(upbeat music) >> Good evening, guys. Welcome back to Las Vegas, theCUBE is here live at AWS re:Invent 2021. I'm Lisa Martin. We have two live sets, two remote sets, over 100 guests on theCUBE talking with AWS, and its massive ecosystem of partners bringing you this hybrid tech event, probably the biggest of the year, and I'm pleased to welcome Stephen Kovac next, the Chief Compliance Officer at Zscaler. Stephen, how's it going? >> Well, it's going well, Lisa. Thank you for asking, enjoying Vegas, loving the conference, unbelievable. >> Isn't it great to be back in person? >> Oh, it's so great, I've seen people. >> Conversations you can't replicate on video conferencing, you just can't. >> Can't, and you see people you haven't seen in two years, and it's like all of a sudden you're best buddies again. It's just wonderful, it's so great to back. >> It is, and AWS in typical fashion has done a great job of getting everybody in here safely. I'm not at all surprised, that's what I expected, but it's been great. And I hope that this can demonstrate to other companies, you can do this safely. >> You can, I think so. I mean, there's a lot of effort going into this, but as usual AWS does it right. So, you expect that. >> They do. Talk to me about the Zscaler-AWS partnership. What's going on? >> Well, it's a great partnership. So AWS and Zscaler have been partners since the beginning of Zscaler. We are the largest security cloud in the world. We're born and bred in the cloud security company. So literally we wrote one application that does global security, everything from firewall to proxy, secure web gateway, to DLP, to all this in one piece of software. So, in the past where people would buy appliances for all these devices and put them in their own data center, we wrote a software that allows us to put that in the cloud, run it on the cloud globally around the world. And our partnership with AWS is, we originally built that on AWS, and today still AWS is our prime partner, especially in the zero trust side of our business. So, great relationship, long-term and great I think for both of us, it's been a very, very... >> Fruitful partnership, synergistic? >> Synergistic, love that, so yes. >> You mentioned zero trust, and we have seen such massive changes to the security and the threat landscape the last 20, 22 months. Talk to me about the recent executive order calling for zero trust, how does Zscaler's partnership with AWS help you enable organizations, fed, SLED, DoD, to be able to actually bring in and apply zero trust? >> Yeah, great question. Five years ago I was tasked to bring Zscaler into the government side of the business. So I was employee one to do that. It was a great honor to do it. And the first thing we did is we partnered with AWS because we needed to get FedRAMP compliant. We knew we were going to go into DoD. So we needed to go to the Impact Level five. And eventually we'll be able to go up level six with AWS. And so it was our partnership started there. And as you've seen in five years with all the change that's happened, that obviously the breaches like SolarWinds, and the people up here talking about them all week with you I'm sure. The executive order came down from the Biden Administration, who I completely salute for being just tremendous leaders in the cybersecurity space. And the executive order, one of the big pieces of the executive order was every agency must produce a plan for zero trust. So our cloud platform that is on AWS is a zero trust platform. It is the first and only zero trust platform to get authorized by the federal government at the FedRAMP level, and now the IL five level. So, together we are literally capturing and taking over the, being the leader in the zero trust space for the federal government. And I'm going to get a sip of water, so forgive me, I've been here all week talking to a lot of people, so forgive me for that. >> That's one thing that we don't have to deal with when we're on Zoom, right, is you don't really have the risk of losing your voice. >> Stephen: There you go. >> But in terms of the executive order, something that you mentioned, SolarWinds, Colonial Pipeline, we only hear about some of the big ones. The fact that ransomware happens one attack every 10, 11 seconds, it's a matter of when we get hit, not if. >> As you know, the story coming up from me, coming up on stage with you today, I just got myself breached just this morning, just individually. So yes, it's going to get all of us. And especially, I think when you look at zero trust and ransomware and how they worked out how zero trust can prevent it, you look at the SLED market, you know, state, local governments, they don't have the dollars to go spend like DHS does, or say, some of the DoD does. So, our partnership with AWS allows us to produce a product that is very cost-effective on a per user basis, consumption model, which is what AWS has been famous for since day one, right, the consumption model, use it when you need it, don't use it when you don't. We built our software the same way. So, at some point in a year, in a school year, we'll ramp up with some schools up to a hundred thousand users in the district, and over the summer we'll ramp down to a thousand, and we just bill them for that. So it's a beautiful relationship that we partner in not just the executive order, but being a partner in SLED, fed in the sense that matches making our business together, match the government's business. And that makes us a true leader and makes us a cost-effective solution. And if you think about it just for a moment, yesterday, I told you I was testifying in front of the Senate. And one of the questions I got asked was, oh, how many security updates do you guys see a year? I said, a year, well, we do over 200,000 a day. 200,000 security updates from potential hackers every single day. And we're doing that over 200 billion transactions a day run on AWS. So it's tremendous partnership, and to be able to work like that, and at that kind of volume, and be able to go up and down with the, and you got AWS able to scope up and down, and us to be able to ride that wave with them. It's been great. >> One of the things that we always talk about when we talk AWS is they're customer focused or customer obsession that, hey, we start backwards, we work backwards from the customer. Same thing, synergistic from a cultural perspective? >> Absolutely, I mean, one of the things I always love about AWS and I've been a customer of AWS for many years, even prior to my Zscaler days, I love the way they approach things, right? If they're not trying to go out and sell it, they're trying to meet with the customer and find out what the customer needs, and then build a solution. We're the same way. I always tell, you know, when you think of our solutions, Zscaler, I always tell my sales teams, I say it takes four sales calls for people to really understand what we do. And AWS, in the beginning of AWS, it was kind of the same thing. In the old days, you know, we all just built data centers and we had all these racks, and all this expense and mesh is what you did. It was unusual back in the day, 10 years ago, and I've been to every single re:Invent. I mean, the first one there was like, you're actually going to put all your stuff in this unknown cloud thing, and it will be available when you need it? So yes, you know, the way that they did it is the same way we do it together today. And we do it together today. We partner on many deals today where we're both, our teams are in there together, selling together, whether it's the DoD, federal agencies, SLED agencies, and commercial, you know, selling it hand-in-hand because it's that same philosophy is we're going to build what a customer needs. We're not going to tell the customer what they need. We're going to hear what they need, and that's the same relationship. So I'm going to get another sip real quick. >> Go for it. One of the things that has been a theme that we've heard the last couple of days is every company needs to be a data company or private sector, public sector, and if they're not, they're probably not going to be around much longer. How do you help customers get their handle around that? Because the security threats are only increasing. I mean, it's ransomware as a service. The fact that these criminals are getting much more brazen, you just had this happen to yourself, but enabling them to become data-driven organizations and use the data, extract the value from it securely, that's hard. >> It is, I mean, if you think back in the day, I mean, companies didn't have chief compliance officers that worked in the space that we do. Their chief compliance officer back in the day was the guy that was writing your HR issues and what OSHA issues, and of course, I still deal with some of that stuff, but my true job is really around the data, right? You know, how do we build our platforms, what decisions we make on our platforms, how we're going to certify them to support that, and I mean, chief data officers, chief security officers, I mean, you go into companies today, even car dealerships today. I mean, I'm picking one, you never thought of them having a security officer, but they do, they have to, they have to. And I mean, basic school districts, I mean, I don't about you, when I was a kid and went to school, they didn't have computers, but when my kid went to school, they did, but they didn't have a security officer. Now today, every single school district has security officers. I mean, I love how you said it, that data-driven, that data thought is there. It has to be, it's a real threat. And the sad thing is of these ransomware attacks, how many don't get reported. >> Oh, right, we're only hearing about a select few. >> The numbers are something like 88% don't get reported. It's that big. So that just tells you, we hear the big ones, right, Colonial Pipeline, things like that. We don't hear about West Texas or Middle Illinois school district that paid five grand because somebody had something on the school. That's how, as you said, this ransomware as a service security, we call it a security as a service, there's SaaS, which is software as a service, we're security software as a service, and AWS is the infrastructure as a service that we run on. And that's how it works well together. >> Do you guys go into accounts together from a go-to-market perspective? >> We, do, we can always do a better job. And my good friend here at AWS, who's probably listening, we can always do better. But yeah, so it is become something that, especially in the government space we do, in federal, DoD, because the certifications are really important, certifications are important everywhere, and we have many, we talked about all the certifications we have in federal, FedRAMP and IL five, and we have a plethora of those certifications in the commercial space. But they mean in a federal space, they're really the ticket. They call them the ENERGY STAR of approval, good housekeeping piece. So, you know, having that, teaming up with AWS who we partner together and because AWS has the same certs, we can sell at the same levels. And we do a really great job of co-selling in that space together. And I think when they look at us and they say, well, you're AWS, they've got their FedRAMP high, IL five, and you're Zscaler, you got your FedRAMP high, IL five. Yes, we can do business with these guys, and that's important. >> So you guys both open doors for each other. >> We do, we do in many cases, yeah. As a matter of fact, re:Invent five years ago, a buddy of mine here opened a big, big account for us, which is today our largest account in federal came from re:Invent, where came up to me and said, hey, my customer wants to, he's looking to do something, they're an agency that has global footprint, and they're like, we want to do something as a security as a service. They don't want to ship boxes all over the place. And we just met the customer for a coffee, and next thing you know, became our, still today, our probably largest customer in federal. >> Wow, well, this is the 10th re:Invent, you said you've been to all of them. >> Stephen: I have been to all of them. I can't lie, but I can't say I did all the virtual ones. I mean, I was logged in. (laughs) >> That's okay, we'll wink on that one. But, one of the things then, we've just got about a minute left here, is in new leadership, Andy Jassy being promoted to the CEO of Amazon, we've got Adam Selipsky, heard lot of announcements and news from Adam yesterday, but some of the things that we've been talking about on theCUBE is the first 15 years of innovation at AWS, that's going to accelerate. Do you see that also, like if you look forward to the next decade, do you see things moving much faster than they did the past decade? >> I don't think they can't. I mean, I shouldn't say they have to. And the change of the guard as you might call it here, is it's always good to have a change of the guard I think. You know, the question is when's Andy going to go to space? I mean, that's the next. (Lisa laughs) I think you have the guys who got AWS to the dance, and now the dance, who's going to become the belle of the ball. And this next generation of leadership coming in is fabulous. I think they've made great decisions, and I think they're going to do really well. And we're behind them, we support it. I got a chance to meet with most of them, love a chance to meet with Andy, I haven't met with him yet. So Andy, I'd love to meet you sometime soon. But I'm very impressed with what they've done. And yes, I think it's going to be, the last 10 years of growth is going to be a year next year. I think literally, you take 10 years be compressed to a year, and then next year it will be compressed to a day. So it's moving that fast. >> Yep, get your neck brace on, prepare for that whiplash. >> Yeah, right? That's what I said to Jeff when Jeff went to space, that's how fast we're about to travel, right? But it's really relative. >> It is, there is no limit. Well, Stephen, thank you for joining me, talking about Zscaler, AWS, what you guys are doing, how you're helping to revolutionize the public sector, fed, SLED, a lot of great stuff there. Security is an ever-evolving topic, and we appreciate all of your insights. >> Well, it was wonderful to be here. Great to see you again. And great to be back with all our friends at re:Invent. >> All of our friends, exactly. >> Stephen: Thank you so much for the time today. >> My pleasure. For Stephen Kovac, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE, the global leader in live tech coverage. (pleasant music)