>> Narrator: From downtown San Francisco it's the Cube covering RSA North America 2018. >> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here with the Cube. We're at the RSA conference in downtown San Francisco, 40,000 plus professionals all about security and one of the big themes is how do we work together? How do we leverage our collective knowledge, look for patterns to help, you know, be better against the bad guys, and one of the really big forces for that is the Cyber Threat Alliance and we're really excited to have Michael Daniel, the president and CEO of Cyber Threat Alliance. Michael, great to see you. >> Thanks for having me. >> So, talk about kind of the genesis of this because it's such an important concept that, yes, we're competitors on this floor but if we work together, we can probably save ourselves a lot of work. >> Absolutely, I mean, part of the idea behind the Cyber Threat Alliance is that no matter how big you are, no matter how broad your coverage is of cyber security company, no one individual company ever sees all of the threats all of the time. >> Jeff: Right. >> And, so that, in order to better protect their customers and clients, sharing that threat intelligence at speed at scale is a very fundamental part of being a much better cyber security company. >> So, how hard of a sell was that a year ago? I think you started it a year ago, announced it, and how's the ecosystem kind of changed over the last year? >> Well, I would say that, you know, it's not like I run into anybody that says, "You know, Michael, that's a really "stupid idea, we shouldn't do that." Right, it's really finding the way for a cyber security company to fit it into their business model. >> Right. >> To be able to consume the threat intelligence at a speed that matters and really be able to bake it into their products. That's usually the hard part. Conceptually, everybody agrees that this is what we need to do. >> Right, and then, how 'about just the nitty gritty nuts and bolts of, you know, how do you share information? How is it picked up, how is it communicated? What are the protocols? I'd imagine that's not too simple. >> That's right, and one of the things that we settled on was we use the STIX format because it's an open format that everybody can translate back and forth. We had to build in a lot of business rules to actually make sure that people were playing fair. You know, for example, we actually require all of our members to share. So, you can't just join the alliance and consume information, you actually have to give in order to receive. >> Right, and you've got some really kind of high-level, lofty goals that you've built this around in terms of doing good for the greater good, kind of beyond the profitability of an individual customer transaction. I wonder if you can speak to a few of those. >> Well, sure, so the part of the idea behind the way that CTA is structured is that we're a 501 C6, so we're a non-profit, right, and the idea is that we function to help raise the level of cyber security across the digital ecosystem and actually enable our member companies to compete more effectively because they have better intelligence that their products and services are based on, but we, ourselves, are not in it to make money. >> Right, right, right, alright, Michael. Unfortunately, we're up against the time. >> Absolutely. >> So, we're going to have to leave it there, but love the work that you guys are doing and it makes so much sense for people to work together. >> Well, thank you very much, thank you for having me. >> Alright, he's Michael from Cyber Threat Alliance. I'm Jeff from the Cube. You're watching us from the RSA conference San Francisco, thanks for watchin'. (soft electronic beat)