>>From around the globe. It's the cube covering Fortinet security summit brought to you by Fortinet. >>Welcome back to Napa Lisa Martin here at the 40, that championship security summit. I'm pleased to welcome the CEO of links us who joins me next. Harry do Hurst, Harry, welcome to the program. Great to you're here we are in an in-person event. One, which is fantastic. Two we're outdoors, three we're in Napa. >>What's not to love. >>There's nothing, nothing not to love. So you had a session this morning. Talk to me about some of the things that you shared with attendees. >>So the session was, was talking about hybrid work and really the how to make that successful. And, you know, we, as a business have really focused making it, not just work for companies, but for companies to thrive and to really embrace, um, the hybrid work and, and, and extract the Mo the most benefit from it. So we, we spoke about the challenges that, that, that, uh, that has, and some of the solutions to, uh, to solving those challenges. >>Tell me about some of the solutions I'm very familiar with as someone who has been working from home for 18 months, some of the challenges I know, understand it too, from an enterprise security perspective, but what are some of the solutions that links us CS? >>So the solutions are fall into kind of three main categories. The first is of course having the best and latest wireless technologies. So that's wifi six wifi, um, it's of course, needs to be coupled with having a good pipe into your home, or all leveraging 5g and other wireless technologies to have, have great connectivity, then having mesh networking to enable it to be wall-to-wall coverage, seamless roaming between, between all the devices to mean that your, your network infrastructure within the home is very robust. Th th the second kind of pillar of, of, of solution is, is around. Now, you can bring enterprise grade security into the home. Typically it would sit in server cupboards in, in, in, in offices and now, um, with, with us and fortunate, we've created a product which brings that enterprise grade technology for the first time into the, into the home. So it managers no longer have to, um, compromise when it comes to security and they can apply the same policies that they would be doing in an office of 10,000 people to 10,000 offices that are in individual's homes. And, and that's a kind of a first, first world first, I would say, but, um, is going to be critical. And again, it, it, it's about moving from it's good enough to let's make it amazing. Um, and let's not compromise on something as critical as security and safety. >>Absolutely. We know we've spoken a lot with 40 net today and over the last year and a half about the massive changes to the threat landscape, the expansion of it, especially with this pivot, when suddenly there were all of these devices, personal devices on home networks, corporate devices on home networks, it's really changed, not just the threat landscape, but also what enterprises need to do. You guys, you mentioned this new announcement came out yesterday, the Linx has homework solution powered by Fordanet talk to us about that, the Genesis of it, and what we're enterprises can actually get access to this. >>Sure. So, so yeah, this is a product that really it's been a meeting of minds. You know, lynxes, lynxes are a leader and have been a leader since the very beginning of wireless. And, and we are, you know, a leader today. Um, Fortnite of course, we're a leader in enterprise security. So the two combined providing the best in class, uh, home internet experience coupled with, um, the, the security, which can be managed by the business. So when as a, as a, as an end user, as a, as a, as an employee, when I plug in this equipment, it automatically phones home to, to, to, to link LyncSys. And then in turn to force net, we know that it's Harriet LyncSys, that that has been been plugged in. It will spin up a network for me, personally, and my family to use in the home. So the, the benefit to the, to the, to the consumer is that there's a fantastic wifi, six mesh solution throughout their home, which is most likely a significant upgrade on their Verizon equipment or whatever it might be. Um, and it's been spins up a corporate network and that corporate network for all intensive purposes is, is imitating exactly like if you were sitting at your desk in the office, in the corporate office. So it becomes an extension of the corporate network. Um, and as I say, it sits behind, behind the FortiGate. >>Talk to me about the Genesis of the solution. Was it the pandemic, because lynxes has seen the challenges from the consumer centric point of view. Talk to me about really kind of the catalyst for these two powerhouses coming together. >>So it was actually something that we were working on three pandemic and fortunate work. We're, we're, we're also looking at how to support the remote work because remote work is not like totally new, this, this pandemic has rapidly accelerated it, but, um, there was already a market and growing, this has just accelerated it. So both businesses independently of one another, where we're kind of toying with it. So when, when we then kind of came together, it was, it was a no brainer. And there was a kind of light bulb moment. And, and we, we realized that the combined solution with the two businesses and bringing together the expertise from both was really, would be how, how we would succeed. >>Do you see any in the last, I know it was just announced yesterday, but any, any industries in particular that you think are really like low-hanging fruit for this type of technology? >>I mean, I think finance is of course, um, you know, there's the high stakes poker in, in that industry. So, um, same goes for healthcare, um, and, and, and even education. So ones that where security is paramount of, and of course security is paramount everywhere, but those ones in particular, given the nature of, of the, those industries. So, so we really expect to see banking, finance, healthcare, uh, pharma, as, as key verticals that we would, uh, we would expect to be successful. >>Okay, excellent. Well, one of the challenges with the ransomware increases, the 40 net threat landscape report showed it's nearly up 11% in the last 12 months. Of course, we have that rapid pivot to work from home 18 months ago, and ransomware and phishing and, and techniques and social engineering getting so much more sophisticated and personalized. Now you've got someone working from home who probably has a million distractions, kids, spouses, et cetera. So easy to click on a link that for most of it looks very legitimate. So having a solution like this in place is really critical for >>Absolutely. And, and I think, you know, until those vulnerabilities are sealed, you know, the attacks will continue. And this solution is part of the, the, the soul for that. Because as soon as, as soon as these, these holes in the bucket of a tape shut, um, you know, the, the appetite to, to invest time in, in attacks, we'll, we'll, we'll fade, >>Hopefully that's the direction that we need to see it going, right. Not up until the right down. Talk to me about, so you mentioned from the it perspective, I'm looking for the benefits for an enterprise, it organization, centralized visibility, they can see in terms of productivity. I imagine it's much better for the end user, but give me that kind of it business perspective, how does this help them come together? >>So for all intents and purposes, the it manager will see within their, their fortunate, uh, interface, these devices, these links devices in people's homes, just in the same way that they would see 40 gates in their office in New York or their office in Pittsburgh. So, um, you know, it really is this, there were 15,000 people in five offices. There's now 15,000 people in 15,000 offices, and, but they can push and manage an and, and push those security, um, policies seamlessly down to all 15,000. They can categorize them. They can, they can do fall intensive purposes. Those, those employees are sitting in the, in one of their facilities. And, and that's really the, the bar that I believe companies should be holding themselves to because, um, it, it provides security for the company. It provides security for the employee, and of course, then by them being able to connect efficiently and secure securely and with great speed and no interruption, that's good for productivity, which is good for the company's profitability. >>Absolutely. It's all interconnected. And this is tuned for video conferencing. Is that >>Yes. So, so we've actually partnered with, um, both zoom and teams, Microsoft teams to, um, we've done an integration with them whereby we're able to identify and optimize that traffic within the network. So, so that adds an added benefit to, to users of those services. And we'll, we'll, we'll be rolling out further, um, partnerships with other key, um, utilities that enable that to optimization to, to, to help it be streamlined. >>So prioritize zoom and teams for the parents kick the kids >>Off. I mean, we've all experienced. The apple TV gets fired up, zoom goes down or, or fought for fortnight, uh, gaming sessions cause you know, havoc within the home. So it it's that application prioritization and optimization that, that I think will also really benefit, um, companies and the employees. The, the frustration is immense. >>I agree I've experienced some of that, but what you're really doing is providing a very secure lifeline that the enterprise needs, the employee needs. It, it's all tied together, productive employees, that our customer experience that our products and services it's, it's really these days, especially considering we don't know how much longer this is going to persist. We expect that there will be some amount of hybrid that will probably be permanent, but that's a lifeline. >>Yes, no, absolutely. I think to your point around the permanence of this, you know, of course we're not all going to be hermits and leave live at home forever, but that, you know, I think this has opened both companies and individuals eyes to what's possible. And I think if you implement these, these types of measures, then you you're setting it up for success. And, and, um, you know, I believe that the solution that we've launched is, is a part of the, the, the piece of the puzzle. >>Maybe the acceleration of it had a bit of a silver lining from what we've all experienced in the last 18 months. Yes. Yes. Talk to me about some of the comments and the feedback that you got from your session this morning. I'm sure people are very excited to hear about what you're doing. >>Yeah. I mean, since, since the announcement came out yesterday, there's been, there's been certainly a lot of interests in appetite. Um, and yeah, we're super excited about the reception it's received. Um, I think that a lot of people that are like, oh, wow, of course, why, why wouldn't this exist already? Um, and, and when you look at it like that, it kind of is obvious, but it, you know, no one expected of course the pandemic and therefore the, no one was ready for it and it's taken us a year or so to, to get a product that's, that's, that's viable and ready and going to be going to be really, really, um, a great utility for companies, but there really was nothing else out there. >>It is surprising in a sense, but then you're right. No one was prepared for the pandemic. We didn't see it coming. And we didn't think that this was a situation that we were going to have to prepare for, let alone live for as long as, as TBD, long as we have. >>Yeah, no, absolutely. That's um, I think it caught everyone by surprise. I think maybe if, if it had happened several years later than the hybrid work movement had started, it was in its infancy. It got very, very quickly ramped up to adulthood. >>I definitely >>Did. So, uh, so great news, very exciting. What you guys are doing with 49. I'm sure that there's going to be great customer feedback. We'll be excited to watch what happens as it gets deployed and rolled out and see how this really transforms the enterprise experience, the employee experience. And I imagine this is a great differentiator for links us business. No. Um, I think it's, it's a really exciting next chapter of, of our, of our history. You know, we've been around for 30 plus years and, um, I think this is, this is a real step change in, in, in where we're focused and I'm super excited about the future. >>I like that change in the future. Well, here we are in beautiful Napa. You said you're not a golfer, but your wife has, >>My wife is golfing. I I'm going to be keeping very many fingers crossed tomorrow during the program for this, for the safety of the spectators. >>That's awesome that she's in the program and here you are settled with all these meetings and all those >>Things. >>Exactly. Well, Harry, it's been a pleasure talking to you. Thank you for joining me on the program, explaining the links as homework solution powered by 49 and all the great things that are going to come from that. Thank you for Harry. Do Hurst. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the cube and Napa at the 40 minute security championship.

(upbeat music) >> Hello, everyone and welcome to this CUBE Conversation. I'm Lisa Martin. I'm excited to be joined by one of our CUBE alumni, John Maddison, the EVP of Products and the Chief Marketing Officer at Fortinet. John, welcome back to the program. Good to see you. >> Hi, Lisa. Good to be here again. >> So we last saw you at the Fortinet Championship back in September, a few months ago, but we've had the opportunity to speak a number of times this year. I've also had the chance to talk with Derek Manky, at FortiGuard Labs. There's been so much going on. Let's kind of break down some of the main challenges that enterprises are facing still. And there's four of them here that you're going to address as we wrap up 2021 head into 2022. And then let's also talk about what Fortinet sees as the solution, the cybersecurity mesh architecture. Let's go ahead and kick off with some of those challenges as we know so much has gone on throughout landscape that work from anywhere is so persistent, but what are some of the main things enterprises are facing still? >> Yeah, there's a lot, it's very dynamic right now. And you know, I've been in cybersecurity almost 20 years now and there's always been these three drivers around the infrastructure changes the threat landscape and regulatory. And I think when you look at the infrastructure changes, this work from anywhere, which is, you know, kind of the hybrid mode where I'm in the office today, it could be hopefully in the future, traveling and home. That's going to be here for some time, it seems. And so, you know, enterprises are now saying, I need a longer term strategy around that. I can't just say flip on the VPN and a bit of endpoint security. So that definitely enterprises are thinking that's going to be here for at least another couple of years. I think they're still running very fast to get the digital infrastructure in place. And so, and you're seeing network security and the application journey continuing and securing all those things. And then there's, you know, there's the threat landscape, which, you know, we've said, I think back at the PGA, we're seeing this huge increase in ransomware. And yes, there's still activity going on and trying to breach data and intellectual property and identity and credit cards. But just about every industry now is seeing attacks and it could be financial, it could be manufacturing, ransomware attacks that's continues. And then I think there's the, there's a couple of other things. There's the supply chain things which are also happening, but we're definitely I was just speaking to a customer a minute ago and they were finding a very hard to find the right skilled professionals around cybersecurity. And it kind of, it's like a hierarchy. I need to find somebody, it's hard to find somebody in IT. It's hard to find somebody in cybersecurity and IT. Is hard to find somebody in IT, cybersecurity and container. And so, you know, the more you go in depth, the harder it becomes and it's not even finding people, just retaining people as well. And so, you know, recently Fortinet committed to training another million. We've already trained to 750,000, but training another million people by 2025 in cybersecurity. >> That's outstanding. We've talked about that skills gap before in a number of conversations about all the work that 40 minutes doing, including with veterans, which is something near and dear to my heart, but the work from anywhere I wanted to talk with you about that because that presents a lot of challenges for organizations. And I was reading some stats that a significant percentage of enterprises expect that this is going to increase in 2022. How can it increase from where it is now? What are some of the things that you're seeing and how can Fortinet help customers address this persistent challenge? >> Yeah, well, I think it's increased or it's just the ratio between home and at work and travel might be changing. And again as I said, I think a lot of companies said, well, let's just put something in place now and it's going to go away. Well, it isn't going away. And so what Fortinet are looking to do, and I think it's not just one point product. It is a combination of technologies. It could be end point security. We're even looking at you know, at home networking through our own devices or our partnership with Linksys. It is looking at that zero trust architecture. It is looking at more network security, whether it be in the data center or in a cloud. I think what's important though, is two things. One is that no matter if you're on the network, off the network or traveling per se, then you need the user experience to be the same or simple. I can't just change the way I work because I'm at home versus travel versus you know, in the office. And the security needs to be consistent on those three places as well. So our goal, when we bring some of those solutions together, zero trust and endpoint and network security and policy and identity is to give the same user experience, a simple user experience and the high level of enterprise security, no matter, you know, if you're on and off the network. And those are the key. And I think today customers kind of struggle because they probably got four or five vendors in those different areas and they're trying to make them to work and it's very hard. And so that's why we, you know, we put forward a more of a platform approach per use case with doing that. >> Let's talk about some of those key use cases. And you mentioned ransomware a minute ago, and I just as of a couple of days ago, Kronos is, you know, the latest big name organization to be hit. A lot of folks concerned so many big companies and small companies rely on them. It's not going to affect, you know, the last paycheck in December, but that's a use case that Fortinet has been covering for a long time. I think when we spoke a few months ago, 2020 to 2021 ransomware was up nearly 11 fold. What are some of the things going on there and how are you guys working with customers to address that as we enter 2022? >> Yeah. Well, I definitely think you also saw the, you know, the recent vulnerability, the Log4j and that sits in a lot of systems. Now that sits in a lot of customer systems. It sits in a lot of security systems as well, by the way. So we come back to this, you know, supply chain issue. And so customers kind of accepting that this is going to be as this attack surface of the network and cloud and devices and users and whether or not the network you know, keeps continuing to expand. They're going to accept that these zero days are going to come along. They're going to, they also understand the sophistication of the threats. We're seeing a lot of activity of the threats in the reconnaissance space, and they're looking at your external attack surface and working out how they can get in. And so, I think customers are accepting that this is just getting more sophistication, there's a bigger attack surface. And so what they're looking at is to deploy some more detection capabilities, more just training of people, not to click on stuff, but you know, building infrastructure so it's segmented, long-term though the only way to defend against these ransomware attacks is to usually platform that then allows you to build automation that long-term allows you to build some contextual engine. Why, when, where, what are you doing, otherwise it's just going to be too hard, just trying to bolt together, you know, 10 or 15 products from vendors that don't get on well, none the best of times. So yeah, that's, it's long, it's a longterm architecture is the only thing that's going to work for customers. >> And for a long time, I think probably since I've known you John, Fortinet has been talking about the security fabric. Now Gartner is talking about the cybersecurity mesh architecture. Talk to me about those two. How similar is that? How leading edge was Fortinet and describe what a cybersecurity mesh architecture is? >> Well, it always takes a while for Gartner to catch up with us, but they, if I'm in a joking Gartner please except the apologies. That, you know, I think they've started to talking about this cybersecurity mesh architecture mesh. And what the saying is that, you know, these products need to talk to each other. And yes you can send things off into a central location for SIM or operational management, but really need to talk to each other and transfer exchange, threat intelligence. They need to be able to exchange policy long. They also need to be able to build automation. You know, a really good example is if our EDR system detects that your laptop has got a virus or a vulnerability, then I can, the EDR system will tell the zero trust policy manager don't allow access application. Or it could if you're on the network, you could tell the Wi-Fi, take off, take them off the network. So this automation is integration is the real long-term goal of the Gartner mesh. It's always been the long-term goal of Fortinet. Yes, we do individual products. You can buy them, but the real power long-term is to get that automation built into the platform. And as I said, even longer term start applying contextual rules, which will be super powerful in stopping, you know, attacks and breaches. >> Tremendous amount of power and capabilities that that context will provide. I was looking at some stats from Gartner and they said that by 2024, which is we're two years basically away from that organizations that do adopt this cybersecurity mesh architecture to integrate security tools, to work as a collaborative ecosystem, significant reduction in the financial impact of security incidents by 90%. That's huge and I know that you guys also have integrations with over 450 third-party technology partners as part of the security fabric. So you're ahead of the game. >> Well, it's not saying, you know, just buy from Fortinet, that's what you need to do, but it's not saying that at all. What, I think what Gartner is saying, and what we've been saying is that take a use case like work from anywhere and then build your platform, a platform for that use case. Now, what we are saying is, again, it's not saying you go from 30 products down to one, you go from 30 products down to maybe five or six platforms, but those platforms need to work together. They also need to exchange threat intelligence and policy and build automation. And so I think the platform approach, every CSO I speak to is just tired of buying another product, another product. They just want to get something that works and is automated long-term. And so the platform and the Gartner mesh. It's a slightly different concept, but something else we call convergence. Okay. So consolidation is consolidation of the vendors, but you may still have the same number of products. You still may have an end point in a zero trust and an email. Convergence is different where we bring it together and eliminating individual products. A really good example of that is SD-WAN that brings together security and application routing. And that goes back to a concept that Fortinet had since our beginning 20 years ago. And that is the original internet that we still use a lot today really has no idea who you are, what device are you using, where are you going, what application, what's the content, no clue, it just connects you. And so that leads to a lot of security being bolted on afterwards in different places. And so this convergence, we call it security different networking, where you start to integrate the security, which may be contextual, it maybe identity, maybe application running like SD-WAN, maybe content like next gen firewall. You bring those together. Now, when you do that, you face some compute challenges. And we've been one of the pioneers and building asics that allow this acceleration to bring this convergence together. But that's another area that's happening as well. It's different from consolidation, but it's bringing together that security and networking so you're not bolting things together as you go forward. >> Different from consolidation, but incredibly important to be able to reduce those silos as businesses are facing some of the challenges that you talked about, the persistence of work from anywhere, the threat landscape, the cybersecurity skills gap. >> Yeah. And you can do this convergence in different places. So you can do it at the cloud edge because you can throw a lot of compute at it. At the one edge, you probably need a asic approach, data center edge, a 5G edge. There's the LAN edge, which is the connectivity. Cause I sometimes have people go, well, let's just put all the security in the cloud, but now yes, you do need security in the cloud. You needs security from the cloud before the cloud, but there's also security needed these ages. And there's also another area that's been under huge attack now is operational technologies. So manufacturers, energy, gas, everyone is really got some physical infrastructure. Even a branch you can consider to be operational technology and they got cameras and other capabilities. So that, especially for the traditional operational technology, that's hard to open up. Because you need access, you need remote access and what's a seeing a huge amount of attacks there. In that world, you know, you've got to put the security there, physically with it to make sure you secure those components. >> What about the, from a challenge perspective John, we talked a lot in the last year, 18, 20, 22 months, I'm losing count of the acceleration of digital. What are some of the security opportunities there that provides Fortinet to help customers solve that if the acceleration is happening faster than the, some of the, you know, that their security infrastructure can keep pace. What are some of the opportunities there for you guys to help customers address that problem? >> Well, this is always been a battle between security and networking. You know, networking is gone from this 400 times faster than it was before. Security is still a lot of it's software. And so, you know, what you don't want to do is and the security team saying is say no all the time. No, don't do that project, it's too insecure. Stop doing that. No slow down on that. And that's, you know, always been an issue for security in that people think of it as a tax or a burden that slows things down. That's why I come back to this convergence. When you're building a network, the security should be inside that. Should be built and integrated. So if I'm building my one edge, which connects my building to a cloud or whatever, when I put that connectivity in there to an SD-WAN device, it should have security integrated inside it. The same effect I found building, you know, a data center or a cloud capability. So I think, you know, customers are you know, security teams can't stop the business from moving forward and building these applications wherever they may be in retail or manufacturing or healthcare. And so they just need to take a different approach to enable that speed of acceleration and to our minds having it totally integrated and converge is the only way you're going to be able to achieve the speed and the security at the same time. >> And that speed is critical as is a security. But let's talk about that cybersecurity skills gap. Something that I think I read recently is in its fifth year, we've talked about this before, but as you alluded to at the beginning of our conversation, Fortinet is very dedicated to training, lots of individuals. Talk to me about that skills gap. And you talked that it also affects people, companies being able to retain talent. How are you guys helping to address? >> Yeah, we did actually a survey a few months ago, a 2500 cybersecurity professionals. And, you know, one really revealing fact was about, I think it was about 70% said they'd had an incident because of the lack of training. Now that could be people who are just clicking on things. Okay. Versus somebody who doesn't, is not trained enough to see a threat. So I think, you know, the question going to go, but either way, the 70% of that, you know, is attributed to that breach. And so it's so, so important. And right from the start Fortinet has provided training. We provide free training to our partners, free training to our customers. I have a quite a large team that's building on the curriculum. So we supply curriculum and gear to over 450 universities and colleges. You mentioned the re-skilling of the veterans as well, over 2000. And to us, it's very important. So this commitment to get people trained because in the end there's, yeah, there's always a people part of this problem, whether it be people clicking on things or whether it be people not understanding and configuring crying, and then people having passwords of one two three or whatever. All these things, all these human things need to get, you know, we need to get educated and trained on it. So we'll continue that. I think a million's probably not enough. It's probably should be two million, but we'll try our best to get people trained as much as possible. And the other thing that I also saw in the survey was that once certified employees thought that was extremely important. It does take a lot of time. So, you know, one of our NSE 4 courses on our firewalls takes a week. It does a lot of things to learn. So one thing we're going to try and do is try and modularize a bit more so we can break it up a bit. But there's going to be a problem. It's kind of like the supply chain, the supply is not there, the people, this is right. The chips, they're not there. They're not there, you've got to try and fix it and expand the training and education of people. >> And I think that's fantastic that Fortinet has been dedicated to that for so long. Look forward to hearing how you guys, the progress that you make on that training 1 million folks. Will we see you at Accelerate in 2022? >> Yeah. Well, so Accelerate 22 is going to be a hybrid, of course. I'm actually, you can't really see here cause I've got my great office here. But in front of me is the window. I can actually see the Apple campus just over there. And this is our new campus in Sunnyvale, Silicon valley. We've got a pretty expensive training center and executive briefing center. So we're going to probably do in the morning of Accelerate 22, a live broadcast of some of the execs and some of our partners and customers, and then have some online stuff. So hybrid probably this year again. But a bit of physical presence. But yeah, we're expecting quite a few partners to, a few partners to be here, live and a few partners, obviously a lot of partners to tune in to the live broadcast. >> That's fantastic. I look forward to that hybrid event. John, great to see you as always. Thank you so much for the update and sharing what enterprises, the battles that they're facing, how Fortinet and the cybersecurity mesh can help. We look forward to seeing you in 2022. >> Thank you Lisa. Thank you. >> For John Maddison, I'm Lisa Martin. You've been watching this CUBE conversation. We'll see you next time. (lively music)

>> Narrator: From around the globe, it's theCUBE, covering Fortinet Security Summit, brought to you by Fortinet. >> Welcome back to theCUBE, Lisa Martin here live in Napa Valley at the Fortinet Championship. This is the site of kickoff to the 2021-22 FedEx Cup regular series. We're here with Fortinet and we're here with one of our distinguished alumni, John Madison, the CMO and EVP of products. John, it's great to see you in person. >> Yes, Lisa it's been a while. >> It has been a while. >> Good to be back here, live. >> I know, you're not on Zoom, you're actually right six feet across from me. >> Yep, look, yes, it's definitely physical. >> It does, talk to me about the PGA and Fortinet. What are some of the synergies? >> There's a lot. I think one of the biggest ones is the culture of the two companies. So I mean, PGA tour, I think they've donated almost $3 billion to charities over the last 15 years, 20 years and we're the same. We would definitely want to give back to the community. We want to make sure we're providing training and education. We're trying to re-skill some of the veterans, for example, over 2000, also women in technology, you may have heard one of the key notes today about that, attempts from a education and training perspective. So there's a lot of synergies between the PGA Tour, and Fortinet from a cultural perspective. >> I love that. Cultural synergy is so important but also some of the initiatives, women in tech, STEM, STEAM, those are fantastic. Give our audience a little overview of what's going on here. We've got over 300 partners and customers here. What are some of the key themes being discussed today? >> Yeah, we're going to try and keep it smaller, this event. We don't want 10,000, 20,000 people. We'll keep it smaller. So about 300 customers and partners, and what we want to do is bring together, you know, the top people in cybersecurity and networking, we want to bring in customers so they can net with each other, we want to bring the partners here. And so, what you're going to see is you can see the tech expo behind you there, where people are talking technology. Some of the keynotes focus on areas like ransomware, for example, and cyber security in different industries. So definitely it's a smaller gathering, but I think it's very focused on cybersecurity and networking. >> Well, that's such an important topic these days. You know, you and I have spoken a number of times this summer by Zoom, and talking about the threat landscape and the changes-- >> Yep. >> And the work from anywhere. When you and I spoke, I think it was in June, you said 25% we expect are going to go back to the office, 25% permanently remote and the other 50 sort of transient. Do you still think given where we are now in September that that's still-- >> Yeah, I'm going to modify my prediction a bit, I think it's going to be hybrid for some time. And I don't think it's just at home or not at home or at work or not at work, I think it's going to be maybe one or two days, or maybe three days versus five days. And so, we definitely see the hybrid mode of about 50% for the next couple of years at least. I think that, you know, ransomware has been in the news a lot. You saw the Colonial, the ransomware has increased. We did a threat report recently. Showed about a 10X increase in ransomware. So, I think customers are very aware of the cybersecurity threats. The damage now is not just sucking information out and IP, it's causing damage to the infrastructure. So definitely the, you know, the attack surface is increased with people working from home, versus in the office, and then you've got the threat landscape, really, really focused on that ransomware piece. >> Yeah, ransomware becoming a household word, I'm pretty sure even my mom knows what that is. And talking about the nearly 11X increase in, what was that, the first half of 2021? >> Yeah, over the last 12 months. And I think what's also happened is ransomware used to be a broad attack. So let me send out, and see if I can find a thousand companies. Again, you saw with the Colonial attack, it's very targeted now as well. So you've got both targeted and broad ransomware campaigns going on. And a lot of companies are just rethinking their cybersecurity strategy to defend against that. And that work from home component is another attack surface. So a lot of companies that were operational technology companies that had air gaps and people would come to work, now that you can remotely get into the network, it's again, you can attack people at home, back into the network. >> Is that a direct correlation that you've saw in the last year, in terms of that increase in ransomware and this sudden shift to working from home? >> Well, I also think there's other components. And so, I think the ransomware organizations, the gangs, could use crypto more reasonably than checks and dollars and stuff like that. So they could get their money out. It became very profitable versus trying to sell credit card data on the dark web. So you saw that component. You also saw, as I said, the attack surface be larger for companies, and so those two things unfortunately have come together, and you know, really seen an exponential rise in attacks. >> Perfect storm. Let's talk about some of your customer conversations and how they've changed and evolved in the last 18 months. Give me a snapshot of when you're talking with customers, what are some of the things that they're coming to you for help, looking for the most guidance? >> Yeah, well I think, you know, the digital innovation transformation is almost accelerated because of, you know, COVID. They've accelerated those programs, especially in industries like retail, where it becomes almost essential now to have that digital connectivity. So they can't stop those programs. They need to accelerate those programs, but as they move those programs faster, again they expand their attack surface. And so, what I'm definitely seeing is a convergence of traditional kind of networking, connectivity, and cybersecurity teams like the CIO and the CSO working on projects jointly. So whether it be the WAN connectivity, or whether it be endpoint, or whether it be cloud, both teams are working much more closely going forward. >> Synergies there that are absolutely essential. Talk to me about what you guys announced with Linksys yesterday, speaking of work from home and how that has transformed every industry. Talk to us about the home work solution powered by Fortinet. >> Yeah, well, we definitely see work from home being there for some time. And so the question is, what do you do there? So I think initially 18 months ago, what happened was companies turned on their, what they call a VPN, which gives them an encrypted access when they went from 5% to a 100% people on the VPN. I speak to customers now and they're saying, that was kind of a temporary solution. It puts an end point security there. It was kind of temporary and now I need a longer-term solution because I can see this at least 50% for the next two years, being this hybrid work from home, and some of them are saying, "Well, let's look at something. Let's try and take the best of enterprise networking and security, and then try and match that with an easy to set up Wi-Fi or routing system." So the two companies, you know, have come together with this joint venture. We're taking Linksys technology from an ease of use at home, it's very simple to set up, you can do it on an app or whatever. And then we integrate the Fortinet technology inside there from a security and enterprise networking. The enterprises can manage themselves, the enterprise component and the consumer can manage their piece. What's very important is that separation as well. So the privacy of your home network, and then to make sure the enterprise piece is secure, and then also introducing some simple, what we call quality of service. So for a business person, things like Teams or Zoom as preference over some of the gaming and downloads of the family. So I think it brings the best of both worlds: ease of use and enterprise security together. >> I'm sure the kids won't like that it's not optimized for gaming, but it is optimized for things like video conferencing which, in the last year we've been dependent on for collaboration and communication. Tell me a little bit about the tuning for video conferencing and collaboration. >> Yeah, so we announced both Zoom and Microsoft Teams, probably the two biggest apps, which I use from a work from home business perspective. And definitely if you've got a normal system at home and your kids they've been downloading something, a new game or something like that, they can just take the whole bandwidth. And so the ability to kind of scale that back and make sure the Zoom meeting or the Teams meeting is first priority, I think is very important, to get that connectivity and that quality of service, but also have that security component as well. >> Yeah, the security component is increasingly important. Talk to me about why Linksys, was COVID the catalyst for this partnership? >> Well, I think we looked at it and we have our own work from home solutions as well. I mean, our own gear. We definitely wanted to find something where we could integrate into more of a ease of use solution set. And it just so happened we were speaking to Linksys on some other things and as soon as we started talking, it was very, very clear that this would be a great relationship and joint venture and so we made the investment. Not just "here's some of our code", we made a substantial investment in Linksys and yeah, we see some other things coming in the future as well. >> Can you talk to me a little bit about what the go to market will be, how can enterprises and consumers get this? >> Yeah. So it's more of an enterprise sale. I know some people think Linksys, they think consumer straight away. For us, this is a sale to the enterprises. So the enterprises buy it, it's a subscription service. So they just pay a monthly fee and they can have different levels of service inside there as well. They will get, you know, for each employee they'll get one, two or three nodes. And then so the, so the enterprise is paying for it, which I think will help a bit and they will manage it through their system, but the consumer will get this kind of a game that's very easy to use, very high speed connectivity, mesh technology. So yes, Linksys will sell some of it as well. But I think, you know, actually Fortinet will be the major kind of go to market because of our 500,000 business customers we have out there. >> Right. And your huge partner network. >> Yes. >> So let's talk about, give me a little bit of a view in terms of the benefit that IT will get leveraging the Linksys home work solution. I imagine that centralized visibility of all the devices connected to the corporate network, even though, wherever the devices are? >> Yeah, it actually extends the corporate network. So not in this initial release, in the second release. In the first release, they can go to a cloud portal and they can manage what they can manage from an enterprise perspective. The employee can go to the same portal, but gets a different view, can manage their piece. In the second release, we'll actually have support in our management systems. So if you're an existing Fortinet customer and you've got our management systems and say you've got, I don't know, 250 sites, and you're managing some of our firewalls or SD WAN systems, You'll be able to see all the employees links as systems as well, in that same management system. But again, there's a separation of duty and privacy where they can just manage the enterprise components, not they can't see the traffic from the employees' side, from the non-business transactions. >> Good. That privacy is key there. Do you think that in a perfect world, would help quiet down some of the perfect storm that we're seeing with ransomware and this explosion, this work from anywhere, work from home, going to be persisting technologies, like what you're doing with Linksys, is going to help make a dent in that spike? >> I think it's a component. So for us, the long term strategy for users, end point, this kind of Linksys component is an element. We also feel like there needs to be a transition of VPN technology into zero trust. So you're limiting again, the access to applications versus the network. And then definitely the third component would be a technology like EDR, which is more behavioral-based versus signature-based. And so you bring all those three together. Absolutely we'll make a dent in ransomware because you're just reducing the attack surface greatly, but also scanning the technology to make sure if you see something, you can act straight away. >> And then pair that with what you guys are doing and the investment that Fortinet's been making for a while in training and helping to fill that cybersecurity skills gap, which is growing year on year. >> Yeah. I speak to a lot of CSOs and CIOs and they go "What's the latest technology? What can you do next?" I say, well, the most important thing you can do is train your people. Train them not to click on that phishing link, right? Because still our numbers are around 6% of employees click on things and it doesn't matter what company you are. And so the education and the training is the one of the core, the most basic steps. We're introducing what we call an IT awareness program as part of NSC, which allows companies to download some tools. And they'll try some phishing emails that go out there, they'll see the response, see how they can (mumbles). So I always say that the people, the social engineering is the first step to try and fix and reduce. That's the biggest attack surface you will have. >> It's getting so sophisticated and so personalized. I mean I've seen examples with training that I've done for various companies where you really have to look 2, 3, 4 times at it and have the awareness alone to know that this might not be legitimate. >> Yeah, especially when people are just clicking on more things because they're going to more places. And so you have to be very careful. You can stop a bunch of that with some rule sets. So the systems, but if they're faking the domain, spear phishing, where they know exactly the context of where the email's coming out, it's hard, but you've just got to be very, very careful. If in doubt don't click on it. >> I agree if in doubt, don't click it. Well, John, it's always great talking to you. Exciting to hear the growth of Fortinet, what you're doing with PGA tour, the synergies there, the cultural synergies and the growth in customers and partners, lots of stuff to come. Can't wait till our next conversation, which I hope is also in person. >> Yes, yes, yes, for sure. You know, I think this is a great venue in that it's- as you can see it's open, which helps a lot. >> Yeah. >> It's not far from our headquarters, just down the road there, we've committed to this event for six or seven years. And so this is our first time, but definitely we're hoping to get out a bit more as we go forward. >> Excellent. I'm glad to see to see a company like Fortinet taking the lead and you look like you're dressed for golf. You said you have meetings, but I'm going to let you go because you probably have to get to that. >> I have a few more meetings. I wish they would leave a little gap for some golf. I'll try and work one as we go forward. >> Yeah. Anyway, John, thank you for joining me, great to see you. For John Madison, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE from the Fortinet Championship Security Summit in Napa. (Upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live from San Francisco, it's theCUBE covering DevNet Create 2017 brought to you by Cisco. >> Hey, welcome back everyone, we are here live in San Francisco for theCUBE's exclusive two days of coverage of Cisco's new inaugural event called DevNet Create. An extension of their classical developer group DevNet, DevNet Create really going into the ethos of DevOps, the infrastructruous code targeting cloud-native and app developers, the collision between applications and infrastructure. A new direction for Cisco, this is theCUBE, I'm John Furrier with my co-host Peter Burris. Our next guest is Bhavana Srines- >> Bhavana: Srinivas. >> Srinivas, solutions architect at PubNub, which provides real-time pubs. Welcome to theCUBE, thanks for coming on. >> Thank you, it's great to be here and talk to you guys. >> So, PubNub, you couldn't get PubSub but it relates. Explain what you guys do real quick. >> Yeah, so what PubNub is is it provides real-time infrastructure as a service. So we realized that a lot of people were trying to build these real-time, always-on applications wherein when something happens in real life, you want that message or event to be translated to several of your friends or other users instantly. So, everyone is trying to build a real-time app like, say, a taxi dispatcher like Lyft or for example, a chat application where if I send a message my friends need to receive it instantly. Anyone trying to build these kind of real-time applications were building the infrastructure before they even got to the best part, which is their business logic. So, we decided that we will provide that infrastructure, we'll provide that plumbing. We'll build a global distributed network for all of these app developers to build their always-on applications. So, what we do is provide this real-time, bidirectional communication between devices in a very scalable manner and it's very, it focuses on real-time communication. >> And the key there is that most apps are mobile, you require this so you want to get them accelerated because, let's face it, most apps don't make it, right? So why build all the plumbing? >> Bhavana: Right. >> Focus on getting to figuring out the best app experience. >> Exactly, so it's for mobile, web, and even for IoT devices because everyone now wants to talk to each other. You're not going to let that gradual sit by itself, you want to connect it. So, like you said, it's meant to go to market quickly. Like you said, not every company has the resources or the time and the effort to put in to building this infrastructure, so why don't we provide this as a service? So now they're focusing on their business logic and try and make that app look pretty. >> So you're clearly in the world of cloud-native, which really is pure cloud, mostly startups. Because why have a data center? If you're a startup, I mean anyone that does a startup these days, if you have data center you're either crazy or you have so much case you just want to spend it. Why would you want to do it? You just go right to the cloud. >> Right, right, right, so we call ourselves more of a network because we're not... Think of it as a CDN but for real-time data. It's not longer static files- >> Peter: CDN is smaller messages deterministic performance. >> Exactly, exactly, you nailed it. So, what we're- >> John: You nailed it. >> Peter: I'm the man! (laughter) >> All right, so talk to me about where your use cases are. Give us some examples of customers and some specific apps that are on the network. >> For sure, so, if you take eBay for instance. They use PubNub for buyer-seller chat. So, you go on eBay, you want to talk to that buyer before you actually buy that thing. So, that chat application is powered by PubNub. Or for instance, you go to Logitech and then you want to control all these devices in your house, and PubNub is what enables that from your mobile phone to all the devices in your house. That is PubNub in play there. Or, if for instance, Lyft uses us for to see where exactly the driver is in real-time. So you're able to see every instantly. So, it's such a low-lying infrastructure that we play in almost 35 different industries. Whether it's real-time chat or taxi dispatch, multiplayer game, like Pocket Gems uses us. That's where it's real-time at it's core, right? So, you have two screens, people are playing a game. You want to see what the other person is doing, right? That's the essence of a multiplayer game. And so you can imagine how important it is to be real-time in such a use case, and that's where PubNub fits in. >> But just so we're clear, we're not talking about scada kinds of, system control kinds of things. Low-level IoT protocols, we're talking about a machine that serve human types of speeds. >> Bhavana: Exactly. >> A few hundred milliseconds, that kind of stuff. >> Exactly, exactly, so we're protocol, we call ourselves protocol agnostic. So, as long as a device can speak ECP it can understand PubNub. So, all you're dealing with is that high-level application level APIs. >> Peter: So you're still layer seven? >> Yes, very much layer seven. >> Peter: That's important. >> Yeah, but then the way we provide that layer seven API is by building out this very robust network. >> All right, so explain to us how you guys play with microservices because you're doing a topic on, Always-on Apps are Driving Microservices to the Edge. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so far you understood that PubNub's almost like a message pipeline between devices. If you have a message to throw out, PubNub will route it for you anywhere in the world. So then we decided that people are sending all these small bits of data through our network, but let's do something with that data. So, maybe if there's a chat application and people are talking to each other, maybe you want to translate it in-stream. So you put in a function there on the PubNub network that says, "Hey, if my destination is going to a "Spanish-speaking person, translate it." Or if I want to do sentiment analysis because I have a customer support kind of app, data's flowing between an agent and a customer, then let's do some sentiment analysis on it. So, what we added to this humongous network is the ability to put small pieces of logic on it. So that it acts on the data flowing though the network. And so it becomes easy to spin up these microservices through PubNub and that's what I'm going to be talking about. So it's, yeah-- >> John: So it's a brand new innovation. >> Bhavana: Sorry? >> A new innovation opportunity for you guys-- >> Bhavana: Exactly. >> To apply logic into a data stream while it's in motion. >> Of course, yes, so we recently even did have a BLOCK, we call this BLOCK, event handlers. So, we have a BLOCK with Cisco Spark. So if you wanted to do any kind of collaboration using that Cisco Spark, you can now send data through PubNub and instantly, in real-time it will sync up with Cisco Spark. >> So, Bhavana I got to get your perspective on something. We talk to a lot of enterprises and you're involved with a lot of cutting edge companies. Microservices, cloud-native, they're doing cutting edge stuff. They don't have time to be bothered with old-fashioned stuff because they have no baggage. There's no legacy, a lot of these enterprises have legacy environments, they're trying to be relevant, and they're looking to design great apps. Is there a pattern that you've seen or observation that you've noticed on these successful new, emerging companies that could be an opportunity for someone to look at and say, "Hmm, I should to more of that." What's the trend? >> (laughs) That's a loaded question. But we talk to a lot of small and medium businesses and also a lot of enterprise level companies. But then, it's just that the sales cycles are much slower. You can't go to a company and say that, "Hey, I know you're building a technical product. "Speed up your development process," right? So it's up to them to do that. So with enterprises at least they have the resource and time to do so. But, like you said, they have a lot of legacy systems. So, it's hard to tear that down and-- >> John: Build new. >> Build new stuff that you have, which might be more optimized but we try to make it work. So we're trying to now, like I said, if you're within the PubNub eco-system, you can use our BLOCKS but then everyone understands https. So we've now included a BLOCKs endpoint, where if you just dock http, you can get in to the PubNub network. So ways to use our network using their infrastructure. So we're trying to make this network accessible for anyone, irrespect of whether they use-- >> John: So integrate easily into these older legacy environments. >> Bhavana: Exactly. >> Well, but so one of the places where at least PubSub initially started was the idea that you could have a published without having to know who the clients were. >> Bhavana: Right, right, right, right. >> So you anticipate, does PubNub anticipate that you're actually going to be in a position to say, I as a real-time device, who has a real-time service, can put something into PubNub and then devices out there can subscribe to it? So a device manufacturer may sell something, it takes advantage of that centralized service, but have it operate in a deterministic, high-quality high-reliability way? Is that kind of the direction you're taking? >> Yeah, but at the end of the day, someone has to build an application. >> Peter: Sure. >> So for instance, even in Insteon, they use PubNub. They integrate PubNub within their devices and they're now selling it at Best Buys and whatnot. So it's like when I as a customer buy an Insteon product, I don't know there's PubNub in there. But then using PubNub, Insteon's now able to collect data about my usage patterns or where I can be saving energy, et cetera so the- >> But then the alternative for them is to build a full-stack system, manage it, have system integrators, have operators-- >> I mean, that was exactly the case at Insteon. They had 23 on-call support agents all day, every day, trying to do exactly what PubNub did for them without that. >> John: Yeah, they save all that cost. It's kind of like why people use Amazon. >> Right, exactly. >> (laughs) I don't need a data center, I don't need staff. All right, what did you think about this event? Obviously, Cisco has been first in a lot of markets and succeeded in networking but didn't really knock it out of the park on smart home or-- >> Peter: Linksys. >> (laughs) And so on and so forth but now, with cloud-native, we're saying is that the opportunity for them? >> Bhavana: Yeah. >> What's your take on Cisco's moving up the stack? >> I mean, I think it's great. This is one of the first conferences that DevNet is hosting for developers, right? I just got here but we've had a booth here and people are saying really great things. And there's been a steady crowd. And apparently there have been great talks. So I'm actually very excited to give my talk and then go on. >> Peter: What time is your talk, today? >> Yeah, today at 5 p.m. and then I'm here tomorrow as well. So, excited to check out the whole experience. >> Great to have you on theCube and thanks for sharing PubNub and we look forward to getting more updates from you. And congratulations on your success. >> Bhavana: Thank you. >> And your customers, thanks for sharing. >> It was great to be here, thank you so much. >> John: Thanks so much. >> So you should stop by our booth when you- >> We'll stop by and check out PubNub, the real-time pub-sub service used by all cutting edge companies in the cloud-native. This is theCUBE, Cube Cloud. Check out our content at youtube.com/siliconangle. That's our Cube Cloud, all the content there for you. I'm John Furrier with Peter Burris. Stay with us for more live, exclusive coverage from Cisco's inaugural event, DevNet Create, after this short break. (upbeat music) >> Hi, I'm April Mitchell and I'm the Senior Director of Strategy and Planning.