>> Narrator: Live from San Diego, California it's theCUBE covering Cisco Live, US, 2019. Brought to you by Cisco and its eco system partners. >> Welcome back to San Diego everybody. This is theCUBE the leader in live tech coverage, My name is Dave Vellante, Stu Miniman is here, Lisa Martin as well but we've got a very special guest now Ken O'Reilly my good friend is here. He's the director of customer experience for Cisco Stealthwatch. Kenny great to see you thanks for coming on. >> Well, thanks for having me, Dave. Good seeing you as well. >> Yes so customer experience, people think about customer experience and security it's not always great right? It's a challenging environment they're constantly sort of chasing their tails it's like the arms race with the bad guy so what is customer experience all about in the context of security? >> So our number one goal for our security customers is to accelerate their value realization so our challenge is to make sure that they get the value out of the product that they're buying because every minute of every day the bad guys are trying to get their assets and their IP and when they buy a technology the quicker you can get it up and running and protect the better it is for our customer. >> So how do you measure like value? It's like reducing the amount of data that you're exposed to losing? Is it increasing the cost of the bad guys getting in? 'cause if I'm a bad guy and it costs me more to get in I would maybe go somewhere else, how do you measure that? >> Right so, you're right, so our whole product strategy is to increase the cost for the bad guy to get the IP or the assets and so for us we have to understand what the value proposition is for our product so that the customers can realize that value, so whether it's tryna help them with the use cases or operationalize the product or in our case what we try to do we have both network users and security users we try to get both groups to adopt the technology and then expand it from there, operation centers to the guys that are doing the thread hunting to the investigations et cetera. So that's how we sort of gauge the value is the number of people that are using the technology and the number of use cases that are actually implemented. >> So we've been talking about security all week Stealthwatch obviously you know one of the flagship products Cisco security business grew 21% last quarter so that's kind of an interesting stat services is 25% of the companies revenue so you're the intersection of two pretty important places for Cisco so specifically when you come into a customer engagement who are you engaging with is it a multidisciplinary are you primarily dealing with the SecOps group or do you touch other parts of the organization? >> Yeah, so typically when a company's looking, it's usually they're looking for network visibility so we're dealing with the network architecture teams and they typically bring in the security architects 'cause today they're working hand in hand, and then from there that's where we say preach the gospel of Stealthwatch we always say you can never have enough Stealthwatch okay? Because you can never have enough visibility 'cause once you turn the lights on and they can see what's going on in their network it's very illuminating for them and then they realize the challenges that they have and what they have to do to protect their assets. >> Yeah I joked at Google Cloud Next it's like the cockroaches all scrambling you know for the corners when you turn the lights on and Stealthwatch at its core is you don't need a lot of fancy AI even though you can apply fancy AI but you start with the basics right? What do ya got, where are the gaps okay, so now once it's exposed what do you do with that information is the customer experience group come in and help implement it faster? That's part of the value so time to value to that? >> So time to value with our experts of course we understand the space we understand our product we understand the challenge and of course our network and security customers are overwhelmed you know the stat that they throw out there is that our large customers have anywhere from 50-100 security products so how do you stand out? So as a vendor our number one goal is to build that relationship with the customer to become the trusted security advisor so we know better than anybody how to get that value how to get it quickly and you know the number one problem that they have Dave is how to operationalize all these tools 'cause Stealthwatch sits in the middle we're a big integration platform we take data, telemetry, NetFlow from a lot of different products and we bring that data together to figure out, to help that customer figure out how to make sense of it update their policies create better policies and really tighten up their security posture. >> Okay so they might like to reduce the number of tools but they really can't right? 'cause their using 'em and so what you do is you bring in a layer to help manage that. >> Absolutely. >> But you're also solving a problem just in terms of exposing gaps and then do you also have tooling to fill those gaps? Or is that partners tools is that Stealthwatch? >> So we have our own what we call integration platform where we have a platform that helps integrate other, not only other Cisco security technologies into our platform but other security technologies as well outside of Cisco so you know it's a platform that we've built it's part of our customer experience sort of tool set but it's a tool set unlike anybody else ever has so that along with what we do with the DevNet group we've built our own set of API's to integrate in with the product API's so we can pump data out to data lakes we can pump data out to SIMS like Splunk and some of the others so you know that's where we are we're a solutions group that's what we do we work on the solutions, long term value you know we work on the lifecycle sort of value chain with customers. We're there with 'em the whole time you know our goal; retention, we want them to renew which means they're investing in us again and of course as Cloud, as their infrastructure is moving the the Cloud and our technologies are moving to the Cloud we have to be there to help them get through all those technology challenges. >> So the pricing model is a subscription model is that right? >> Yeah. >> Or can be or? >> Yes, well we call it term all right? But it's essentially subscription we have switched over the last 18 months from a perm to a term based model. >> Which I mean Chuck Robbins in the conference calls in the earnings calls talks about the importance of you know increasingly having a rateable model and recognizing subscription, so when you say a term so I got to what, sign up for a year, two years, three years or something like that? >> We like three yep. >> So who doesn't right? Okay so you sign up for three years but the price book says monthly I'm sure right so you (laughs) make it look smaller, but it makes sense though because you're not going to start stop, start stop with your security, you really want to get success out of it so you got to have some kind of commitment, let's talk a little bit more about the analytics side of it and how you're applying machine intelligence I mean there's always been some form of analytics largely for reporting and things of that nature but now it's getting more automated so take us on that analytics journey Stealthwatch has been around for what five years? >> 15 yeah over 15 years. >> 15? >> Ken: Yes, yes, yes. >> Oh wow maybe I just found out about it five years ago. >> (laughs) right yeah, not but I mean-- >> Dave: Take us back five years. >> Five years? So the big thing for us in the data that we collect is context. Right so you've talked to TK about the more context you can add to that data the better you are at analyzing that data so for us that's one of the things that we do we add a lot of context to that data through ICE so identity information, what kind of assets they are and that's where we get to through our tools add more context so that our analytical engines so like the cognitive thread analytics, the encrypted thread analytics that we have, that they're able to analyze that data a lot better and that's what we've been doing now for the past three plus years since we were acquired by Cisco is to find a way to add more context to the data so that helps our analytics become much more effective. >> And you can interact with through API's say for instance Splunk you mentioned that so you got that data that you can operate on do you see a point where the machines are actually going to plug the holes? I mean are we on the cusp of that? In other words you see a gap >> Right. >> Dave: Today a human has to take action correct? >> Yes, right, right, right. >> Do you see a point maybe it's two, three, five 10 years but are we going to get to that point? >> I think so down the line I mean because we've seen as we've been able to get better visibility and better context about that data we can make better decisions through the machine all right? So it doesn't take an army of people to read the matrix right, we're getting better at you know synthesizing that matrix down you take our network segmentation capabilities that we've built as part of the Stealthwatch customer experience team we can get to well over 90% identification of the assets on the network which is a lot better than anybody else in the industry all right? So we're getting there and through sort of the final stages of reading that metrics, reading the matrix we're getting to the point where we understand a lot more what's on peoples networks what those assets are. >> So as a security practitioner how do you think we're doing as an industry? I mean I used to go back every year and say okay how much was spent on security? are we more secure, less secure? And it felt like you know as data grew it felt like we were getting more and more and more exposed you've seen the stats where when a company gets infiltrated it takes on average you know 250 days for them to realize they've been infiltrated is that changing, are we getting better as an industry? >> I think in Cisco we are because of the products that we have in that integrated architecture so when we first joined three years ago that was the drum beat and now today we integrate with ICE we're going to integrate with next generation firewall through the integration of the sort of analytics that we've got in the Cloud that's happening right? And we're trying to integrate with other products but you know you go down on the floor and you see the number of point products that is a nightmare for our customers so for us through the customer experience in our organization we're there to take that complexity out and bring all of those technologies together and when you get to that point then you're really making progress with a customer, a customer that's got 50-100 products in the mix that's a recipe for disaster and if it's still like that five years from now customers are still going to be challenged. >> So a big part of your customer experience mission is simplification, speed time, time to value. >> Yes. >> Raise the cost to the bad guys and then do it all over again. >> Yeah, yeah it's just rinse and repeat and that's a life cycle journey and that's what we take our customers through right. >> Now I noticed you have on your phone you got the Bruins logo. >> That's right, right here proud. >> So big game tomorrow any predictions? >> 4-3 in overtime Bruins. >> Oh my God I don't think my heart could take that. >> Could you not take that Dave? It's going to be an overtime game. >> Well it's you know it's rare to have a game seven in any, at the very final one, a lot of game sevens but not to win it all I think the last time at Boston was 1984. >> Ken: Is that right? >> Yeah it's been a long time, so you know I'm excited. >> I know you are (laughs) that's right. >> Warriors fans too we got that thing going out I mean I don't know for all you hoop fans out there so, >> Hopefully there's a game seven for that as well. >> Yeah let's go right, why not? >> Why not, game seven all round. >> All right so Chara is going to play with his broken jaw or whatever's going on. >> Matt Grzelcyk I hope is back. >> Dave: Yeah that would be key. >> That would be key yeah so, >> Dave: sure up the defense >> That's right. (crosstalk) >> Ken: He's a plus minus leader Chara. >> Oh yeah. >> That's right all time. >> Even though we give him a lot of grief. (laughter) he may look slow but he's all time plus minus leader. >> All right Kenny hey thanks so much-- >> All right Dave thanks for having me on all right go Bruins. >> All right keep it right there everybody go Bruins we will be right back Dave Vellante, Stu Miniman and Lisa Martin we're live from Cisco Live in San Diego you're watching theCUBE. (electronic jingle)