>> Narrator: New York City, it's the Cube covering CyberConnect 2017 brought to you by Centrify and the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology. >> Welcome back, everyone. This is the Cube's live coverage in New York City's Grand Hyatt Ballroom for CyberConnect 2017 presented by Centrify. I'm John Furrier, the co-host of the Cube with my co-host this week is Dave Vellante, my partner and co-founder and co-CEO with me in SiliconAngle Media in the Cube. Our next guest is James Scott who is the co-founder and senior fellow at ICIT. Welcome to the Cube. >> Thanks for having me. >> You guys are putting on this event, really putting the content together. Centrify, just so everyone knows, is underwriting the event but this is not a Centrify event. You guys are the key content partner, developing the content agenda. It's been phenomenal. It's an inaugural event so it's the first of its kind bringing in industry, government, and practitioners all together, kind of up leveling from the normal and good events like Black Hat and other events like RSA which go into deep dives. Here it's a little bit different. Explain. >> Yeah, it is. We're growing. We're a newer think tank. We're less than five years old. The objective is to stay smaller. We have organizations, like Centrify, that came out of nowhere in D.C. so we deal, most of what we've done up until now has been purely federal and on the Hill so what I do, I work in the intelligence community. I specialize in social engineering and then I advise in the Senate for the most part, some in the House. We're able to take these organizations into the Pentagon or wherever and when we get a good read on them and when senators are like, "hey, can you bring them back in to brief us?" That's when we know we have a winner so we started really creating a relationship with Tom Kemp, who's the CEO and founder over there, and Greg Cranley, who heads the federal division. They're aggressively trying to be different as opposed to trying to be like everyone else, which makes it easy. If someone wants to do something, they have to be a fellow for us to do it, but if they want to do it, just like if they want to commission a paper, we just basically say, "okay, you can pay for it but we run it." Centrify has just been excellent. >> They get the community model. They get the relationship that you have with your constituents in the community. Trust matters, so you guys are happy to do this but more importantly, the content. You're held to a standard in your community. This is new, not to go in a different direction for a second but this is what the community marketing model is. Stay true to your audience and trust. You're relied upon so that's some balance that you guys have to do. >> The thing is we deal with cylance and others. Cylance, for example, was the first to introduce machine learning artificial intelligence to get passed that mutating hash for endpoint security. They fit in really well in the intelligence community. The great thing about working with Centrify is they let us take the lead and they're very flexible and we just make sure they come out on top each time. The content, it's very content driven. In D.C., we have at our cocktail receptions, they're CIA, NSA, DARPA, NASA. >> You guys are the poster child of be big, think small. >> Exactly. Intimate. >> You say Centrify is doing things differently. They're not falling in line like a lemming. What do you mean by that? What is everybody doing that these guys are doing differently? >> I think in the federal space, I think commercial too, but you have to be willing to take a big risk to be different so you have to be willing to pay a premium. If people work with us, they know they're going to pay a premium but we make sure they come out on top. What they do is, they'll tell us, Centrify will be like, "look, we're going to put x amount of dollars into a lunch. "Here are the types of pedigree individuals "that we need there." Maybe they're not executives. Maybe they're the actual practitioners at DHS or whatever. The one thing that they do different is they're aggressively trying to deviate from the prototype. That's what I mean. >> Like a vendor trying to sell stuff. >> Yeah and the thing is, that's why when someone goes to a Centrify event, I don't work for Centrify (mumbles). That's how they're able to attract. If you see, we have General Alexander. We've got major players here because of the content, because it's been different and then the other players want to be on the stage with other players, you know what I mean. It almost becomes a competition for "hey, I was asked to come to an ICIT thing" you know, that sort of thing. That's what I mean. >> It's reputation. You guys have a reputation and you stay true to that. That's what I was saying. To me, I think this is the future of how things get done. When you have a community model, you're held to a standard with your community. If you cross the line on that standard, you head fake your community, that's the algorithm that brings you a balance so you bring good stuff to the table and you vet everyone else on the other side so it's just more of a collaboration, if you will. >> The themes here, what you'll see is within critical infrastructure, we try to gear this a little more towards the financial sector. We brought, from Aetna, he set up the FS ISAC. Now he's with the health sector ISAC. For this particular geography in New York, we're trying to have it focus more around health sector and financial critical infrastructure. You'll see that. >> Alright, James, I've got to ask you. You're a senior fellow. You're on the front lines with a great Rolodex, great relationships in D.C., and you're adivising and leaned upon by people making policy, looking at the world and the general layout in which, the reality is shit's happening differently now so the world's got to change. Take us through a day in the life of some of the things you guys are seeing and what's the outlook? I mean, it's like a perfect storm of chaos, yet opportunity. >> It really depends. Each federal agency, we look at it from a Hill perspective, it comes down to really educating them. When I'm in advising in the House, I know I'm going to be working with a different policy pedigree than a Senate committee policy expert, you know what I mean. You have to gauge the conversation depending on how new the office is, House, Senate, are they minority side, and then what we try to do is bring the issues that the private sector is having while simultaneously hitting the issues that the federal agency space is. Usually, we'll have a needs list from the CSWEP at the different federal agencies for a particular topic like the Chinese APTs or the Russian APT. What we'll do is, we'll break down what the issue is. With Russia, for example, it's a combination of two types of exploits that are happening. You have the technical exploit, the malicious payload and vulnerability in a critical infrastructure network and then profiling those actors. We also have another problem, the influence operations, which is why we started the Center for Cyber Influence Operations Studies. We've been asked repeatedly since the elections last year by the intelligence community to tell us, explain this new propaganda. The interesting thing is the synergies between the two sides are exploiting and weaponizing the same vectors. While on the technical side, you're exploiting a vulnerability in a network with a technical exploit, with a payload, a compiled payload with a bunch of tools. On the influence operations side, they're weaponizing the same social media platforms that you would use to distribute a payload here but only the... >> Contest payload. Either way you have critical infrastructure. The payload being content, fake content or whatever content, has an underpinning that gamification call it virality, network effect and user psychology around they don't really open up the Facebook post, they just read the headline and picture. There's a dissonance campaign, or whatever they're running, that might not be critical to national security at that time but it's also a post. >> It shifts the conversation in a way where they can use, for example, right now all the rage with nation states is to use metadata, put it into big data analytics, come up with a psychographic algorithm, and go after critical infrastructure executives with elevated privileges. You can do anything with those guys. You can spearfish them. The Russian modus operandi is to call and act like a recruiter, have that first touch of contact be the phone call, which they're not expecting. "Hey, I got this job. "Keep it on the down low. Don't tell anybody. "I'm going to send you the job description. "Here's the PDF." Take it from there. >> How should we think about the different nation state actors? You mentioned Russia, China, there's Iran, North Korea. Lay it out for us. >> Each geography has a different vibe to their hacking. With Russia you have this stealth and sophistication and their hacking is just like their espionage. It's like playing chess. They're really good at making pawns feel like they're kings on the chessboard so they're really good at recruiting insider threats. Bill Evanina is the head of counterintel. He's a bulldog. I know him personally. He's exactly what we need in that position. The Chinese hacking style is more smash and grab, very unsophisticated. They'll use a payload over and over again so forensically, it's easy to... >> Dave: Signatures. >> Yeah, it is. >> More shearing on the tooling or whatever. >> They'll use code to the point of redundancy so it's like alright, the only reason they got in... Chinese get into a network, not because of sophistication, but because the network is not protected. Then you have the mercenary element which is where China really thrives. Chinese PLA will hack for the nation state during the day, but they'll moonlight at night to North Korea so North Korea, they have people who may consider themselves hackers but they're not code writers. They outsource. >> They're brokers, like general contractors. >> They're not sophisticated enough to carry out a real nation state attack. What they'll do is outsource to Chinese PLA members. Chinese PLA members will be like, "okay well, here's what I need for this job." Typically, what the Chinese will do, their loyalties are different than in the west, during the day they'll discover a vulnerability or an O day. They won't tell their boss right away. They'll capitalize off of it for a week. You do that, you go to jail over here. Russia, they'll kill you. China, somehow this is an accepted thing. They don't like it but it just happens. Then you have the eastern European nations and Russia still uses mercenary elements out of Moscow and St. Petersburg so what they'll do is they will freelance, as well. That's when you get the sophisticated, carbonic style hack where they'll go into the financial sector. They'll monitor the situation. Learn the ins and outs of everything having to do with that particular swift or bank or whatever. They go in and those are the guys that are making millions of dollars on a breach. Hacking in general is a grind. It's a lot of vulnerabilities work, but few work for long. Everybody is always thinking there's this omega code that they have. >> It's just brute force. You just pound it all day long. >> That's it and it's a grind. You might have something that you worked on for six months. You're ready to monetize. >> What about South America? What's the vibe down there? Anything happening in there? >> Not really. There is nothing of substance that really affects us here. Again, if an organization is completely unprotected. >> John: Russia? China? >> Russia and China. >> What about our allies? >> GCHQ. >> Israel? What's the collaboration, coordination, snooping? What's the dynamic like there? >> We deal, mostly, with NATO and Five Eyes. I actually had dinner with NATO last night. Five Eyes is important because we share signals intelligence and most of the communications will go through Five Eyes which is California, United States, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK. Those are our five most important allies and then NATO after that, as far as I'm concerned, for cyber. You have the whole weaponization of space going on with SATCOM interception. We're dealing with that with NASA, DARPA. Not a lot is happening down in South America. The next big thing that we have to look at is the cyber caliphate. You have the Muslim brotherhood that funds it. Their influence operations domestically are extremely strong. They have a lot of contacts on the Hill which is a problem. You have ANTIFA. So there's two sides to this. You have the technical exploit but then the information warfare exploit. >> What about the bitcoin underbelly that started with the silk roads and you've seen a lot of bitcoin. Money laundering is a big deal, know your customer. Now regulation is part of big ICOs going on. Are you seeing any activity from those? Are they pulling from previous mercenary groups or are they arbitraging just more free? >> For updating bitcoin? >> The whole bitcoin networks. There's been an effort to commercialize (mumbles) so there's been a legitimate track to bring that on but yet there's still a lot of actors. >> I think bitcoin is important to keep and if you look at the more black ops type hacking or payment stuff, bitcoin is an important element just as tor is an important element, just as encryption is an important element. >> John: It's fundamental, actually. >> It's a necessity so when I hear people on the Hill, I have my researcher, I'm like, "any time you hear somebody trying to have "weakened encryption, back door encryption" the first thing, we add them to the briefing schedule and I'm like, "look, here's what you're proposing. "You're proposing that you outlaw math. "So what? Two plus two doesn't equal four. "What is it? Three and a half? "Where's the logic?" When you break it down for them like that, on the Hill in particular, they begin to get it. They're like, "well how do we get the intelligence community "or the FBI, for example, to get into this iphone?" Civil liberties, you've got to take that into consideration. >> I got to ask you a question. I interviewed a guy, I won't say his name. He actually commented off the record, but he said to me, "you won't believe how dumb some of these state actors are "when it comes to cyber. "There's some super smart ones. "Specifically Iran and the Middle East, "they're really not that bright." He used an example, I don't know if it's true or not, that stuxnet, I forget which one it was, there was a test and it got out of control and they couldn't pull it back and it revealed their hand but it could've been something worse. His point was they actually screwed up their entire operation because they're doing some QA on their thing. >> I can't talk about stuxnet but it's easy to get... >> In terms of how you test them, how do you QA your work? >> James: How do you review malware? (mumbles) >> You can't comment on the accuracy of Zero Days, the documentary? >> Next question. Here's what you find. Some of these nation state actors, they saw what happened with our elections so they're like, "we have a really crappy offensive cyber program "but maybe we can thrive in influence operations "in propaganda and whatever." We're getting hit by everybody and 2020 is going to be, I don't even want to imagine. >> John: You think it's going to be out of control? >> It's going to be. >> I've got to ask this question, this came up. You're bringing up a really good point I think a lot of people aren't talking about but we've brought up a few times. I want to keep on getting it out there. In the old days, state on state actors used to do things, espionage, and everyone knew who they were and it was very important not to bring their queen out, if you will, too early, or reveal their moves. Now with Wikileaks and public domain, a lot of these tools are being democratized so that they can covertly put stuff out in the open for enemies of our country to just attack us at will. Is that happening? I hear about it, meaning that I might be Russia or I might be someone else. I don't want to reveal my hand but hey, you ISIS guys out there, all you guys in the Middle East might want to use this great hack and put it out in the open. >> I think yeah. The new world order, I guess. The order of things, the power positions are completely flipped, B side, counter, whatever. It's completely not what the establishment was thinking it would be. What's happening is Facebook is no more relevant, I mean Facebook is more relevant than the UN. Wikileaks has more information pulsating out of it than a CIA analyst, whatever. >> John: There's a democratization of the information? >> The thing is we're no longer a world that's divided by geographic lines in the sand that were drawn by these two guys that fought and lost a war 50 years ago. We're now in a tribal chieftain digital society and we're separated by ideological variation and so you have tribe members here in the US who have fellow tribe members in Israel, Russia, whatever. Look at Anonymous. Anonymous, I think everyone understands that's the biggest law enforcement honeypot there is, but you look at the ideological variation and it's hashtags and it's keywords and it's forums. That's the Senate. That's congress. >> John: This is a new reality. >> This is reality. >> How do you explain that to senators? I was watching that on TV where they're trying to grasp what Facebook is and Twitter. (mumbles) Certainly Facebook knew what was going on. They're trying to play policy and they're new. They're newbies when it comes to policy. They don't have any experience on the Hill, now it's ramping up and they've had some help but tech has never been an actor on the stage of policy formulation. >> We have a real problem. We're looking at outside threats as our national security threats, which is incorrect. You have dragnet surveillance capitalists. Here's the biggest threats we have. The weaponization of Facebook, twitter, youtube, google, and search engines like comcast. They all have a censorship algorithm, which is how they monetize your traffic. It's censorship. You're signing your rights away and your free will when you use google. You're not getting the right answer, you're getting the answer that coincides with an algorithm that they're meant to monetize and capitalize on. It's complete censorship. What's happening is, we had something that just passed SJ res 34 which no resistance whatsoever, blew my mind. What that allows is for a new actor, the ISPs to curate metadata on their users and charge them their monthly fee as well. It's completely corrupt. These dragnet surveillance capitalists have become dragnet surveillance censorists. Is that a word? Censorists? I'll make it one. Now they've become dragnet surveillance propagandists. That's why 2020 is up for grabs. >> (mumbles) We come from the same school here on this one, but here's the question. The younger generation, I asked a gentleman in the hallway on his way out, I said, "where's the cyber west point? "We're the Navy SEALS in this new digital culture." He said, "oh yeah, some things." We're talking about the younger generation, the kids playing Call of Duty Destiny. These are the guys out there, young kids coming up that will probably end up having multiple disciplinary skills. Where are they going to come from? So the question is, are we going to have a counterculture? We're almost feeling like what the 60s were to the 50s. Vietnam. I kind of feel like maybe the security stuff doesn't get taken care of, a revolt is coming. You talk about dragnet censorship. You're talking about the lack of control and privacy. I don't mind giving Facebook my data to connect with my friends and see my thanksgiving photos or whatever but now I don't want fake news jammed down my throat. Anti-Trump and Anti-Hillary spew. I didn't buy into that. I don't want that anymore. >> I think millennials, I have a 19 year old son, my researchers, they're right out of grad school. >> John: What's the profile like? >> They have no trust whatsoever in the government and they laugh at legislation. They don't care any more about having their face on their Facebook page and all their most intimate details of last night's date and tomorrow's date with two different, whatever. They just don't... They loathe the traditional way of things. You got to talk to General Alexander today. We have a really good relationship with him, Hayden, Mike Rogers. There is a counterculture in the works but it's not going to happen overnight because we have a tech deficit here where we need foreign tech people just to make up for the deficit. >> Bill Mann and I were talking, I heard the general basically, this is my interpretation, "if we don't get our shit together, "this is going to be an f'd up situation." That's what I heard him basically say. You guys don't come together so what Bill talked about was two scenarios. If industry and government don't share and come together, they're going to have stuff mandated on them by the government. Do you agree? >> I do. >> What's going to happen? >> The argument for regulation on the Hill is they don't want to stifle innovation, which makes sense but then ISPs don't innovate at all. They're using 1980s technology, so why did you pass SJ res 34? >> John: For access? >> I don't know because nation states just look at that as, "oh wow another treasure trove of metadata "that we can weaponize. "Let's start psychographically charging alt-left "and alt-right, you know what I mean?" >> Hacks are inevitable. That seems to be the trend. >> You talked before, James, about threats. You mentioned weaponization of social. >> James: Social media. >> You mentioned another in terms of ISPs I think. >> James: Dragnet. >> What are the big threats? Weaponization of social. ISP metadata, obviously. >> Metadata, it really depends and that's the thing. That's what makes the advisory so difficult because you have to go between influence operations and the exploit because the vectors are used for different things in different variations. >> John: Integrated model. >> It really is and so with a question like that I'm like okay so my biggest concern is the propaganda, political warfare, the information warfare. >> People are underestimating the value of how big that is, aren't they? They're oversimplifying the impact of info campaigns. >> Yeah because your reality is based off of... It's like this, influence operations. Traditional media, everybody is all about the narrative and controlling the narrative. What Russia understands is to control the narrative, the most embryo state of the narrative is the meme. Control the meme, control the idea. If you control the idea, you control the belief system. Control the belief system, you control the narrative. Control the narrative, you control the population. No guns were fired, see what I'm saying? >> I was explaining to a friend on Facebook, I was getting into a rant on this. I used a very simple example. In the advertising world, they run millions of dollars of ad campaigns on car companies for post car purchase cognitive dissonance campaigns. Just to make you feel good about your purchase. In a way, that's what's going on and explains what's going on on Facebook. This constant reinforcement of these beliefs whether its for Trump or Hillary, all this stuff was happening. I saw it firsthand. That's just one small nuance but it's across a spectrum of memes. >> You have all these people, you have nation states, you have mercenaries, but the most potent force in this space, the most hyperevolving in influence operations, is the special interest group. The well-funded special interests. That's going to be a problem. 2020, I keep hitting that because I was doing an interview earlier. 2020 is going to be a tug of war for the psychological core of the population and it's free game. Dragnet surveillance capitalists will absolutely be dragnet surveillance propagandists. They will have the candidates that they're going to push. Now that can also work against them because mainstream media, twitter, Facebook were completely against trump, for example, and that worked in his advantage. >> We've seen this before. I'm a little bit older, but we are the same generation. Remember when they were going to open up sealex? Remember the last mile for connectivity? That battle was won before it was even fought. What you're saying, if I get this right, the war and tug of war going on now is a big game. If it's not played in one now, this jerry rigging, gerrymandering of stuff could happen so when people wake up and realize what's happened the game has already been won. >> Yeah, your universe as you know it, your belief systems, what you hold to be true and self evident. Again, the embryo. If you look back to the embryo introduction of that concept, whatever concept it is, to your mind it came from somewhere else. There are very few things that you believe that you came up with yourself. The digital space expedites that process and that's dangerous because now it's being weaponized. >> Back to the, who fixes this. Who's the watchdog on this? These ideas you're talking about, some of them, you're like, "man that guy has lost it, he's crazy." Actually, I don't think you're crazy at all. I think it's right on. Is there a media outlet watching it? Who's reporting on it? What even can grasp what you're saying? What's going on in D.C.? Can you share that perspective? >> Yeah, the people that get this are the intelligence community, okay? The problem is the way we advise is I will go in with one of the silos in the NSA and explain what's happening and how to do it. They'll turn around their computer and say, "show me how to do it. "How do you do a multi vector campaign "with this meme and make it viral in 30 minutes." You have to be able to show them how to do it. >> John: We can do that. Actually we can't. >> That sort of thing, you have to be able to show them because there's not enough practitioners, we call them operators. When you're going in here, you're teaching them. >> The thing is if they have the metadata to your treasure trove, this is how they do it. I'll explain here. If they have the metadata, they know where the touch points are. It's a network effect mole, just distributive mole. They can put content in certain subnetworks that they know have a reaction to the metadata so they have the knowledge going in. It's not like they're scanning the whole world. They're monitoring pockets like a drone, right? Once they get over the territory, then they do the acquired deeper targets and then go viral. That's basically how fake news works. >> See the problem is, you look at something like alt-right and ANTIFA. ANTIFA, just like Black Lives Matter, the initiatives may have started out with righteous intentions just like take a knee. These initiatives, first stage is if it causes chaos, chaos is the op for a nation state in the US. That's the op. Chaos. That's the beginning and the end of an op. What happens is they will say, "oh okay look, this is ticking off all these other people "so let's fan the flame of this take a knee thing "hurt the NFL." Who cares? I don't watch football anyway but you know, take a knee. It's causing all this chaos. >> John: It's called trolling. >> What will happen is Russia and China, China has got their 13 five year plan, Russia has their foreign influence operations. They will fan that flame to exhaustion. Now what happens to the ANTIFA guy when he's a self-radicalized wound collector with a mental disorder? Maybe he's bipolar. Now with ANTIFA, he's experienced a heightened more extreme variation of that particular ideology so who steps in next? Cyber caliphate and Muslim brotherhood. That's why we're going to have an epidemic. I can't believe, you know, ANTIFA is a domestic terrorist organization. It's shocking that the FBI is not taking this more serious. What's happening now is Muslim brotherhood funds basically the cyber caliphate. The whole point of cyber caliphate is to create awareness, instill the illusion of rampant xenophobia for recruiting. They have self-radicalized wound collectors with ANTIFA that are already extremists anyway. They're just looking for a reason to take that up a notch. That's when, cyber caliphate, they hook up with them with a hashtag. They respond and they create a relationship. >> John: They get the fly wheel going. >> They take them to a deep web forum, dark web forum, and start showing them how it works. You can do this. You can be part of something. This guy who was never even muslim now is going under the ISIS moniker and he acts. He drives people over in New York. >> They fossilized their belief system. >> The whole point to the cyber caliphate is to find actors that are already in the self-radicalization phase but what does it take psychologically and from a mentoring perspective, to get them to act? That's the cyber caliphate. >> This is the value of data and context in real time using the current events to use that data, refuel their operation. It's data driven terrorism. >> What's the prescription that you're advising? >> I'm not a regulations kind of guy, but any time you're curating metadata like we're just talking about right now. Any time you have organizations like google, like Facebook, that have become so big, they are like their own nation state. That's a dangerous thing. The metadata curation. >> John: The value of the data is very big. That's the point. >> It is because what's happening... >> John: There's always a vulnerability. >> There's always a vulnerability and it will be exploited and all that metadata, it's unscrubbed. I'm not worried about them selling metadata that's scrubbed. I'm worried about the nation state or the sophisticated actor that already has a remote access Trojan on the network and is exfiltrating in real time. That's the guy that I'm worried about because he can just say, "forget it, I'm going to target people that are at this phase." He knows how to write algorithms, comes up with a good psychographic algorithm, puts the data in there, and now he's like, "look I'm only going to promote this concept, "two people at this particular stage of self-radicalization "or sympathetic to the kremlin." We have a big problem on the college campuses with IP theft because of the Chinese Students Scholar Associations which are directly run by the Chinese communist party. >> I heard a rumor that Equifax's franchising strategy had partners on the VPN that were state sponsored. They weren't even hacking, they had full access. >> There's a reason that the Chinese are buying hotels. They bought the Waldorf Astoria. We do stuff with the UN and NATO, you can't even stay there anymore. I think it's still under construction but it's a no-no to stay there anymore. I mean western nations and allies because they'll have bugs in the rooms. The WiFi that you use... >> Has fake certificates. >> Or there's a vulnerability that's left in that network so the information for executives who have IP or PII or electronic health records, you know what I mean? You go to these places to stay overnight, as an executive, and you're compromised. >> Look what happened with Eugene Kaspersky. I don't know the real story. I don't know if you can comment, but someone sees that and says, "this guy used to have high level meetings "at the Pentagon weekly, monthly." Now he's persona non grata. >> He fell out of favor, I guess, right? It happens. >> James, great conversation. Thanks for coming on the Cube. Congratulations on the great work you guys are doing here at the event. I know the content has been well received. Certainly the key notes we saw were awesome. CSOs, view from the government, from industry, congratulations. James Scott who is the co founder and senior fellow of ICIT, Internet Critical Infrastructure Technology. >> James: Institute of Critical Infrastructure Technology. >> T is for tech. >> And the Center for Cyber Influence Operations Studies. >> Good stuff. A lot of stuff going on (mumbles), exploits, infrastructure, it's all mainstream. It's the crisis of our generation. There's a radical shift happening and the answers are all going to come from industry and government coming together. This is the Cube bringing the data, I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante. Thanks for watching. More live coverage after this short break. (music)

(upbeat music) >> Announcer: New York City. It's theCUBE. Covering CyberConnect 2017. Brought to you by Centrify, and the Institute For Critical Infrastructure Technology. >> Hey, welcome back everyone. This is theCUBE, live in New York City, in Manhattan. We're here at the Grand Hyatt Ballroom for CyberConnect 2017. Inaugural event presented by Centrify. I'm John Furrier, with my co-host Dave Vellante, both Co-Founders of SiliconANGLE Media. Our next guest is Parham Eftekhari, who's the Co-Founder and Senior Fellow of ICIT. Also part of the team and the lead around putting the content agenda together. These are the guys who put it all together. Really inaugural conference, great success. Turns out, you know we (laughs), we talked about it was going to be big, it was going to be huge. By the numbers, it's just a great beachhead, the right people showed up. Welcome to theCUBE, thanks for joining us. >> Yeah, thank you for having me, excited to be here, good to chat with you again. >> So, we, before the event started, just, you know, a couple months ago when we were talking about the event, we're like, this is, love the name, first event of its kind. Always wondering, you know, will people show up? Right, you know? >> That's right, first-time events, we've talked about this before, there are so many cyber security events out there, and so many organizations competing for a limited time and resources. So, I think to have a, an event like this be such a big success in the first time speaks to the quality of the content, and, you know, Centrify's role and ICIT's role in putting it together. >> I want to give you guys congratulations, to you and your partner, for running a really amazing company and event. You guys go big by thinking small, by being small, being relevant. Your model and how you do business earns trust, it's very community-driven. Same ethos as what we believe in. So, wanted to give you props for that. >> Parham: Thank you. >> It's not usual you see great execution thinking about your audience and constituents, so congratulations. >> Thank you. >> Okay, so, with that, you've got a lot of heavy hitters in your rolodex, you guys got a great community, big names. General's up there, you have big time SiSoS. >> Parham: Yeah. >> What's the vibe? I mean, you guys are dealing with this profile persona all the time. What's on the minds? I mean, obviously the General's banging his fist on the table, virtual table, or he's holding his coffee cup, telling war stories, he's basically saying, if we don't get our act together, industry and government... >> Yeah, well, I think what's happening today, and you know the business of the Institute, we're a research-driven organization, so as an organization that provides objective research, we have the fortunate position to be able to advise to some of these commercial and public sector leaders. And so, in that advisory, we have a really good sense on the pulse of the community. And we're able to hear directly from these individuals, we don't have to look at market research studies, we don't have to look at what some of these third-party groups are talking about. We're able to communicate directly, and we can actually see and feel their feedback to what we're discussing. >> There's no lag to your model, you have your fingers on the pulse. What is it telling you? Obviously, we heard the message here, there's some work to be done, there's some technical core fundamental infrastructure things, there's application-specific things, obviously the threats aren't stopping. >> Parham: That's right. >> What are the, what's-- >> If you look at the program that was built, it really does mirror the way that the Institute believes we need to approach solving these issues. And that comes with a layered security strategy. And so, oftentimes you'll go to these events, and we understand that there's organizations that are looking to make this into more of a marketing opportunity for them. So, unfortunately, the curriculum and content only touches one or two core competencies, which obviously really underscore what the sponsors do. What we've done here at CyberConnect, which is why Centrify's such a great partner, they understand that they may be one of the world's leading identity access management organizations, but they know for us to have a cyber security renaissance and actually make that quantum leap that the General and some of the executives that you were mentioning were discussing all day, we need to have a number of different technologies discussed, and have that education talk about things like the use of machine-learning based artificial intelligence. Talk about how technology can enable automation. Talk about identity access management. Talk about, like we just heard Terry Gravenstein, talk about the importance of building a culture of trust, right? Security has a human element to it, people's one of the biggest problems we have. So, I think this is one of the reasons why this event, to your point earlier, is such a big success only the first year out. >> Parham, we heard a lot today about sort of the partnership, really the imperative, of government and commercial enterprises working together. You do a lot of work in the government. And there seems to be, anyway our impression is, there's a heightened sense of security, for obvious reasons. And, board levels in the commercial side have really tuned in to security. But still, organizations seem to be struggling with what's the right regime. You know, it used to be just an IT problem, or a security team problem, and as you really pointed out many, many times at this event, it's everybody's problem. >> Parham: Yeah. >> So, what are you seeing in terms of, things that commercial enterprises can learn from government, particularly from the top, in the top down initiative. >> Yeah, I think one of the themes you've heard discussed several times today is, and Terry again just talked about us having a seat at the table, I think there's so much media discussion about cyber security. You know, all of our families, our moms, our grandparents, are understanding that cyber security is a major issue. We're even starting to get some more general consensus that cyber security is a national security imperative. And, so I think this is helpful. I think now we have to start to, as cyber security practitioners, we have to speak in the language that resonates with, so, if you're talking to a chief operating officer, and trying to educate them on the impact of ITOT convergence, then you have to speak in the terms that a COO is interested in, versus a CFO, versus your CIO, versus your Board of Directors. So I think language matters, vocabulary matters. And I think it's one of the things that we see, we see starting to percolate up in some of the conversations that we're having. >> Given that humans are the main problem, I mean we all have this assumption, we talk about it in theCUBE all the time, but oh my gosh, internet of things is going to create this huge space of people to attack, a huge attack vector. But if the humans aren't managing the devices, is there potentially an upside there, if that makes sense? >> Yeah, so, you know, I think it all goes back to, tomorrow morning, we'll hear from Dr. Ron Ross and David from Centrify. And they're going to be talking about security by design. In this, Dr. Ross actually put out a paper, 800-160, which really talks about the importance of building better systems, devices, products. So, I think that we are moving towards automation, we're moving towards machine learning, we already see it impacting a lot of our society, and even down to the, to your point, the IoT devices. We just put out a paper about cyborgs and the use of embedded devices in an actual, in humans, trans-humanism. This is all a, this, this ship has, the train has left the station, I guess you could say. I think what's important now is to not make the same mistakes we did the first go around, and pause and not put profits over security and privacy, and actually understand that, if we can't build it with security, certain security requirements there, then we can't get that functionality, or it may not cost the price point that we want it to cost, which may, you know, have it be more affordable for consumers. So I think we have to re-prioritize. >> US companies generally have not taken that pause and put security over profits. It's really been the reverse. And many would say, okay, but it's actually worked out pretty well for US companies, they dominate the technology industry. What do you say to those folks that say, well, profits are actually more important? >> Well, I think, I think it depends, when you say it worked out well, I think if you look at all those individuals that have been impacted by the breaches, I think that's where people are really starting to understand how it's impacting us, and going back to my comment about the national security side, this is no longer just about being able to steal your PII, and maybe doing some fraud in terms of identity theft and what not. When we're talking about meta-data and capitalistic dragnet surveillance, and now if you're looking at who is stealing and curating this information, it could be special interest groups, could be nation states, so now this becomes a much larger issue and a much larger challenge. >> So it's a ticking timebomb, is essentially what you're saying. And so that begs the next question: does really government have to get involved, to begin to impose its will, if you will, on commercial organizations? >> Yeah, I think what's going to happen, and actually we were talking about this at lunch with General Alexander earlier today, it's going to be a balance. You know, the government will be getting involved, they are getting involved, there's a lot of legislation being passed that truly is trying to make a bi-partisan push to address some of these issues. But I think, ultimately, that's going to be, as the General kind of said earlier, it's just going to be the government beating these, these folks virtually on the head until they start to do some self-governance and self-regulation. >> Parham, talk about your relationship with the General, vis-a-vis, this event. I see he had a great keynote, inspiring us, he moved a lot of people, talked about the general common defense versus civil liberties balancing privacy, as you mentioned. What more can you share about some of the things that he sees and feels strongly about, that you guys are seeing in your research in the Institute, because this is interesting, because you got a guy who says, "I'm an Army guy," right, who's now looking through the prism of the future, with past history at the NSA Command Center, Cyber Command Center. >> Yeah. >> He's got a pretty interesting view, and he sees both sides of the coin. >> Yeah. >> You guys are seeing that, people in the tech business are like deer in the headlights. We saw Twitter, Facebook and Alphabet, you know, like (groans). And then the center's trying to grock what Twitter does. >> Parham: Yeah. >> So, I mean, you have this generational gap, you also have historical analog to digital transformation going on. This is a societal impact, this is pretty huge. What does the General truly feel, what's his vision, what's his point of view these days? >> So, I'm not going to speak for the General, I wouldn't dare do that, but I will say that, if you listen to his comments on stage, one of the things he does talk about, and where our relationship is very strong, is the importance of public-private sector collaboration. The General actually received our pinnacle, I'm sorry, was named our pioneer last year at our gala which is actually happening in a couple of days in Washington, DC. And he really, if you listen to his message, he underscores the importance of collaboration, not just within a sector, not just within government, but cross-sector and between public-private sector, and between technology providers and government and legislative community. So, I think one of the things that I am comfortable saying is that, he would encourage more collaboration, and more information sharing, and more trust among the sectors to work together to solve these problems. >> How should people measure success in this business? >> That's a loaded question. I think, I think success needs to be, at this stage, incremental. I think that we need to be realistic in terms of how much quote success can we achieve overnight. We've, as we mentioned earlier, the ship has sailed, and so I think we need to do multiple things simultaneously. We, of course, do need to continue to implement technology and strategies that detect and respond to threats. But I personally would say that the true success is going to really be accomplished when we start to deploy strategies and re-prioritize so we're actually building more secure systems, more secure devices. I think that's going to be... Needs to go hand-in-hand, and we'll hear a lot about that tomorrow with Dr. Ross. >> Would that imply that, either, you know, the rate of growth of breaches starts to moderate, or the amount of data or loss, revenue dollars lost, begins to, you know, slow down its growth rate or-- >> Yeah, at some point that's absolutely going to be the goal, I think that-- >> Is that a reality though, I mean given that everything is growing so fast in our business? >> Oh, yeah, I'm an eternal optimist. I think absolutely, we'll get there. I can't tell you the timeframe, but I do know that venues like this, and the work that ICIT is doing, is really important to getting us to that point. Until we get folks in the media and on Capitol Hill and in federal agencies talking about these issues, so then it's not just the security folks who are focused on this, but a broader group. >> Yeah, and I think that's the opportunity, and as we wrap up day one here, education and content value is what we're seeing. You guys see that all the time, I know I'm preaching to the choir. But again, looking at mainstream media and some of the techniques that the Russians and other states have used to implement means and the election conversations, it's being gamified, we know that. So, the media picks up on it because there's identity politics going on. So, I think there needs to be a wake-up call, I mean, I think the educational process is critical. >> Yeah. >> What's next? >> And, and, and that's where, you know, we feel very fortunate to be in the position that we're in, because ICIT is a neutral, third-party, non-profit, and non-partisan research organization. So what we're doing is putting out content. We're not, we're not, the... I should say it this way, the information comes out-- >> You've no agenda in terms of how to capture? >> Yeah, exactly. >> It's all transparent. >> Our, our, our agenda is national security. Our agenda is improving the security of our nation's critical infrastructure sectors, improving resiliency. And providing trusted advisory to these various stakeholders. >> Well, getting the people here on theCUBE, and having you guys come on, and doing this great event really get, opens up the door for more voices to be heard. >> Parham: Absolutely. >> And we heard from your partner, had some great things to say. This has got to get out there, so the people, the press can report on it-- >> Parham: That's right. We'll turn on the cameras. >> Parham: Yeah. >> Dave, what's your take on the event here? Obviously, as an inaugural event, what's your analysis? >> Well, I mean, we touched on some big topics, right? I mean, the General, in particular, was talking about collaboration with the FBI, you know, Sony came in. >> John: The role of government. >> Privacy, ACLU, Jeffrey Stone. I think, you know, my big takeaway, as we were just discussing, was... And the General said that Sony, for example, he gave that example, can't do it alone. And I, we've been saying this for a while. And John, you predicted this, you said a while back that, that the government's processes, technologies, know-how, is going to seep into commercial businesses. As it has so often. I mean, you look at, you know, space launch, you know, radar, nuclear energy, the internet, et cetera. And I think security, cyber security, is such a big problem, only the government can help solve this problem. >> Well, the government's always been dealing with the moving train, and the corporations and the enterprise have traditionally been buying shrink-wrapped software loaded on a server that's evolved to buying more servers that have been pre-integrated with software. And buying silver bullet solutions, and then leave it alone until something breaks, and then fixes it. And I think, you know, when we were talking and looking at this event, my takeaway here is, the moving train is never going to stop, and the shifting of the game is going to be a cat-and-mouse, good versus bad, new technology versus reality. Open source certainly accelerated the role of the public domain. Treasure troves of information are being amassed, whether it's WikiLeaks or in the open source. This is a problem, and then there's no real, like, real creative solutions. I am not seeing anything. So, to me, this event takeaway is that, this is the first time a step has been taken to saying, whoa, holistic big picture. What is the architecture of a global society, where nation states can compete with no borders. >> Yeah. >> In a digital, virtual space, be effective, have freedom, and then respect for the individual. I mean, no one's ever had that conversation. >> Yeah, well we're excited to have it. We've gotten really great feedback from just some of the conversations that we're hearing in the hallway, as people are taking, learning actionable intelligence, where I can actually take this and instill it. I think a lot of people are actually being inspired, and that's something we need, especially in an industry where every day is about how, you know, cyber security folks don't get in the news when nothing happens. There's a commercial, I think it's an IBM commercial, right, where it's, my, my, nothing happened at work for my dad today, right? That never happens, it's always about what does go wrong, so I think we need to be inspired and motivate ourselves. >> Well, one of the things that we're excited about, as you know, we're community-model like you guys are. You look at some of the early indicators of how blockchain, and even though it's kind of crazy, you know, bubbly with the ICOs and cryptocurrency and overall blockchain, it all comes down to the common thread. We see an open source software over multiple generations, we're seeing it in blockchain, we're seeing it in security. Community matters. And I think the role of individuals and communities will be a big part of the change, as a new generation comes up. Really fundamental, so congratulations. >> Parham: Absolutely, thank you. >> Okay, Parham here's inside theCUBE for our wrap-up of day one of CyberConnect 2017. I'm John, with Dave Vellante. Thanks for watching. (synthesizer music)

>> Narrator: Live from New York City, It's theCUBE. Covering CyberConnect 2017. Brought to you by Centrify, and The Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology. (synth music tag) >> And government industries together for the first time. A unique kind of collaboration unlike normal events, like black hat or RSA, that are mostly about hacks and really geeky sessions. There's a great place for that, but again, this is the first of its kind, and it's presented by Centrify's theCUBE as an exclusive partner here, I'm John Furrier, co-host of theCUBE, co-founder of SiliconANGLE, my co-founder, Dave Vellante here. Dave, I mean, Centrify really taking an industry proactive role, not having their own event. Instead, using their money to fund an industry event. This is the trend in digital media. Presented by Centrify, not 'sponsored by' or 'their event'. This, we've seen this in the big data space before where events are sponsored for the community. You know, cyber security, really a big topic. You know, General Keith Alexander, retired general, was on stage as the keynote. Really talking about the crisis in the United States and around the world, around cyber security, cyber war, a whole new reality. This is the thrust of the event. >> Well, they say content is king. Well, context is kind of the empire, and the context here is, the world is changing. And the seriousness of that change is significant. General Alexander, many people may not know, General Keith, former, retired General Keith Alexander, he was the first Head of Chief $of Cyber Security at U.S., appointed by Obama. John, he was appointed Director of the NSA in 2005. Now, you guys remember, I'm sure, Stuxnet was right around 2004, 2005 when it was developed, and it bridged the Bush to the Obama administration. So he had the, all the inside baseball. He didn't talk about Stuxnet, but that was, >> He did share some nice war stories. >> Yeah, but that was the first and most significant, the way they got into Natanz, and he was at the center of all that. And he did share some war stories. He talked about Snowden, he talked about collaboration with the FBI, he talked about saving lives. And basically he said, hey, I stood in front of the ACLU. They basically undressed him, right? And then came back and said, hey, this is one of the most ethical agencies, and law-abiding agencies I've ever, he's seen, so he read that note from the head of the ACLU, it was very proud of that. >> Yeah, and the Stuxnet, it was in the news obviously, just yesterday it was reported, actually the day before November 1st, November 2nd, that Stuxnet was highly underestimated. In fact, the digital certificates that were spoofed were, been hanging around, the malware's been out there. Then again, this is, this is an indictment of the problem that we have, which is, we've got to get the security. Now, the things that the General talked about, I want to get your reaction to, because certainly I honed in on a couple key things. "Foundational tech for common defense." So he talked a lot about the Constitution and the role of government, I did a tweet on that, but what is the role of the government? That's the common defense of the United States, citizens and business. One. Not just protect the Department of Defense. At the same time, he did kind of put a plug in that we need the civil liberties and privacy to be addressed. But this is the biggest crisis we have, and it's a problem that can only be solved by working together. And if you look at, Dave, the trends that we're following on theCUBE and SiliconANGLE and Wikibon, the common thread is community. If you look at blockchain and what's going on in that disruptive, decentralized world, the role of the community is critical. If you look at what's going on in security, it's the role of the community. If you look at open source, the biggest success story of our multiple generations and now impacting the younger generation in the computer science industry and the computer industry, open source software. Community. You're starting to see the role of communities where knowing your neighbor, knowing who's involved with things, is really critical, and you can't highlight it any more than this conference that Centrify's presenting with these gurus, because they're all saying the same thing. You've got to share the data. The community's got to work together. So, common defense, maintaining civil liberties and maintaining privacy at the same time, solving the biggest crisis of our time. >> Well the other big thing and, John, you actually made this prediction to me a couple weeks ago, was that government and industry are going to start working together. It's going, it has to happen. General Alexander basically said that, is it the government's role, job, to protect commercial industry? And it was an emphatic yes, and he pulled out his fake version of the Constitution, and said yes, and he got in front of Panetta, in front of the US Senate, and made the case for that. And I think there's no question about it. Industries control critical infrastructure. And industries aren't in a good position to protect that critical infrastructure. They need help from the government, and the government has some of the most advanced technologies in the world. >> And the other thing we've been hearing from this, the executive at Aetna, is attack, maintaining intelligence on the data and sharing is critical to resolve the problem, but his point was that most people spend time on an attack vector that's usually wrong. He said, quote, "You're better off having people be idle, than chasing down on an attack vector that's wrong." So his point is, report that to the agencies quickly, to, one, reverse-engineer the problem. Most likely you're going to get better intel on the attack, on the vector, then you can start working effectively. So he says a lot of problems that are being solved by unconventional means. >> Well, General Alexander said that when he was head of Cyber Command, his number one challenge was visibility, on the attacks, they could only respond to those attacks. So, my question to you, John, is how will data, big data, machine learning, AI, whatever you want to call it, how will that affect our ability as an industry to proactively identify threats and thwart them, as opposed to just being a response mechanism? >> I think it's going to be critical. I think if you look at the AI and machine learning, AI is basically machine learning on steroids, that's really kind of what it is now, but it hopefully will evolve into bigger things, is really going through the massive amounts of data. One of the points that General Alexander talked about was the speed and velocity of how things are changing, and that most IT departments can't even keep up with that right now, never mind security. So machine learning will allow things to happen that are different analysis faster, rather than relying on data lakes and all kinds of old modeling, it's just not fast enough, so speed. The other thing too is that, as you start looking at security, this decentralized approach, most attacks are coming in on state-sponsored but democratized attacks, meaning you don't have, you can use open source and public domain software to provide attacks. This is what he's been talking about. So the number one thing is the data. Sharing the data, being part of a community approach where companies can work in sectors, because there's a lot of trend data coming out that most attackers will come out, or state-sponsored attacks, will target specific things. First of all, the one problem that can be solved immediately is that there's no way any of the United States military and-or energy grid should be attached to the Internet. And you can mask out all foreign attacks just by saying only people in the US should be accessing. That's one network conventional thing you can do. But getting the data out there is critical, but working in sectors. Most attacks happen like on the financial services industry, so if you sit in there and trying to solve the problem and keeping it on the down-low, you're going to get fired anyway, you know? The business is probably going to get hurt. Report it early, with your peers in the community, share some data, anonymize that data, don't make it, you know, privacy breaching, but get it out there. Number one thing. >> Well, here's the problem is, 80 billion dollars is spent a year on security, and the vast majority of that is still spent on perimeter security, and we heard today that the number one problem is things like credential stuffing, and password, poor user behavior, and our response to that is education. Jim Routh talked about, that's a conventional response. We need unconventional responses. I mean, the bottom line is that there's no silver bullet to security. You talked about, critical infrastructure should not be connected to the internet, but even then, when you have an air gap, you go back to Stuxnet, Natanz had an air gap. Mossad got through the air gap. There's always a way to get through somehow. So there's no one silver bullet. It's a portfolio of approaches and practices, and education, and unconventional processes that you have to apply. And as we talked about, >> Well I mean, there's no silver bullet, but there are solutions. And I think that's what he's saying. He gave it, General Alexander gave specific examples, when he was in charge, of the NSA command center was, you know, terrorist attacks being thwarted. Those are actual secure problems on the terrorism front that were solved. There was a silver bullet for that, it's called technology. So as you generalize it, Dave, I can hear what you're saying, because IT guys want a silver bullet. I want to buy a product that solves my security problem. >> So here's the problem I have with that is, I used to read Art Coviello's, you know, memo every year, >> Yeah. >> It was like, he tried to do like the, and he still does. But I look back every year and I say, Do we feel safer and more secure than we were last year? And every year the answer is no. So we, despite all the technology, and we've talked about this on theCUBE with Pat Gelsinger, security is essentially a do-over. We do need unconventional new ways, >> No debate. >> Of attacking the problem. >> No debate. Well I noticed, I'm just highlighting the point, I mean if you look at it from an IT perspective, the old conventional wisdom was, I want to buy a product. Hey, vendor, sell me your security product. What General's kind of pointing out is, he's kind of pointing out and connecting the dots, is like, hey, what they learned in the NSA was, it's an ongoing iterative thing that's happening in real time. It's not an IT solution anymore. It's a more of a holistic problem. Meaning, if you don't under stand the problem space, you can't attack it. So when they talked about the terrorist attack, they had a phone record, and they had to give it to the FBI. The FBI had to get into it. They discovered the guy in basically 24 hours, and then it took a week to kind of vet the information. Luckily they caught it and saved a subway attack in New York City in 2008 that would have been devastating. Okay, still, they were successful, but, weeks. So machine learning, and to your point, is only going to accelerate those benefits. And again, the real counterpoint as General pointed out is, civil liberties and privacy. >> Well, talk- >> I mean, what do you want? You want subway attacks, or you want to have your email, and your email be clean, or you want to have people read your email, and no subway attacks? I mean, come on. >> Well, you and I have talked about this on theCUBE over a number of years, and talking about Snowden, and General Alexander brought it up, you know, basically saying, hey, he told he story and he was pretty emphatic as to, his job is to protect, not only the citizens of the United States, but the infrastructure, and basically saying that we couldn't have done it without the laws that allowed us to analyze the metadata. >> I think, I think, in my opinion, what I think's going to happen is, we're going to have a completely reimagined situation on government. If you look at the trends with GovCloud, what's going on with AWS, Amazon Web Services, in the federal area, is an acceleration of massive agility and change happening. You're going to see a reimagine of credentials. Reimagining of culture around hiring and firing people that are the right people. You know I said, and I always say, there should be a Navy SEALs for cyber, a West Point for cyber. So I think you're going to start to see a cultural shift from a new generation of leaders, and a new generation of citizens in the US, that are going to look at citizenship differently. So for instance, Centrify, which is putting on this event, has an identity solution. That's an easy solution. Take it out of IT's problem, no one should be patching 1200 different IT systems in the government. Screw it. It's like a driver's license. Here's your credential, you know? >> So, >> So there's new ways to think of it. Radical ways, progressive ways, whatever you want to call it, I think those are going to be coming fast. Blockchains is a solution. >> I was going to ask you about that. So, four out of five breaches are password related. From credential stuffing or just bad password behavior. Everybody uses the same password, because they can remember it, across all these sites. So four out of five of the breaches can be traced back to poor password behavior. So, will things like blockchain or single sign-on, really, the answer, that's about the wrong question. When will, and how will, things like blockchain come to front and center, to solve that problem? >> I don't know, Dave. I mean, all I know is in today's Wall Street Journal, Andy Kessler writes a story that if you want to predict the future, it's all about dodgeball. You've got to get in the game and get hit by a few balls to know what's kind of going on around you. >> Dave: So you've got to fail first. >> Everybody has an opinion, nobody actually knows the answer, this has been a premise in the tech business. In my opinion, my opinion is, to reimagine things, you've got to look at it differently. So if you look at Jim Routh, the CSO at Aetna said, he said, look, we're going to solve these problems in a way, and he said, I'm not even a computer science major, I'm a history major, and I'm running Aetna's security practice. And his point was, he's a history major, civilizations crumble when trust crumbles. Okay, so trust is a huge issue, so trust on the government, trust on the systems, trust with email, so that, so he's looking at it and saying, hey, I want systems that don't erode trust, because the civilization of the world will disintegrate. So trust is a big factor, these are the new things that the best minds have to solve. >> I think the other thing, that really important topic that came up is, is public policy, and there was a discussion on sort of the, you know, hacktivists versus state-sponsored terrorism, so the payload, or the signature of a hacktivist malware is dramatically different than that of a state-sponsored initiative. State-sponsored initiatives are much more sophisticated and much more dangerous. And so, Robert Gates, when he was on theCUBE, brought this up, and he said, listen, we have the best technology in the world. The best security in the world. And we apply that largely for defense, and he said, we could go on the offensive. He said the problem is, so can everyone else, and we have, as a nation, a lot more to lose. So when you, we talked about Stuxnet earlier, Stuxnet basically was your tax dollars at work, getting into the hands eventually of the bad guys, who then use that to come back and say, okay, we can attack critical infrastructure, US, so you better be careful. >> It's bigger than that, though, Dave. That's a one, that's an old point, which is a good point, but Stuxnet was the beginning of a movement that state-sponsored actors were doing. In the old days, a state-sponsored actor, in the Iran case, came from a state sponsor, they revealed their hands in their hack a little too early, and we could counter that. But when you look at the specific attacks over the past 15 years, if a state-sponsored attack on the US was happening, it was their, they had to show their hand. That's different now, with WikiLeaks and public domain, states can still remain anonymous and saying "It wasn't us!" And point to these organizations by democratizing hacker tools. So whether it's Stuxnet or something else, you're seeing state-sponsored actors, and I won't, China, Russia, whoever they are, they can actually enable other people who hate the US to attack us. Their signature's not even on it. So by democratizing the hacker tools, increases the number of people that could attack the US. And so the state sponsors aren't even doing anything. >> Well, so, Jim Routh talked about WannaCry and NotPetya, which were, you know, generally believed to be ransomware. He said no, they weren't ransomware. They only collected about 140 thousand from that in US dollars. They were really about state-sponsored political acts. I don't know, sending warnings. We're going to ask him about that when he comes in theCUBE. >> Alright. We've got a big day here. New York City here for CyberConnect 2017, this is the inaugural event presented by Centrify. All the top leaders in the industry and government are here solving the problem, the crisis of our generation's cyber attack security, both government and industry coming together. This is theCUBE, we'll be back, more live coverage after this short break.

(upbeat music) >> Hello, everyone and welcome to this special CUBE conversation here in our studios in Palo Alto, California. I'm John Furrier, the co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media and cohost of theCUBE, with a special preview of CyberConnect 2017, a global security conference presented by Centrify, it's an industry-independent event. I'm here with the CEO and Founder of Centrify, Tom Kemp. Tom, thanks for joining me on this preview of CyberConnect 2017. >> It's great to be here again. >> So, you guys, obviously, as a company are no longer struggling, you're clearly clearing the runway on growth. Congratulations on the success. This event will be broadcasting live on theCUBE as folks should know on the site. CyberConnect 2017 is a different kind of event, it's really the first of its kind where it's an industry gathering, not just a Black Hat, I mean, RSA's got Black Hat and they try to weave a little business in. This is all about leadership in the industry. Is that right? >> Yeah, absolutely. You know, there's really a dearth of business-focused discussions with C-Level people discussing the issues around security. And so, what we found was, was that most of the conversations were about the hackers, you know, the methodology of goin' in and hacking in. And, that doesn't really help the business people, they have to understand what are the higher level strategies that should be deployed to make their organizations more secure. So, we kind of wanted to up-level the conversation regarding security and help C-Level people, board people, figure out what they should be doing. >> And, we've obviously been reporting at SiliconANGLE, obviously, the latest and greatest on hacks. You know, you've seen everything from cyber threats, where are real hacking, to nuanced things like the rushing dissidents campaign on Facebook around voter impressions. And we saw that in the hearings in the senate where Facebook got really grilled by, you know, "Is it a real threat," no, but it is a threat in the sense that they're putting opinion-shaping. So, there's a broad range of business issues, some are highly-nuanced, some are very specific business values, you're out of business if you get hacked. So, how do you see that, because is that the discussion point? Is it more policy, all of the above, what is the overall conversations going to be like at CyberConnect 2017? >> Yeah, I think it's, look, the reality is, is that breaches before were about potentially stealing your data. But, now it's an impact on your brand. Like, what if the Russians were doing that to Pepsi or Coca-Cola, et cetera? They could just completely setup a lot of negative sentiment about you, so there's a lot of different ways to impact organizations as well. And so, what we're doing at CyberConnect is, putting forth CIOs of Aetna, US Bank, and having them describe what they do. I mean, think about a major healthcare company, Aetna, US Bank, the list goes on, you know, Blue Cross Blue Shield. And we're having the major CSOs of these large organizations tell their peers what they're doing to protect their company, their brands, et cetera. >> Well, I want to get back to the business impact in a second, but some notable key notes here. Securing a Nation Amid Change, A Roadmap to Freedom, from Retired General Keith Alexander, Former Director of the NSA and Chief of the U.S. Cyber Command. Why is he there, what's the focus for his talk? >> Well, you can't ignore the government aspect. Well, first of all, government is a huge target and we obviously saw that with the election, we saw that with the hack of the Office of Personnel Management, et cetera. And so, you know, nation states are going after governments as well as criminal organizations, so General Alexander can talk about what he did to protect us as citizens and our government. But, he also has a great insight in terms of what hackers are doing to go after critical infrastructure. >> John: He's got some experience thinking about it, so he's going to bring that thinking in? >> Absolutely, and he's going to give us an update on the latest vectors of attacks that are happening, and give us some insight on what he experienced trying to protect the United States but also trying to protect our businesses and infrastructure. So, we wanted to have him kick things off to give, you know, what more, the NSA, the ex-NSA head telling us what's going on. >> And you got amazing guests here, again the CSO from Aetna, the Chief Security Officer from Cisco, The Global Value Chain, you got US Bank. You got Amazon Web Services here talking about the Best Practice of Running Workloads on an Amazon Service Cloud. So, you got the gamut of industry, as well as some government people who have experienced dealing with this from a practitioners standpoint? What's the convoluence of that, what's the trends that are coming out of those? What can people expect to hear and look forward to watching the videos for? >> You know, I think it's going to be some of the trends that you guys talk about. It's like, how can you leverage AI and machine learning to help better protect your organization as well? So, that's going to be one huge trend. I think the other trend, and that's why we have the folks from Amazon, is in a world in which we're increasingly using mobile and Cloud and leaving the perimeter, you know, in a world where there's no perimeter, how can you secure your users, your data, et cetera? So, I think the focus of the conference is going to be very much on leveraging modern and new technologies, AI, machine learning, discussing concepts like Zero Trust. And then, also, figuring out and helping people really get some good ideas as they make the move to Cloud, how can they secure themselves, make themselves, more secure than when they had the traditional perimeter set up? >> I mean, given the security landscape, you and I discussed this in and around the industry, go back seven years, "Oh, Cloud's un-secure," now Cloud seems to be more secure then on perim because of the work that Amazon, for instance, they upped their game significantly in security, haven't they? >> Absolutely, and you know, it's interesting, it's, I mean, you see it first hand, Google comes out with announcements, Microsoft, Oracle, et cetera, and security is a key issue. And they're trying to provide a more secure platform to get people comfortable moving with the Cloud. At the same time, there's vendors such as Centrify, that's there's value-add that we can provide and one area that we specifically provide is in the area of identity and controlling who can access what, as well. So, yeah, it completely reshapes how you do security, and the vendors are contributing. What's so important that the solutions that we had before are being completely disruptive and they need to be completely adopted for the new Cloud world. >> I know it's your first event, you guys are underwriting this, it's presented by Centrify, it's not sponsored by, it's not your show. Although you're doing a lot of heavy lifting in supporting this, but your vision for this CyberConnect is really more of a gathering amongst industry folks. We're certainly glad to be a part of it, thanks for inviting us, we're glad to be there. But, this is not a Centrify-only thing, explain the presented by Centrify vis-a-vis CyberConnect. >> So, and we've also put forth another organization that we've worked with. It's an organization called ICIT, the Institute for Critical Information Technology. And, what they are, is they're a think tank. And they are very much about how can we support and secure the infrastructure of the United States, as well? We didn't want this to be a vendor fest, we wanted to be able to have all parties, no matter what technologies they use, to be able to come together and get value of this. It benefits Centrify because it raises awareness and visibility for us, but even more important, that we wanted to give back to the community and offer something unique and different. That this is not just another vendor fest show, et cetera, this is something where it's a bringing together of really smart people that are on the front-lines of securing their organizations. And we just felt that so much value could be driven from it. Because, all the other shows are always about how you can hack and ATM and all that stuff, and that's great, that's great for a hacker but that doesn't really help business people. >> Or vendors trying to sell something, right? >> Exactly. >> Another platform to measure something? >> Yeah, exactly. >> This is more of a laid-back approach. Well, I think that's great leadership, I want to give you some props for that. Knowing that you guys are very, as you say, community-centric. Now you mentioned community, this is about giving back and that's certainly going to be helpful. But, security has always been kind of a community thing, but now you're starting to see the business and industry community coming together. What's your vision for the security community at this CSO level? What's needed, what's your vision? >> I think what's needed is better sharing of best practices, and really, more collaboration because the same attacks that are going to happen for, say one healthcare organization, the hackers are going to use the same means and methods, as well. And so, if you get the CSOs in the room together and hear what the others are experiencing, it's just going to make them more better. So, the first thing, is to open up the communication. The second thing is, is that could we figure out a way, from a platform or a technology perspective, to share that information and share that knowledge? But, the first step is to get the people in the room to hear from their peers of what's going on. And, frankly, government at one point was supposed to be doing it, it's not really doing it, so, I think an event like this could really help in that regard. >> Well, and also, I would just point out the growth in GovCloud and following some of the stuff going on at Amazon, as an example, had been skyrocketing. So, you're starting to see industry and government coming together? >> Yeah. >> And now you got a global landscape, you know, this is interesting times and I want to get your reaction to some of the things that have been said here on theCUBE but also, out in the marketplace where, you know, it used to be state-actor game, not state on state. And then, if they revealed their cards, then they're out in the open. But now, the states are sponsoring, through open source, and also, in these public domains, whether it's a WikiLeaks or whatever, you're starting to see actors being subsidized or sponsored. And so that opens up the democratization capability for people to organize and attack the United States. And companies. >> Oh, absolutely, and you could right now, they have a help desk, and it's like ordering a service. "Oh, you want 500 bots going after this?" >> John: Smear a journalist for $10k. >> (laughing) Exactly, it's like as a service. Hacking as a service, they have help desk, et cetera. And, the interesting thing is. >> It's a business model. >> It's a business model, you're absolutely right. The people, it's all pay to play, right? And, just the number of resources being devoted and dedicated, and we're talking about thousands of people in Russia, thousands of people in North Korea, and thousands of people in China. And, what came out just recently, is now that they're shifting their target to individuals, and so, now you may have an individual that there may be a person just dedicated to them in China, or Russia or North Korea, trying to hack into them as well. So, it's getting really scary. >> It's almost too hard for one company with brute force, this is where the collective intelligence of the community really plays a big difference on the best practices because when you thought you had one model nailed, not just tech, but business model, it might shift. So, it seems like a moving train. >> Yeah, and we're having Mist show up, and so we're getting the government. But, I really think that there does need to be, kind of, more of an open-sourcing of knowledge and information to help better fine tune the machine learning that's needed and required to prevent these type of breaches. >> So, what can we expect? Obviously, this is a preview to the show, we'll be there Monday broadcasting live all day. What can people expect of the event, content-wise, what are your favorites? >> Well, I mean, first of all, just the people that we have there. We're going to get the two CCOs from two of the biggest healthcare companies, we're going to get the former head of the NSA, we're going to get the CSO of US Bank, I mean, we're talking the biggest financial services organizations. We're going to have the biggest healthcare organizations. We're going to have the people doing cyber. >> John: MasterCard's there. >> Yeah, MasterCard, we have the German government there as well, so we've got government, both U.S. as well as European. We've got all the big people in terms of, that have to secure the largest banks, the largest healthcare, et cetera. And then, we also have, as you talked about, obviously Centrify's going to be there, but we're going to have AWS, and we're going to have some other folks from some of the top vendors in the industry as well. So, it's going to be a great mixture of government, business, as well as vendors. Participating and contributing and talking about these problems. >> So, it's an inaugural event? >> Yes. >> So, you're looking for some success, we'll see how it goes, we'll be there. What can you expect, are you going to do this every year? Twice a year, what's the thoughts on the even itself? >> It's been amazing, the response. So, we just thought we were going to have 400 people, we sold out, we're getting close to 600 people. And now, we're going to have over 1,000 people that are going to be doing the live streaming. There's just a huge, pent-up demand for this, as well. So, we actually had to shut down registration and said sold out a week or two ago. And, so far, it looks really good, let's see how it goes. It looks like we can easily double this. We're already thinking about next year, we'll see how the event goes. If you just look at the line-up, look at the interest, or whatever, there's a pent-up demand to better secure government and enterprises. >> And leadership, like you guys are taking this as an issue, plus, others coming together. We're certainly super glad to be a part of the community, and we look forward to the coverage. This is really, kind of, what the industry needs. >> Absolutely. >> All right, Tom Kemp, the CEO and Founder of Centrify, really fast growing start up, doing an event for the community. Very strong approach, I love the posture, I think that's the way to go than these vendor shows. You know how I feel about that. It's all about the community, this is a community. I mean, look at the Bitcoin, the Blockchain, know you're customer isn't into money laundering. It's an identity game. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> Now, by the way, quick, is there going to be any Blockchain action there? >> Oh, I don't know about that, I don't think so. >> Next year. (laughing) >> Next year, exactly. >> It's certainly coming, Blockchain security, as well as a lot of great topics. Check out CyberConnect 2017. If you can't make it to New York, they're sold out, theCUBE.net is where you can watch it live. And, of course, we'll have all the video coverage on demand, on theCUBE.net, as well. So, we'll have all the sessions and some great stuff. Tom Kemp, CEO. I'm John Furrier from theCUBE, here in Palo Alto, thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

(light orchestral music) >> Hello, everyone. Welcome to special CUBEConversation here in theCUBE studio in Palo Alto, California. I'm John Furrier, the co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media and also the co-host of theCUBE. We're here with Junaid Islam, who is the President and CTO of a company called Vidder. Also supports the public sector and the defense community. Teaches a class on cyber intelligence and cyber warfare. Junaid, thank you for coming in. >> Well, thanks for having me, it's great to be here. >> Now, you see, we've been doing a lot of coverage of cyber in context to one, the global landscape, obviously >> Yeah >> And in our area of enterprise and emerging tech you see the enterprises are all shaking in their boots. But you now have new tools like IoT which increases the service area of attacks. You're seeing AI being weaponized for bad actors. But in general, it's just that it's really a mess right now. >> Yeah >> And security is changing. So, I'd like to get your thoughts on it and also talk about some of the implications around the cyber warfare that's going on. Certainly the election's on everyone's mind, you see fake news. But really, it's a complete new generational shift that's happening. With all the good stuff going on, block chain and everything else, and AI, there's also bad actors. Fake news is not just fake content. There's an underlying infrastructure, a critical infrastructure, involved. >> Yeah, you're 100% right. And I think what you have hinted on is something that is only, now, people are getting awareness of. That is, as America becomes a more connected society, we become more vulnerable to cyber attacks. For the past few years, really, cyber attacks were driven by people looking to make twenty bucks, or whatever, but now you really have state actors moving into the cyber attack business. And actually subsidizing attackers with free information. And hoping to make them more lethal attackers against the United States. And this really is completely new territory. When we think about cyber threats almost all of the existing models, don't capture the risks involved here. And it affects every American. Everybody should be worried about what's going on. >> And, certainly, the landscape has changed in security and tech with cloud computing, but more importantly, we have Trump in the office and all this brouhaha over just that in itself. But in concern to that, you're seeing the Russians, we're seeing them involved in the election, you're seeing China putting blocks and everything, and changing how the rules, again. It's a whole global economy. So I got to ask you the question that's on everyone's mind is cyber war is real. We do not have a West Point, Navy SEALs for cyber yet. There's some stuff at Berkeley that's pretty interesting to me. That Michael Grimes at Morgan Stanley is involved with. A bunch of other folks as well. Where a new generation of attacks is happening. >> Junaid: Yeah. >> In the US of A right now. Could you comment and share your thoughts and reactions to what's happening now that's different in the US from a cyber attack standpoint and why the government is trying to move quickly why companies are moving quickly. What's different now? Why is the attacks so rampant? What's changed? >> I think the biggest difference we have now is what I would call direct state sponsorship of cyber attack tools. A great example of that is the Vault 7 disclosure on WikiLeaks. Typically, when you've had intelligence agencies steal one thing from another country, they would keep it a secret. And, basically, use those vulnerabilities during a time of an attack or a different operation. In this case, we saw something completely different. We think the Russians might have stolen, but we don't know. But whoever stole it, immediately puts it back into the public domain. And why do they do that? They want those vulnerabilities to be known by as many attackers as possible, who then, in turn, will attack the United States at across not only public sector organizations, but as private. And one of the interesting outcomes that you've seen is the malware attacks or cyber attacks we saw this year were much more lethal than ever before. If you look at the WannaCry attack and then the NotPetya attack. NotPetya attack started with the Russians attacking the Ukraine. But because of the way that they did the attack, they basically created malware that moved by itself. Within three days, computers in China that were 20 companies away from the original target were losing their data. And this level of lethality we've never seen. And it is a direct result of these state actors moving into the cyber warfare domain. Creating weapons that basically spread through the internet at very high velocity. And the reason this is so concerning for the United States is we are a truly connected society. All American companies have supply chain partners. All American companies have people working in Asia. So we can't undo this and what we've got to do, very quickly, is develop counter measures against this. Otherwise, the impacts will just get worse and worse. >> So in the old days, if I get this right, hey I attack you, I get to see a backdoor to the US. And spy on spy kind of thing. >> Junaid: Yeah. >> Right, so now, you're saying is, there's a force multiplier >> That's right out there with the crowd. So they're essentially democratizing the tools. We used to call it kiddie scripts. Now they're not kiddie scripts anymore, they're real weapons of cyber weaponry that's open to people who want to attack or motivated to attack the US. Is that kind of, am I getting that right? >> That's right. I mean, if you look at what happened in WannaCry, you had people looking for $200 payout, but they were using tools that could have easily wiped out a country. Now, the reason this works for America's enemies, as it were, or adversaries, is in the short run, they get to test out weapons. In the long run, they're really learning about how these attacks propagated. And make no mistake, if there's a political event and it's in their interest to be able to shut down US computers. It's just something we need to worry about and be very conscious of. Of specifically, these new type of attack vectors. >> Now to put my fear mongering hat on because as a computer scientist, myself, back in the day, I could only imagine how interesting this is to attack the United States. What is the government doing? What is the conversations that you're hearing? What are some of the things going on in the industry around? OK, we're seeing so sophisticated, so orchestrated. At many levels, state actors, democratizing the tools for the bad guys, if you will, but we've seen fraud and cyber theft be highly mafia driven or sophisticated groups of organized, black market companies. Forms, I mean, really well funded, well staffed. I mean, so the HBO hack just a couple weeks ago. I mean, it's shaking them down with ransomware. Again, many, many different things. This has got to scare the cyber security forces of the United States. What are they doing? >> So I think, one thing I think Americans should feel happy about is within the defense and intelligence community, this has become one of the top priorities. So they are implementing a huge set of resources and programs to mitigate this. Unfortunately, they will, they need to take care of themselves first. I think it's still still up to enterprises to secure their own systems against these new types of attacks. I think we can certainly get direction from the US government. And they've already begun outreach programs. For example, the FBI actually has a cyber security branch, and they actually assign officers to American companies who are targets. And typically that's actually, I think, started last year. >> John: Yeah. But they'll actually come meet you ahead of the attack and introduce themselves. So that's actually pretty good. And that's a fantastic program. I know some of the people there. But you still have to become aware. You still have to look at the big risks in your company and figure out how to protect them. That is something that no law enforcement person can help you at. Because that has to be pro-active. >> You know we everyone who watches my Silicon Valley podcast knows that I've been very much, talk a lot about Trump, and no one knows if I voted for him or not or actually, didn't vote for him, but that's a different point. We've been critical of Trump. But also at the same time, the whole wall thing is kind of funny, in itself, building wall is ridiculous, but that's take that to the firewall problem. >> Junaid: Yeah. >> Let's talk about tech. The old days, you have a firewall. Right? The United States really has no firewall because the perimeters or the borders, if you will, are not clear. So in the industry they call it "perimeter-less". There's no more moat, there's no more front door. There's a lot of access points into networks in companies. This is changing the security paradigm. Not only at the government level, but the companies who are creating value but also losing money on these attacks. >> Junaid: Yeah. >> So what is the security paradigm today? Is it people putting their head in the sand? Are there new approaches? >> Junaid: Well, yeah. >> Is there a do over, is there a reset? Security is the number one thing. >> So I >> What are companies and governments doing? >> So I think, well first of all, there's a lot of thinking going on but I think there's two things that need to happen. I think one, we certainly need new policies and laws. I think just on the legal side, whether you look at the most recent Equifax breach we need to update laws on people holding assets that they need to become liable. We also need more policies that people need to lock down national critical infrastructure. Like power systems. And then the third thing is the technical aspect. I'd bring it. We actually in the United States actually do have technologies that are counter measures to all of these attacks and we need to bring those online. And I think as daunting as it looks like protecting the country, actually, it's a solvable problem. For example, there's been a lot of press that you know foreign governments are scanning US power infrastructure. And, you know, from my perspective as a humble networking person, I've always wondered why do we allow basically connectivity from outside the United States to power plants which are inside the United States. I mean, you could easily filter those at the peering points. And I know some people might say that's controversial, you know, are we going to spy on >> John: And ports too. >> Yeah. >> Like, you know, ports of New Orleans. I was talking to the CTO there. He's saying maritimes are accessing the core network. >> Yeah, so from my perspective as a technical, I'm not a politician, but I >> (laughs) That's good, thank God! We need more of you out there. >> I would and I've worked on this problem a little bit I would certainly block in-bound flows from outside the United States to critical infrastructure. There is no value or reason, logical reason, you would give a why someone from an external country should be allowed to scan a US asset. And that is technically quite simple for us to do. It is something that I and others have talked about you know, publically and privately. I think that's a very simple step we could do. Another very simple step we could do across the board is basically authenticated access. That is, if you are accessing a US government website, you need to sign in and there will be an MFA step-up. And I think that makes >> What's an MFA step-up. >> Well like some kind of secondary >> OK. >> Say your accessing the IRS portal and you just want to check on something you know, that you're going to sign in and we're going to send a message to your phone to make sure you are you. I know a lot of people will feel, hey, this is an invasion of privacy. But you know, I'll tell you what's an invasion of privacy. Someone stealing 140 million IDs or your backgrounds, and having everything. >> John: That just happened. >> That's a bigger >> John: That's multifactor authentication. >> So I think that >> Unless they hack your cell phone which the bitcoin guys have already done. >> Yeah >> So, it's easy for hackers to hack one system. It's harder for hackers to hack multiple systems. So I think at the national security level, there are a number of simple things we can do that are actually not expensive. That I think we as a society have to really think about doing. Because having a really governments which are very anti-American destabilizing us by taking all of our data out doesn't really help anyone. So that's the biggest loss. >> And there's no risk for destabilizing America enemies out there. They what's the disincentive. Are they going to get put in jail? There's no real enforcement. >> Junaid: Yeah. I mean, cyber is a great leverage. >> So one of the things that I think that most people don't understand is the international laws on cyber attacks just don't exist anymore. They have a long way to catch up. Let me give a counter-example, which is drugs. There are already multilateral agreements on chasing drug traffickers as they go from country to country. And there's a number of institutions that monitor and enforce that. That actually works quite well. We also have new groups focusing on human trafficking. You know, it's slowly happening but in the area of cyber we haven't even started a legal framework on what would constitute a cyber attack. And, sadly, one of the reasons that it's not happening, is America's enemies don't want it to happen. But this is where I think, as a nation, first you have to take care of yourself. And then on a multi-lateral perspective the US should start pushing a cyber security framework world wide, so that if you start getting emails from that friendly prince, who's actually a friend of mine How about you know about putting in some we can actually go back to that country and say hey, you know, we don't want to send you any more money anymore. >> John: Yeah, yeah exactly. Everyone's going to make 18 million dollars if they give them their username, password and social security number. Alright, final question on this segment, around the cyber security piece. What's the action, going forward? I would say it's early days and hardcore days right now. It's really the underbelly of the internet. Globally is attacking, we see that. The government doesn't have enough legal framework yet in place. They need to do that. But there's a lot of momentum around creating a Navy SEALs. You need a version of land, air and sea. Or multidisciplinary combat. >> Junaid: Yeah. >> Efforts out there there's been conversations certainly in some of our networks that we talk about. What's the young generation. I mean, you've got a lot of gamers out there that would love to be part of a new game if you will called cyber defense. What's going on? Is there any vision around how to train young people. Is there an armed forces concept? Is there something like this happening? What's the next what do we need to do as a government? >> So you've actually touched on a very difficult issue. Because if you think about security in the United States it's really been driven by a compliance model. Which is here's these set of things to memorize and this is what you do to become secure. And all of our cyber security training courses are based on models. If there's one thing we learned about cyber attackers is that these people are creative and do something new every time. And go around the model. So, I think one of the most difficult things is actually to develop training courses that almost don't have any boundaries. Because the attackers don't confine themselves to a set of attack vectors. Yet we, in our training do, we say, this is what you need to do. And time and time again people just do something that's completely different. So that's one thing we have to understand. The other thing we have to understand, which is related to that, is that all of US's cyber security plans are public and conferences. All of our universities are open. So we actually have. >> John: The playbook is out there. >> We actually, so one of the things that does happen is if you go to any large security conference you see a lot of people from the countries that are attacking us showing up everywhere. Actually going to universities and learning the course. I think there are two things. One we really need to think deeper about just how attacks are being done which are unbounded. And, two, which is going to be a bit more difficult we have to rethink how we share information on a worldwide basis of our solutions. >> John: Mmm-hmm. >> So probably not the easy answer you wanted. But I think >> Well, it's complex and required unstructured thinking that's not tied up. It's like the classic frog in boiling water dies and you put a frog in boiling water and it jumps out. We're in this false sense of security with these rules. >> Junaid: Yeah. >> Thinking we're secure And we're, people are killing us with this security >> Yeah >> It's scary >> And like I say, it's even worse when we figure out a solution the first thing we do is we tell everybody including our enemies, giving them all a lot of chance to figure out how to attack us. So I think >> So don't telegraph, don't be so open Be somewhat secretive in a ways, is actually helpful. >> I think, sadly, I think we've come to the very unfortunate position now where I think we need to, especially in the area of cyber rethink our strategies because as an open society we just love telling everybody what we do. >> John: So the final question. Final, final question. Is just, again, to end this segment. So cyber security is real or not real. How real is this? Can you just share some color for the folks watching who might say hey, you know I think it's all smoke and mirrors. I don't believe the New York Times. I don't believe this. Trump's saying this. And is this real problem? And how big is it? >> I think it is real. I think we have this calendar year, twenty seventeen, we have moved from the classic, you know, kind of like cyber, attack you know like someone's being fished to really a, the beginning of a cyber warfare. And unlike kinetic warfare where someone blows something up this is a new face that's long and drawn out. And I think one of the things that makes us very vulnerable as a society is we are an open society, we're interlinked with every other global economy. And I think we have to think about this seriously because unfortunately there's a lot of people who don't want to see America succeed. They're just like that. Even though we're nice people >> John: Yeah >> But, it's pretty important. >> It requires some harmony, it requires some data sharing. Junaid Islam, President and CTO of Vidder. Talking about the cyber security cyber warfare dynamic that's happening. It's real. It's dangerous. And our countries and other countries need to get their act together. Certainly, I think, a digital West Point, a digital Navy SEALs needs to happen. And I think this is a great opportunity for us to kind of do some good here and keep an open society while maintaining security. Junaid, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE, here in Palo Alto. Thanks for watching. (dramatic orchestral music)

(perky music) >> Hello everyone. Welcome to a special CUBE Conversation here in the CUBE studio in Palo Alto, California. I'm John Furrier the co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media and also the co-host of the CUBE. We're here with Junaid Islam who's the president and CEO of a company called Vidder. Also supports the public sector and the defense community, teaches a class on cyber intelligence and cyber warfare. Junaid thank you for coming in. >> Well thanks for having me. It's great to be here. >> Okay, you know we've been doing a lot of coverage of cyber in context to one, the global landscape obviously. >> Yeah. >> In our area of enterprise and emerging tech, you see the enterprises are all, you know, shaking in their boots. But you now have new tools like IOT which increases the service area of attacks. You're seeing AI being weaponized for bad actors. But in general it's just really a mess right now. >> Yeah. >> And security is changing, so I'd like to get your thoughts on and also talk about, you know, some of the implications around the cyber warfare that's going on. Certainly the election is on everyone's mind. You see fake news. But really it's a complete new generational shift that's happening. With all the good stuff going on, block chain and everything else and AI, there's also bad actors. You know, fake news is not just fake content. There's an underlying infrastructure, critical infrastructure involved. >> Yeah, you're 100% right and I think what you have hinted on is something that is only now people are getting awareness of. As that is as America becomes a more connected society we become more vulnerable to cyber attacks. For the past few years really cyber attacks were driven by people looking to make $20 or whatever, but now you really have state actors moving into the cyber attack business and actually subsidizing attackers with free information and hoping to make them more lethal attackers against the United States. And this really is completely new territory. When we think about cyber threats almost all of the existing models don't capture the risks involved here and it affects every American. Everybody should be worried about what's going on. >> And certainly the landscape has changed in security and tech (mumble) cloud computing, but more importantly we have Trump in the office and there's all this brouhaha over just that in itself, but in concert to that you're seeing the Russians, we're seeing them involved in the election, you're seeing, you know, China putting, you know, blocks on everything and changing how the rules (mumble). It's a whole global economy. So I got to ask the question that's on everyone's mind, is cyber war is real? We do not have a West Point, Navy Seals for cyber yet. I know there's some stuff at Berkeley that's pretty interesting to me that Michael Grimes at Morgan Stanley's involved in with a bunch of other folks as well, where a new generation of attacks is happening. >> Junaid Islam: Yeah. >> In the US of A right now. Could you comment and share your thoughts in reaction to what's happening now that's different in the US from a cyber attack standpoint and why the government is trying to move quickly, why companies are moving quickly, what's different now? Why is the attacks so rampant? What's changed? >> I think the biggest difference we have now is what I would call direct state sponsorship of cyber attack tools. A great example of that is the Vault 7 disclosure on WikiLeaks. Typically when you've had intelligence agencies steal one thing from another country they would keep it a secret and basically use those vulnerabilities during a time of an attack or a different operation. In this case we saw something completely different. We think the Russians might has stolen it but we don't know. But whoever stole it immediately puts it back into the public domain. And why do they do that? They want those vulnerabilities to be known by as many attackers as possible who then in turn will attack the United States at across not only a public sector organizations but as private, and one of the interesting outcomes you've seen is the malware attacks, or the cyber attacks we saw this year were much more lethal than ever before. If you look at the Wannacry attack and then the NotPetya attack. NotPetya started with the Russians attacking the Ukraine but because of the way they did the attack they basically created malware that moved by itself. Within three days computers in China that were 20 companies away from the original target were losing their data. And this level of lethality we've never seen and it is a direct result of these state actors moving into the cyber warfare domain, creating weapons that basically spread through the internet at very high velocity and the reason this is so concerning for the United States is we are a truly connected society. All American companies have supply chain partners. All American companies have people working in Asia. So we can't undo this and what we've got to do very quickly is develop counter-measures against this. Otherwise the impacts will just get worse and worse. >> So the old days, if I get this right, hey, I attack you, I get to see a back door to the US and spy on spy kind of thing- >> Junaid Islam: Yeah. >> So now you're saying is there's a force multiplier out there- >> That's right. >> John Furrier: With the crowd, so they're essentially democratizing the tools, not, we used to call it kiddie scripts. >> Junaid Islam: Yeah. Now they're not kiddie scripts any more. They're real weapons of cyber weaponry that's open to people who want to attack, or motivated to attack, the US. Is that kind of, am I getting that right? >> That's right. I mean if you look at what happened in WannaCry, you had people looking for a $200 payout but they were using tools that could have easily wiped out a country. Now the reason this works for America's enemies as it were, or adversaries, is in the short run they get to test out weapons. In the long run they're really learning about how these attacks propagated and, you know, make no mistake, if there's a political event and it's in their interests to be able to shut down US computers it's just something I think we need to worry about and be very conscious of specifically these new type of attack vectors. >> Now to put my fear mongering hat on, because, you know, as a computer scientist myself back in the day, I can only imagine how interesting this is to attack the United States. What is the government doing? What's the conversations that you're hearing? What are some of the things going on in the industry around okay, we're seeing something so sophisticated, so orchestrated at many levels. You know, state actors, democratizing the tools for the bad guys, if you will, but we've seen fraud and cyber theft be highly mafia-driven or sophisticated groups of organized, you know, under the, black market companies. Forms, I mean really well-funded, well-staffed, I mean so the HBO hack just a couple weeks ago, I mean, shaking them down with ransom-ware. Again there's many, many different things. This has got to scare the cyber security forces of the United States. What are they doing? >> So I think, one thing I think Americans should feel happy about is within the defense and intelligence community this has become one of the top priorities. So they are implementing a huge set of resources and programs to mitigate this. Unfortunately, you know, they need to take care of themselves first. I think it's still up to enterprises to secure their own systems against these new types of attacks. I mean I think we can certainly get direction from the US government and they've already begun outreach programs, for example, the FBI actually has a cyber security branch and they actually assign officers to American companies who are targets and typically that's actually, I think it started last year, but they'll actually come meet you ahead of the attack and introduce themselves so that's actually pretty good. And that's a fantastic program. I know some of the people there. But you still have to become aware. You still have to look at the big risks in your company and figure out how to protect them. That is something that no law enforcement person can help you at because that has to be proactive. >> You know everyone who watches my silicon valley podcast knows that I've been very much, talk a lot about Trump and no one knows if I voted for him or not. I actually didn't vote for him but that's a different point. We've been critical of Trump but also at the same time, you know, the whole wall thing's kind of funny in and of itself. I mean, building a wall's ridiculous. But let's take that to the firewall problem. >> Junaid Islam: Yeah. >> Let's talk about tech. The old days, you had a firewall, all right? The United States really has no firewall because the perimeters or the borders, if you will, are not clear. So in the industry they call it perimeter-less. There's no more mote. There's no more front door. There's a lot of access points into networks and companies. This is changing the security paradigm not only at the government level but the companies who are creating value but also losing money on these attacks. >> Junaid Islam: Yeah. >> So what is the security paradigm today? Is it people putting their head in the sand? Are there new approaches? >> Junaid Islam: Well, yeah. >> Is it a do-over? Is there a reset? Security is a number one thing. What are companies and governments doing? >> So I think, well first of all there's a lot of thinking going on, but I think there's two things that need to happen. I think one, we certainly need new policies and laws. I think just on the legal side, whether if you look at the most recent Equifax breach, we need to update laws on people holding assets that they need to become liable. We also need more policies that people need to lock down national, critical infrastructure like power systems and then the third thing is the technical aspect (mumble). We actually, in the United States we actually do have technologies that are counter measures to all of these attacks and we need to bring those online. And I think as daunting as it looks like protecting the country, actually it's a solvable problem. For example, there's been a lot of press that, you know, foreign governments are scanning US power infrastructure. And, you know, from my perspective as a humble networking person, I've always wondered why do we allow basically connectivity from outside the United States to power plants which are inside the United States? I mean, you could easily, you know, filter those at the peering points and I know some people might say that's controversial, you know. Are we going to spy on- >> John Furrier: Yeah, and ports, too. Like- >> Yeah. >> John Furrier: You know, ports of New Orleans. I was talking to the CTO there. He's saying maritimes are accessing the core network. >> Yeah and so from my perspective as a technical, I'm not a politician, but- >> That's good! Thank God! >> But I- >> We need more of you out there. >> And I've worked on this problem a little bit. I would certainly block inbound flows from outside the United States to critical infrastructure. There is no value or reason, logical reason, you would give of why someone from an external country should be allowed to scan a US asset. And that is technically quite simple for us to do. It is something that I and others have talked about, you know, publicly and privately. I think that's a very simple step we could do. Another very simple step we could do across the board is basically authenticated access. That is if you are accessing a US government website you need to sign in and there will be an MFA step up. And I think this makes sense- >> What's an MFA step up? >> Well like some kind of secondary- >> Okay, yeah. >> So say you're accessing the IRS portal and you want to just check on something, you know, that you're going to sign in and we're going to send a message to your phone to make sure you are you. I know a lot of people will feel, hey, this is an invasion of privacy but you know I tell you what's an invasion of privacy: someone stealing 140 million IDs or your backgrounds and having everything. >> John Furrier: Which just happened. >> That's a bigger- >> So MFA multi- >> That's right, factor. Yeah, yeah. >> John Furrier: Multifactor Authentication. >> Yeah, so I think, again- >> John Furrier: Unless they hack your cellphone which the BitCoin guys have already done. >> Yeah. But, so it's easier for hackers to hack one system. It's hard for hackers to hack multiple systems. So I think at the national security level there are a number of simple things we could do that are actually not expensive that I think we as a society have been, have to really think about doing because having really governments which are very anti-American destabilizing us by taking all of our data out doesn't really help anyone, so that's the biggest loss. >> And it's no risk for the destabilizing America enemies out there. What's the disincentive? They're going to get put in jail? There's no real enforcement, I mean, cyber is great leverage. >> So one of the things that I think most people don't understand is the international laws on cyber attacks just don't exist anymore. They have a long way to catch up. Let me give a counter example which is drugs. There are already multilateral agreements on chasing drug traffickers as they go from country to country. And there's a number of institutions that monitor, that enforce that. That actually works quite well. We also have new groups focusing on human trafficking. You know, slowly happening. But in the area of cyber, we haven't even started a legal framework on what would constitute a cyber attack and sadly one of the reasons it's not happening is America's enemies don't want it to happen. But this is where I think as a nation first you have to take care of yourself and then on a multilateral perspective the US should start pushing a cyber security framework worldwide so that if you start getting emails from that friendly prince who's actually a friend of mine about, you know, putting in some, you know, we can actually go back to that country and say, hey, you know, we don't want to send you any more money anymore. >> John Furrier: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Everyone's going to make $18 million if they give up their user name, password, social security number. >> Junaid Islam: Yeah. >> All right, final question on this segment around, you know, the cyber security piece. What's the action going forward? I would say it's early days and hardcore days right now. It's really the underbelly of the internet globally is attacking. We see that. The government is, doesn't have a legal framework yet in place. They need to do that. But there's a lot of momentum around creating a Navy Seals, you know, the version of land, air, and sea, or multi-disciplinary combat. >> Junaid Islam: Yeah. >> Efforts out there. There's been conversations certainly in some of our networks that we talk about. What's the young generation? I mean, you got a lot of gamers out there that would love to be part of a new game, if you will, called cyber defense. What's going on, I mean, is there any vision around how to train young people? Is there an armed forces concept? Is there something like this happening? What's the next, what do we need to do as a government? >> So you actually touched on a very difficult issue because if you think about security in the United States it's really been driven by a compliance model, which is here's the set of things to memorize and this is what you do to become secure. And all of our cyber security training courses are based on models. If there's one thing we've learned about cyber attackers is these people are creative and do something new every time. And go around the model. So I think one of the most difficult things is actually to develop training courses that almost don't have any boundaries. Because the attackers don't confine themselves to a set of attack vectors, yet we in our training do. We say, well this is what you need to do and time and time again people just do something that's completely different. So that's one thing we have to understand. The other thing we have to understand which is related to that is that all of US's cyber security plans are public in conferences. All of our universities are open so we actually have, there's been- >> John Furrier: The playbook is out there. >> We actually, so one of the things that does happen is if you go to any large security conference you see a lot of people from the countries that are attacking us showing up everywhere. Actually going to universities and learning the course, so I think there's two things. One, we really need to think deeper about just how attacks are being done which are unbounded. And two, which is going to be a little bit more difficult, we have to rethink how we share information on a worldwide basis of our solutions and so probably not the easy answer you wanted but I think- >> It's complex and requires unstructured thinking that's not tied up. I mean- >> Yeah. >> It's like the classic, you know, the frog in boiling water dies and they put a frog in boiling water it jumps out. We're in this false sense of security with these rules- >> Yeah. >> Thinking we're secure, and people are killing us with this. >> Junaid Islam: Yeah and like I say, it's even worse when we figure out a solution. The first thing we do is we tell everybody including our enemies. Giving them a lot of chance to- >> John Furrier: Yeah. >> Figure out how to attack us. So I think, you know, we do have some hard challenges. >> So don't telegraph, don't be so open. Be somewhat secretive in a way is actually helpful. >> I think sadly, I think we've come to the very unfortunate position now where I think we need to, especially in the area of cyber. Rethink our strategies because as an open society we just love telling everybody what we do. >> John Furrier: Yeah, well so the final question, final, final question is just to end the segment. So cyber security is real or not real, I mean, how real is this? Can you just share some color for the folks watching who might say, hey, you know, I think it's all smoke and mirrors? I don't believe The New York Times, I don't believe this, Trump's saying this and is this real problem and how big is it? >> I think it is real. I think we have this calendar year 2017, we have moved from the classic, you know, kind of like cyber attack, you know, like someone's being phished for too, really the beginning of the cyber warfare and unlike kinetic warfare where somebody blows something up, this is a new phase that's long and drawn out and I think one of the things that makes us very vulnerable as a society is we are an open society. We are interlinked with every other global economy. And I think we have to think about this seriously because unfortunately there's a lot of people who don't want to see America succeed. They're just like that. Even though we're nice people. >> John Furrier: Yeah. >> But and so it's pretty important. >> It requires some harmony, it requires some data sharing. Junaid Islam, president and CTO of Vidder talking about the cyber security, cyber warfare dynamic that's happening. It's real. It's dangerous. And our country and other countries need to get their act together. Certainly I think a digital West Point, a digital Navy Seals needs to happen and I think this is a great opportunity for us to kind of do some good here and keep an open society while maintaining security. Junaid thanks for sharing your thoughts. I'm John Furrier with the CUBE here in Palo Alto. Thanks for watching.

>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Veritas Vision 2017. Brought to you by Veritas. >> And we're back at Veritas Vision 2017 in Las Vegas. This is theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. My name is Dave Valanti and I'm here with my co-host, Stuart Miniman, and we've been unpacking the innovations and the evolution of Veritas at Veritas Vision over the past two days. Shahin Pirooz is here, he's the CTO of Data Endure. >> Shahin: Thank you for having us. >> Welcome to theCUBE, thanks for coming on. Digitally resilient. That's an interesting and powerful and loaded phrase. [Shahin] Sure. What does it mean to be digitally resilient? >> Ultimately, we're trying to get our customers digital resilience, and what that means to us is that your people have access to their data whenever they need it, wherever they need it, in a secure and protected manner. >> I got to follow up on that, but before I do, give us an overview of your company, what you guys do and what your specialty is. >> We're a system integrator and we happen to resell stuff as well, including Veritas, and we're about 32 years old. We evolved from very early days in the tech space, and continue to evolve the company and today, have four practice areas. Those practice areas include security and compliance, data center and cloud, the information management practice, which is where Veritas clearly falls into, and finally, we have a systems and storage practice, which is primarily one of our biggest practice areas in terms of revenue. We have, go ahead. >> [Dave} Go Ahead, please, carry on. >> We have customers. All of the biggest names you'd imagine in the Silicon Valley. Cisco, Facebook, Yahoo, Google, and then a series of customers below that tier as well. >> Really, those customers are relying on you to do their integration? To help with their deployments, get value faster? >> Yep, CenturyLink is the largest Veritas net backup appliance deployment in the world, and we implemented that platform for them. >> Interesting. You've got these heavy engineering driven companies, and they just what? They just don't want to waste time on stuff that's not their main business? >> So typically, it's like any IT organization. You've got a series of projects and those projects are spread out across the engineers that you have. Then you have something that you have to get done that's more urgent and more critical. You've got to re-vamp your backup infrastructure, for example, or you got to build out a new backup as a service offering, in CenturyLink's case. And while the engineers have the skillset to do it, they're also doing 60 other things during the day. So they bring companies like us in to get it done quickly, get it done accurately. Then, there's a level of reliance on not only our technical depth, but the access to visibility of what we see in other places as well. Whereas, your engineers might be focused on a single thing within a company, we see a lot of different environments. So when we run into problems, it's not the first time we've run into it, and we can get through it much more quickly. >> So this idea of digital resilience is really interesting to me. They say you should skate to the puck. I think you're really skating to the puck as most customers haven't transformed digitally even though everybody's talking about it, but what I said, it's really a rich and loaded phrase, what I'm inferring from it is if you're going to go digital, you better not bolt on resilience. You better design it in. I mean, that's sort of my inference. >> Shahin: That's exactly right. >> Well, talk about it a little bit. >> Typically, there's a, we look at the consumption and cloud is a big part of this journey for both our Veritas and ourselves. We look at cloud consumption as a journey that happens in five phases, or maturity levels, as we like to call them. So the cloud maturity model that I talk about often is level one is usually companies that start consuming backup to the cloud. The first step is we're going to backup our data to the cloud target and remove tape from our environment. Second step is consumption of storage. Then, you start moving some virtual machines, doing lift and shifts to the cloud at Level three, and Level four is when that digital transformation starts to happen. Where you're starting to build consumed cloud native data bases instead of just migrating your database to the cloud. Then, Level five is typically the startups of the world, which are building cloud native applications and companies will eventually get to the point where they're building those cloud native applications. >> It's an interesting model. Cloud's getting more and more complicated. We said some of those companies that started up, out, cloud native, everything built there. >> Shahin: Yes. >> Sometimes, they're pulling things to another cloud or building their own data centers. We're finding, you know, they hyperscale companies look and sound a little bit more like some of the enterprise vendors and some of the enterprise vendors are going there and you've got companies like Veritas that are going to play everywhere. What's that dynamic? Especially Silicon Valley tends to be early on these. What's kind of that macro level? There is no typical customer. What are some of the dynamics you're seeing with the customers in cloud? >> It's a simple scale calculation. There's a point, there's a tipping point, where cloud becomes too expensive, and it's cheaper to have some fraction of your infrastructure running in house. It's that hybrid cloud model we've been talking about for the last decade and nobody really has a good handle on what it is. Run some of the cloud in-house, some of it in a public or multiple public clouds. What you're seeing in the Netflix's of the world who went all in and then back out is exactly that. They got to a point where they realize the amount of money that they're paying on a monthly basis to the public cloud providers is outpacing what they could do themselves internally. So they cut back to that tipping point. There is definitely sense in having infrastructure in the cloud, but there is that point where it doesn't scale out, work very well financially. >> Did you have any guidance that you can give people as to when they're going to hit that? I mean, we look at everything. You know, you talk to Amazon, they'll say no, no. We're always the cheapest, we can use reserve entities. Heck, they just gave, you know, by the second pricing. It's always kind of it depends, but what has your experience been? >> Shahin: It really is and it depends. But the short answer is that that tipping point is different for every single company. If you're a company who's never going to get two billions of users accessing your infrastructure, you're probably never going to hit that tipping point. You can be all cloud and you can be cloud native and be happy. Whereas if you're a Dropbox or a Netflix or somebody like that, who built all in or work day, for example. All of them are now looking at we need to build our own infrastructure to support that scale that can't keep up with us financially. >> I wonder if you could talk about some of the big picture. We touched on cloud, what are the big picture trends that you see driving customer behavior and how is it affecting their IT and how are you responding? >> I would say that there's two primary things that we're focused on to help customers address what is coming. Number one is compliance. Our security and compliance practice, we lead with compliance as opposed to all the other managed security providers. We effectively go to market with this notion that no matter who you are, you have some sort of regulatory concern, whether it's enforce by yourself or you have a third party or a government that's enforcing some regulatory concern on you. There's not a company out there that doesn't have something that they have to deal with on a regular basis. Our positioning is get your head around your compliance and that dictates what your infrastructure looks like, what your application consumption looks like, what your cloud consumption looks like. But you have to start from that place of here is how we have to deliver services and here's the controls we have to have in place. Then, do we have the right tools, technologies, people, and policies to do that. That's our approach to market. That's one side of the answer. The other side of the answer is storages continuously growing in leaps and bounds. We have this ridiculous amount of data that's stockpiling. We're all hoarders of storage, if you will. We don't know what to do with it. We're running out of storage places. We're throwing it in Amazon, we're throwing it in Google. We're throwing it in all these places and just paying monthly storage fees. That data is critical business data that if you can get and analyze it, you can make important business decisions about what your customers are doing, how they're buying things, what products they're buying, what products are not selling, and make fundamental business shifts and changes and all you have to do is put a layer of analytics above this massive hoards of data that we're just continuing to pile and pile. >> Where does Veritas fit in to this equation? >> In all of that. The 360 offering that Veritas has brought to market, a big part of that is compliance. If you look at the messaging on GDPR, that's just one compliance that they're focusing on. That applies across the board. Having visibility into all your data with their data insight platform, for example, who's accessing it, where they're accessing it, what types of data it is, the classification of data. That's the first level of being able to understand your unstructured data and know does it meet all the controls that I have to adhere to in order to deliver health information controls, or personal information controls, whatever your industry control might be. Whether it's PCI or GPR or HIPAA, you name it, it gives you the, you apply the compliance onto the data and have reports that let you know if you're in compliance or not. On the storage side, there's analytics within the backups as well as the data that give you visibility into what you've been protecting and what you've been backing it up and where that data resides on a global level so not only what but where is it and who's accessing it. It's giving you all that visibility to try to get a handle on what it is, where it is and what valuable information is in there. >> And so you're bring this to market today. >> Shahin: We did. >> I mean, you got some pretty advanced customers. >> Shahin: Yes. >> Do you feel like you're on sort of the leading edge of the bell curve? >> We have customers that are on the leading edge of that bell curve, and we have customers that are starting that journey. They are starting to realize, GDPR is a perfect example, not everybody's sure what it's going to mean to them. It's like when HIPAA and PCI came out way back when. Everybody was like, "That's not my problem." And now everybody has to deal with it. I had many hospitals back then who wouldn't do anything, wouldn't do anything, and then the fines came, and they're like, "Okay, hurry. "Let's do something." >> Dave: Yeah, right. >> So similarly, the compliance aspect of this, we're seeing a lot more traction on because GDPR's only about six months away. >> I mean, it's a two sided coin, right? Because on the one hand, it's this sort of boondog for all the guys that can service those accounts, but on the other hand, it takes dollars away, potentially, from other more strategic initiatives, and in the case of HIPAA, you can't even get your own information out of the hospitals let alone other people's. What's your thought on GDPR? Is it as big as these other initiatives? It feels that way, but we don't really know yet, right? >> The risk, where GDPR is different than all the other regulatory concerns is that any individual in any of the European Union can come and say, "I want you to delete all the information "you have about me." And you have to. >> Dave: You have to prove it. >> You have to prove that you did it and that you don't have any of it. The control structures are making it difficult for companies to say, "How am I going to do this?" That's where products like the 360 solution that Veritas is bringing to market help give visibility into the data and so, you know, I see Joe Smith across my unstructured data. I see it in these file servers and this place and the other place. So you have visibility into where Joe Smith is and can take action to, actually, delete the data and show it's not there anymore with audits. It could be very real. Whether it's going to kick in and go live in July as it's supposed to or they're going to continue to extend it as they did with HIPAA and PCI, it's unclear at this point. >> Talk about that a little bit. Is that, sort of, what happened with HIPAA and PCI? But that was the U.S. government. >> Shahin: Yeah. >> It wasn't the EU. You know, again, we don't really know. You've seen some of the crackdowns by the EU on Google and others and so maybe they won't be as forgiving, who knows. >> They may not be as forgiving and I think it'll get dialed in a little bit more. I think, when it comes out and they realize the expense in trying to do this, is going to hamper business. I think it'll get dialed back a little bit. Not that you have to delete the data, for example, but you have to prove that you have it controlled and secured and somebody can't get to it. >> Dave: I mean, do you think that's really ultimately what it's going to be is the processes around it? >> Shahin: Yeah. >> It's going to be as important as everything else. >> Shahin: At the end of the day, All any of these audits and the regulatory concerns can do is tell you you have to have these processes. That's the best they can go hope for. It really is nothing more than a process conversation. But process without technology can be really burdensome and expensive on a company. >> Dave: Yeah, because the risk is that you say, "Okay, we got these processes in place. "Yes, we did it and here's the information." And then if you get hacked, and there's Joe Smith is still in there, oops. And then that somehow gets published on Wikileaks. >> Rut-roh. >> Exactly. >> So Shahin, as an industry, we've been talking for a while about how important data is, how we can leverage data. When we're talking GDPR, it's like well, you know, your data can be dangerous for you. Where are your customers? How do they, actually, do they value data? Is data still a challenge for them, or maybe give us a little bit of the spectrum of where you're seeing customers. >> It's a wide range. We've got customers that are in the research space, and they're doing, for example, genomics research, and their data is everything to them. We've got customers in the semi-conductor space, and they're building chips and their designs and they're information about how each chip design is improving from version to version. All that data is important to them and when they go back to do new chip designs, they have to be able to look back at that data and they do a lot of analytics. But then, there's industries that just keep the data because they think it's going to be important and they don't use it, they don't take advantage of it. They don't realize the risk associated with it either. It's the number one thing I used to, I've been a CECO for over 15 years, and the one thing I used to say to customers is, "If you're going to keep your data, "if you have a policy for data retention, "make sure that it's not longer "and creates an exposure for you "than it needs to be." Because keeping data too long can be, because you have to present it if you're in a litigation. So that's the challenge with these piles of data we keep keeping. The reality is customers are all the way to the extreme of using it heavily in deep analytics to I have no idea what I have, I just have piles of data. >> Dave: The variation on the Einstein quip, keep data as long as you need to but no longer. >> Shahin: Exactly. >> All right, Shahin, we have to go. Thanks very much for coming on theCUBE. >> Thank you. >> We appreciate it. >> My pleasure. >> All right. We're in a rapid sprint to the end of day two here at Veritas Vision 2017. We'll be right back. This is theCUBE.

>> Announcer: Live, from Silicon Valley, it's the Cube. Covering Google Cloud Next 17. (ambient music) >> Okay, welcome back everyone. We are here live in Palo Alto for a special two days of coverage of Google Next 2017 events in San Francisco. Sold out, 10,000 plus people. Yeah, really, an amazing turn of events. Amazon Web Services Reinvent had 36,000, Google's nipping at their heels, although different, we're going to break down the differences with Google versus Amazon because they're really two different things and again, this is Cube coverage here in Palo Alto studio, getting reaction. Sponsored by Intel, thanks, Intel, for allowing us to continue the wall-to-wall coverage of the key events in the tech industry. Our next guest is Val Bercovici who's the boardmember of the Cloud Native Compute Foundation, boardmember. >> That's right. >> Welcome back, you were here last week from Mobile World Congress, great to see you. Silicon contributor, what your reaction to the Google keynote, Google news? Not a lot of news, we saw the SAP, that was the biggest news and the rest were showcasing customers, most of the customers were G Suite customers. >> Yeah, exactly. So, I would say my first reaction is bit of a rough keynote, you know, there's definitely not as quit as much polish as Microsoft had in their heyday and of course, Amazon nowadays in the Cloud era. But what's interesting to me is there's the whole battle around empathy right now. So, the next gen developers and the Clouderati talk about user empathy and that means understanding the workflow of the user and getting the user to consume more of your stuff, you know, Snapchat gets user empathy for the millennial generation but anybody else. Facebook as well. So, you see Google, we emphasize, even the Google Twitter account, it emphasizes developer productivity and they have pretty strong developer empathy. But what AWS has, Amazon with AWS is enterprise empathy, right, they really understand how to package themselves and make themselves more consumable right now for a lot of mainstream enterprises, they've been doing this for three, four years at their Reinvent events now. Whereas Google is just catching up. They've got great developer empathy but they're just catching up on enterprise empathy. Those are the main differences I see. >> Yeah, I think that's an important point, Val, great, great point, I think Amazon certainly has, and I wrote this in my blog post this morning, getting a lot of reaction from that, actually, and some things I want to drill down on the network and security side. Some Google folks DMing me we're going to do that. But really, Amazon's lead is way out front on this. But the rest, you know, call 'em IBM, not in any particular, IBM, Oracle, Google, SAP, others, put Salesforces, we're talking Sass and Adobe, they're all in this kind of pack. It's like a NASCAR, you know, pack and you don't know who's going to slimshot around and get out there. But they all have their own unique use cases, they're using their own products to differentiate. We're hearing Google and again, this is a red flag for me because it kind of smells like they're hiding the ball. G Suite, I get the workplace productivity is a Cloud app, but that's not pure Cloud conversations, if you look at the Gartner, Gartner's recent, last report which I had a chance to get a peek at, there's no mention of Sassifications, Google G Suite's not in there, so the way Cloud is strictly defined doesn't even include Sass. >> Yeah. >> If you're going to include Sass, then you got to include Salesforce in that conversation or Adobe or others. >> Exactly. >> So, this is kind of an optical illusion in my mind. And I think that's something that points to Google's lack of traction on customers in the enterprise. >> This is where behind the scenes, Kubernetes, is so important and why I'm involved with the the CNCF. If anything, the first wave of Clouded option particularly by enterprise was centered around the VM model. And you know, infrastructure's a service based on VMs, Amazon, AWS is the king of that. What we're seeing right now is developers in particular that are developing the next generation of apps, most of them are already on our phones and our tablets and our houses and stuff, which is, you know, all these Echo-style devices. That is a container-based architecture that these next gen applications are based on. And so, Kubernetes, in my mind, is really nothing more than Google's attempt to create as much of a container-based ecosystem at scale so that the natural home for container-based apps will be GCP as opposed to AWS. That's the real long term play in why Google's investing so heavily in Kubernetes. >> Is that counterintuitive? Is that a good thing? I mean, it sounds like they're trying to change the goalpost, if you will, to change the game because we had Joe Arnold on, the founder of Swiftstack and you know, ultimately, you know, Clouds are Clouds and inter-Clouding and multi-Cloud is important. Does Kubernete actually help the industry? Or is that more Google specific in your mind? >> I think it will help the industry but the industry itself is moving so rapidly, we're seeing server-less right now and functions of service, and so, I think the landscape is shifting away from what we would think of as either VM or container-based infrastructure service towards having the right abstractions. What I'm seeing is that, really, even the most innovative enterprises today don't really care about their per minute or per hour cost for a cycle of computer, a byte of, you know, network transferred or stored. They care about big table, big quarry, the natural language processing, visual search, and a whole category of these AI based applications that they want to base their own new revenue-generating products and services based on. So, it's abstraction now as a new battlefield. AWS brings that cult of modularity to it, they're delivering a lot of cool services that are very high level Lambda centered based on really cool modularity, whereas Google's doing it, which is very, very elegant abstraction. It's at the developer level, at the technical level, that's what the landscape is at right now. >> Are you happy with Google's approach because I think Google actually doesn't want to be compared to AWS in a way. I mean, from what I can see from the keynote... >> Only by revenue. (laughs) >> Well, certainly, they're going to win that by throwing G Suite on it but, I mean, this is, again, a philosophy game, right? I mean, Andy Jassy is very customer focused, but they don't have their own Sass app, except for Amazon which they don't count on the Cloud. So, their success is all about customers, building on Amazon. Google actually has its own customer and they actually include that in, as does Microsoft with Office 365. >> Yeah, that's the irony, is if we go back to enterprise empathy I think it's Microsoft has that legacy of understanding the enterprise better than all the others. And they're beginning to leverage that, we're definitely seeing, as you're sliding comfortably to a number two position behind AWS, but it really does come back to, you know, are you going to lead with a propeller head lead in technology which Google clearly has, they've got some of the most superior technology, we were rattling off some the speeds and feeds that one of their product managers shared with you this morning. They've had amazing technology, that's unquestioned. But they do have also is this reputation of almost flying in rarefied air when it comes to enterprises. >> What do you mean by that? >> What I mean by that is that most enterprise IT organizations, even the progressive ones, have a hard time relating to Google technology. It's too far out there, it's too advanced, in some cases, they just can't understand it. They've never been trained in college courses on it or even post-grad courses on it. MBA is older than three years old, don't even reference the Cloud. So, there's a lot of training, a lot of knowledge that has to be, you know, conducted on the enterprise side. AWS is packaged, that technology there is the modularity in such a way that's more consumable. Not perfect, but more consumable than any other Cloud render and that's why, with an early head start, they've got the biggest enterprise traction today. >> Yeah, I mean, and I'm really bullish on Google, I love the company, I've been following them since '98, a lot of friends here at Palo Alto, a lot of Googlers living in my neighborhood, they're all around us. Larry Page, seen him around town. Great, great company and very, always been kind of like an academic, speed of academic. Very strong, technically, and that is, clearly, they're playing that card, "We have the technology." So, I would just say that, to counter that argument would be if Google, I'm Google, I'm on the team, the guy in green and you know, lookit, what I want to do is, we want to be the intel for the Cloud. So, the hard and top is we don't really care if people are trained, should be so easy to use, training doesn't matter. So, I mean, that's really more of an arrogant approach, but I don't think Google's being arrogant in the Cloud. I think that ship has sailed, I think Google has kind of been humbled in the sense, in recognizing that the enterprise is hard, they're checking the boxes. They have a partner program. >> Yeah, you're right, I mean, if you take a look at their customers today, you've got Spotify, and Snap, and Evernote, and you know, Pokemon Go and Niantic, all of the leading edge technology companies that have gone mainstream that are, you know, startup oriented Snap, of course. They're on Google Cloud. But that's not enough, you know, the enterprise, I did a seminar just last week promoting Container World with Jim Forge from ADP. The enterprise is not homogeneous, the enterprise is complicated. The L word legacy is all over, what they have to budget and plan for. So, the enterprise is just a lot more complicated than Google will acknowledge right now. And I believe if they were to humanize some of their advanced technology and package it and price it in such a way that AWS, you know, where they're seeing success, they'll accelerate their inevitable sort of leap to being one of those top three contenders. >> So, I'm just reading some of my, I'm putting together because for the Google folks, I'm going to interview them, just prepping for this, but just networking alone, isolating Cloud resources. That's hard, right? So, you know, virtual network in the Cloud, Google's got the virtual network. You get multiple IP addresses, for instance, ability to move network interfaces and IPs between instances, and AS networking support. Network traffic logging, virtual network peering, manage NAT gateways, subnet level filtering, IP V stick support, use any CIDR including RC 1918. Multiple network interface instances, I mean, this is complicated! (laughs) It's not easy so, you know, I think the strategy's going to be interesting to see how, does Google go into the point to point solution set, or they just say, "This is what we got, take it or leave it," and try to change the game? >> That's where they've been up until now and I don't think it's working because they have very formidable competitors that are not standing still. So, I think they're going to have to keep upping their game, again, not in terms of better technology but in terms of better packaging, better accessibility to their technology. Better trust, if you will, overseas. Cloud is a global game, it's not US only. And trust is so critical, there's a lot of skepticism in Europe today with the latest Wikileaks announcements, or Asia Today around. Any American based Cloud provider truly being able to isolate and protect my citizen's data, you know, within my borders. >> I think Google Cloud has one fatal flaw that I, looking at all the data, is that and the analysis that we've been looking at with Bookie Bontine and our research is that there's one thing that jumps out at me. I mean, the rest are all, I look at as, you know, Google's got such great technologies, they can move up fast, they can scale up to code. But the one thing that's interesting is their architecture, the way they handle their architecture is they can't let customers dictate data where data's stored. That is a huge issue for them. And if, to your point, if a user in Germany is using an app and it's got to stay in Germany. >> This is back to the empathy disconnect, right? As an abstraction layer for a developer, what I want is exactly what Google offers. I don't want to care as a developer where the bits and bytes are stored, I want this consistent, uniform API, I want to do cool stuff with the data. The operation side, particularly within legal parameters, regulatory parameters, you know, all sorts of other costs and quality assurance parameters, they really care about where that data is stored, and that's where having more enterprise empathy, and their thinking, and their offerings, and their pricing, and their packaging will leapfrog Google to where they want to be today. >> Val Bercovici, great analysis, I mean, I would totally agree just to lock that in, their developer empathy is so strong. And their operational one needs to be, they got a blind spot there where they got to work on that. And this is interesting because people who don't know Google are very strong operations, it's not like they don't have any ops chops. (Val laughs) They're absolutely in the five nines, they are awesome operations. But they've been operations for themselves. >> Exactly. >> So, that's the distinction you're getting at, right? >> Absolutely. >> Okay, so the next question I got to ask you is back to the developer empathy, 'cause I think it's a really big opportunity for Google. So, pointing out the fatal flaw in my opinions in the data locality thing. But I think the opportunity for Google to change the game, using the developer community opportunity because you mentioned the Kubernetes. There is a huge, open source, I don't want to say transformation but an evolution to the next generation, you're starting to see machine learning and AI start to tease out the leverage of not just data now. Data's become so massive now, you have data sets. That can be addressable and be treated like software programs. So, data as code becomes a new dynamic with AI. So, with AI, with open source, you're seeing a lot of activity, CNCF, the Cloud Native Compute Foundation, folks should check that out, that's an amazing group, analytics foundation. This is an awesome opportunity for Google to use Kubernetes as saying, "Hey, we will make orchestration of application workloads." >> Absolutely. >> This is something, Amazon's been great with open source, but they don't get a lot of love... >> Amazon has a blind spot on containers, let's not, you know, let's not call, you know, let's call it the speed of speed, let's not, you know, beat around the bush, they do have a blind spot around containers. It is something they strategically have to get a hold of, they've got some really interesting proprietary offerings. But it's not a natural home for a Docker workflow, it's not a natural home for a Kubernetes workflow yet. And it's something they have to work on and AI as a use case could not be more pertinent to business today because it's that quote, you know, "The future is here "but unevenly distributed." That's exactly where AI is today, the businesses that are figuring it out are really leaping ahead of their competitors. >> We're getting some great tweets, my phone's blowing up. Val, you've got great commentary. I want to bring up, so, I've been kind of over the top with the comment that I've been making. It's maybe mischaracterized but I'll say it again. There seems to be a Cold War going on inside the communities between, as Kubernetes have done, we've seen doc, or we've seen Docker Containers be so successful in this service list, server list vision, which is absolutely where Cloud Native needs to be in that notion of, you know, separating out fiscal gear and addressability, making it completely transparent, full dev ops, if you will. To who's going to own the orchestration and where does it sit on the stack? And with Kubernetes, to me, is interesting is that it tugs at some sacred cows in the container world. >> Yes. >> And it opens up the notion of multi-Cloud. I mean, assume latency can be solved at some point, but... >> It's actually core religion, what impressed me about he whole Kubernetes community, and community is its greatest strength, by the way, is the fact that they had a religion on multi-Cloud from day one. It wasn't about, "We'll add it later "'cause we know it's important," it's about portability and you know, even Docker lent that to the community. Portability is just a number one priority and now portability, at scale, across multiple Clouds, dynamically orchestrated, not through, you know, potential for human error, human interventions we saw last week. That the secret sauce there to stay. >> I think not only is, a Cold War is a negative connotation, but I think it's an opportunity to be sitting in the sun, if you will, on the beach with a pina colada because if you take the Kubernetes trend that's got developer empathy with portability, that speaks to what developers want, I want to have the ability to write code, ship it up to the network, and have it integrate in nicely and seamlessly so, you know, things can self-work and do all that. And AI can help in all those things. Connecting with operational challenges. So, what is, in your mind, that intersection? Because let's just say that Kubernetes is going to develop a nice trajectory which it has now and continues to be a nice way to galvanize a community around orchestration, portability, etc. Where does that intersect with some of the challenges and needs for operational effectiveness and efficiency? >> So, the dirtiest secret in that world is data gravity, rigtht? It's all well and fine to have workload portability across, you know, multiple instances and a cluster across multiple Clouds, so to speak. But data has weight, data has mass and gravity, and it's very hard to move particularly at scale. Kubernetes only in the last few releases with a furious pace in evolution, one four, one five, has a notion of provisioning persistent volumes, this thing they affectionately called pet sets that are not a stateful sets, I love that name. >> Cattle. >> Exactly. (laughs) So, Google is waking up and Kubernetes, I should say, in particular is waking up to the whole notion of managing data is really that last mile problem of Cloud portability and operational maturity. And planning around data gravity and overcoming where you can data gravity through meta-operational procedures is where this thing is going to really take off. >> I think that's where Google, I like Google's messaging, I like their posture on machine learning AI, I think that's key. But Amazon has been doing AI, they've got machine learning as a service, they've had Kineses for a while. In fact, Redshift and Kineses were their fastest growing services before Aurora became the big thing that they had. So, I think, you know, they're interested in the jets, with the trucks, and the snowmobile stuff. So I think certainly, Amazon's been doing that data and then rolling in as some sort of AI. >> And they've been humanizing it better, right? I can relate to some of Amazon's offering and sometimes I have it in the house. You know, so, the packaging and just the consumerability of these Amazon services today is ahead of where Google is and Google arguably has the superior technology. >> Yeah, and I think, you know, I was laying out my analysis of Google versus Amazon but I think it's not fair to try to compare them too much because Google is just making their opening moves on the chessboard. Because they had Diane Green, got to give her credit, she's really starting behind. And that's been talked about but they are serious, they're going to get there. The question is what does an enterprise need to do? So, your advice to enterprise would be what? Stick with the use cases that are either Google specific apps or Cloud Native, where do you go, how do you...? >> I would say to remember the lock-in days of the Linux vendors and even Microsoft in their heyday and definitely think multi-Cloud, you know, Cloud first is fine. But think, we need data first in a Cloud before I think a particular Cloud first. Always keep your options open, seek the highest levels of abstraction, particularly as you're innovating early on and fast failing in the Cloud. Don't go low right away, go low later on when you're operationalizing and scaled and looking to squeeze efficiencies out of a new product or service. >> Don't go low, you mean don't go low in the stack? >> Don't go low in the stack, exactly. Start very high in the stack. >> What would be an example? >> Lambda, you know, taking advantage of, if we bring in Kineses, IOT workflows, all sorts of sensor data coming in from the Edge. Don't code that for efficiency day one and switch to Kafka or something else that's more sophisticated, but keep it really high level as events triggering off, whether it's the IOTICK in the sensor inputs or whether it's S3 events, Dynamo, DB events. Write your functions that are very, very high level. >> Yeah. >> Get the workflows right. Pay a bit more money up front, pay premium for the fast... >> Well, there's also Bootstraps and the Training Channel Digimation, so, with Google, pick some things that are known out there. But you mentioned IOT and one of the things I was kind of disappointed in the keynote today, there wasn't much talk about IOT. You're not seeing IOT in the Google story. >> That may come up in tomorrow's keynote, it may come up tomorrow in a more technical context. But you're right, it's an area both Agar and AWS have a monster of a lead right now, as they've had really good SDKs out there to be able to create workflows without even being an expert in some of the devices that you know, you might own and maintain. >> Google's got some differentiation, they've got something, I'll highlight one that I like that I think is really compelling. Tensor flow. Tensor flow as got a lot of great traction and then Intel is writing chips with their Skylake product that actually runs much faster silicon... >> What was that, Nvidia? You know, it's a GPU game as much as a CPU game when it comes to machine learning. And it's just... >> What does that mean for you? I mean, that's exciting, you smile on that, I get geeked out on that because if you think about that, if you can have a relationship between the silicon and software, what does it mean from an impact standpoint? Do you think that's going to be a good accelerant for the game? >> Massive accelerant, you know, and this is where we get into sort of more rarefied air with Elon Musk's quote around the fact we'll need universal income for society. There a lot of static tasks that are automated today. There's more and more dynamic tasks now that these AI algorithms, through machine learning, can be trained to conduct in a very intelligent manner. So, more and more task based work all over the world, including in a robotic context but also call centers, stock brokerage, for example, it's been demonstrated that AI ML algorithms are superior to humans nine times out of ten in terms of recommending stocks. So, there's a lot of white collars, while it's blue collared work that just going to be augmented and then eliminated with these technologies and the fact that you have major players, economies at scales such as Intel and Nvidia and so forth accelerating that, making it affordable, fast, low power in certain edge context. That's, you know, really good for the industry. >> So, day one of two days of coverage here with Google, just thoughts real quick on what Google needs to do to really conquer the enterprise and really be credible, viable, successful, number two, or leader in the enterprise? >> I'm a big fan, you know, I've had personal experiences with fast following as opposed to leading and innovating sometimes in terms of getting market traction. I think they should unabashedly, unashamedly examine what Microsoft or what Amazon are doing right in the Cloud. Because you know, simple things like conducting a bit more of a smooth keynote, Google doesn't seem to have mastered it yet, right now in the Cloud space. And it's not rocket science, but shamelessly copying what works, shamelessly copying the packaging and the humanization that some of the advanced technologies that Amazon and Microsoft have done in particular. And then applying their technical superiority, you know, their uptime availability advantages, their faster networks, their strong consistency which is a big deal for developers across their regions. Emphasizing their strengths after they package and make their technology more consumable. As opposed to leading where the tech specs. >> And you have a lot of experience in the enterprise, table stakes out there that are pretty obvious that they need to check the boxes on, and would be what? >> A very good question, I would say, first and foremost, you really have to focus on more, you know, transparent pricing. Think something that is a whole black art in terms of optimizing your AWS usage in this industry that's formed around that. I think Google has and they enact blogs advertising a lot of advantages they have in the granularity, in the efficiency of their auto scaling up and down. But businesses don't really map that, they don't think of that first even though it can save them millions of dollars as they do move to Cloud first approaches. >> Yeah and I think Google got to shake that academic arrogance, in a way, that they've had a reputation for. Not that that's a bad thing, I'll give you an example, I love the fact that Google leads a lot of price performance on many levels in the Cloud, yet their SLAs are kind of wonky here and there. So, it's like, okay, enterprises like SLAs. You got to nail that. And then maybe keep their price a little high here, it can make more money, but... So, you were saying, is that enterprise might not get the fact that it's such a good deal. >> It's like enterprise sales 101, you talk about, you know, the operational benefits but you also talk about financial benefits and business benefits. Catching into those three contexts in terms of their technical superiority would do them a world of good as they seek more and more enterprise opportunities. >> Alright, Val Bercovici, CTO, also CTO, and also on the board of the Cloud Native Compute Foundation known as CNCF, a newly formed organization, part of the Linux Foundation. Really looking at the orchestration, looking at the containers, looking at Kubernetes, looking at a whole new world of app enablement. Val, thanks for the company, great to see you. Turning out to be guest contributor here on the Cube studio, appreciate his time. This is the Cube, two days of live coverage. Hope to have someone from Google on the security and network side coming in and calling in, we're going to try to set that up, a lot of conversations happening around that. Lot of great stuff happening at Google Next, we've got all the wall-to-wall coverage, reporters on the ground in San Francisco as well as analysts. And of course, in studio reaction here in Palo Alto. We'll be right back. (ambient music)