(bright music) >> Hello and welcome to today's session of the 2021 AWS Global Public Sector Partner Awards for the award for Best Partner Transformation, Best Cybersecurity Solution. I'm now honored to welcome our next guests, General Keith Alexander, Founder, and Co-CEO of IronNet Cybersecurity, as well as Gil Quiniones, President and CEO of the New York Power Authority. Welcome to the program gentlemen, delighted to have you here. >> Good to be here. >> Terrific. Well, General Alexander, I'd like to start with you. Tell us about the collective defense program or platform and why is it winning awards? >> Well, great question and it's great to have Gil here because it actually started with the energy sector. And the issue that we had is how do we protect the grid? The energy sector CEOs came together with me and several others and said, how do we protect this grid together? Because we can't defend it each by ourselves. We've got to defend it together. And so the strategy that IronNet is using is to go beyond what the conventional way of sharing information known as signature-based solutions to behavioral-based so that we can see the events that are happening, the unknown unknowns, share those among companies and among both small and large in a way that helps us defend because we can anonymize that data. We can also share it with the government. The government can see a tax on our country. That's the future, we believe, of cybersecurity and that collective defense is critical for our energy sector and for all the companies within it. >> Terrific. Well, Gil, I'd like to shift to you. As the CEO of the largest state public power utility in the United States, why do you think it's so important now to have a collective defense approach for utility companies? >> Well, the utility sector lied with the financial sector as number one targets by our adversaries and you can't really solve cybersecurity in silos. We, NYPA, my company, New York Power Authority alone cannot be the only one and other companies doing this in silos. So what's really going to be able to be effective if all of the utilities and even other sectors, financial sectors, telecom sectors cooperate in this collective defense situation. And as we transform the grid, the grid is getting transformed and decentralized. We'll have more electric cars, smart appliances. The grid is going to be more distributed with solar and batteries charging stations. So the threat surface and the threat points will be expanding significantly and it is critical that we address that issue collectively. >> Terrific. Well, General Alexander, with collective defense, what industries and business models are you now disrupting? >> Well, we're doing the energy sector, obviously. Now the defense industrial base, the healthcare sector, as well as international partners along the way. And we have a group of what we call technical and other companies that we also deal with and a series of partner companies, because no company alone can solve this problem, no cybersecurity company alone. So partners like Amazon and others partner with us to help bring this vision to life. >> Terrific. Well, staying with you, what role does data and cloud scale now play in solving these security threats that face the businesses, but also nations? >> That's a great question. Because without the cloud, bringing collective security together is very difficult. But with the cloud, we can move all this information into the cloud. We can correlate and show attacks that are going on against different companies. They can see that company A, B, C or D, it's anonymized, is being hit with the same thing. And the government, we can share that with the government. They can see a tax on critical infrastructure, energy, finance, healthcare, the defense industrial base or the government. In doing that, what we quickly see is a radar picture for cyber. That's what we're trying to build. That's where everybody's coming together. Imagine a future where attacks are coming against our country can be seen at network speed and the same for our allies and sharing that between our nation and our allies begins to broaden that picture, broaden our defensive base and provide insights for companies like NYPA and others. >> Terrific. Well, now Gil, I'd like to move it back to you. If you could describe the utility landscape and the unique threats that both large ones and small ones are facing in terms of cybersecurity and the risks, the populous that live there. >> Well, the power grid is an amazing machine, but it is controlled electronically and more and more digitally. So as I mentioned before, as we transform this grid to be a cleaner grid, to be more of an integrated energy network with solar panels and electric vehicle charging stations and wind farms, the threat is going to be multiple from a cyber perspective. Now we have many smaller utilities. There are towns and cities and villages that own their poles and wires. They're called municipal utilities, rural cooperative systems, and they are not as sophisticated and well-resourced as a company like the New York Power Authority or our investor on utilities across the nation. But as the saying goes, we're only as strong as our weakest link. And so we need- >> Terrific. >> we need to address the issues of our smaller utilities as well. >> Yeah, terrific. Do you see a potential for more collaboration between the larger utilities and the smaller ones? What do you see as the next phase of defense? >> Well, in fact, General Alexander's company, IronNet and NYPA are working together to help bring in the 51 smaller utilities here in New York in their collective defense tool, the IronDefense or the IronDome as we call it here in New York. We had a meeting the other day, where even thinking about bringing in critical state agencies and authorities. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and other relevant critical infrastructure state agencies to be in this cloud and to be in this radar of cybersecurity. And the beauty of what IronNet is bringing to this arrangement is they're trying to develop a product that can be scalable and affordable by those smaller utilities. I think that's important because if we can achieve that, then we can replicate this across the country where you have a lot of smaller utilities and rural cooperative systems. >> Yeah. Terrific. Well, Gil, staying with you. I'd love to learn more about what was the solution that worked so well for you? >> In cybersecurity, you need public-private partnerships. So we have private companies like IronNet that we're partnering with and others, but also partnering with state and federal government because they have a lot of resources. So the key to all of this is bringing all of that information together and being able to react, the General mentioned, network speed, we call it machine speed, has to be quick and we need to protect and or isolate and be able to recover it and be resilient. So that's the beauty of this solution that we're currently developing here in New York. >> Terrific. Well, thank you for those points. Shifting back to General Alexander. With your depth of experience in the defense sector, in your view, how can we stay in front of the attacks, mitigate them, and then respond to them before any damage is done? >> So having run our nations, the offense. I know that the offense has the upper hand almost entirely because every company and every agency defends itself as an isolated entity. Think about 50 mid-sized companies, each with 10 people, they're all defending themselves and they depend on that defense individually and they're being attacked individually. Now take those 50 companies and their 10 people each and put them together and collect the defense where they share information, they share knowledge. This is the way to get out in front of the offense, the attackers that you just asked about. And when people start working together, that knowledge sharing and crowdsourcing is a solution for the future because it allows us to work together where now you have a unified approach between the public and private sectors that can share information and defend each of the sectors together. That is the future of cybersecurity. What makes it possible is the cloud, by being able to share this information into the cloud and move it around the cloud. So what Amazon has done with AWS has exactly that. It gives us the platform that allows us to now share that information and to go at network speed and share it with the government in an anonymized way. I believe that will change radically how we think about cybersecurity. >> Yeah. Terrific. Well, you mention data sharing, but how is it now a common tactic to get the best out of the data? And now, how is it sharing data among companies accelerated or changed over the past year? And what does it look like going forward when we think about moving out of the pandemic? >> So first, this issue of sharing data, there's two types of data. One about the known threats. So sharing that everybody knows because they use a signature-based system and a set of rules. That shared and that's the common approach to it. We need to go beyond that and share the unknown. And the way to share the unknown is with behavioral analytics. Detect behaviors out there that are anonymous or anomalous, are suspicious and are malicious and share those and get an understanding for what's going on in company A and see if there's correlations in B, C and D that give you insights to suspicious activity. Like solar winds, recognizes solar winds at 18,000 companies, each defending themselves. None of them were able to recognize that. Using our tools, we did recognize it in three of our companies. So what you can begin to see is a platform that can now expand and work at network speed to defend against these types of attacks. But you have to be able to see that information, the unknown unknowns, and quickly bring people together to understand what that means. Is this bad? Is this suspicious? What do I need to know about this? And if I can share that information anonymized with the government, they can reach in and say, this is bad. You need to do something about it. And we'll take the responsibility from here to block that from hitting our nation or hitting our allies. I think that's the key part about cybersecurity for the future. >> Terrific. General Alexander, ransomware of course, is the hottest topic at the moment. What do you see as the solution to that growing threat? >> So I think, a couple things on ransomware. First, doing what we're talking about here to detect the phishing and the other ways they get in is an advanced way. So protect yourself like that. But I think we have to go beyond, we have to attribute who's doing it, where they're doing it from and hold them accountable. So helping provide that information to our government as it's going on and going after these guys, making them pay a price is part of the future. It's too easy today. Look at what happened with the DarkSide and others. They hit Colonial Pipeline and they said, oh, we're not going to do that anymore. Then they hit a company in Japan and prior to that, they hit a company in Norway. So they're attacking and they pretty much operate at will. Now, let's indict some of them, hold them accountable, get other governments to come in on this. That's the way we stop it. And that requires us to work together, both the public and private sector. It means having these advanced tools, but also that public and private partnership. And I think we have to change the rhetoric. The first approach everybody takes is, Colonial, why did you let this happen? They're a victim. If they were hit with missiles, we wouldn't be asking that, but these were nation state like actors going after them. So now our government and the private sector have to work together and we need to change that to say, they're victim, and we're going to go after the guys that did this as a nation and with our allies. I think that's the way to solve it. >> Yeah. Well, terrific. Thank you so much for those insights. Gil, I'd also like to ask you some key questions and of course, certainly people today have a lot of concerns about security, but also about data sharing. How are you addressing those concerns? >> Well, data governance is critical for a utility like the New York Power Authority. A few years ago, we declared that we aspire to be the first end-to-end digital utility. And so by definition, protecting the data of our system, our industrial controls, and the data of our customers are paramount to us. So data governance, considering data or treating data as an asset, like a physical asset is very, very important. So we in our cybersecurity, plans that is a top priority for us. >> Yeah. And Gil thinking about industry 4.0, how has the surface area changed with Cloud and IoT? >> Well, it's grown significantly. At the power authority, we're installing sensors and smart meters at our power plants, at our substations and transmission lines, so that we can monitor them real time, all the time, know their health, know their status. Our customers we're monitoring about 15 to 20,000 state and local government buildings across our states. So just imagine the amount of data that we're streaming real time, all the time into our integrated smart operations center. So it's increasing and it will only increase with 5G, with quantum computing. This is just going to increase and we need to be prepared and integrate cyber into every part of what we do from beginning to end of our processes. >> Yeah. And to both of you actually, as we see industry 4.0 develop even further, are you more concerned about malign actors developing more sophistication? What steps can we take to really be ahead of them? Let's start with General Alexander. >> So, I think the key differentiator and what the energy sector is doing, the approach to cybersecurity is led by CEOs. So you bring CEOs like Gil Quiniones in, you've got other CEOs that are actually bringing together forums to talk about cybersecurity. It is CEO led. That the first part. And then the second part is how do we train and work together, that collective defense. How do we actually do this? I think that's another one that NYPA is leading with West Point in the Army Cyber Institute. How can we start to bring this training session together and train to defend ourselves? This is an area where we can uplift our people that are working in this process, our cyber analysts if you will at the security operations center level. By training them, giving them hard tests and continuing to go. That approach will uplift our cybersecurity and our cyber defense to the point where we can now stop these types of attacks. So I think CEO led, bring in companies that give us the good and bad about our products. We'd like to hear the good, we need to hear the bad, and we needed to improve that, and then how do we train and work together. I think that's part of that solution to the future. >> And Gil, what are your thoughts as we embrace industry 4.0? Are you worried that this malign actors are going to build up their own sophistication and strategy in terms of data breaches and cyber attacks against our utility systems? What can we do to really step up our game? >> Well, as the General said, the good thing with the energy sector is that on the foundational level, we're the only sector with mandatory regulatory requirements that we need to meet. So we are regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation to meet certain standards in cyber and critical infrastructure. But as the General said, the good thing with the utility is by design, just like storms, we're used to working with each other. So this is just an extension of that storm restoration and other areas where we work all the time together. So we are naturally working together when it comes to to cyber. We work very closely with our federal government partners, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Energy and the National Labs. The National Labs have a lot of expertise. And with the private sector, like great companies like IronNet, NYPA, we stood up an excellence, center of excellence with private partners like IronNet and Siemens and others to start really advancing the art of the possible and the technology innovation in this area. And as the governor mentioned, we partnered with West Point because just like any sporting or just any sport, actual exercises of the red team, green team, and doing that constantly, tabletop exercises, and having others try and breach your walls. Those are good exercises to really be ready against the adversaries. >> Yeah. Terrific. Thank you so much for those insights. General Alexander, now I'd like to ask you this question. Can you share the innovation strategy as the world moves out of the pandemic? Are we seeing new threats, new realities? >> Well, I think, it's not just coming out of the pandemic, but the pandemic actually brought a lot of people into video teleconferences like we are right here. So more people are working from home. You add in the 5G that Gil talked about that gives you a huge attack surface. You're thinking now about instead of a hundred devices per square kilometer up to a million devices. And so you're increasing the attack surface. Everything is changing. So as we come out of the pandemic, people are going to work more from home. You're going to have this attack surface that's going on, it's growing, it's changing, it's challenging. We have to be really good about now, how we trained together, how we think about this new area and we have to continue to innovate, not only what are the cyber tools that we need for the IT side, the internet and the OT side, operational technology. So those kinds of issues are facing all of us and it's a constantly changing environment. So that's where that education, that training, that communication, working between companies, the customers, the NYPA's and the IronNet's and others and then working with the government to make sure that we're all in sync. It's going to grow and is growing at an increased rate exponentially. >> Terrific. Thank you for that. Now, Gil, same question for you. As a result of this pandemic, do you see any kind of new realities emerging? What is your position? >> Well, as the General said, most likely, many companies will be having this hybrid setup. And for company's life like mine, I'm thinking about, okay, how many employees do I have that can access our industrial controls in our power plants, in our substations, and transmission system remotely? And what will that mean from a risk perspective, but even on the IT side, our business information technology. You mentioned about the Colonial Pipeline type situation. How do we now really make sure that our cyber hygiene of our employees is always up-to-date and that we're always vigilant from potential entry whether it's through phishing or other techniques that our adversaries are using. Those are the kinds of things that keep myself like a CEO of a utility up at night. >> Yeah. Well, shifting gears a bit, this question for General Alexander. How come supply chain is such an issue? >> Well, the supply chain, of course, for a company like NYPA, you have hundreds or thousands of companies that you work with. Each of them have different ways of communicating with your company. And in those communications, you now get threats. If they get infected and they reach out to you, they're normally considered okay to talk to, but at the same time that threat could come in. So you have both suppliers that help you do your job. And smaller companies that Gil has, he's got the 47 munis and four co-ops out there, 51, that he's got to deal with and then all the state agencies. So his ecosystem has all these different companies that are part of his larger network. And when you think about that larger network, the issue becomes, how am I going to defend that? And I think, as Gil mentioned earlier, if we put them all together and we operate and train together and we defend together, then we know that we're doing the best we can, especially for those smaller companies, the munis and co-ops that don't have the people and a security ops centers and other things to defend them. But working together, we can help defend them collectively. >> Terrific. And I'd also like to ask you a bit more on IronDefense. You spoke about its behavioral capabilities, it's behavioral detection techniques, excuse me. How is it really different from the rest of the competitive landscape? What sets it apart from traditional cybersecurity tools? >> So traditional cybersecurity tools use what we call a signature-based system. Think of that as a barcode for the threat. It's a specific barcode. We use that barcode to identify the threat at the firewall or at the endpoint. Those are known threats. We can stop those and we do a really good job. We share those indicators of compromise in those barcodes, in the rules that we have, Suricata rules and others, those go out. The issue becomes, what about the things we don't know about? And to detect those, you need behavioral analytics. Behavioral analytics are a little bit noisier. So you want to collect all the data and anomalies with behavioral analytics using an expert system to sort them out and then use collected defense to share knowledge and actually look across those. And the great thing about behavioral analytics is you can detect all of the anomalies. You can share very quickly and you can operate at network speed. So that's going to be the future where you start to share that, and that becomes the engine if you will for the future radar picture for cybersecurity. You add in, as we have already machine learning and AI, artificial intelligence, people talk about that, but in this case, it's a clustering algorithms about all those events and the ways of looking at it that allow you to up that speed, up your confidence in and whether it's malicious, suspicious or benign and share that. I think that is part of that future that we're talking about. You've got to have that and the government can come in and say, you missed something. Here's something you should be concerned about. And up the call from suspicious to malicious that gives everybody in the nation and our allies insights, okay, that's bad. Let's defend against it. >> Yeah. Terrific. Well, how does the type of technology address the President's May 2021 executive order on cybersecurity as you mentioned the government? >> So there's two parts of that. And I think one of the things that I liked about the executive order is it talked about, in the first page, the public-private partnership. That's the key. We got to partner together. And the other thing it went into that was really key is how do we now bring in the IT infrastructure, what our company does with the OT companies like Dragos, how do we work together for the collective defense for the energy sector and other key parts. So I think it is hit two key parts. It also goes on about what you do about the supply chain for software were all needed, but that's a little bit outside what we're talking about here today. The real key is how we work together between the public and private sector. And I think it did a good job in that area. >> Terrific. Well, thank you so much for your insights and to you as well, Gil, really lovely to have you both on this program. That was General Keith Alexander, Founder and Co-CEO of IronNet Cybersecurity, as well as Gil Quiniones, the President and CEO of the New York Power Authority. That's all for this session of the 2021 AWS Global Public Sector Partner Awards. I'm your host for theCUBE, Natalie Erlich. Stay with us for more coverage. (bright music)

>> Narrator: From New York, it's theCUBE covering Blockchain Week. Now, here's John Furrier. >> Hey welcome back, everyone. This is theCUBE, I'm John Furrier, the host. We are in New York City for Blockchain Week NY for New York. Part of Consensus 2018. A lot of activity is happening, and I'm here with Agne Kazakaskaite who's the president of Vilnius Blockchain Association. Did I get that right, your name? >> Yes, that is correct. Agne Kazakaskaite from Vilnius Blockchain Association. >> Thank you for coming on. Appreciate you taking the time. First of all, I got to say I love what you're working on. You got this really cool project. Take a minute to explain what the Crypto Rally is. It's really cool. What is it? >> Sure, so Crypto Rally's an innovative concept. In short, it's Formula 1 with Davos. It's a marketing platform for blockchain companies to showcase their innovations, what they have developed in blockchain technologies. It's a car racing event. First it's starting in Lithuania, and then we're going to Dubai and China, taking our partners and sponsors together with us. And they receive a huge global media exposure by participating in Crypto Rally. >> So, the purpose is to take the cars and travel around and do education. Is it inspiration to partying? Is it fun? What is the format? >> What is the format? So, the format is we're traveling from Vilnius to the seaside and back. And Crypto Rally stops in six pit stops. In those pit stops, we have performances, car drifts, drag races, and the blockchain companies showcase the innovations. Let us say, automatic blockchain company that is installing sensors in the cars, they can showcase how it actually works. Say it's a blockchain company that opens the wallets for customers, they can open the wallets there and then. Yes, of course it's a party. We have parties. We have 3D projections on the walls. We have augmented reality games. All of this is interactive experience for the blockchain companies and for the community to participate together. >> And it's going to be fun. >> Yes. >> Informational, educational. Where'd the idea come from? >> It was my idea, actually. I worked before with Formula 1 teams. We consulted them. And I understand the concept quite well, actually. It's a racing event, but in a sense, it's a marketing platform. You put stickers on the cars, and if you can call it circus, travels around the world giving immediate exposure to the company that participate in it. And cars just add a sexiness to all of this event. >> That's beautiful. Who's involved? Can you talk about the names of people that are involved? >> Yes. >> Sponsors and communities. >> Yes, of course, Bee-li-al's already participating. We have local partners at CoinGate who actually are installing cryptocurrency payments all along the route of Crypto Rally. So wherever Crypto Rally goes, each country will be cryptocurrenc-inized. >> It's a treasure hunt meets car racing meets partying blockchain style. >> Exactly, it's really really fun. >> So what's your background? How did you get into this? I mean, it seems very cool. >> Yes. >> We love it. I love it. >> Thank you very much. My background is in finance. I studied in London, investment and financial risk management. I worked in an investment bank for a little bit. Then consulting company. And now I'm doing a master's degree in blockchain. I believe it's a great opportunity for our generation of people to make a huge impact to the world. I'm so excited about this new era. I can't contain my happiness. >> I love your story. I think it's phenomenal. >> Thank you. >> I think you're dynamic, vibrant, super smart. But I look around here at the hotel, it's a sea of men. We need more women in tech. >> Exactly. >> Tell all your friends. >> Exactly, exactly. So we're trying to change that. The Crypto Rally team consists girls actually who are our partners. It's Emile and Gaile, so three of us founders were female. So we're changing the whole blockchain ecosystem. >> Thank you so much for doing it. Thanks for coming on and sharing. Love to go along for the ride. Take theCUBE with you. Maybe we could be media partner. We'd love to promote it. Keep in touch. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you for coming on. >> Thank you. >> TheCUBE Crypto Rally. TheCUBE, we're rallying here day one of two days of coverage. We were at eight interviews last night at the crypto house. This is Blockchain Week in New York City. We are rallying. The Crypto Rally, check it out. Is there a URL they can go to? Crypto Rally website? >> Yeah. >> Share the address. >> Cryptorally2018.com. >> Check it out, Crypto Rally. This is theCUBE rallying in New York City. Be back with more coverage after this. Thanks for watching, I'm John Furrier.

>> Voiceover: From New York, it's theCUBE, covering Blockchain Week. Now, here's John Furrier. >> Hello and welcome to exclusive CUBE coverage here in New York City for Blockchain Week, NY Blockchain Week New York City. CUBE's coverage continues with cryptocurrency, decentralized internet, the applications of blockchain. Our next guest is Richard Rofe, who's the co-found partner of Arcadia Crypto Ventures. Welcome to this CUBE conversation. >> Thanks, good to be here. >> So when you're in that neck of the woods, New York City, obviously Wall Street, you know, they traded across the wall in the old days, and then it became now the Wall Street, it's changing. We're seeing crypto and token economics really driving the entrepreneurial energy, both on start-ups, as well as in the capital market. And you guys are on the front end of that, with some awesome investments advisory. And what's the craze all about? I mean, you have more practical view, your firm, conservative and also aggressive. What's your take? >> Well, first off, I'm a little older than most of the guys in the space, so I have a different perspective. I did come from Wall Street prior to this, I ran a hedge fund for 12 years, and before that I was basically an entrepreneur my whole life, software and other things. So, I looked at this a little differently, than probably some of the younger guys do. I've kind of seen this before? I think I saw it with the internet. And I think it's a world-changing shift, and we're an early part of it. We've been in for a while, actually in this space forever. Cause, you know, this space isn't that old. So, six years out of 10, we've been in it from the beginning, basically. >> You know, us old guys look at the waves, these waves of innovation, we're like hanging ten on the old big surfboards, and the young kids are ninjaing up on the small board. What is the younger generation looking at? Cause they're certainly, I wish I was 20-something, this is the best wave I've seen in tech revolution coming, all the ingredients are there, the capital markets are changing radically, the technology product market is changing radically, the global landscape's changing radically, the regulatory landscape, and everything else, is a perfect storm for innovation. >> Rapid change, I got involved early around 2012, just to give you a, you know, since we're at a conference this week, and see how crowded and incredibly busy it is, takes up an entire giant hotel, and bursting into the street, when I, in 2012 when I went to the very first conference, that I attended anyway, you could fill a small room with every single person at the conference. So the growth has been insane. It is driven by younger people, but the beauty of this is it's driven by people all over the world. This is not just an American thing. This is a worldwide thing. This is a shift, a technology shift that I don't think we've seen since basically the advent of the internet itself. >> You know, there's an old expression, both sides of the table, you've been an entrepreneur, you've been an investor. A hedge fund is almost the third side of the table, it's like 3D chess almost, you are now playing in the crypto world. Being an entrepreneur, you've been there, done that, hedge fund you had to run money and make great investments. Now, with this new crypto phase, how are you looking at it? Because you have the experience, you can see the growth in the younger generation, new disruptive people literally just flying blind, just going crazy with some good stuff. How are you managing that? How do you look at the marketplace, how do you make your bets? >> Good question. It's difficult. First of all, the barrier to entry is low. At this time, anyone who understands technology is really getting involved, and for good reason, but therefore you have, hundreds and hundreds of deals that come your way on a weekly basis. So you have to really pick and choose through the ones that are interesting. And you apply the same techniques that you applied as an entrepreneur and an investor prior to that, you look at the underlying business, the area that the blockchain will disrupt, change, shift, how it will do it, how long it will last, and how many people will be interested in it. And if you find the ones that are attractive and interesting, then you find the team that's attractive and interesting. That's the big point, is that you really want to have a very good team, you care so much about their background, their technology background, as well as their business background. If you can put those things together, you have a winning investment, and then you try to do it. >> You and I were talking before you came on camera... crowd sales and Kickstarter, Gofundme, as great ways to get capital. But now there's really no liquidity there. Talk about the dynamics because I think, you know, traditional investors in this market say "hmm", and there's so much more coming that'll create more stability obviously. We see some of that, I'll get to that in a second. But I want to get your take on, from an investor standpoint, the notion of liquidity, and also an entrepenuer's standpoint, access to capital. Talk about the dynamics between access to capital and liquidity for the investors and for the entrepreneurs. >> Also great points. I mean, right now, we have something that is giving both things, right? Access to capital, worldwide access to capital, from the smallest investor to the biggest investor, everybody has an opportunity, where before it was really limited, and then you have liquidity in that if you have a token or a coin, that's tradable, whether it's on an exchange, or private trade, you can actually liquidify your investment. Where if you were in a private company in the past, and I've done many of those, you're locked in. You're kind of at the mercy of the organizers of the company, whoever they are, the people that run the business. And you're kind of stuck there, good or bad. In this case, you have the ability to trade in and out, just as you would with a public stock. >> So you can get some liquidity in the front end, while private still, so it's kind of like a little liquidity market. I want you to address a question that's come up, an observation that we've made on theCUBE. We were at the Bahamas at Polycon 18, Puerto Rico. Not in the US, is New York or New York City the capital, you know, of money, that's where money never sleeps, so to speak, Gordon Gekko would say, in the old Wall Street quote. But this is a global phenomenon. We're outside of the United States, there's a lot of action. Let's talk about the role of global money. >> Well, that's part of the excitement of the whole thing. It's not just the United States. It's all over the world, so it's really democratized investing, it's democratized finance, it's changing the landscape completely. And I think that it's unstoppable. I do think that regulation, and I know we talked about that earlier too, is a good thing. I think that regulation is necessary, because you can't just have a rogue environment completely, but on the other hand too much regulation kills things. So there has to be a happy medium and hopefully they'll find that. >> I love the invisible hand strategy, and certainly let capital take, but you want to have some signaling, SSC's been doing that. I just don't think it's stoppable in my opinion. But I want to go shift to where entrepreneurs are looking at the capital markets. Today the choices are bootstrap, friends and family, small sized business, cash flow business if you will, or go venture capital or private equity, if you have the kind of multiples that would warrant that, assuming the sector is in vogue at the moment. Which, you know, always a coin flip. Here, with token economics, there's a huge access to capital. Bubble we're seeing certainly is reflected in that. What are you looking for, when you see that kind of behavior? How do you manage the risk, how are entrepreneurs navigating that world? >> First of all, managing the risk, it's tough obviously. Especially as I mentioned earlier, there's so many deals coming at you at all times, so you have to choose wisely, that's the first way to manage risk. Always was the way to manage risk. People used to ask me in the hedge fund business, how do you manage your risk? Well, I only try to invest in the things that I think have the best upside, and the smallest downside, it was pretty simple. And it's the same here. It comes down to at the end of the day, what businesses are you choosing? The other thing is that, you know, first of all there's inherent risk. You can never get around that fact. But if you really believe in the long-term future, and you're willing to go through some ups and downs, and there are going to be, and there have been, as we know, over the past 10 years, and there will be more in the future. You have to be willing to ride those waves. And if you can do that, then I think your risk will just mitigate over time, as long as you're a smart, wise investor, and of course spreading it around. You don't want to be in, you know, all your eggs in one basket, then you'll take a giant risk. >> Yeah, it's one of those things where you don't want to zig when you should have zagged, with all this going on. It's certainly a turbulent landscape, I've heard phrases like, it's like wet cement, you don't know when it's going to form, all these kinds of phrases. So the question I want to ask you is, what do you look for? What are you looking at, what signals are you trying to synthesize, what's the tea leaves that you're reading, what're you looking at? What's concerning you, what are some tell signs that are going to help you navigate the investment side and advisory side? >> With regard to the entire space, we're looking very much at regulation, we want to know what the regulators want. I'm not sure they know what they want. We speak to them, we keep them pressed on the situation from our end, and we hear back from them on with their thinking. We'd like to see some regulation over time, but it's complicated because they don't even know what they're looking at yet. That's a big part of it. They're not sure how to regulate something that they don't understand. And there are very few people in this space, and this is one of the biggest risks. There are very few people that even do understand it, and are in this maze. >> I was telling an entrepreneur just here today, and then last week, it's in the Bay Area in California, they're more progressive than their suppliers, their law firm, and some of their accounting help. They're more progressive on the front end, they're actually advising the law firm on deals. >> And that has happened, that's happened with us, in fact we've recently put a structure together, where we taught the law firm how to do it, the law firm was impressed with it. They had to go study it, they spent a few weeks, and they came back and said "Hey, this is a great idea, we're going to do this with everybody else going forward." And that basically came from us backwards. >> Did they bill you for those hours, or did you charge them? >> Great question, I really hope not. I'm going to ask my partner if we got billed for anything. >> Rich, I want to ask about blockchain, we got to see Consensus 2018, it's happening here in New York, big event, part of CoinDesk too, they're doing a great job, content program's been solid. It's been super crowded, they need a bigger venue obviously, the demand was high and sold out. And I know there's a lot of side events going on, a lot of activity. What is your take away, what do you look this as saying? Is it like, wow, what's your take on the impact of the momentum? >> Well, first of all, as I mentioned before, I saw this thing with my own eyes, right, from a little tiny room in Las Vegas, was the entire conference, to what we saw today. With people in the streets who can't even get in, thousands and thousands of people in one hotel, which is probably not even cut out for that many. I think it's incredible, the momentum says a lot, by the way, talking about mitigating risk, there's not just so many people, there's so many smart people, that are figuring this out, one by one, and getting involved early. And that really gives me a lot of confidence, in terms of the long-term strategy. If this thing grew by, you know, two or three times, four or five times what I saw in 2012, I would not be nearly as excited. What I'm seeing here, this mass load of people, who are fighting to get into an event, right, into a venue, and the intelligence, and the kind of people they are, and how educated they are, it really gives me hope. And it reminds me, of early days in the internet, where we saw the super smartest people, kind of broke away from the crowd, did their own thing. We saw guys leaving traditional firms, going and starting companies, the Amazons, the Googles, the Facebooks, and things of that nature, which became the largest companies in the world. >> And there were problems there too. You had back-dating stock options, you had all these deals where revenue is revenue, and then accounting issues, but again all that is just a symptom of a growth market. Final question for you, when you look at what you guys are doing, and how you're investing, how you're getting involved in companies, you're also an advisor to Bloq which is having an event here in New York City. How are you navigating the hiring, the partnership, the community aspect, as in the financial community, like the entrepreneurial community, there's a tight-knit bond. How is it evolving, how are you guys shaping that, what are some of the things you can share around the financial community? >> Well, we do advisory work, so we work with a lot of different clients that want to get into the space. We work with some very traditional clients, that are not really technologists, and those are the most interesting ones. They're difficult, because they don't understand a lot of it, and I don't blame them, I come from that world too. So, we have to really hold their hand, and we deal with a lot of very smart tech people who come from a whole other, but don't know the business side so well, so we kind of work with both. In terms of our own hiring, and who we bring on to our company, we really look for a very unique person, which is, usually in this case a younger, because of the space itself, we look for everybody, but we don't find that many people my age and older, that even want to spend time, let alone understand it. >> Some smart kid "I don't want to work at Goldman Sachs, they're old." >> Listen, and again, we saw this in the internet, you could not get a smart kid out of college to get a regular job back in the Nineties. They were all going to Web startups. Kind of same thing here. So we have a great pool to choose from, we try to pick people that are on the cutting-edge, but that also want to work hard. Because, again, it's a start-up industry, right? So, think about the hours, you know, you're really going to put in a lot more than you would at a nine-to-five job. Your weekend, nights, you know, the phone, you're connected 24/7. But the hiring's been, uh, we have a staff of about six people, and I think they're great, but we do hand-pick them and it takes a while. >> Take a minute to explain what you guys do, how many investments you've made, you've been there early, the year 2012 you mentioned, early on. >> I started in 2012 in terms of in just the space itself, due to my friend Matt Roszac at Bloq, who was really early, a year ahead of me there, and he got me involved, but I didn't really start making serious investments. My first investment was in 2014, we invested in a settlement and clearing house company, that's now one of the fastest growing banks in the country, and then we got into some of the coins, and some of the platforms, that's where we invest the most, and a few deals here and there. And then we started to do advisory work, because let's face it, we knew what we were doing, we were ahead of the curve, we certainly understood it, and so many people want to get into something that they don't know, they're going to need someone to hold their hand all the way through. So, our advisory business is our main stable business, and then we invest into certain deals that we think are interesting, a lot of them are platforms. >> Yeah, and token economics is driving all that. Richard, thanks for coming on, appreciate taking the time to come on CUBE, I'm John Furrier, we're here at New York City for Blockchain Week New York, and this is theCUBE exclusively continuing coverage of the cryptocurrency craze, token economics, obviously blockchains enabling technology underneath it, and the whole new Internet infrastructure is transforming with cloud, everything behind it's really exciting. Thanks for watching.

this one minute I'm here with my co-host Jeff Frick who we just fresh off of the AWS summit the Amazon event Jeff and I covered that and we're here at knowledge 13 now this conference is all about the notion of going from IT as a service organization changing high teas mantra from no to now that really is the theme of this conference and we're here with Frank's luton who's the president and CEO of service now Frank welcome back to the cube thanks good to be here that's good to see you again we had you on that vm world is great story when we first introduced service now to our community you just fresh off the keynote fantastic keynote by the way thank you you had strong themes i mentioned the from no to now you talked about itu gave a little little tongue-in-cheek joke about the line outside the the rmv the Registry of Motor Vehicles and that's sort of the the idea is you guys are transforming IT from an organization that is trying to manage demand push off demand saying no we'll get it in six months it'll cost you five million dollars to one that really is redesigning IT processes around the globe so first of all welcome back congratulations how do you feel after that keynote I have to work a lot of energy in that room and it was electrifying it was awesome well one of the one of the guys in the panel stopped when you had asking the question I think was the guy from NY yes he said even stop you looked at the audience said i love this crowd that was a great crowd we gave a little goop out to the audience so talk about from know to now how'd you come up with that theme and you know give us a little color behind you know it's it's actually not easy for for us to communicate about service now desk to to lay people in sight unless you have lived in sight I t you just most people don't even know what I t really does on the day-to-day basis right so we've lived a fairly insular existence because you know everybody knows what sales people do and to some degree about HR doesn't finance people but I t it's a bit of a you know a bit of a mystery to what most folks do right but most people do know however is that the service experience with IT has been and challenging what's all we say I mean it's been you know sort of a service experience where if you have to ask the answer was going to be no right because IT organizations have been super preoccupied with infrastructure rapid change in the infrastructure for the last 30 40 years nothing ever set still long enough for us to really master the architecture and the platforms are really stabilizing mature our systems and they have to keep moving so you get pretty cranky it's back to your organization having to live that kind of life so their their their reputation for service has not been stellar and I love making the joke during the keynote their ranking right down there with legal in the basement you know of the corporate enterprise you know so well so talk a little bit about sort of how you guys you know go into an organism's you start with the IT organization right in helping them sort of automated processes connect all these different processes but you've been through your platform expanding out to other parts of the organization the irony is that I T which is the most technology savvy organization in the price as the least management sophistication in terms of managing their own activity which you know I duck to the CIO of a very large consumer gets company he said where does she make her son it's inexcusable right here here we are running milk that going in dollar budgets and staffs with tens of thousands of people and we're running it on spreadsheets email excel project management tools this is ridiculous right we don't have real information in near real time and show that we can drive our business as opposed to being driven by it right i key executives have a tendency to run from one crisis to another with their hair on fire and that's sort of the mental model and a note of now message is about out of a get these people out of this you know reactive crisis mode to where they become full-blown business partners and they start you know bring your guide to enterprise and in a very transformative way or they become the people that bring innovation to the enterprise you know here's so much Frank about shadow I teach my colleague Jeff Frick and I were at the AWS some of the few weeks and you see a lot of these cloud companies you mentioned your keynote Salesforce the salespeople workday talk to HR people they sort n run IT certainly amazon is the poster child for shadow IT but you know Jeff we have that sort of notion where IT people are not the center of the new cloud universe but that's different for service now yes it's very different but the other thing brought up amazon your keynote and how they've kind of fine what kind of a user expectation experiences with an application on the web a level of service a level of delivery and then you've got AWS its kind of the girl child of shadow IT but you guys are coming in really as the enabler to let the internal IT guys actually have the tools to compete with with guys trying to go around it really exact with delivery platform I mean we're trying to turn the tables here right because the entire history of IT is one big end around righty the many computer was an end-around of the glasshouse client-server was really pcs you know dribbling into departmental environments suffer as a service was an incredible end around people in there didn't realize it was seeping into the enterprise right now things like 80 lbs now infrastructure right is actually finding its way so we're saying look you know worthy Enterprise IT cloud company right we are going to empower and enable IT to be driving rather than just being driven and being taken over and run over by by events because that's what's been happening here's the goodness IT can start withdrawing and getting out of the business of infrastructure which is what they've been doing forever infrastructure is very challenging pretty soon that's going to be somebody else's problem right infrastructure goes behind the cooking all you have to do is in network connection so that means that the role of IT is moving from you know keeping the lights on to you know we're going to be the people who are experts at defining structuring and automating service relationships and so does relationship management I mean at this and I make a joke about you know your hole in the inbox of email you know it's full of basically service relationships that are unstructured and unlimited and undefined right right and there is this incredible opportunity to go aptet with record-keeping workflow systems and that's what we want to enable and empower IT to do right we had to give you a quick example actually very interesting we talked to our one of our very large retail customers and the supply chain office unbeknownst to us went to IT and said hey we want to build this app what should we use and Ikey said no you should try and do that on service now what's the app a supply chain office in a retail environment what they do is they take requests all day long stores distribution centers suppliers and they're rebalancing you know product right place right time right right product and they were doing that everybody running spreadsheets and emails and people constantly calling what's the update on my request and they decide no we're going to go to a record-keeping workflow system and from the moment you know they started using that system all of a sudden they had full visibility to a what the volume was of issues that was coming in but the nature of the volume was how well they were doing on their SOS relative to their storage and distribution centers and they were able to structurally go after you know the things that were a constant them grief because they just didn't know right so very simply in very short period of time you know they transformed themselves from the supply chain all those Devils running around like a chicken with his head cut off the people that were actually driving to supply chain now now supply chain management in the retail organization it's super mission-critical right because their results are directly impacted by having right product right time right place simple example where we moving from email and Excel to a record-keeping workflow system any impact with literally within 30 40 days is enormous yeah you hear that a lot of people just using Excel using email we talked to we talking some customers last night we talked to some perspective customers that were in so to check it out and they were big Lotus no shop and is describing sort of the difficulties and challenges of it you will sign them up I can almost see it but the other thing so so this notion of your customer base is very powerful in fact I tweeted out I said the service now has a sick logo basis and we said is that a typo said no sick like that sick touchdown catch it isn't good yeah sick is it good but I mean which I we hear from land o lakes Red Hat metropcs KPM nor Brent I mean just on and on and on at Facebook Intel google or customers what are some other favorite customer stories you hear a lot of the same themes Frank you know we used to use spreadsheets with using email or reliant on all these disparate processes bringing them all together getting some some other you know favorite stories of yours for customers I I relayed a bunch of him on stage this morning right beasties it's just extraordinary to me the the corporate America I mean you mentioned some of them but you know the people we had on stage you know AIG you know coca-cola company's general electric demand this is United States Army right and they owe is yeah New York Stock Exchange eli lilly big pharmaceuticals bristol-myers squibb they all have the same set of issues they have a completely fractured fragmented sprawled acti environment right and here's the interesting history we have not had CIOs that long you know I T used to report into a division next sag or a regional exact and there really wasn't one person that was responsible for running IT throughout the global enterprise because it was just a decentralized function by the way example when you in Europe yeah I ray mighty and I certainly wasn't IT guy stuff and by the way it wasn't my priority either you know it was just by the way that's for some of the history you know comes from so CIO comes in and they are now charged with you're going to run this thing they're not running anything they're being run by it right so until you get to global IT processes I mean City another you know big name they set to as rogue global bank that we don't have global IT right it is the inefficiency and the lack of ability to drive and manage is unacceptable for these very sophisticated large institutions it's embarrassing really you know yeah I mean you really can't go global as a come you can't scale your business not having all these surprises so to me it's about global scaling and it's about the business value of both having ITB accountable but also have the metrics and the visibility to be able to demonstrate the value to the organization you see i SAT with our executive sponsor from bristol-myers squibb last night and she said i got data and i got it in real time and i know it's good so I'm not putting my service providers on their heels you know before they were you know everything was you know in the realm of you know interpretation and fuzzy fuzzy right and now it's like I have data and I'm driving and I'm changing behavior right so the empowering effective it has mighty organizations it's just stomach right I thought that empowering note that came up in your keynote was interesting how the IT organizations themselves and their presentation now to their internal customers are looking more like a company you know they're they're being cute there yeah I'm taking branding they're there they're not just button pushers in and as you said you know infrastructure operators they are trying to be contributors to the business and keeping some this automobile shade of nail them to it's even stronger than now yes they want to be contributors to the business but they want to be the playmakers they wanted me to go to guys give me the ball you know that that's where we want to you know take itt there that people that really understand how to change how work gets done the enterprise I thought you characterize the dwelling experience in IT people have been running from crisis to crisis and they need to be more proactive so talk about how your system allows them to be more proactive well it's all about going from a message oriented environment to a system or an a message or environment is the one way l know it's email it's text you know it's voice right that doesn't work because you know we're just talking right systems have the ability to drive behavior because you know every time you send an email you should think to yourself could i create a service request instead right because a service request has a defined data ship it goes into a database it gets assigned you know in a workflow operation it has metrics around it if it doesn't get responded to a certain amount of time it gets accelerated to the escalator to the next level or management right so the process is defined structure to automate it is going to run its course right whether you know people are participating in it or not with this great example one of our customers equinix delilah or Brian Lily's here actually is a CIO and he said they will sell funny you know we have a system that all my life cycle application where our developers check-in fixes and enhancement to a particular software release for an application and he says because they know to work flows is completely structured an automated everybody knows that they don't get their fixes enhancement in by a certain time poof the dashboards pop the higher-ups see you know who's behind and who's not and that the threat alone of the transparency and visibility that the process introduces causes everybody there run harder right so people won't have to run around with the whip like where are you you know the process is driving is like a hamster on a treadmill you know so Freki used amazon as an example of the user experience that you know you covet as a CEO of this company and you believe you're your customer base desires at the back end also when you talk about companies like Amazon and Facebook and Google they are super highly automated you also talked about lights out automation yeah now normally IT organizations are managed now they're managed by humans they're not highly automated are you are you seeing your customers able to get to that sort of vision that you're talking about that lights-out automation almost like the hyperscale guys you know it's a super important custody I said during the cleanup or were overstaffed and under automated NIT we have reams of people on staff any large financial institutions have tens of thousands of people on staff they're bigger than any technology company right why is that it's because things are very laborious laborious and manual right the processes that they run require so many touch points I mean one of the things that we always tell our customers when you can reimplement these processes do not take your legacy forward because your legacy is very manual you remember the inbox in the outbox when we have physical in boxes and other boxes and now we know we have our laptop why do we have an inbox and outbox right does this message really this cross why are you even involved in this process right so we have to invert the process it's not like wouldn't it be nice for you to be involved in this process there'd better be a very good reason for you to touch this process because the moment you touch it you know we're going from the speed of light to you know the speed of the dirt road that Franco so service now is really in a rocket ship right now and you've demonstrated you've got a track record of being able to be sometimes call jump three myself throwing gasoline on the fire you look very good at that you got 1,600 customers you're growing like crazy but you're under penetrated in your target which is the global 2000 you're only fourteen percent penetrated in the global 2000 so get a long way to go in this journey we're very excited to be you know covering this event really appreciate you guys having us here Frank's loot Minh will give you the last word and then we'll wrap you know this is actually one of the great things that we are so on the front hood and they're penetrated because our investors are like wow you've got a lot of runway you know considering the size company that we we already are and you know the rate of monetization of our business is is extraordinarily I in other words the share of wallet that service now represents and the enterprise is so much larger than people had ever considered or thought because it was not an existing category that was fully metastasized and visible it's new it's emergent it is really transforming how people you know look at technology and process automation and so on now we're gonna be here all week covering knowledge we've got it we're going to double-click on so how is it that service now is able to deliver this cloud functionality the secret is in the single system of record the CMDB and that is not a trivial thing to do we didn't talk about that with Frankie could talk about it but we don't want to steal you know the name of thunder yeah fred muddies going to be on RNA Justin who's the CTO we're going to go deep into sort of how service now actually accomplishes this architecture Lee what their vision is so Frank thanks very much for spending so much time I know you're busy you got to run but appreciate you coming on terrific thanks for having me alright thanks for watching everybody keep it right there we'll be right back with more we're live from Las Vegas ServiceNow knowledge we'll be right back this is the Q cute baby rock and roll