>>From around the globe. It's the cube covering Fortinet security summit brought to you by Fortinet. >>Welcome back to the cube. Lisa Martin here at the Fordham het championship security summit. Napa valley has been beautiful and gracious to us all day. We're very pleased to be here. I'm very pleased to welcome a first-timer to the cube. Rupesh Chuck Chuck Xi, VP a T and T cybersecurity and edge solutions at, at and T cybersecurity. Refresh. Welcome. >>Thank you. Thank you so much for having me, Lisa, I'm looking forward to our conversation today. >>Me too. First of all, it's we're in Napa we're outdoors. It's beautiful venue, no complaints, right? We're at a golf PGA tournament. Very exciting. Talk to me about the at and T Fordanet relationship. Give me, give me an, a good insight into the partnership. >>Sure, sure. So, as you said, you know, beautiful weather in California, Napa it's my first time. Uh, so it's kind of a new experience for me going back to your question in terms of the relationship between eight P and T and Ford in that, uh, a long lasting, you know, 10 plus years, you know, hand in hand in terms of the product, the technology, the capabilities that we are brought together in the security space for our customers. So a strategic relationship, and I'm so thrilled to be here today as a, Fordanet invited us to be part of the championship. Tommy, >>Talk to me. So your role VP of, and T cybersecurity and edge solutions, give me an, a deep dive into what's in your purview. >>Sure, sure. So I, uh, sort of, you know, run the PNL or the profit and loss center for product management for all of at and T cybersecurity and ed solutions and the whole concept behind putting the teams together is the convergence in networking and security. Um, so, you know, we are supporting the entire customer continuum, whether it's a fortune 50, the fortune 1000 to mid-market customers, to small businesses, to, you know, government agencies, you know, whether it's a local government agency or a school district or a federal agency, et cetera. And my team and I focus on bringing new product and capabilities to the marketplace, you know, working with our sales team from an enablement perspective, go to market strategy. Um, and the whole idea is about, uh, you know, winning in the marketplace, right? So delivering growth and revenue to the business, >>Competitive differentiation. So we've seen so much change in the last year and a half. I know that's an epic understatement, but we've also seen the proliferation at the edge. What are some of the challenges that you're seeing and hearing from customers where that's concerned >>As you stated, right. There's a lot happening in the edge. And sometimes the definition for edge varies when you talk with different people, uh, the way we look at it is, you know, definitely focused on the customer edge, right? So if you think about many businesses, whether I am a, a quick serve restaurant or I'm a banking Institute or a financial services or an insurance agency, or I'm a retail at et cetera, you know, lots of different branches, lots of different transformation taking place. So one way of approaching it is that when you think about the customer edge, you see a lot of virtualization, software driven, a lot of IOT endpoints, et cetera, taking place. So the cyber landscape becomes more important. Now you're connecting users, devices, capabilities, your point of sale system to a multi-cloud environment, and that, you know, encryption of that data, the speed at which it needs to happen, all of that is very important. And as we think ahead with 5g and edge compute and what that evolution revolution is going to bring, it's going to get even more excited because to me, those are kind of like in a playgrounds of innovation, but we want to do it right and keep sort of, you know, cyber and security at the core of it. So we can innovate and keep the businesses safe. >>How do you help customers to kind of navigate edge cybersecurity challenges and them not being synonymous? >>That's a great, great question. You know, every day I see, you know, different teams, different agendas, different kinds of ways of approaching things. And what I tell customers and even my own teams is that, look, we have to have a, a blueprint and architecture, a vision, you know, what are the business outcomes that we want to achieve? What the customer wants to achieve. And then start to look at that kind of technology kind of convergence that is taking place, and especially in the security and the networking space, significant momentum on the convergence and utilize that convergence to create kind of full value stack solutions that can be scaled, can be delivered. So you are not just one and done, but it's a continuous innovation and improvement. And in the security space, you need that, right. It's never going to be one and done. No >>We've seen so much change in the last year. We've seen obviously this rapid pivot to work from home that was overnight for millions and millions of people. We're still in that too. A fair amount. There's a good amount of people that are still remote, and that probably will be permanently there's. Those that are going to be hybrid threat landscape bloated. I was looking at and talking with, um, 40 guard labs and the, the nearly 11 X increase in the last 12 months in ransomware is insane. And the ransomware as a business has exploded. So security is a board level conversation for businesses I assume in any. >>Absolutely. Absolutely. I agree with you, it's a board level conversation. Security is not acknowledged the problem about picking a tool it's about, you know, the business risk and what do we need to do? Uh, you mentioned a couple of interesting stats, right? So we've seen, uh, you know, two things I'll share. One is we've seen, you know, 440 petabytes of data on the at and T network in one average business day. So 440 petabytes of data. Most people don't know what it is. So you can imagine the amount of information. So you can imagine the amount of security apparatus that you need, uh, to Tofino, protect, and defend and provide the right kind of insights. And then the other thing that VOC and along the same lines of what you were mentioning is significant, you know, ransomware, but also significant DDoSs attacks, right? So almost like, you know, we would say around 300% plus said, DDoSs mitigations that we did from last year, you know, year over year. >>So a lot of focus on texting the customer, securing the end points, the applications, the data, the network, the devices, et cetera. Uh, the other two points that I want to mention in this space, you know, again, going back to all of this is happening, right? So you have to focus on this innovation at the, at the speed of light. So, you know, artificial intelligence, machine learning, the software capabilities that are more, forward-looking have to be applied in the security space ever more than ever before, right. Needs these do, we're seeing alliances, right? We're seeing this sort of, you know, crowdsourcing going on of action on the good guys side, right? You see the national security agencies kind of leaning in saying, Hey, let's together, build this concept of a D because we're all going to be doing business. Whether it's a public to public public, to private, private, to private, all of those different entities have to work together. So having security, being a digital trust, >>Do you think that the Biden administrations fairly recent executive order catalyst of that? >>I give it, you know, the president and the, the administration, a lot of, you know, kudos for kind of, and then taking it head on and saying, look, we need to take care of this. And I think the other acknowledgement that it is not just hunting or one company or one agency, right? It's the whole ecosystem that has to come together, not just national at the global level, because we live in a hyper connected world. Right. And one of the things that you mentioned was like this hybrid work, and I was joking with somebody the other day that, and really the word is location, location, location, thinking, network security, and networking. The word is hybrid hybrid hybrid because you got a hybrid workforce, the hybrid cloud, you have a hybrid, you have a hyper-connected enterprise. So we're going to be in this sort of, you know, hybrid for quite some time are, and it has to >>Be secure and an org. And it's, you know, all the disruption of folks going to remote work and trying to get connected. One beyond video conference saying, kids are in school, spouse working, maybe kids are gaming. That's been, the conductivity alone has been a huge challenge. And Affordanet zooming a lot there with links to us, especially to help that remote environment, because we know a lot of it's going to remain, but in the spirit of transformation, you had a session today here at the security summit, talked about transformation, formation plan. We talk about that word at every event, digital transformation, right? Infrastructure transformation, it security. What context, where you talking about transformation in it today? What does it transformation plan mean for your customers? >>That's a great question because I sometimes feel, you know, overused term, right? Then you just take something and add it. It's it? Transformation, network, transformation, digital transformation. Um, but what we were talking today in, in, in the morning was more around and sort of, you know, again, going back to the network security and the transformation that the customers have to do, we hear a lot about sassy and the convergence we are seeing, you know, SD van takeoff significantly from an adoption perspective application, aware to experiences, et cetera, customers are looking at doing things like internet offload and having connectivity back into the SAS applications. Again, secure connectivity back into the SAS applications, which directly ties to their outcomes. Um, so the, the three tenants of my conversation today was, Hey, make sure you have a clear view on the business outcomes that you want to accomplish. Now, the second was work with a trusted advisor and at and T and in many cases is providing that from a trusted advisor perspective. And third, is that going back to the one and done it is not a one and done, right? This is a, is a continuous process. So sometimes we have to be thinking about, are we doing it in a way that we will always be future ready, will be always be able to deal with the security threats that we don't even know about today. So yeah, >>You bring up the term future ready. And I hear that all the time. When you think of man, we really weren't future ready. When the pandemic struck, there was so much that wasn't there. And when I was talking with 49 earlier, I said, you know, how much, uh, has the pandemic been a, uh, a catalyst for so much innovation? I imagine it has been the same thing that >>Absolutely. And, you know, I remember, you know, early days, February, March, where we're all just trying to better understand, right? What is it going to be? And the first thing was, Hey, we're all going to work remote, is it a one week? Is it a two week thing? Right? And then if you're like the CIO or the CSO or other folks who are worried about how am I going to give the productivity tools, right. Businesses in a one customer we work with, again, tobacco innovation was said, Hey, I have 20,000 call center agents that I need to take remote. How do you deliver connectivity and security? Because that call center agent is the bloodline for that business interacting with their end customers. So I think, you know, it is accelerated what would happen over 10 years and 18 months, and it's still unknown, right? So we're still discovering the future. >>There's a, there will be more silver linings to come. I think we'll learn to pick your brain on, on sassy adoption trends. One of the things I noticed in your abstract of your session here was that according to Gardner, the convergence of networking and security into the sassy framework is the most vigorous technology trend. And coming out of 2020, seeing that that's a big description, most vigorous, >>It's a big, big description, a big statement. And, uh, we are definitely seeing it. You know, we saw some of that, uh, in the second half of last year, as the organizations were getting more organized to deal with, uh, the pandemic and the change then coming into this year, it's even more accelerated. And what I mean by that is that, you know, I look at sort of, you know, three things, right? So one is going back to the hybrid work, remote work, work from anywhere, right. So how do you continue to deliver a differentiated experience, highly secure to that workforce? Because productivity, human capital very important, right? The second is that there's a back and forth on the branch transformation. So yes, you know, restaurants are opening back up. Retailers are opening back up. So businesses are thinking about how do I do that branch transformation? And then the third is explosive business IOT. So the IOT end points, do you put into manufacturing, into airports in many industries, we continue to see that. So when you think about sassy and the framework, it's about delivering a, a framework that allows you to protect and secure all of those endpoints at scale. And I think that trend is real. I've seen customer demand, we've signed a number of deals. We're implementing them as we speak across all verticals, healthcare, retail, finance, manufacturing, transportation, government agencies, small businesses, mid-sized businesses. >>Nope, Nope. Not at all. Talk to me about, I'm curious, you've been at, at and T a long time. You've seen a lot of innovation. Talk, talk to me about your perspectives on seeing that, and then what to you think as a silver lining that has come out of the, the acceleration of the last 18 months. >>She and I, I get the question, you know, I've been with at and T long time. Right. And I still remember the day I joined at T and T labs. So it was one of my kind of dream coming out of engineering school. Every engineer wants to go work for a brand that is recognized, right. And I, I drove from Clemson, South Carolina to New Jersey Homedale and, uh, I'm still, you know, you can see I'm still having the smile on my face. So I've, you know, think innovation is key. And that's what we do at, at and T I think the ability to, um, kind of move fast, you know, I think what the pandemic has taught us is the speed, right? The speed at which we have to move the speed at which we have to collaborate the speed at which we have to deliver, uh, to agility has become, you know, the differentiator for all of us. >>And we're focusing on that. I also feel that, uh, you know, there have been times where, you know, product organizations, technology organizations, you know, we struggle with jumping this sort of S-curve right, which is, Hey, I'm holding onto something. Do I let go or not? Let go. And I think the pandemic has taught us that you have to jump the S-curve, you have to accelerate because that is where you need to be in, in a way, going back to the sassy trend, right. It is something that is real, and it's going to be there for the next three to five years. So let's get ready. >>I call that getting comfortably uncomfortable, no businesses safe if they rest on their laurels these days. I think we've learned that, speaking of speed, I wanna, I wanna get kind of your perspective on 5g, where you guys are at, and when do you think it's going to be really impactful to, you know, businesses, consumers, first responders, >>The 5g investments are happening and they will continue to happen. And if you look at what's happened with the network, what at and T has announced, you know, we've gotten a lot of kudos for whatever 5g network for our mobile network, for our wireless network. And we are starting to see that, that innovation and that innovation as we anticipated is happening for the enterprise customers first, right? So there's a lot of, you know, robotics or warehouse or equipment that needs to sort of, you know, connect at a low latency, high speed, highly secure sort of, you know, data movements, compute edge that sits next to the, to the campus, you know, delivering a very different application experience. So we're seeing that, you know, momentum, uh, I think on the consumer side, it is starting to come in and it's going to take a little bit more time as the devices and the applications catch up to what we are doing in the network. And if you think about, you know, the, the value creation that has happened on, on the mobile networks is like, if you think about companies like Uber or left, right, did not exist. And, uh, many businesses, you know, are dependent on that network. And I think, uh, it will carry on. And I think in the next year or two, we'll see firsthand the outcomes and the value that it is delivering you go to a stadium at and T stadium in Dallas, you know, 5g enabled, you know, that the experience is very different. >>I can't wait to go to a stadium again and see it came or live music. Oh, that sounds great. Rubbish. Thank you so much for joining me today, talking about what a T and T is doing with 49, the challenges that you're helping your customers combat at the edge and the importance of really being future. Ready? >>Yes. Thank you. Thank you so much. Really appreciate you having me. Thanks for 49 to invite us to be at this event. Yes. >>Thank you for refresh talk. She I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the cube at the 40 net championship security summits.