>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Fortinet Accelerate 18, brought to you by Fortinet. (upbeat techno music) >> Welcome to Fortinet 20... Welcome to Fortinet Accelerate 2018. I haven't had enough caffeine today. I'm Lisa Martin. I'm joined by my co-host, Peter Burris. Peter, it's theCUBE's second time here at Fortinet Accelerate. We were here last year. Great to be back with you. Some exciting stuff we have heard in the keynote this morning. Cyber security is one of those topics that I find so interesting, 'cause it's so transformative. It permeates every industry, everybody, and we heard some interesting things about what Fortinet is doing to continue their leadership in next generation security. Some of the themes that popped up really speak to the theme of this year's event, which is Strength in Numbers. Ken Xie, their CEO, shared some great, very strong numbers for them. 2017, they reached 1.8 billion in billing, which is a huge growth over the previous year. They acquired nearly 18,000 new customers in 2017, and another thing that I thought was very intriguing was that they protect 90% of the global S&P 100. They have over 330,000 customers, and they share great logos: Apple, Oracle, Coca Cola, et cetera. So, great trajectory that they're on. From a security perspective, digital transformation, security transformation, they have to play hand in hand. What are some of the things that you are seeing and that you're looking forward to hearing on today's show? >> Well, I always liked this show. This is the second year, as you said, that we've done this. One of the reasons I like it is because security is very complex, very hard, highly specialized, and Fortinet does a pretty darn good job of bringing it down to Earth and simplifying it so that people could actually imagine themselves becoming more secure, as a consequence of taking actions along the lines of what Fortinet's doing. So, there's clearly a strong relationship between the notion of digital business and the notion of digital security. The way we describe the difference between a business and digital business is that a digital business uses its data assets differently, and in many respects, it is through security concepts and constructs that you go about privatizing, or making unique, your data, so that it doesn't leave your network when you don't want it to, so it can't be subject to ransomware, so that it isn't compromised in some way by a bad actor. So there's a very, very strong relationship between how we think about digital assets and how we think about security, and what Fortinet's overall approach is is to say, "Look, let's not focus just on the device. "Let's look at the entire infrastructure "and what needs to happen to collect data, "to collect information, across the whole thing," what we call a broad approach as opposed to a deep approach. A broad approach to looking at the problem, with partnerships and working with customers in a differentiated way, so that we can help our clients very quickly recognize, attend, and make problems go away. >> One of the things, too, that is interesting is, you know, we hear so much talk at many other shows about digital transformation, DX, everyone's doing it. They're on some journey. There's now such amorphous environments with Multi-Cloud, IoT, opens the-- It spreads the attack surface. I thought they did a great job this morning of really articulating that very well. I'd love to hear your perspective, and we have some of their customers that are going to be talking to us today, but what is the mix of security transformation as a facilitator or an enabler of true digital business transformation? How do companies do that when, as we were talking earlier, companies, and even Ken said, Ken Xie, the CEO, that lot of companies have 20 to 30 different disparate security products in place that are pointed at different things that aren't integrated. How does a company kind of reconcile security transformation to-- as an enabler of digital business transformation? >> Yeah, and I think that's going to be one of the major themes we hear today, is the process that customers are, in 2018, going to have to accelerate. Does that ring a bell? (laughs) Accelerate... >> Lisa: That's genius. Somebody should use that. >> This journey (laughs)... Accelerate this journey... >> Yeah. >> To employing security and security-related technologies and services, much more effectively within their business. There's so many ways of answering that question, Lisa, but one of the-- Let's start with a simple one. That, increasingly, a company is providing its value proposition to its customer bases, whether they're small, residential, whether they're a consumer, or whether they're other businesses, through a digital mechanism, and that could be e-commerce, as pedestrian as e-commerce, or perhaps recommendation engines, or it could be increasingly digital services that are providing, effectively, a digital twin in the home, and, so, your security, your ability to provide those services and those capabilities that consumers want, if those fundamental, or those services are fundamentally insecure, then your brand, no matter how good the service is, your brand's going to take a hit. So, when you think about what Google's trying to do with Nest, if you think about, you know, in the home, a lot of the things that are going into the home, Amazon Alexa, there is an enormous amount of attention being paid to, is our platform, is our fabric a source of differentiation-- security fabric a source of differentiation in our business? Are we going to be able to look a consumer in the eye, or a B2B company in the eye, and say, "You'll be able to do things with us "that you can't do with others, "because of our security profile." And, increasingly, that's got to be the way that boards of directors and CEOs, and IT professionals need to think, "What can we do differently and better "than our competitors because of our security profile "and the security assets that we've invested in?" That's not the way a lot of people are thinking today. >> Why do you think that is? Because, I think you're spot on with providing security capabilities as a differentiator. There's a lot of competition, especially in the detection phase. Ken Xie talked about that this morning, and there's a lot of of coopetition that needs to happen to help companies with myriad disparate products, but why do you think that is that this security capability as a differentiator hasn't yet, kind of, boiled up to the surface? >> I think it's a number of reasons. Some good, some, obviously, not so good, but the main one is, is that, historically, when a CFO or anybody looked at the assets, they looked at tangible assets of the company, and data was, kind of, yeah, was out there, and it was, yeah, secure that data, but we were still more worried about securing the devices, because the devices were hard assets. We were worried about securing the server, securing the routers, securing, you know, whatever else, the repeaters, whatever else is in your organization, or securing your perimeters. Well, now, as data moves, because of mobile, and Ken told us, that 90% of the traffic now inside of a typical enterprise is through mobile, or through wireless types of mechanisms as opposed to wired, well, it means, ultimately, that the first step that every business has to take is to recognize data as an asset, and understanding what what we're really trying to secure is the role the data's playing in the business. How we're using it to engage customers, how we're using it to engage other businesses, how employees are using it, and very importantly, whether the security products themselves are sharing data in a way that makes all that better, and in a secure way, themselves, because the last thing you want is a vulnerability inside your security platform. >> Yes. >> So, the main reason is is that the industry, in most businesses, they talk a great game about digital business, but they haven't gotten down to that fundamental. It's about your data, and how you treat data as an asset, and how you institutionalize work around that data asset, and how you invest to improve the value, accrete value to that data asset over an extended period of time. >> Something that I'm interested in understanding, and we've got Phil Quade, their CSO, on, later today. >> Peter: Smart guy. >> How the role of the CSO has had to evolve, and I'd love to hear... And you asked a little bit about this earlier, the Fortinet on the Fortinet story. What are you doing, internally, to secure and provide security that all elements of your business need? Because I imagine a customer would want to understand, "Well, tell us how you're doing it. "If you're the leader in this, "in providing the products and the technologies, "are you doing this internally?" >> Well, I think, look, I think going back to what I was just talking about, and we had a great... We had a great conversation with Ken Xie that's going to show up in the broadcast today, it is... I think every technology executive increasingly needs to look at their potential customers, their peers, and their customers, and say, "Here's what I can do, as a consequence of using my stuff, "that you can't do, because you're not using my stuff." And Phil, Phil Quade, needs to look at other CSOs and say, "Here's what I can do "as a CSO, because I use Fortinet, "that you cannot do as a CSO, because you don't." Now, the role of the CSO is changing pretty dramatically, and there's a lot of reasons for that, but if we think about the number of individuals that, again, we go back to this notion of data as an asset and how we organize our work around that data. We're hearing about how the CIO's role is changing and how the chief digital officer's changing, or the chief data officer or the CSO. We've got a lot of folks that are kind of circling each other about what really and truly is the fundamental thing that we're trying to generate a return on. >> Lisa: Right. >> When I think about the job of a chief, the job of a chief is to take capital from the board, capital from the ownership, and create net new value, and whether it's a CIO doing that, or anybody. And, so, what Phil's job, or what the CSO's job is is to also find ways to show how investments in the business's security is going to create a differentiating advantage over time. Working with the chief digital officer, the chief data officers and others, but there's a lot of complexity in who does what, but at the end of the day, the CSO's job is to make sure that the data and access to the data is secure, and that the data and the ability to share the data supports the business. >> You mentioned the word "complexity" in the context of the CSO and some of the senior roles, where data is concerned. One of the things I'm interested to hear from some of our guests today, those at Fortinet, and we've got the CSO on we mentioned, and we've also got John Madison, their Senior Vice President of Products and Solutions. We've got their global strategist on security, Derek Manky, but we also have some customers. One from Tri-City, and another from Clark County School District, which is here in Vegas, and I'm curious to understand how they're dealing with complexity in their infrastructure. You know, we talked so much about, and they... have already started today, about Cloud, IoT, multi-cloud, mobile, as you talked about. As the infrastructure complexity increases, how does that change the role of the C-Suite to facilitate the right changes and the right evolution to manage that complexity in a secure way. So I'm very interested to hear how that internal complexity on the infrastructure side is being dealt with by the guys and the gals at the top who need to ensure that, to your point, their data and information assets are protected. We've got some great examples, I think, we're going to hear today, in three verticals in particular: education, healthcare, and financial services. And education really intrigued me because it's been a long time since I've been in college, but there's this massive evolution of smart classrooms, it's BYOD, right? And, there's so many vulnerabilities that are being brought into a school district, so I'd love to understand how do you protect data in that sense when you have so many devices that are connecting to an environment that just drives up complexity, and maybe opens... Perforates their perimeter even more. >> Well, I mean, you know, one of the... We're as a nation, we are living through a recent experience of some of the new tensions that a lot of the school districts are facing, and it could very well be, that voice or facial recognition or other types of things become more important, so I, look. Large or small, well-funded, not well-funded, young or old, consumer or business, all companies are going to have to understand and envision what their digital footprint's going to look like. And as they envision what that digital footprint, companies or institutions, as they envision what that digital footprint's going to look like and what they want to achieve with that digital footprint, they're going to have to make commensurate investments in security, because security used to be, as Ken said when he talked about the three stages, security used to be about perimeter. So, it was analogous to your building. You're either in your building or you're not in your building. You're in your network, or you're not in your network. But, today, your value proposition is how do you move data to somebody else? Today, your security profile is who is inside your building right now? Are they doing things that are good or bad? It's not a "I know everybody, I know where they are, "and I know what they're doing." We are entering into the world where digital business allows us to envision or to execute a multitude of more complex behaviors, and the security platform has to correspondingly evolve and adjust, and that is a hard problem. So, listening to how different classes of companies and different classes of institutions are dealing with this given different industries, different budgets, different levels of expertise, is one of the most important things happening in the technology industry right now. >> Yeah, it's that, how do you get balance between enabling what the business needs to be profitable and grow and compete, and managing the risk? >> And, how... and what is a proper level of investment? Do I have too many vendors, do I have not enough vendors? All those... all of those issues, it's increasing, we have to get-- We have to make our security capacity, our security capabilities, dramatically more productive. And that is going to be one of the major gates on how fast all of these technologies evolve. Can we introduce new AI? Can we introduce faster hardware? Can we introduce new ways of engaging? Can we bring biology and kind of that bio-to-silicon interface and start building things around that? Well, there's a lot of things that we can do, but if we can't secure it, we probably shouldn't do it. >> Lisa: Absolutely. >> So, a security profile is going to be one of the very natural and necessary, reasonable gates on how fast the industry evolves over the next 20-30 years. And that's going to have an enormous bearing and impact on how well we can solve some of the complex problems that we face. >> Well, I'm excited to co-host today with you, Peter. I think we're going to have some great, very informative conversations from some of Fortinet's leaders, to their customers, to their channel partners, and really get a great sense of the things that they're seeing in the field and how that's going to be applied internally to really have security be that enabler of true business transformation. >> Peter: Excellent. >> Alright. Well, stick around. I'm Lisa Martin. Let's hope I don't screw up the outro. Hosting with Peter all day. We're excited that you're joining us live from Fortinet Accelerate 2018. Stick around. We'll be right back. (upbeat techno music)