>>Hello, and welcome to the cube conversation here in Palo Alto, California. I'm John furier host of the cube. We got a great guest, a chief information security officer CISO, Alex Shukman who's with Colgate Paul mall of company, Alex. Thanks for coming on this cube conversation. >>Thanks for having me, >>John. So fresh off the heels of RSA in San Francisco was quite the spectacle people back in person. Um, a lot of great conversations, kind of the old conversations, moving to the new, uh, really good to see, but CISO, the CISO agenda was clear on everyone's mind, more attacks, no surface area. Perimeter's dead. You got cloud native shift left, SBOs open sourced, supply chain and technology. Uh, software's now open source. How do you deal with that? A lot of complicated issues all through the prism of constantly being hacked with ransomware, everything else going on, you're in the middle of it. You gotta protect manufacturing assets, people, assets, intellectual property, you're in the middle of it. What's, what's the view. What's your current scope, the problem that you're dealing with every day. >>Yeah, it's really interesting world we live in today. Um, and, and definitely, uh, you know, the key topics were jumping around in RSA. Um, you know, everyone seems to be really trying to understand the, the environment better. And, you know, I, I think in the past we saw a lot of attacks against financial sector, a a lot of, of tax against critical infrastructure, but now many of us in the private sector, uh, especially in the non-critical manufacturing areas, you know, we're seeing the same thing that those industries have seen for many years. And so the criminals are getting, you know, less picky about their targets and, and they're targeting, uh, publicly traded companies, as much as they're targeting critical infrastructure. They're not as, uh, picky as they used to be. >>Yeah. You know, you see healthcare, financial services, uh, manufacturing, um, all there, intellectual, property's a big one, but you have, you know, now as you guys have your business, you're dealing with a global, um, borderless environment. You know, that's a big thing. You also have service providers probably work with. So you gotta have the business operations run modern in a modern way at the same time, protect in the modern way. What is the top agenda item for you in your sector, in, in manufacturing, in this area? What's the main high level, um, important task that you usually face every day? >>Yeah. When we talk to a lot of our, our peer companies or peers in the security industry, uh, especially in, in, at RSA, you know, a lot of 'em are very focused on their, their us business, a as well as you know, how to protect themselves. You know, I think one of the things that's really interesting about FGI Pala is that we are a global company and we really do have operations everywhere, uh, both from an, an office presence, a business presence, as well as manufacturing. So, you know, everything that, that those companies have to deal with who are primarily us based, and maybe they're aligning with some us intelligence, uh, we have to, to really incorporate global threats into our security program. Uh, and, and I think that's one of the really interesting things about Colgate, especially for people, uh, maybe who are familiar with our products, cuz they grew up using them. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, uh, you know, we have products, uh, all over the world and depending on which area you're in, you know, we are the one security team who's responsible for protecting the entire Colgate world. >>How has the pandemic pulled forward issues or highlighted more necessity around certain areas? Obviously the work from home thing is pretty obvious for many people and who would've thought you'd have to provision a hundred percent VPNs or whatever endpoint protection. Um, what, how has that affected you, your, your area, your company and your sector, um, how has the pandemic impacted your security? >>Yeah, and I think this is a really interesting topic. You've I I've heard many other people, uh, talk about their response to the COVID 19 pandemic over the last few years. Um, you know, I, I think the, the, the best way to answer it from, from my personal perspective is if, if you were prepared for remote work or you were prepared for a partially remote workforce, then you really could have been very prepared for the pandemic. So even prior to the pandemic, you had people traveling on business and you needed to provide system access, but in a secure way, you had people doing short term assignments, you had a remote sales force and you had a number of different, especially being a global company, uh, people working out of an office, that's not their traditional office. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. If, if you look at all the security prepared, preparedness that you need to do to enable all that, it's not that much different than the pandemic, except that it's really on steroids and it's gone a hundred times further. >>It makes everyone work harder. Yeah. You have to prepare for the a hundred percent scenario, not, you know, not some, uh, um, estimate, um, good, good call out. And the other thing too, is that there's also these, these markets where it gets pulled forward, but then pulls back when the pandemic is over. Have you seen any of that as we kind of come into our third year of, I guess, hybrid being steady state, what has kind of gone away, fell off the plate? What's been, what's the steady state. How do you, have you seen anything kind of go back? >>Yeah, I, I think one of the things that kind of seems to ping pong back and forth is, is our ability to really rely on suppliers to, to deliver it equipment. So, you know, being a, a global company we're, we have employees all over the world, we have it infrastructure that we're supporting across the globe. And, and as you see, different countries go into lockdowns, as you see different suppliers faced with, with different pressures, you know, that seems to be something that kind of ebbs and flows over the last few years, uh, being able to get laptops, being able to get multiple devices, being able to get communications equipment. So, um, you know, I think some of those industries are still trying to evolve, uh, post pandemic. Right. >>You know, I always, I always like to ask the question privately, but I won't do it on camera, how much budget you have and how much you spend on cyber. Um, but you know, generally speaking, I think it's pretty safe to say the number's going up and up, um, cuz of the threats and you got more vectors coming in, but on the question of what tools and platforms work best for you, what are you looking for? What works best from your perspective, as you evaluate new things, right? You gotta look at the new, then you gotta keep up with the state of the art to, to be ahead of the bad guys and obvious you take risk management very seriously, as well as prepare. Right. So what are some of the tools that work for you? What do you see out there that that's getting your attention? >>Yeah, you know, I, I look at a lot of different vendor solutions. I think, uh, that's pretty prevalent in our industry. I look for solutions from large names, suppliers that have been around for a number of years, but I also like to, to look at startup companies who are really trying to innovate and, and make a solution, that number one is easy to implement. And number two is, is easy to keep working. If, if we're spending more time keeping a solution working than we are using the solution. I think that's one of the pain points that than other security, uh, programs are, are fighting with. You know, we try to really avoid those types of solutions, put something in, make sure that it works well so that we can really focus on getting the value out of the solution versus trying to keep it running. >>You know, the old SAS equation, helping the enterprise get better at the old enterprise playbook, which was how do you solve complexity by adding more complexity and, you know, lock in or, you know, <laugh> more costs, hidden costs under the water, so to speak or the shark fan or the iceberg, uh, cost of ownership. I mean, so it's a time to value shift, um, cuz your time's valuable and you've got staff and the hiring's not easy. This is a huge point. >>Yeah. We're a manufacturing organization. Obviously our, our goal as a company is to produce, to sell to consumers. You know, it is a cost center. We're trying to be as efficient as possible yet still support our business and keep it safe. So, uh, if we're investing in a security solution or if we're investing in, in a, a vendor solution that that does provide some layer of protection, you know, we wanna make sure that that's efficient as possible for us and, and that we get value out of it immediately. Uh, you know, that's always the, the hardest thing to try to find a solution that, that fits your business, but also delivers value to your organization. >>You know, it's interesting, you mention it as a cost center and you're talking about cyber security, which is the, the jewels of the company. You're talking about the criticality of the business model. One hat could really take down companies. So you, you it's really offense you're it's profit center in inherently. If you look at it that way. Um, and a lot of people are looking at this this way because you're a private company, you're not a government, you don't have a militia, you got cyber protection issues. So there's a real trend for CISOs to come together. And we're seeing this, uh, about sharing for instance, you know, sharing a threat information. So there's been a big movement in the CISO community. Uh, and I'm curious to get your reaction to this and what your conversations are, where sharing is really about collective intelligence and winning and ex and helping each other. And there's this, it's a, it's a, it's an enable user enablement, a CISO enablement kind of vibe. How do you have those conversations? What is, uh, when you huddle with your CISO buddies and friends and colleagues, what's the conversations like, is this sharing thing real is how do you do it effectively? Is it data rooms? Is it, how do you protect the information? Can you share your perspective on that? Cause this is a kind of a real cutting edge area right now. >>Yeah, I think in the, in the public sector, especially in, in, uh, in the government side, as well as critical manufacturing, critical infrastructure, you know, they really do it best in class and have done it for years out, out of necessity. Uh, what's really nice to see, especially on CS a and some of the latest initiatives like shields up is, is a lot more public private sharing going on. There's a lot more information available to us as a private company. Who's not part of, of the DIB or any of the intelligence community, but at the same time, we need to protect ourselves from the bad guys as much as they do. So, you know, I like the fact that that we're seeing CS a do more and more outreach to connect public and private sector, plus there's more and more sharing initiatives going on in the ISAC communities and making sure that barrier is low and, and they're, they're sharing, uh, threat Intel IOCs, but in a safe way among a, a community of security practitioners, security practitioners are, are great at sharing. They just need the permission to do so. >>Exactly. And then getting that, getting that mindset of, we're not just a cost setter, we're a critical division or group that protects the assets. And I think that's where I seen security elevate from the it world where yeah, King's born in it, cuz that's where that, where everything is, assets are all there. And then as assets change it, you guys have a lot of operational technology called OT on your manufacturing. You gotta deal with that. Now that's usually locked down. Pretty good. Right. <laugh> so as you bring OT and it together, you guys are in the middle of that industrial I OT world. >>Yeah. What's really interesting about my, uh, career at Colgate. I I've been here for, for 25 years and uh, actually the majority of my career has been in it supporting business applications, uh, either for our sales force or our manufacturing organization, our finance and HR teams. So I really got a, a good partnership with our business teams and really understood what they were trying to deliver. Then in the last few years, when I shifted over security, it really helped me bridge that gap and understand, you know, what the business systems are doing, what the OT systems are doing and then how to best secure them. >>Yeah, it's interesting. It's it kind of goes away. It's everything now it's digital, right? Digital digitization, digital transformation. This is what what's awesome. And this is what I love about the cloud scale and it's about bringing the two worlds together and the hybrid is a steady state. Now, both workforce and environment, Alex. Great to get your perspective. Um, thanks for sharing, um, insight here on the cube. Final question, give a plug for what you're working on. What's the cool projects you got going. If you can share a little bit without getting confidential information out there, what's going on at Colgate? Uh what's on your plate. What are you excited about? Put a plug. Are you looking for hiring, give a quick plug for what you got working on? >>I mean, we have a great team. Uh, we've been growing the team steadily, uh, building out our, our security program. Uh, you know, we're always looking to hire new talent, uh, from different industries. Uh, we've been very focused on making sure that that we're building a diverse talent group inside my security program. So I'm not just looking for, uh, security practitioners. Who've been doing this for 25 years, but I've been hiring from various places like, uh, infrastructure service provider consultants, pen testers, and really trying to build, uh, uh, the best team possible. >>Yeah, just as a side to real quick note is I was chatting with a friend of mine the other day were old, old Foggie. Um, the young guns have never racked gear before. Right. They don't, they've never loaded Linux on a box. So, you know, as you start hiring some of the young talent, what's it like, what are they coming in? Obviously they probably probably have a broader CS perspective. Maybe they're probably more familiar, but you know, some of the different really rack gear all. So what is it like, what, what are some of the new, new, new young folks looking at right now? What's the, what's the skill. >>Yeah, they they're, they're used to cloud consoles and right clicking to, uh, to spin up a computer. And in an our day we unboxed the computer, put racks on, you know, had to plug in power and network and figure out, uh, you know, the right way to, to, to hook everything up and even load an OS. I mean, uh, you know, you're right out of, uh, university today, you, you probably right. Click spin up a, uh, an image in, in one of the public clouds and the OS boom comes up automatically for you, like imagine. So they >>Probably are like fish to water on the, on the dashboards and the, on some of the security challenges I can imagine they have a nice fit there, >>But at the same time, uh, you know, they have a great understanding of, uh, containers. They have a great understanding of server list. So you can really, uh, kind of marry the, the old school technology with some of the new ways of working. >>Yeah. Great stuff. Great. We'll have to do a segment on, uh, on talent and what the new roles are. A lot of openings, a lot of new opportunities. It really is a great time to be in this new digital, I don't know what the call it's nearly not it anymore. It's just digital transformation. Uh, it's just, it's just the way it is. Thanks for coming on. Appreciate it, Alex. Thanks for your time. >>Thanks a lot, John. Okay. Take >>Care. Just a cube conversation here in Palo Alto. I'm John fur host of the cube. Thanks for watching.

>> Narrator: New York City, it's the Cube covering CyberConnect 2017 brought to you by Centrify and the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology. >> Welcome back, everyone. This is the Cube's live coverage in New York City's Grand Hyatt Ballroom for CyberConnect 2017 presented by Centrify. I'm John Furrier, the co-host of the Cube with my co-host this week is Dave Vellante, my partner and co-founder and co-CEO with me in SiliconAngle Media in the Cube. Our next guest is James Scott who is the co-founder and senior fellow at ICIT. Welcome to the Cube. >> Thanks for having me. >> You guys are putting on this event, really putting the content together. Centrify, just so everyone knows, is underwriting the event but this is not a Centrify event. You guys are the key content partner, developing the content agenda. It's been phenomenal. It's an inaugural event so it's the first of its kind bringing in industry, government, and practitioners all together, kind of up leveling from the normal and good events like Black Hat and other events like RSA which go into deep dives. Here it's a little bit different. Explain. >> Yeah, it is. We're growing. We're a newer think tank. We're less than five years old. The objective is to stay smaller. We have organizations, like Centrify, that came out of nowhere in D.C. so we deal, most of what we've done up until now has been purely federal and on the Hill so what I do, I work in the intelligence community. I specialize in social engineering and then I advise in the Senate for the most part, some in the House. We're able to take these organizations into the Pentagon or wherever and when we get a good read on them and when senators are like, "hey, can you bring them back in to brief us?" That's when we know we have a winner so we started really creating a relationship with Tom Kemp, who's the CEO and founder over there, and Greg Cranley, who heads the federal division. They're aggressively trying to be different as opposed to trying to be like everyone else, which makes it easy. If someone wants to do something, they have to be a fellow for us to do it, but if they want to do it, just like if they want to commission a paper, we just basically say, "okay, you can pay for it but we run it." Centrify has just been excellent. >> They get the community model. They get the relationship that you have with your constituents in the community. Trust matters, so you guys are happy to do this but more importantly, the content. You're held to a standard in your community. This is new, not to go in a different direction for a second but this is what the community marketing model is. Stay true to your audience and trust. You're relied upon so that's some balance that you guys have to do. >> The thing is we deal with cylance and others. Cylance, for example, was the first to introduce machine learning artificial intelligence to get passed that mutating hash for endpoint security. They fit in really well in the intelligence community. The great thing about working with Centrify is they let us take the lead and they're very flexible and we just make sure they come out on top each time. The content, it's very content driven. In D.C., we have at our cocktail receptions, they're CIA, NSA, DARPA, NASA. >> You guys are the poster child of be big, think small. >> Exactly. Intimate. >> You say Centrify is doing things differently. They're not falling in line like a lemming. What do you mean by that? What is everybody doing that these guys are doing differently? >> I think in the federal space, I think commercial too, but you have to be willing to take a big risk to be different so you have to be willing to pay a premium. If people work with us, they know they're going to pay a premium but we make sure they come out on top. What they do is, they'll tell us, Centrify will be like, "look, we're going to put x amount of dollars into a lunch. "Here are the types of pedigree individuals "that we need there." Maybe they're not executives. Maybe they're the actual practitioners at DHS or whatever. The one thing that they do different is they're aggressively trying to deviate from the prototype. That's what I mean. >> Like a vendor trying to sell stuff. >> Yeah and the thing is, that's why when someone goes to a Centrify event, I don't work for Centrify (mumbles). That's how they're able to attract. If you see, we have General Alexander. We've got major players here because of the content, because it's been different and then the other players want to be on the stage with other players, you know what I mean. It almost becomes a competition for "hey, I was asked to come to an ICIT thing" you know, that sort of thing. That's what I mean. >> It's reputation. You guys have a reputation and you stay true to that. That's what I was saying. To me, I think this is the future of how things get done. When you have a community model, you're held to a standard with your community. If you cross the line on that standard, you head fake your community, that's the algorithm that brings you a balance so you bring good stuff to the table and you vet everyone else on the other side so it's just more of a collaboration, if you will. >> The themes here, what you'll see is within critical infrastructure, we try to gear this a little more towards the financial sector. We brought, from Aetna, he set up the FS ISAC. Now he's with the health sector ISAC. For this particular geography in New York, we're trying to have it focus more around health sector and financial critical infrastructure. You'll see that. >> Alright, James, I've got to ask you. You're a senior fellow. You're on the front lines with a great Rolodex, great relationships in D.C., and you're adivising and leaned upon by people making policy, looking at the world and the general layout in which, the reality is shit's happening differently now so the world's got to change. Take us through a day in the life of some of the things you guys are seeing and what's the outlook? I mean, it's like a perfect storm of chaos, yet opportunity. >> It really depends. Each federal agency, we look at it from a Hill perspective, it comes down to really educating them. When I'm in advising in the House, I know I'm going to be working with a different policy pedigree than a Senate committee policy expert, you know what I mean. You have to gauge the conversation depending on how new the office is, House, Senate, are they minority side, and then what we try to do is bring the issues that the private sector is having while simultaneously hitting the issues that the federal agency space is. Usually, we'll have a needs list from the CSWEP at the different federal agencies for a particular topic like the Chinese APTs or the Russian APT. What we'll do is, we'll break down what the issue is. With Russia, for example, it's a combination of two types of exploits that are happening. You have the technical exploit, the malicious payload and vulnerability in a critical infrastructure network and then profiling those actors. We also have another problem, the influence operations, which is why we started the Center for Cyber Influence Operations Studies. We've been asked repeatedly since the elections last year by the intelligence community to tell us, explain this new propaganda. The interesting thing is the synergies between the two sides are exploiting and weaponizing the same vectors. While on the technical side, you're exploiting a vulnerability in a network with a technical exploit, with a payload, a compiled payload with a bunch of tools. On the influence operations side, they're weaponizing the same social media platforms that you would use to distribute a payload here but only the... >> Contest payload. Either way you have critical infrastructure. The payload being content, fake content or whatever content, has an underpinning that gamification call it virality, network effect and user psychology around they don't really open up the Facebook post, they just read the headline and picture. There's a dissonance campaign, or whatever they're running, that might not be critical to national security at that time but it's also a post. >> It shifts the conversation in a way where they can use, for example, right now all the rage with nation states is to use metadata, put it into big data analytics, come up with a psychographic algorithm, and go after critical infrastructure executives with elevated privileges. You can do anything with those guys. You can spearfish them. The Russian modus operandi is to call and act like a recruiter, have that first touch of contact be the phone call, which they're not expecting. "Hey, I got this job. "Keep it on the down low. Don't tell anybody. "I'm going to send you the job description. "Here's the PDF." Take it from there. >> How should we think about the different nation state actors? You mentioned Russia, China, there's Iran, North Korea. Lay it out for us. >> Each geography has a different vibe to their hacking. With Russia you have this stealth and sophistication and their hacking is just like their espionage. It's like playing chess. They're really good at making pawns feel like they're kings on the chessboard so they're really good at recruiting insider threats. Bill Evanina is the head of counterintel. He's a bulldog. I know him personally. He's exactly what we need in that position. The Chinese hacking style is more smash and grab, very unsophisticated. They'll use a payload over and over again so forensically, it's easy to... >> Dave: Signatures. >> Yeah, it is. >> More shearing on the tooling or whatever. >> They'll use code to the point of redundancy so it's like alright, the only reason they got in... Chinese get into a network, not because of sophistication, but because the network is not protected. Then you have the mercenary element which is where China really thrives. Chinese PLA will hack for the nation state during the day, but they'll moonlight at night to North Korea so North Korea, they have people who may consider themselves hackers but they're not code writers. They outsource. >> They're brokers, like general contractors. >> They're not sophisticated enough to carry out a real nation state attack. What they'll do is outsource to Chinese PLA members. Chinese PLA members will be like, "okay well, here's what I need for this job." Typically, what the Chinese will do, their loyalties are different than in the west, during the day they'll discover a vulnerability or an O day. They won't tell their boss right away. They'll capitalize off of it for a week. You do that, you go to jail over here. Russia, they'll kill you. China, somehow this is an accepted thing. They don't like it but it just happens. Then you have the eastern European nations and Russia still uses mercenary elements out of Moscow and St. Petersburg so what they'll do is they will freelance, as well. That's when you get the sophisticated, carbonic style hack where they'll go into the financial sector. They'll monitor the situation. Learn the ins and outs of everything having to do with that particular swift or bank or whatever. They go in and those are the guys that are making millions of dollars on a breach. Hacking in general is a grind. It's a lot of vulnerabilities work, but few work for long. Everybody is always thinking there's this omega code that they have. >> It's just brute force. You just pound it all day long. >> That's it and it's a grind. You might have something that you worked on for six months. You're ready to monetize. >> What about South America? What's the vibe down there? Anything happening in there? >> Not really. There is nothing of substance that really affects us here. Again, if an organization is completely unprotected. >> John: Russia? China? >> Russia and China. >> What about our allies? >> GCHQ. >> Israel? What's the collaboration, coordination, snooping? What's the dynamic like there? >> We deal, mostly, with NATO and Five Eyes. I actually had dinner with NATO last night. Five Eyes is important because we share signals intelligence and most of the communications will go through Five Eyes which is California, United States, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK. Those are our five most important allies and then NATO after that, as far as I'm concerned, for cyber. You have the whole weaponization of space going on with SATCOM interception. We're dealing with that with NASA, DARPA. Not a lot is happening down in South America. The next big thing that we have to look at is the cyber caliphate. You have the Muslim brotherhood that funds it. Their influence operations domestically are extremely strong. They have a lot of contacts on the Hill which is a problem. You have ANTIFA. So there's two sides to this. You have the technical exploit but then the information warfare exploit. >> What about the bitcoin underbelly that started with the silk roads and you've seen a lot of bitcoin. Money laundering is a big deal, know your customer. Now regulation is part of big ICOs going on. Are you seeing any activity from those? Are they pulling from previous mercenary groups or are they arbitraging just more free? >> For updating bitcoin? >> The whole bitcoin networks. There's been an effort to commercialize (mumbles) so there's been a legitimate track to bring that on but yet there's still a lot of actors. >> I think bitcoin is important to keep and if you look at the more black ops type hacking or payment stuff, bitcoin is an important element just as tor is an important element, just as encryption is an important element. >> John: It's fundamental, actually. >> It's a necessity so when I hear people on the Hill, I have my researcher, I'm like, "any time you hear somebody trying to have "weakened encryption, back door encryption" the first thing, we add them to the briefing schedule and I'm like, "look, here's what you're proposing. "You're proposing that you outlaw math. "So what? Two plus two doesn't equal four. "What is it? Three and a half? "Where's the logic?" When you break it down for them like that, on the Hill in particular, they begin to get it. They're like, "well how do we get the intelligence community "or the FBI, for example, to get into this iphone?" Civil liberties, you've got to take that into consideration. >> I got to ask you a question. I interviewed a guy, I won't say his name. He actually commented off the record, but he said to me, "you won't believe how dumb some of these state actors are "when it comes to cyber. "There's some super smart ones. "Specifically Iran and the Middle East, "they're really not that bright." He used an example, I don't know if it's true or not, that stuxnet, I forget which one it was, there was a test and it got out of control and they couldn't pull it back and it revealed their hand but it could've been something worse. His point was they actually screwed up their entire operation because they're doing some QA on their thing. >> I can't talk about stuxnet but it's easy to get... >> In terms of how you test them, how do you QA your work? >> James: How do you review malware? (mumbles) >> You can't comment on the accuracy of Zero Days, the documentary? >> Next question. Here's what you find. Some of these nation state actors, they saw what happened with our elections so they're like, "we have a really crappy offensive cyber program "but maybe we can thrive in influence operations "in propaganda and whatever." We're getting hit by everybody and 2020 is going to be, I don't even want to imagine. >> John: You think it's going to be out of control? >> It's going to be. >> I've got to ask this question, this came up. You're bringing up a really good point I think a lot of people aren't talking about but we've brought up a few times. I want to keep on getting it out there. In the old days, state on state actors used to do things, espionage, and everyone knew who they were and it was very important not to bring their queen out, if you will, too early, or reveal their moves. Now with Wikileaks and public domain, a lot of these tools are being democratized so that they can covertly put stuff out in the open for enemies of our country to just attack us at will. Is that happening? I hear about it, meaning that I might be Russia or I might be someone else. I don't want to reveal my hand but hey, you ISIS guys out there, all you guys in the Middle East might want to use this great hack and put it out in the open. >> I think yeah. The new world order, I guess. The order of things, the power positions are completely flipped, B side, counter, whatever. It's completely not what the establishment was thinking it would be. What's happening is Facebook is no more relevant, I mean Facebook is more relevant than the UN. Wikileaks has more information pulsating out of it than a CIA analyst, whatever. >> John: There's a democratization of the information? >> The thing is we're no longer a world that's divided by geographic lines in the sand that were drawn by these two guys that fought and lost a war 50 years ago. We're now in a tribal chieftain digital society and we're separated by ideological variation and so you have tribe members here in the US who have fellow tribe members in Israel, Russia, whatever. Look at Anonymous. Anonymous, I think everyone understands that's the biggest law enforcement honeypot there is, but you look at the ideological variation and it's hashtags and it's keywords and it's forums. That's the Senate. That's congress. >> John: This is a new reality. >> This is reality. >> How do you explain that to senators? I was watching that on TV where they're trying to grasp what Facebook is and Twitter. (mumbles) Certainly Facebook knew what was going on. They're trying to play policy and they're new. They're newbies when it comes to policy. They don't have any experience on the Hill, now it's ramping up and they've had some help but tech has never been an actor on the stage of policy formulation. >> We have a real problem. We're looking at outside threats as our national security threats, which is incorrect. You have dragnet surveillance capitalists. Here's the biggest threats we have. The weaponization of Facebook, twitter, youtube, google, and search engines like comcast. They all have a censorship algorithm, which is how they monetize your traffic. It's censorship. You're signing your rights away and your free will when you use google. You're not getting the right answer, you're getting the answer that coincides with an algorithm that they're meant to monetize and capitalize on. It's complete censorship. What's happening is, we had something that just passed SJ res 34 which no resistance whatsoever, blew my mind. What that allows is for a new actor, the ISPs to curate metadata on their users and charge them their monthly fee as well. It's completely corrupt. These dragnet surveillance capitalists have become dragnet surveillance censorists. Is that a word? Censorists? I'll make it one. Now they've become dragnet surveillance propagandists. That's why 2020 is up for grabs. >> (mumbles) We come from the same school here on this one, but here's the question. The younger generation, I asked a gentleman in the hallway on his way out, I said, "where's the cyber west point? "We're the Navy SEALS in this new digital culture." He said, "oh yeah, some things." We're talking about the younger generation, the kids playing Call of Duty Destiny. These are the guys out there, young kids coming up that will probably end up having multiple disciplinary skills. Where are they going to come from? So the question is, are we going to have a counterculture? We're almost feeling like what the 60s were to the 50s. Vietnam. I kind of feel like maybe the security stuff doesn't get taken care of, a revolt is coming. You talk about dragnet censorship. You're talking about the lack of control and privacy. I don't mind giving Facebook my data to connect with my friends and see my thanksgiving photos or whatever but now I don't want fake news jammed down my throat. Anti-Trump and Anti-Hillary spew. I didn't buy into that. I don't want that anymore. >> I think millennials, I have a 19 year old son, my researchers, they're right out of grad school. >> John: What's the profile like? >> They have no trust whatsoever in the government and they laugh at legislation. They don't care any more about having their face on their Facebook page and all their most intimate details of last night's date and tomorrow's date with two different, whatever. They just don't... They loathe the traditional way of things. You got to talk to General Alexander today. We have a really good relationship with him, Hayden, Mike Rogers. There is a counterculture in the works but it's not going to happen overnight because we have a tech deficit here where we need foreign tech people just to make up for the deficit. >> Bill Mann and I were talking, I heard the general basically, this is my interpretation, "if we don't get our shit together, "this is going to be an f'd up situation." That's what I heard him basically say. You guys don't come together so what Bill talked about was two scenarios. If industry and government don't share and come together, they're going to have stuff mandated on them by the government. Do you agree? >> I do. >> What's going to happen? >> The argument for regulation on the Hill is they don't want to stifle innovation, which makes sense but then ISPs don't innovate at all. They're using 1980s technology, so why did you pass SJ res 34? >> John: For access? >> I don't know because nation states just look at that as, "oh wow another treasure trove of metadata "that we can weaponize. "Let's start psychographically charging alt-left "and alt-right, you know what I mean?" >> Hacks are inevitable. That seems to be the trend. >> You talked before, James, about threats. You mentioned weaponization of social. >> James: Social media. >> You mentioned another in terms of ISPs I think. >> James: Dragnet. >> What are the big threats? Weaponization of social. ISP metadata, obviously. >> Metadata, it really depends and that's the thing. That's what makes the advisory so difficult because you have to go between influence operations and the exploit because the vectors are used for different things in different variations. >> John: Integrated model. >> It really is and so with a question like that I'm like okay so my biggest concern is the propaganda, political warfare, the information warfare. >> People are underestimating the value of how big that is, aren't they? They're oversimplifying the impact of info campaigns. >> Yeah because your reality is based off of... It's like this, influence operations. Traditional media, everybody is all about the narrative and controlling the narrative. What Russia understands is to control the narrative, the most embryo state of the narrative is the meme. Control the meme, control the idea. If you control the idea, you control the belief system. Control the belief system, you control the narrative. Control the narrative, you control the population. No guns were fired, see what I'm saying? >> I was explaining to a friend on Facebook, I was getting into a rant on this. I used a very simple example. In the advertising world, they run millions of dollars of ad campaigns on car companies for post car purchase cognitive dissonance campaigns. Just to make you feel good about your purchase. In a way, that's what's going on and explains what's going on on Facebook. This constant reinforcement of these beliefs whether its for Trump or Hillary, all this stuff was happening. I saw it firsthand. That's just one small nuance but it's across a spectrum of memes. >> You have all these people, you have nation states, you have mercenaries, but the most potent force in this space, the most hyperevolving in influence operations, is the special interest group. The well-funded special interests. That's going to be a problem. 2020, I keep hitting that because I was doing an interview earlier. 2020 is going to be a tug of war for the psychological core of the population and it's free game. Dragnet surveillance capitalists will absolutely be dragnet surveillance propagandists. They will have the candidates that they're going to push. Now that can also work against them because mainstream media, twitter, Facebook were completely against trump, for example, and that worked in his advantage. >> We've seen this before. I'm a little bit older, but we are the same generation. Remember when they were going to open up sealex? Remember the last mile for connectivity? That battle was won before it was even fought. What you're saying, if I get this right, the war and tug of war going on now is a big game. If it's not played in one now, this jerry rigging, gerrymandering of stuff could happen so when people wake up and realize what's happened the game has already been won. >> Yeah, your universe as you know it, your belief systems, what you hold to be true and self evident. Again, the embryo. If you look back to the embryo introduction of that concept, whatever concept it is, to your mind it came from somewhere else. There are very few things that you believe that you came up with yourself. The digital space expedites that process and that's dangerous because now it's being weaponized. >> Back to the, who fixes this. Who's the watchdog on this? These ideas you're talking about, some of them, you're like, "man that guy has lost it, he's crazy." Actually, I don't think you're crazy at all. I think it's right on. Is there a media outlet watching it? Who's reporting on it? What even can grasp what you're saying? What's going on in D.C.? Can you share that perspective? >> Yeah, the people that get this are the intelligence community, okay? The problem is the way we advise is I will go in with one of the silos in the NSA and explain what's happening and how to do it. They'll turn around their computer and say, "show me how to do it. "How do you do a multi vector campaign "with this meme and make it viral in 30 minutes." You have to be able to show them how to do it. >> John: We can do that. Actually we can't. >> That sort of thing, you have to be able to show them because there's not enough practitioners, we call them operators. When you're going in here, you're teaching them. >> The thing is if they have the metadata to your treasure trove, this is how they do it. I'll explain here. If they have the metadata, they know where the touch points are. It's a network effect mole, just distributive mole. They can put content in certain subnetworks that they know have a reaction to the metadata so they have the knowledge going in. It's not like they're scanning the whole world. They're monitoring pockets like a drone, right? Once they get over the territory, then they do the acquired deeper targets and then go viral. That's basically how fake news works. >> See the problem is, you look at something like alt-right and ANTIFA. ANTIFA, just like Black Lives Matter, the initiatives may have started out with righteous intentions just like take a knee. These initiatives, first stage is if it causes chaos, chaos is the op for a nation state in the US. That's the op. Chaos. That's the beginning and the end of an op. What happens is they will say, "oh okay look, this is ticking off all these other people "so let's fan the flame of this take a knee thing "hurt the NFL." Who cares? I don't watch football anyway but you know, take a knee. It's causing all this chaos. >> John: It's called trolling. >> What will happen is Russia and China, China has got their 13 five year plan, Russia has their foreign influence operations. They will fan that flame to exhaustion. Now what happens to the ANTIFA guy when he's a self-radicalized wound collector with a mental disorder? Maybe he's bipolar. Now with ANTIFA, he's experienced a heightened more extreme variation of that particular ideology so who steps in next? Cyber caliphate and Muslim brotherhood. That's why we're going to have an epidemic. I can't believe, you know, ANTIFA is a domestic terrorist organization. It's shocking that the FBI is not taking this more serious. What's happening now is Muslim brotherhood funds basically the cyber caliphate. The whole point of cyber caliphate is to create awareness, instill the illusion of rampant xenophobia for recruiting. They have self-radicalized wound collectors with ANTIFA that are already extremists anyway. They're just looking for a reason to take that up a notch. That's when, cyber caliphate, they hook up with them with a hashtag. They respond and they create a relationship. >> John: They get the fly wheel going. >> They take them to a deep web forum, dark web forum, and start showing them how it works. You can do this. You can be part of something. This guy who was never even muslim now is going under the ISIS moniker and he acts. He drives people over in New York. >> They fossilized their belief system. >> The whole point to the cyber caliphate is to find actors that are already in the self-radicalization phase but what does it take psychologically and from a mentoring perspective, to get them to act? That's the cyber caliphate. >> This is the value of data and context in real time using the current events to use that data, refuel their operation. It's data driven terrorism. >> What's the prescription that you're advising? >> I'm not a regulations kind of guy, but any time you're curating metadata like we're just talking about right now. Any time you have organizations like google, like Facebook, that have become so big, they are like their own nation state. That's a dangerous thing. The metadata curation. >> John: The value of the data is very big. That's the point. >> It is because what's happening... >> John: There's always a vulnerability. >> There's always a vulnerability and it will be exploited and all that metadata, it's unscrubbed. I'm not worried about them selling metadata that's scrubbed. I'm worried about the nation state or the sophisticated actor that already has a remote access Trojan on the network and is exfiltrating in real time. That's the guy that I'm worried about because he can just say, "forget it, I'm going to target people that are at this phase." He knows how to write algorithms, comes up with a good psychographic algorithm, puts the data in there, and now he's like, "look I'm only going to promote this concept, "two people at this particular stage of self-radicalization "or sympathetic to the kremlin." We have a big problem on the college campuses with IP theft because of the Chinese Students Scholar Associations which are directly run by the Chinese communist party. >> I heard a rumor that Equifax's franchising strategy had partners on the VPN that were state sponsored. They weren't even hacking, they had full access. >> There's a reason that the Chinese are buying hotels. They bought the Waldorf Astoria. We do stuff with the UN and NATO, you can't even stay there anymore. I think it's still under construction but it's a no-no to stay there anymore. I mean western nations and allies because they'll have bugs in the rooms. The WiFi that you use... >> Has fake certificates. >> Or there's a vulnerability that's left in that network so the information for executives who have IP or PII or electronic health records, you know what I mean? You go to these places to stay overnight, as an executive, and you're compromised. >> Look what happened with Eugene Kaspersky. I don't know the real story. I don't know if you can comment, but someone sees that and says, "this guy used to have high level meetings "at the Pentagon weekly, monthly." Now he's persona non grata. >> He fell out of favor, I guess, right? It happens. >> James, great conversation. Thanks for coming on the Cube. Congratulations on the great work you guys are doing here at the event. I know the content has been well received. Certainly the key notes we saw were awesome. CSOs, view from the government, from industry, congratulations. James Scott who is the co founder and senior fellow of ICIT, Internet Critical Infrastructure Technology. >> James: Institute of Critical Infrastructure Technology. >> T is for tech. >> And the Center for Cyber Influence Operations Studies. >> Good stuff. A lot of stuff going on (mumbles), exploits, infrastructure, it's all mainstream. It's the crisis of our generation. There's a radical shift happening and the answers are all going to come from industry and government coming together. This is the Cube bringing the data, I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante. Thanks for watching. More live coverage after this short break. (music)

>> Host: New York City, it's The Cube covering Cyber Connect 2017, brought to you by Centrify and the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology. >> Hey, welcome back, everyone. This the Cube's live coverage in New York City. This is the Cyber Connect 2017, presented by Centrify, underwritten by such a large industry event. I'm John Furrier, Dave Vellante. Our next guest is Byron Acohido who's the journalist at lastwatchdog.com. Thanks for joining us, welcome to The Cube. >> Thank you, pleasure to be here. >> So, seasoned journalist, there's a lot to report. Cyber is great, we heard a great talk this morning around the national issues around the government. But businesses are also struggling, too, that seems to be the theme of this event, inaugural event. >> It really is a terrific topic that touches everything that we're doing, the way we live our lives today. So, yeah, this is a terrific event where some of the smartest minds dealing with it come together to talk about the issues. >> What's the top level story in your mind in this industry right now? Chaos, is it data, civil liberties, common threats? How do you stack rank in level of importance, the most important story? >> You know, it really is all of the above. I had the privilege to sit at lunch with General Keith Alexander. I've seen him speak before at different security events. So it was a small group of the keynote speakers, and Tom Kemp, the CEO of Centrify. And he just nailed it. He basically, what resonated with me was he said basically we're kind of like where we were, where the world was at the start of World War I, where Russia and Germany and England, we're all kind of lining up, and Serbia was in the middle, and nobody really knew the significance of what lay ahead, and the US was on the sidelines. And all these things were just going to converge and create this huge chaos. That's what he compared it today, except we're in the digital space with that, because we're moving into cloud computing, mobile devices, destruction of privacy, and then now the nation states, Russia is lining up, North Korea, and Iran. We are doing it too, that was probably one of the most interesting things that came at you. >> His rhetoric was very high on the, hey, get our act together, country, attitude. Like, we got a lot to bring to the table, he highlighted a couple use cases and some war stories that the NSA's been involved in, but almost kind of teasing out, like we're kind of getting in our own way if we don't reimagine this. >> Yes, he is a very great advocate for the private sector industry, but not just industry, the different major verticals like especially the financial sector and the energy sector to put aside some of the competitive urges they have and recognize that this is going on. >> Okay, but I got to ask you, as a journalist, Last Watchdog, General Alexander definitely came down, when he sort of addressed privacy, and Snowden, and the whole story he told about the gentleman from the ACLU who came in a skeptic and left an advocate. As a journalist whose job is to be a skeptic, did you buy that? Does your community buy that? What's the counterpoint to that narrative that we heard this morning? >> Well, actually I think he hit it right on the head. As a journalist, why I got into this business and am still doing it after all these years is if I can do a little bit to shed a little bit of light on something that helps the public recognize what's going on, that's what I'm here to do. And this topic is just so rich and touches everything. We were talking just about the nation state level of it, but really it effects down to what we're doing as a society, what Google, and Facebook, and Twitter, how they're shaping our society and how that impacts privacy. >> We were talking last night, Dave, about the Twitter, and Facebook, and Alphabet in front of the Senate hearings last week, and how it means, in terms, he brought it up today. The common protection of America in this time, given the past election, that was the context of the Google thing, really has got a whole opportunity to reimagine how we work as a society in America, but also on the global stage. You got China, Russia, and the big actors. So, it's interesting, can we eventually reimagine, use this opportunity as the greatest crisis to transform the crap that's out there today. Divisiveness, no trust. We're living in an era now where, in my life time I can honestly say I've never seen it this shitty before. I mean, it's bad. I mean, it's like the younger generation looking at us, looking at, oh, Trump this, Trump that, I don't trust anybody. And the government has an opportunity. >> Alright, but wait a minute. So, I'm down the middle, as you know, but I'm going to play skeptic here a little bit. What I basically heard from General Alexander this morning was we got vetted by the ACLU, they threw sort of holy water on it, and we followed the law. And I believe everything he said, but I didn't know about that law until Snowden went public, and I agree with you, Snowden should be in jail. >> John: I didn't say that. >> You did, you said that a couple, few years ago on The Cube, you said that. Anyway, regardless. >> I'm going to go find the archive. >> Maybe I'm rewriting history, but those laws were enacted kind of in a clandestine manner, so I put it out to both of you guys. As a citizen, are you willing to say, okay, I'll give up maybe some of my privacy rights for protection? I know where I stand on that, but I'm just asking you guys. I mean, do all your readers sort of agree with that narrative? Do all of The Cube? >> If you look at the World War I example the general, he brought up at lunch, I wasn't there, but just me thinking about that, it brings up a good perspective. If you look at reinventing how society in America is done, what will you give up for safety? These are some of the questions. What does patriotizing mean for if industry's going to work together, what does it mean to be a patriot? What I heard from the general onstage today was, we're screwed if we don't figure this out, because the war, it's coming. It's happening at massive speeds. >> Again, I know where I stand on this. I'm a law-abiding citizen. >> - Byron, what do you think? >> Go ahead and snoop me, but I know people who would say no, that's violating my constitutional rights. I dunno, it's worth a debate, is all I'm saying. >> It's a core question to how we're living our lives today, especially here in the US. In terms of privacy, I think the horse has left the barn. Nobody cares about privacy if you just look at the way we live our lives. Google and Facebook have basically thrown the privacy model-- >> GPS. >> That came about because we went through World War I and World War II, and we wanted the right to be left alone and not have authoritative forces following us inside the door. But now we don't live in just a physical space, we live in a cyberspace. >> I think there's new rules. >> There is no privacy. >> Don't try and paint me into a corner here, I did maybe say some comments. Looking forward the new realities are, there are realities happening, and I think the general illuminated a lot of those today. I've been feeling that. However, I think when you you define what it means to be a patriot of the United States of America and freedom, that freedom has to be looked through the prism of the new realities. The new realities are, as the General illuminated, there are now open public domain tools for anyone to attack the United State, industry and government, he brought it up. Who do they protect, the banks? So, this ends up, I think will be a generational thing that the younger generation and others will have to figure out, but the leaders in industry will have to step up. And I think that to me is interesting. What does that look like? >> I think leadership is the whole key to this. I think there's a big thread about where the burden lies. I write about that a lot as a central theme, where is the burden? Well, each of us have a burden in this society to pay attention to our digital footprint, but it's moving and whirling so fast, and the speaker just now from US Bank said there is no such thing as unprecedented, it's all ridiculous the way things are happening. So, it has to be at the level of the leaders, a combination, and I think this is what the general was advocating, a combination of the government as we know it, as we've built it, by and for the people, and industry recognizing that if they don't do it, regulations are going to be pushed down, which is already happening here in New York. New York State Department of Financial Services now imposes rules on financial services companies to protect their data, have a CSO, check their third parties. That just went in effect in March. >> Let's unpack that, because I think that's what new. If they don't do this, they don't partner, governments and industry don't partner together, either collectively as a vertical or sector with the government, then the government will impose new mandates on them. That's kind of what you're getting at. That's what's happening. >> It'll be a push and shove. Now the push is because industry has not acted with enough urgency, and even though they were seeing them in the headlines. California's already led the way in terms of its Data Loss Disclosure law that now 47 states have, but it's a very, I mean, that's just the level the government can push, and then industry has to react to that. >> I got to say, I'm just being an observer in the industry, we do The Cube, and how many events will we hear the word digital transformation. If people think digital transformation is hard now, imagine if the government imposes all these restrictions. >> What about GDPR? >> Byron: That's a good question, yeah. >> You're trying to tell me the US government is going to be obliged to leak private information because of a socialist agenda, which GDPR has been called. >> No, that's another one of these catalysts or one of these drivers that are pushing. We're in a global society, right? >> Here's my take, I'll share my opinion on this, Dave, I brought it up earlier. What the general was pointing out is the terror states now have democratized tools that other big actors are democratizing through the public domain to allow any enemy of the United States to attack with zero consequences, because they're either anonymous. But let's just say they're not anonymous, let's just say they get caught. We can barely convert drug dealers, multiple jurisdictions in court and around the world. What court is out there that will actually solve the problem? So, the question is, if they get caught, what is the judicial process? >> Navy SEALs? >> I mean, obviously, I'm using the DEA and drug, when we've been fighting drug for multiple generations and we still have to have a process to multiple years to get that in a global court. I mean, it's hard. My point is, if we can't even figure it out for drug trade, generations of data, how fast are we going to get cyber criminals? >> Well, there is recognition of this, and there is work being done, but the gap is so large. Microsoft has done a big chunk of this in fighting botnets, right? So, they've taken a whole legal strategy that they've managed to impose in maybe a half-dozen cases the last few years, where they legally went and got legal power to shut down hosting services that were sources of these botnets. So, that's just one piece of it. >> So, this World War I analogy, let's just take it to the cloud wars. So, in a way, Dave, we asked Amazon early on, Amazon Web Services how their security was. And you questioned, maybe cloud has better security than on premise, at that time eight years ago. Oh my God, the cloud is so insecure. Now it looks like the cloud's more secure, so maybe it's a scale game. Cloud guys might actually be an answer, if you take your point to the next level. What do you think? >> Correct me if I'm wrong, you haven't seen these kind of massive Equifax-like breaches at Amazon and Google. >> That we know about. >> That we know about. >> What do you think? Don't they have to disclose? >> Cloud players have an opportunity? >> That we know about. >> That's what I was saying. The question on the table is, are the cloud guys in a better position to walk around and carry the heavy stick on cyber? >> Personally, I would say no question. There's homogeneity of the infrastructure, and standardization, and more automation. >> What do you think? What's your community think? >> I think you're right, first of all, but I think it's not the full answer. I think the full answer is what the general keeps hammering on, which is private, public, this needs to be leadership, we need to connect all these things where it makes sense to connect them, and realize that there's a bigger thing on the horizon that's already breathing down our necks, already blowing fire like a dragon at us. It's a piece of the, yeah. >> It's a community problem. The community has to solve the problem at leadership level for companies and industry, but also what the security industry has always been known for is sharing. The question is, can they get to a data sharing protocol of some sort? >> It's more than just data sharing. I mean, he talked about that, he talked about, at lunch he did, about the ISAC sharing. He said now it's more, ISACs are these informational sharing by industry, by financial industry, health industry, energy industry, they share information about they've been hacked. But he said, it's more than that. We have to get together at the table and recognize where these attacks are coming, and figure out what the smart things are doing, like at the ISP level. That's a big part of the funnel, crucial part of the funnel, is where traffic moves. That's where it needs to be done. >> What about the the balance of power in the cyber war, cyber warfare? I mean, US obviously, US military industrial complex, Russia, China, okay, we know what the balance of power is there. Is there much more of a level playing field in cyber warfare, do you think, or is it sort of mirror the size of the economy, or the sophistication of the technology? >> No, I think you're absolutely right. There is much more of a level playing field. I mean, North Korea can come in and do a, this is what we know about, or we think we know about, come in and do a WannaCry attack, develop a ransomware that actually moves on the internet of things to raise cash, right, for North Korea. So there, yeah, you're absolutely right. >> That's funding their Defense Department. >> As Robert Gates said when he was on The Cube, we have to be really careful with how much we go on the offense with cyber security, because we have more to lose than anybody with critical infrastructure, and the banking system, the electrical grid, nuclear facilities. >> I interviewed a cyber guy on The Cube in the studio from Vidder, Junaid Islam. He's like, we can look at geo and not have anyone outside the US access our grid. I mean, no one should attack our resources from outside the US, to start with. So, core network access has been a big problem. >> Here's something, I think I can share this because I think he said he wouldn't mind me sharing it. At the lunch today, to your point that we have more to lose is, the general said yeah, we have terrific offensive capability. Just like in the analog world, we have all the great bombers, more bombers than anybody else. But can we stop people from getting, we don't have the comparable level of stopping. >> The defense is weak. >> The defense, right. Same thing with cyber. He said somebody once asked him how many of your, what percentage of your offensive attacks are successful? 100%. You know, we do have, we saw some of that with leaks of the NSA's weapons that happened this year, that gone out. >> It's like Swiss cheese, the leaks are everywhere, and it's by the network itself. I ran into a guy who was running one of the big ports, I say the city to reveal who it was, but he's like, oh my God, these guys are coming in the maritime network, accessing the core internet, unvetted. Pure core access, his first job as CIO was shut down the core network, so he has to put a VPN out there and segment the network, and validate all the traffic coming through. But the predecessor had direct internet access to their core network. >> Yeah, I think the energy sector, there's a sponsor here, ICIT, that's in the industrial control space, that I think that's where a lot of attention is going to go in the next couple of years, because as we saw with these attacks of the Ukraine, getting in there and shutting down their power grid for half a day or whatever, or with our own alleged, US own involvement in something like Stuxnet where we get into the power grid in Iran, those controls are over here with a separate legacy. Once you get in, it's really easy to move around. I think that needs to be all cleaned up and locked down. >> They're already in there, the malware's sitting in there, it's idle. >> We're already over there probably, I don't know, but that's what I would guess and hope. >> I don't believe anything I read these days, except your stuff, of course, and ours. Being a journalist, what are you working on right now? Obviously you're out there reporting, what are the top things you're looking at that you're observing? What's your observation space relative to what you're feeding into your reports? >> This topic, security, I'm going to retire and be long gone on this. This is a terrific topic that means so much and connects to everything. >> A lot of runway on this topic, right? >> I think the whole area of what, right there, your mobile device and how it plugs into the cloud, and then what that portends for internet of things. We have this whole 10-year history of the laptops, and we're not even solving that, and the servers are now moving here to these mobile devices in the clouds and IOT. It's just, attack surface area is just, continues to get bigger. >> And the IT cameras. >> The other thing I noticed on AETNA's presentation this morning on the keynote, Jim was he said, a lot of times many people chase the wrong attack vector, because of not sharing, literally waste cycle times on innovation. So, it's just interesting market. Okay, final thoughts, Byron. This event, what's the significance of this event? Obviously there's Black Hat out there and other industry events. What is so significant about CyberConnect from your perspective? Obviously, our view is it's an industry conversation, it's up-leveled a bit. It's not competing with other events. Do you see it the same way? What is your perspective on this event? >> I think that it's properly named, Connect, and I think that is right at the center of all this, when you have people like Jim Ralph from AETNA, which is doing these fantastic things in terms of protecting their network and sharing that freely, and the US Bank guy that was just on, and Verizon is talking later today. They've been in this space a long time sharing terrific intelligence, and then somebody like the general, and Tom Kemp, the CEO of Centrify, talking about giving visibility to that, a real key piece that's not necessarily sexy, but by locking that down, that's accessing. >> How is the Centrify message being received in the DC circles? Obviously they're an enterprise, they're doing very well. I don't know their net revenue numbers because they're private, they don't really report those. Are they well-received in the DC and the cyber communities in terms of what they do? Identity obviously is a key piece of the kingdom, but it used to be kind of a fenced off area in enterprise software model. They seem to have more relevance now. Is that translating for them in the marketplace? >> I would think so, I mean, the company's growing. I was just talking to somebody. The story they have to tell is substantive and really simple. There's some smart people over there, and I think there are friendly ears out there to hear what they have to say. >> Yeah, anything with identity, know your customer's a big term, and you hear in blockchain and anti-money laundering, know your customer, big term, you're seeing more of that now. Certainly seeing Facebook, Twitter, and Alphabet in front of the Senate getting peppered, I thought that was interesting. We followed those guys pretty deeply. They got hammered, like what's going on, how could you let this happen? Not that it was national security, but it was a major FUD campaign going on on those platforms. That's data, right, so it wasn't necessarily hacked, per se. Great stuff, Byron, thanks for joining us here on The Cube, appreciate it. And your website is lastwatchdog.com. >> Yes. >> Okay, lastwatchdog.com. Byron Acohido here inside The Cube. I'm John Furrier, Dave Vellante, we'll be back with more live coverage after this short break.