(bright music) >> Hello everybody, welcome to this special CUBE Conversation. I'm John Furrier here in theCUBE's Palo Alto studio. We're here with Jonathan Nguyen, who's with, formally Verizon, now with Fortinet. What's your title? >> Vice President of Strategy. >> Vice President of Strategy, but you're really, I would say, more of a security guru. You had, notably, with the author of the Verizon Data Breach Investigative Report. Great report, it really has been interesting. Congratulations, it's great to have you here. >> Thanks, it was great, 16 years at Verizon, in the security business. ran the data breach investigations team, so that was a great honor in my career, yeah. >> John: So, you called strategy, 'cause they didn't want you to use the word cyber security on your title on LinkedIn in case they spearfish you, is that right, no? (laughs) >> Jonathan: You know, having started my career as a US foreign service officer, as a victim of the OPM data breach, everything about me is out there. >> Yeah. (laughs) >> I live in a perfect universe about how do you defend your identity when everything about you's been compromised to begin with? >> Some of these stories, I had a CUBE guest talk about LinkedIn, and attackers involved in spearfishing, and the efforts that people go into to attack that critical resources inside the parameter. This is a big problem. This is the problem with cyber warfare and security, and crime. >> Yes. Talk about that dynamic, 'cause this is, we always talk about the cloud change, the perimeter, of course. >> Sure. >> More than ever, this is really critical. >> Jonathan: Fundamentally, as we begin going into digital transformation and notions about where data is today and the nature of computing, everything has changed, and the notion of a traditional perimeter has changed as well. I'm going to borrow a great analogy from my friend, Ed Amoroso, and he said, "Look, let's pretend "this is your traditional enterprise network, "and all your assets are in there. "And we all agree that that perimeter firewall "is being probed everyday by nation state actors, "organized criminal syndicates, hacktivists, anybody. "Everyone's probing that environment." It's also dissolving because we've got staffers inside there using shadow IT, so they're opening up that firewall as well. Then you've got applications and portals that need to be accessed by your stakeholders, your vendors, your customers. And so that traditional wall is gradually eroding, yet, that's where all of our data is, right? And against this environment, you've got this group, this unstoppable force, as Ed calls it. These nation-state actors, these organized crime, these hacktivist groups, all highly sophisticated. And we all agree, that with time and effort, they can all penetrate that traditional perimeter. We know that because that's why we hire pin testers, and red teamers, to demonstrate how to get into that network and how to protect that. So if that's the case, that we have this force, and they're going to break in eventually, why are we still spending all of our time and effort to defend this traditional perimeter that's highly vulnerable? Well, the answer is, of course, that we need to distribute these workloads, into multiple clouds, into multi hybrid cloud solutions. The challenge has been, well, how do you do that with enough control and visibility and detection as you have with a traditional perimeter, because a lot of folks just simply don't trust that type of deployment. >> That's the state of the, I mean, that's the state of our problem. How to deal with the complexity of IT, with digital transformation, as it becomes so complicated, and so important, at the same time. Yet, cloud is also on the horizon, it's here. We see the results of Amazon Web Services, see what Azure is doing, Google, et cetera, et cetera. And some companies are doing their own cloud. So, you have this new model, cloud computing. Data driven applications. And it's complex, but does that change the security paradigm? How does the complexity play into it? >> Jonathan: Absolutely, so, complexity has always been the enemy of security. And at Fortinet, what we essentially do is that we help companies understand and manage complexity to manage risk. So complexity is only going to increase. So digital transformation, the widespread adoption of digital technology is to enable exponential explosive productivity growth. Societal level changes, right? Also, massively expand the inter-connective nature of our society. More and more connections, accelerated cycles across the board, greater levels of complexity. The challenge is going to be not about whether we're moving to the cloud, everyone is going to move into the cloud, that is the basis of computing moving next. So in the Australian government, the US government, all of the agencies have a cloud-first migration initiative. It's not about whether, it's not about, it's really about when. So how you move forward with moving your computing, your workloads into the cloud? In many ways it goes back to fundamentals about risk management. It's about understanding your users and your systems, the criticality, the applications you're associated with. And understanding what can you move into the cloud, and what do you keep on-prem, in a private cloud, as it were? >> I want to ask you more about global, more about cybersecurity, but first, take a step back and set the table. What is the holistic and the general trend, in cybersecurity today? What's going on in the landscape, and what are the core problems people are optimizing for? >> Sure. >> So, across my 20-odd years in cyber, what we've seen consistently has been the acceleration of the volume, the complexity, and the variety of cyber threats. So, 10 years ago, 2007 or so, there were about 500 threat factors; today, we're north of 5000. Back at that point, there were maybe 200 vendors; today, we're north of 5000 vendors. There was less than a billion dollars of cybersecurity spent; today, we're north of 80 billion dollars spent. And yet, the same challenges pervade. And what's happening now, they're only becoming more accelerated. So in the threat environment, the criminal environment, the nation-state threat actors, they're all becoming more sophisticated. They're all sharing information! (laughs) They're sharing TTP, and they're sharing it on a highly effective marketplace: the dark web cyber crime marketplace is an effective mechanism of sharing information, of matching threat actors to targets. So the frequency, the variety, the intelligence of attacks, automated ransomware attacks, is only going to grow. Across the board, all of us on this side of the fence, our challenge is going to be, how do we effectively address security at speed and scale? And that's the key. Because you can affect security very well, in very discreet systems, networks, facilities. But how do you do it from the IOT edge? From the home area network, the vehicle area network, the personal area network? To the enterprise network, to then, to a hybrid cloud. A highly distributed ecosystem. And how do you have visibility and scale across that, when the interval of detection, between the detonation of malware, to the point of irrecoverable damage, is in seconds. >> So, tons of attack vectors, but, also, I would add, to complicate the situation further is, the service area, you mentioned IOT. We've seen examples of IOT increasing more avenues in. Okay, so you've got more surface area, more attack vectors with technology. Malware, we see that in ransomware, certainly, number one. But it's not just financial gain, there's also this terrorism involved. >> Absolutely. It's not just financial services get the cash, and embarrass the company, it's, I want to take down that power plant. So, is there a common thread? I mean, every vertical is going to have their own, kind of situation, contextually. But is there a common thread across the industries, that cybersecurity, is there a baseline, that you guys are attacking, that problems are being solved? Can you talk about that? >> Sure. >> So, at the heart of that is a convergence of operational technologies and information technology. Operational technologies were never designed to be IP enabled, they were air gapped. Never designed to be integrated and interconnected, with information technology systems. The challenge has been, as you said, is that as you go through digital transformation, become more interconnected, how do you understand when a thermostat has gone offline, or a conveyor belt has gone offline, or a furnace is going out of control? How do you understand that the HVAC system for the operating theater, the surgery theater, is operating properly? Now we have this notion of functional safety, and you have to marry that with cybersecurity. So, in many ways, the traditional approaches are still relevant today. Understanding what systems you have, the users that use them, and what's happening, in that. And detect those anomalies and to mitigate that, in a timely fashion? Those same themes are still relevant. It's just that they're much, much larger now. >> John: Let's get back to the perimeter erosion issue because one of the things that we're seeing on theCUBE is digital transformations out there. And that's, I kicked a lot of buzzwords out there, but certainly, it's relevant. >> Yeah. People are transforming to digital business. Peter Burroughs had research, we keep on top of those all of the time. And it's, a lot involves IT. Business process, putting data to work, all that good stuff, transforming the business, drive revenue. But security is more coarse. And sometimes we're seeing it unbundled from IT, and we're reporting directly to the board level, or CEO level. That being said, how do you solve this? I'm a digital transformation candidate, I'm doing it, and I'm mindful of security all the time. How do I solve the security problem, cyber security problem? Just prevention, other things? What's the formula? >> Okay, so at the heart of cybersecurity is risk management. So digital transformation is the use of digital technologies to drive exponential productivity gains across the board. And it's about data driven decision making, versus intuitive led human decision making. So at the heart of digital transformation is making sure that the business leaders have their timely information to make decisions, in a much more timely fashion, so they have better business outcomes and better quality of life. Safety, if you will. And so the challenge is about, how do you actually enable digital transformation, it comes down to trust. And so, again, across the pillars of digital transformation. And they are, first, IOT. These devices that are connected collect, share information, to make decisions. The sheer volume of data, zettabytes of data, that will be generated in the process of these transactions. Then you have ubiquitous access. And you're going to have five G, you have this notion of centralized and distributed computing. How will you enable those decisions to be made, across the board? And then how do you secure all of that? And so, at the heart of this is the ability to have, automated, that's key, automated deep visibility and control across an ecosystem. So you've got to be able to understand, at machine speed, what is happening. >> John: How do I do that, what do I do? Do I buy a box, is it mindset, is it everything? How do I solve, how do I stop cyber attacks? >> You need a framework of automated devices that are integrated. So, a couple of things you're going to need: you're going to need to have the points, across this ecosystem, where you can detect. And so, whether that is a firewall on that IOT edge, or in the home, or that's an internally segmented firewall, across the enterprise network into the hybrid cloud. You're also going to need to have intelligence, and by intelligence, that means, you're going to need a partner who has a global infrastructure of telemetry, to understand what's happening in real time, in the wild. And once you collect that data, you're going to need to have intelligence analysts, researchers, that can put into context what that data means, because data doesn't come into information on its own, you actively have to have someone to analyze that. So you have to have a team, at Fortinet, we have hundreds of people who do just that. And once you have the intelligence, you've got to have a way of utilizing it, right? And so, then you've got to have a way of orchestrating that intelligence into that large framework of integrated devices, so you can act. And in order to do that, effectively, you have to do that at machine speed. And that's what I mean by speed and scale. The big challenge about security is the ability to have deep visibility, and control, at speed, at machine speed. And at scale, from that IOT edge, way across, into the cloud. >> Scale is interesting, so what I want to ask you about Fortinet, how are you guys, at Fortinet, solving this problem for customers? Because you have to, is it, the totality of the offering, is it, some technology here, and again, you have 5000 attack vectors, you mentioned that earlier, and you did the defense report at Verizon, in your former jobs. You kind of know the landscape. What does Fortinet do, what are you guys, how do you solve that problem? >> So, from day one, every CSO has been trying to build a fabric, we didn't call it that. But from my first packet-filtering firewall, to my first stateful firewall, then I employed intrusion detection systems, and all of that generated far more lists I can manage, and I deployed an SEM. And then I went to intrusion prevention. And I had to look at logs, so I went to an SIEM. And when that didn't work, I deployed sandboxing, which was called dynamic malware inspection, back in the day, and then when that didn't work, I had to go to analytics. And then, I had to bring in third party technology, third party intelligence feats, and all along, I hoped I was able to make those firewalls, and defense sensors, that platform, integrated with intelligence, work somehow to detect the attack, and mitigate that in real time. Now, what we essentially do, in the Fortinet security fabric is, we reduce that complexity. We bring that level of-- >> And by the way. >> John: You're Ed Hoff, you're reacting in that mode, you're just, I got to do this, I got to add that to it. So it's almost like sprawling, software sprawl. You're just throwing solutions at the wall. >> Right, and a lot of that time, no one knows if their vices are properly configured, no one has actually done the third party technology integration. No one has actually met the requirements that were deployed three years ago, there are requirements today, there are requirements three years from now. And so, that's a huge level of complexity, and I think, at the heart of that complexity. That's reflected in the fact that, we're missing the basic elements in security today. The reason, the large data attacks, and the data breaches, didn't come because of advanced malware, they didn't happen off nation-state threats. These were known vulnerabilities, the patches existed, they weren't patched! In my experience, 80% of all the attacks could be mitigated through simple to intermediate controls. >> Deploying the patches, doing the job. >> Complexity. Patch management sounds easy, it's hard. Some applications, there is no patch available. You can't take things offline, you have to have virtual patches, there are unintended consequences. And there are a lot of things that don't happen. There's the handoff between the IT team and the security team, and it adds complexity. And if you think about this, if our current teams are so overwhelmed that they cannot mitigate known attacks, exploits against known vulnerabilities. How are they going to be able to grapple with the complexity of managing zettabytes of data, with an ecosystem that spans around the world, and operates in milliseconds, where, now, it's not just digital issues, it's health, safety, physical security. How can we trust a connected vehicle, is it secure or not? >> Jon, talk about the digital transformation for industries. As we talked earlier about the commonalities of the industries, they all have their own unique use cases, contextually, I mean, oil and gas, financial services, healthcare, EDU, they all have different things. What is the digital transformation objective and agenda and challenges and opportunities for financial services, healthcare, education, and the public sector? >> So, digital transformation has some similar themes, across industry verticals. For financial services, it's about omnichannel customer engagement, it's about owning that customer experience, how will a financial service company be able to reach each connected consumer? Highly personalized way, highly customized services, suited for that customer so that they can interact, at any time, that they desire, on any device, any media they desire, across the entire experience? For when that person first becomes employed, and has a first checking account, to the point that they retire, the notion around digital transformation for financial services. How do we go about, as an FS company, to reach that customer, in an omnidirectional, omnichannel way, and maximize that experience? How do we do that with highly personalized, highly customized service, self-service, if you will, all with security, across massive amounts of data? How do you ensure that that's the challenge? And then you have to do that in a very distributed ecosystem, from the ATM, home, from the vehicle, and as we move into digitally enabled societies, from the connected car, all of those places will have transactions, all of that will have to be the purveyance of financial services companies. So the level of complexity that they're going to have to grapple with is going to be immense. >> John: And the app, too, is basically the teller, 'cause the app is driving everything, too. It brings up, essentially, the argument, not argument, our thesis, your thesis, on the obvious, which is, the perimeter is eroding. It's the app on the phone. (laughs) Okay, healthcare. Healthcare is one of those things that is near and dear to my heart because, I remember back in the days, when I was younger, HIPAA compliance, it created all of these databases. Creating complexity, but also, structured things. So, healthcare is being disrupted, and security is obviously concerned. More ransomware in hospitals, you see, everywhere these days, big, big issue. >> Yeah, so, challenges in healthcare are twofold. On the one hand, their targets are ransomware because that's where money is. They have compliance challenges, but in a very interesting way, based off of the research we've seen, is that healthcare is a lot more kin to the intelligence community than any other. Because it has insider threats. Large amounts, 7 out of 10 healthcare data breaches are the result of insider threat. So, like financial services, and the other verticals in digital transformation, again, it comes to the notion of the connected consumer and the connected citizen. How do you make sure that that person can be touched and served, irrespective of whether they're in the home, or in another healthcare facility, and all of their devices that are IP-enabled are safe and secure, and to monitor that. And to keep that secure, across a large distributed ecosystem, and for a long period of time, as well. >> Education, talk about insider threats probably there, too. Education is a huge vertical with a lot of, sure, students, but also the general EDU market is hot too. >> Jon: And it's incredibly challenging, because the environment ranges from kindergarten, preschool, to high school, to higher levels of education, that are government funded, with classified intelligence, and materials, and research labs. And the educational environment, how do you provide security, confidentiality, and availability, in an ecosystem that was designed for the free flow and access of information, and how do you do that across a highly distributed ecosystem? Again, constant themes of complexity, volumes of data, and personalized and customized services. >> John: And you got to be able to turn those services on fast, and turn them off and on. Okay, finally, my favorite area is the federal, or public sector market, of course, that also includes higher ed, whatnot. But really government and federal. Public sector, seeing govcloud booming. What are some of the challenges with digital transformation in federal? >> So the hard part of federal government is the notion of service to the connected citizen. And that connected citizen now wants to be able to access city hall, their members of Congress, the White House, in a digital way, at any time, on any device, so that they can log their opinion. It is a cacophony of demand from across the board. From state, local, to federal, that every citizen now demands access to services, on any digital media, and, at the same time, for everything from potholes, and snow removal, and trash removal, those are the types of services that are needed. So, government, now, needs to provide services in the digital way, and provide security across that. >> John: In respect to those verticals, especially public sector and education, transparency is critical. You can't hide, the government can't hide. They provide citizens connectivity, and services. There's no more excuses, they have to go faster. This is a big dynamic. >> I think that we all have expectations of what it is to grow up in a digital world. My children have only grown up in a digital world. They expect things to happen at digital speed, at machine speed, they expect a high level of customized services, so that when they go, and interact with a government agency or a vendor, that vendor, that service provider, needs to know his or her preference. And will automate that and deliver those services in an incredible fashion. As I said earlier, when my kids talk about, when they learned about Moses, and heard about Moses coming down from the mountain with tablets, they thought that he was an Apple user. You know, there was no notion of other types of tablets. The connected citizen is a digital citizen, with digital demands and expectations. And our job in cyber is to enable the digital transformation so that all of those things can be delivered, and expectations met. >> Talk about the dynamic between machines and humans, because you mentioned patches, this is, you could argue it's a human mistake. But also, you mentioned automation earlier. Balance between automation, and using machines and humans. Because prevention and risk management seem to be the axis of the practice. It used to be all prevention, now it's a lot more risk management. There's still a human component in here. How are you guys talking about that, and how is that rendering itself, as a value proposition for customers? >> Sure, so it's just, humans are the essence. Both the challenge, in so many cases, we have faulty passwords, we have bad hygiene. That's why security awareness training is so critical, right, because humans are part of the problem, on one end. On the other end, within the sock, humans are grappling with huge amounts of data, and trying to understand what is malicious, what needs to be mitigated, and then prioritizing that. For us, it's about helping reduce the complexity of that challenge, and helping automate those areas that should be automated, so that humans can act better and faster, as it were. >> We have Jonathan Nguyen with Fortinet. I wanted to ask you about the ecosystem, you mentioned that earlier, and also the role of CSOs, chief information security officers, and CIOs, essentially, they're the executives in charge of security. So, you have the executives in charge of the risk management, don't get hacked, don't get breached. And also, the ecosystem partners. So you have a very interesting environment right now where people are sharing information, you mentioned that earlier, as well. So you got the ecosystem of sharing, and you have executives in charge of running their businesses effectively, and not have security breaches happen. What's happening, what are they working on, what are they key things that chief security officers are working on with CIOs, what specifics are on their plate? And what's the ecosystem doing around that, too? >> So digital transformation dominates all discussions today. And every CSO has two masters. They have a productivity master, which is always the business side of the house, and they have a security master. Which is ensuring that reasonable level of security, in the advent, and managing risk, right? And that's the challenge, how do you balance that? So, across the board, CSOs are being challenged to make sure that the applications, those digital transformation initiatives are actually occurring. At the same time, in the advent of a data breach, understanding the risk and managing the risk. How do you tell your board of directors, your governments, that you're not only compliant, but that you have handled risk to a reasonable level of assurance? And that means, in my opinion, across my experience, you've got to be able to demonstrate a couple of things. One, you have identified and adopted, with third party implementation, and attestation, of recommended best practices and controls. Second, you have implemented and used best-in-class products and technology, like Fortinet. Products that have gone through clearances, gone through common criteria, where things are properly certified. And that's how you demonstrate a reasonable level, it's really about risk management. Understanding what level of risk you will tolerate, what level of risk you will mitigate, and what level of risk you're going to transfer. And I think that's the discussion at the board level today. >> So, make people feel comfortable. But also have a partner that can actually do the heavy lifting on new things. 'Cause there's always going to be a new attack vector out there. >> Absolutely, so, I think the key to it is understanding what you're really good at. And so one of the questions that I ask every CSO is that, when you look at technology, what is it that your organization is really good at? Is it using technology, operationalizing that experience? Or is it really about ensuring that that firewall is integrated with your sim, that the sim works in trying to create your own threat intelligence. And I think one of the things that we do better than anybody else is that we reduce the level of complexity, of that allowing our clients to really focus on providing security, using best-in-class technologies to do that. >> John: That's awesome. I want to just kind of go off the board, on a question that's a little bit more societal oriented, but it's mostly here in the US. You're seeing cryptocurrencies booming, blockchain, whatnot, and it is really kind of two vectors there, that conversation, it's attacks and regulation. So the regulatory environment in DC, on the hill, looks at tech companies these days, oh my god, the big bad, Google, Apple, Facebook. And that's kind of today's narrative. But in general, technology can be an innovation opportunity. So around cyber, it's a little bit more relevant. As govcloud becomes much more ingrained in public sector, what is the regulatory environment out there? Is it helping, is it hurting? What's your thoughts? >> Jonathan: I think, on the most part, it's helping, because regulatory and compliance environments typically lag behind technology. And that's been consistent across not just cyber, but just every field of human endeavor. And I think in cryptocurrency we're beginning to see the effects as governments around the world begin to grapple with, what does this mean, if they have no visibility, insight, or control, over a currency, and we're seeing that in East Asia today. We're seeing that in China, we're seeing that in South Korea. It will have implications, I mean, the question you have to ask, with regards to cryptocurrencies is, will governments allow a non-controlled currency to operate in their marketplace? And given that we are a more integrated and digital marketplace, unless it's adopted on a global basis, is it really compelling? Now, blockchain technology is compelling; what is going to be powering that is a different question. I think that regu-- >> And also. >> The profiteering mode of hackers, which, we talked before we came on camera, is a central part of the dynamic. So if you have a flourishing ecosystem of cryptocurrency, aka Bitcoin, you have, now, a clearinghouse for payments. And that's where ransomware is mostly paid off, in Bitcoin. >> Absolutely. So this is an interesting dynamic, I'm just trying to get a read from how that plays into some of these cybersecurity dynamics. >> I think cybersecurity is highly dynamic, as you said. It is move and countermove, active threat adversaries, active marketplaces coming up with new challenges. I think, for us, on this side of the fence, it's really about making sure, getting the fundamentals right first. I often tell people, first, do you really have all of the security controls in place? Do you really know what's operating in your system? Do you understand your users? Have you done the vulnerability scans? Where are you in those basic things, first? I mean, if you do the basics, you'll mitigate, eight, nine, out of 10 attacks. >> John: Well the costs are going up, obviously, we talked about it, global, earlier. The global impact is interesting, and that's not to say cloud is global, but you now have different regional aspects of cryptocurrencies as one example. But yeah, data breach is another, look at GEPR, the penalties involved. (laughs) And certain countries in Europe, it's going to be astronomical. So there seems to be a tax involved here. So the motivations are multifold. >> So, the motivations in cyber crime. Always consistent, whether they're monetary gain, social media gain, or some sort of political gain. And I think the way you address that is that you cannot take down the marketplace, you cannot take down the physical criminals themselves. You're going to have to take away the ability to monetize, or make gains from cyber attacks. And the way I look at it is that, if you make it so complex to actually launch a successful attack, and then, to go beyond that, and monetize what you've gained, or compromised, you effectively take away the root motivation for cyber crime. And that's, it's an interesting thought, because no one talks about that, because at an industry level, do you really have the ability to, what I call, affect the trajectory of cyber crime? That's a very different way to look at it. >> John: And it's interesting, in Jeff's position, he's basically saying, make it more complex, that'll be more effective against cybersecurity, yet, digital transformation is supposed to make it easier. With building blocks in cloud, you can almost argue that if you can make it easy to deploy in cloud, it's inherently complex. So, creating a very easy to use, complex environment, or complex system, seems to be the architecture. >> The essence of cyber, I think, moving forward, is managing complexity. If you can manage complexity then you have taken complexity and made it your advantage. Because now the cyber criminal has to figure out, where is the data? Is it in the traditional data center, that enterprise environment? Is it a multi-cloud environment, if so, which node, and if I'm successful at compromising one node, I can't get to the next node, because the security fabric separated it. >> John: Jon, the final question, 2018, what's your outlook for the year, for CSOs, and companies with cyber, right now? >> I think it's going to be an exciting time. I think, is there going to be a focus back on basics? Because before we take this next evolutionary leap, in terms of cyber, and computing, and the digital nature of our society, we've got to get the basics done right. And I think the way Fortinet is going, our ability to use the fabric, to help manage risk, and reduce risk, is going to be the path forward. >> Jonathan Nguyen, with Fortinet, former author of the Data Breach Investigation Report, which I've been a big fan of, been reading it for years. Super document, congratulations, it must have been fun working on that. >> It was the high point of my career, at this point. >> It really was a great doc, it was the Bible of state of the art, state of the union, for cyber security. This is theCUBE, bringing you commentary and coverage of cybersecurity, of course, here, in our Palo Alto studio. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching. (bright music)