that changed as, you know, sports is fun. People love sports, they have real problems. It's a really great use case as well. How's that change the culture? It's been amazing. I, so one from a branding perspective, we are a lot more recognized, right? Um, the most important thing about these partnerships for us is that they're actually using the technology. So, you know, we've got the red Sox here with us today. We've got arsenal represented, we've got Williams, we've got Roush racing, we've got a NASCAR car back here. Um, they use our technology on a daily basis and for each one of them we solve different types of use cases. Whether it's sending them large amount of video data from an essence studio over to Fenway park, or if it's a scout out in the field that needs to send information back and their laptop crashes, how do they recover? >>A lot of these different use cases, you can call them right back to a small business owner. You don't have to be a multibillion dollar sports organization with the same challenge. Well, I'm smiling because we've been called the ESPN of tech to they bring our set. We do let the game day thing. We certainly could love to come join you in all these marquee events that you have. We'd love to have it. Yeah, so if you follow us on social, we're out there and that, that's a big part of it. You mentioned one of ours looking for what our partners looking for. They want a personal relationship too. A lot of that goes away with technology nowadays and being able to really generate that type of a, of a personal relationship. These partnerships enable that to happen and they're very anything, I don't know anything about cars. >>We started partnering with formula one. All of a sudden I know everything about 41 I go to these races. I tell everybody I don't know anything about cars and I ended up being the, the subject matter export for him over over the weekend. So we'd love to have you guys join us. We'd love all of our partners. They get more engaged in the sports aspect of it because for us, it really is something that, um, again, they're using us in real life scenarios. We're not paying to put a sticker on a car that's going 300 miles. It's not traveling as a real partnership. Exactly. Pat, congratulations on your success and good luck on people owning away the numbers. Congratulations. Thank you very much. Just the cube coverage here at the Chronis global cyber summit 2019 I'm John furry. More coverage after this short break.