(upbeat music) >> Welcome back to Las Vegas, guys and girls. We're so happy that you're with us. This is our first full day of coverage live on theCube at AWS re:Invent '22. We're in Vegas, as I said at the Venetian Expo one of the biggest places to host, and there's probably about 50,000 people here or so. Lisa Martin and Dave Vellante Dave, we've had such great conversations. We talked about data, data, data. Every company is a data company. The most important thing is to make sure that data is accessible, that there's insights gained from it, but that it's protected and recoverable should anything happen. >> Yeah, security is the most important topic right now. We all know that it's the number one priority. The Cloud has changed the security model. the shared responsibility model is great, but at the same time, now you got shared responsibilities across multiple clouds, your developers are being asked to do more, right? It kind of the audit is like the last line of defense. So what the ecosystem does with AWS is really make the CISO's job easier. As opposed to, I mean AWS is a friendly place for security companies and I'm excited to talk about that. >> Yeah, we're going to be unpacking that. Rick Holtman is here, the VP of Advertising and Media Security at Human Security. Rick, welcome to theCUBE. >> Oh, thank you so much. Thanks for having me on. >> Pleasure to have you on here. So talk to us about Human Security. What do you do, what are the differentiators and what's in the name? >> Sure. Human is a cybersecurity company. It's been around for about 12 years right now, and our mission is truly to disrupt the economics of cyber crime. And right now, businesses are under attack like they have not been before. There's been a proliferation of bots on site that are truly hitting people's businesses. And what everyone will understand is that when bots hit your site and permeate your business, you'll never end up with a positive business outcome. >> Let's just say. What are in terms of competitive differentiators, when you're in customer conversations, what are those top three things that you say, this is why you go Human. >> Yeah, and that's great. This is why you go Human. We have a tremendous sensor network and what that gives us is observability. Because of our clients and partners, we're actually able to see 20 trillion transactions a week that we filter. And what that does is enables us to look across a broad spectrum of industry. Because of our partner networks, we're able to see all the media transacted across this ecosystem. And what we're working to do is preserve and protect that. So when we work with an SSP, DSP, ad servers and truly the pillars of technology across media, those are our core clients. And we very quickly, in under 10 milliseconds, let them know is this a bot or a human being you're about to serve an ad to, which is paramount to saving them money and not wasting their precious ad dollars. >> So what am I buying from you? Is it a subscription? Explain that. >> Sure. You're buying a subscription to the Human Defense Platform, and across that platform we've got multiple cyber tools. And what we do is we'll take different combinations of those tools and create a specific solution to address a use case. Each one of these businesses is very unique, so we had to be very flexible and malleable with the tools that we use and be able to create custom solutions, which is really what sets us apart in market. >> What are some of the key use cases that you're helping customers to address? >> Sure. It can be anything from simply guarding a website, and actually providing insights and the ability to mitigate bots, it can be guarding against account takeover, form fills. There are so many ways and attack vectors right now for people to get us at that we've got multiple disciplinary ways of looking at how to deploy solutions. It is going to continue to grow because we're seeing more and more new platforms and new types of innovation. A great example is in-game advertising. It is very new, but the industry is starting to look at it and say, hey, we know as growth comes, we're going to see fraud. How do we get out in front of that? How do we make sure that we don't have the same issue we had with CTV? Explosive growth happen before standards were in place, and now we're playing catch up and it's a huge issue. >> How are you doing that as the fraudsters are just getting more and more sophisticated? >> And that's really the problem. I think you hit it on the head. They'll continually change how they attack. They'll continually put resources behind it. And that's why I talk about disrupting the economics of cyber crime because the more we're able to mitigate and stop this, we actually make the cost of attack more and more expensive. Eventually, they're going to move on to a softer target and we want to harden up all of our clients so they're not that soft target. >> I always say, you're in the denominator business You get the bigger denominator, less value so they'll move on to somewhere else. What is your secret sauce? Is it your data? Is it your humans? >> You know, it's actually really three pillars. Part of what we talked about, which is observability. How much we're able to see because of the vast view through our partner network. And that's the other piece is this partner network. So we have what we'll call collective protection because we have so many different data inputs and understanding or what we'll call signal that we're able to interpret. And that is really one of our large differentiators. The last piece is disruption. So we'll use both the signal, our network, and truly go after these fraudsters and actually penalize 'em. And we are responsible for partly one of the largest ad fraud take downs, and someone is sitting in jail today because of it. >> Can you explain the anatomy of an ad hack? Like, what's that look like? I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of different profiles, but what's a common thing? >> And there's a few different profiles, right? One could simply be bots hitting your site, your homepage, right? That could skew data that will be used by a marketing team to make strategic decisions for a business. Form fills, account takeovers, there's all these different types of attack vectors. And then what we also specialize in across the programmatic industry is really reading what we'll call a bid stream. All these pieces of data that are going to come in, and that's how we can actually take a look at the device, the IP, and some of these signals when you put them all together, they give us a true picture of is this a human being or an automated bot swarm trying to permeate a business? >> Okay, and the automated bot swarm. So take it from the hacker's point of view. What's their objective of, you know, hitting you with those bots? What happens after they flood the zone? >> It really depends what they want. In certain cases it could be to actually take over someone's account and buy things. It can be, again, hitting the marketing component and actually driving differentiation on someone's site with form fills and surveys. So there's lots of different ways that they come to us. Inside the bid streams we're able to stop quickly because we're really high up in the actual food chain of that technology. So before some of these ad servers make a single decision, they'll make a call to Human and we'll quickly tell them serve this ad or do not. >> And the profile is largely criminals, not so much nation-state attack, or is it? >> Well, it really could be a little bit of everybody. That's the toughest part to tell. I would say we deal mostly with criminals more than I think nation-states. And people that are simply going after money, and when they see soft targets and people that don't have either they're site hardened or a true understanding of what they're fighting against, they get taken advantage of very quickly. >> What are some of the positive business outcomes that your customers are achieving? Maybe you have a favorite customer story example that you think really shines light on the value that Human is delivering. >> Sure. There's a huge customer inside the media ecosystem, and they truly serve as the gatekeepers or barriers to a lot of fraud. They look at Human as a strategic partner to make sure that when we bring on customers, they're all above board and we are not actually allowing anyone to permeate this advertising and media ecosystem with fraud. So we work hand in glove with lots of the largest platforms across media to really make sure this ecosystem is protected as it can be. >> So- >> You have the sets... Oh, go ahead please. I'm sorry. >> I was going to say, but you do more than media, is that right? >> Absolutely. We have a tremendous enterprise side of our business as well. And that is looking at financials, hospitality companies, travel companies. We really work across a full ecosystem. Bots aren't siloed. They don't care what industry you're in. So we set up industry expertise and domain expertise both across the media spectrum, as well as other components so that we can go as deep as we need to to really mitigate this. >> So you've got this huge observation space, this kind of sensor network if you will. what's the proportionality between the number of channels that we've seen evolve, and the way that that attackers are approaching the hacks? >> Sure. I think, you know, when we look at channels or platforms, the moment a new platform opens up, it gets attacked and we're continually seeing this. So the minute there is money moving towards any sort of industry, you'll see fraud right behind it. So we very carefully track industries, and we make sure we understand the changes and evolutions that are happening so we can get out in front. And a great example is in-game advertising and audio in-game advertising. They're brand new and we're starting to see money shift there for the first time. So those are the companies that have come to us immediately and said, hey, we know what's coming next. The money's here, fraud's on the way, how can Human help us? >> We haven't talked about 5G. It's rare that we don't talk about 5G, but how is that going to affect your customers? >> 5G is really going to give everybody ubiquity in terms of access, right? The more access we have, it allows your device `to become an attack vector. >> It's going to open up more channels. >> Rick: That's right. That's right. >> And so how are you planning as that becomes more mainstream to help customers combat that? As things just keep changing, there's so much flux going on. >> And that's it. You know, cyber is polymorphic. It will continue to change on us. So we are constantly evolving, and one of the things I always like to talk about with Human is the depth of the talent inside the company. And we source cyber talent globally, truly globally. All over the world, we have humans working with extreme expertise. So we've got this global perspective of what's happening everywhere in the world right now. And we're really leveraging that tremendously to fight the economics of cyber crime. >> How are you helping with your expertise at Human, companies address the massive skills gap in cybersecurity? >> Well, that's exactly it. I think there's a lot of education going on. When we meet customers or prospects, we make sure they understand the gravity of the situation and make sure we can help them see and provide insights so they understand who's attacking them, what they're being attacked with, and how to fight back. >> So what's the next step for your technology approach? How should we think about your roadmap? What are your customers asking you 'cause it's hard, right? Like you said, it's polymorphic. Sometimes it's hard to predict, but at the same time, you know, it's like you defend against yourself. You know, you say, okay let's flip the equation. You know, where are weaknesses? What are you guys thinking about in the future? >> Sure, it's a great question. We've continued to build out the Human defense platform. We merged with another company about six months ago, and we just acquired a company as well. The reason we continue on this growth path is to continue to put products and services in place so that we can continue to grow and really actually mitigate against all the different potential attacks out there. So we'll continue to add products, we'll continue to add services because as we see more and more attacks coming, we've got a greater understanding of the how and the why. So we're actually building out products that specifically hit these new pockets in industry so we can get there first and really create a beachhead. >> And how do you work with AWS? >> Sure, AWS is strategic partner and they've done a great job of helping lean in with us. We're not only working with AWS, but working across their ecosystem and working with some of their partners as well and some of their clients as well. So we're really standing up this Human Defense Platform for our partners and direct clients as well. >> Can you give us any examples of that? >> I'm not really allowed to name names when it comes to that. I apologize, but it's truly across their entire partner network. >> Got it. What are some of the things that you've heard? We're only at day one, obviously of re:Invent '22. Anything that you've heard today, maybe during the keynote or some of the things on the show floor that really excite you about the direction that AWS is moving, and the opportunities that it's going to deliver to Human? >> Sure. Absolutely. I think one of the things that was mentioned today was their clean room initiative, and I think that is an excellent place where Human has a great fit. And I think that our filtering technology and our layer there will really make sure that a clean room stays clean, and that the data that is actually joined and used is pure data and not rife with any bots. >> Got it. Humansecurity.com. Last question, Rick. If you had a bumper sticker to put on a fancy shiny new car and it was about Human, what would it say? >> It would say, know who's real. Keep it human. >> Love it. Know who's real, keep it human. Rick, thank you so much for joining us on the program. >> Thanks so much for having me. >> Introducing Human Security to our audience. We appreciate that. Really exciting stuff and so needed, especially in today's dynamic cyber landscape. We appreciate your insights. >> Rick: My pleasure. Thank you guys. >> All right. For our guest and for Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE. The leader in live enterprise and emerging tech coverage. (soft bright music)