(techno music) >> (Narrator) Live from Washington, DC. It's Cube conversations with John Furrier. (techno music) >> Hello and welcome to the special exclusive Cube Conversations here in Washington, DC. I'm John Furrier host of the Cube. Here at Amazon Web Services Headquarter World Headquarters for Public Sector Summit in Arlington, Virginia. Our special guest is Tricia Davis-Muffett, who is the Director of Marketing for Worldwide Amazon Web Services. Thanks for joining me. >> Yep. >> So we see each other and reinvent Public Sector Summit, but you're always running around. You got so many things going on. >> I am. >> Big responsibility here. (Tricia laughs) >> You guys are running hard and you have great culture, Teresa's team. Competitive, like to have fun. Don't like to lose. (Tricia laughs) >> What's it like being a marketer for the fastest growing hottest product in Washington, DC and around the world? >> Yeah. I mean it's really been amazing. When I came here, I kind of took a leap of faith on the company because it's four and a half years ago that I came. I literally accepted the job before we had even gotten our first fed ramp approval. So it wasn't entirely sure that this was going be the place to go to for technology for the government, but I really loved the way that we were helping the government innovate and save money of course. I think most of us who are in Public Sector have a passion for citizens, and for making government better and so that's really what I saw in Teresa and her team that they had such a passion to do that and that the technology was going to help the government really improve the lives of citizens. It's been great. One of the things that's been amazing is the passion that our customers have for our technology. I think they get a little taste of it and they go "Wow, I can't believe what I can do "that I thought was impossible before." And so I love seeing what our customers do with the technology. >> It's something people would think might be easy to be a marketer for Amazon, but if you think about it, you have so much speed in your business. You have a cult of personality in the Cloud addiction, or Cloud value. In addition to the outcomes that are happening. >> Uh huh. >> We're a customer and one kind of knows that's pretty biased on it. We've seen the success ourselves, but you guys have a community. Everywhere you go, you're seeing Amazon as they take more territory down. Public Cloud originally, and now Enterprise, and Public Cloud, Public Sector Enterprise, Public Cloud. Each kind of wave of territory that Amazon goes in to Amazon Web Services, is a huge community. >> Yeah. >> And so that's another element. I mean Public Sector Summit last year it felt like Reinvent. So this years going to be bigger. >> Yeah. We had 65 hundred plus people attend last year, just in the Washington DC area and we've also expanded that program now and we are taking our Public Sector Summit specifically for government education non-profit around the world. So this year we will be in Brussels, and Camber, Australia. We have great adoption in Australia as well with the government there. In Singapore, Ottawa. So we're really expanding quite a bit and helping governments around the world to adopt. >> So if that's a challenge, how are you going to handle that because you guys have always been kind of with Summits. Do you coattail Summits? Do you go separate? >> No. We go separate. We actually have the Public Sector Summits we take the experience of our technology to government towns that wouldn't typically get a Summit. So for instance here in the United States of course, San Francisco and New York there's a lot of commercial businesses. We have our big Summits there, but there's not as much commercial business here in Washington DC, so really Public Sector takes the lead here. And then we focus on some of the things that really are most important to our Public Sector customers. Things like, procurement and acquisition. Things like the security and compliance that's so critical in the government sector. And then also, we do a really careful job of curating our customers, because we know that our government customers want to hear from each other. They want to hear from people who are blazing a trail within the Public Sector. They don't necessarily want to hear about what we want to say. They want to hear what their peers are doing with the technology. So last year, we had over a hundred of our Public Sector customers speaking to each other about what they were doing with the Cloud. >> And I find that's impressive. I actually commented on the Cube that week that it's interesting you let the customers do the talking. I mean, that's the best ultimate sign of success and traction. >> Yeah. And the great thing is, you know I've worked in other places in the Public Sector and government customers can be kind of shy about talking about what they're doing. You know, there are very motivated to just keep things going calmly, quietly, you know get their jobs done. But I think... >> Well, it doesn't hurt when you have the top guy at the CIA say, "Best decision we've ever made." "It's the most innovative thing we've ever done." I mean talk about being shy. >> Yeah. >> That's the CIA, by the way. That's the CIA. And we've also had, people like NASA JPL who've been very outspoken. Tom Soderstrom said that it was conservatively 1/100th of the cost of what it would have been if he had built out the infrastructure himself to build the infrastructure for his Mars landing. I mean that kind of... >> It just keeps giving. You lower prices. Okay I got to change gears, because a couple things that I've observed to every Reinvent, as being a customer and I think I've used Amazon I first came out as an entrepreneur. (inaudible) had no URL support, but that's showing my age. (Tricia laughs) But, here's the thing, you guys have enabled customers to solve problems that they couldn't solve in the past. >> (Tricia) Right. >> You mentioned NASA and then a variety of other (inaudible). But you guys are also in Public Sectors specifically are doing new things. New problems that no ones ever seen before. And society, entrepreneurship, diversity inclusion, education, non-profits. You don't think of Gov Cloud and Public Sector; you think non-profits, education. So it's kind of these sectors that are coming together. This is a new phenomenon. Can you talk and explain the dynamic behind that and the opportunity? >> Sure. I love to hear the stories of what our customers are doing when they really are tackling a problem that no one had thought of before. So for instance, at Reinvent this year, one of our Public Sector customers who spoke was Thorne. And they are using AI to crawl the dark web and help find people who are trafficking children in human trafficking, and that's a great use of AI and that's the kind of thing. It also helps our public servants because it helps to make police officers' jobs more effective. So of course we know that police officers, there are never enough police officers to go around. There's never enough detectives to look into everything that they need to and this makes them so much more effective to make the world a safer, better place. I also love some of the things about educational outcomes. Ivy Tech Community College is one of our great community college customers. And their using big data analysis to put together all of the different data sets that they have about their students and identify who might be at risk of failing a class 10 days into the semester so that they can help intervene with those students. >> Where was that class when I needed it? >> I know. >> Popup and say, "Hey homework time." >> I mean it really is looking at what kind of issues that they're having very early on with attendance, with different behavioral things. >> A great example at Reinvent with the California Community College system. That was a very interesting way. He was up there bragging like it was nobody's business. >> Yeah, and I think the community colleges that really goes into this idea of we're trying to expand opportunity for a wide-range of people. You might think of computer scientists as that's going to be all the Carnegie Mellon and Stanford and MIT people. And of course those are great contributors to computer science, but the fact is that computer science is so critical in so many aspects of life and in so many different kinds of careers. We know that one of the limiters to our own growth is going to be the talent that we have available to take advantage of the technology. We've been really working hard to expand opportunity for a wide-range of people, so that any smart person with an idea, can be using our technology, that's part of what's behind building the AWS Educate Program, which is a program to offer free computer science training to any university student or college student anywhere in the world. >> So it's a program you guys are doing? >> (Tricia) This is a program we are doing, >> What's it called again? >> AWS Educate. And it's a program that offers free credits to use AWS to any student who is enrolled in any kind of university or college anywhere around the world. >> That's a gateway drug to Cloud computing. >> Absolutely. >> Free resources. >> Yeah, and we're giving them a training path so that they can... >> So they want to write some code, or whatever they want to do. >> Yeah, and they can take different paths and learn. Okay, I want to learn a data science pathway, so I'm going to go that way. I want to learn a websites pathway. And they can go through things and build a portfolio of projects that they've actually built. >> So can they tap into some of the AWS AI tools too? >> They can tap into a wide range of tools and they have different levels of tiers of credits that they get, so it's a really great program to really open up Cloud computing. >> Now is there any limitations on that? What grade levels, is it college and above? >> Actually at Reinvent we just opened it up to students 14 and above. >> (John) Beautiful. That's awesome. >> And we also have a program called... >> How do they prove they're a student? >> Having a school, an EDU email address, or their school being registered through the program. >> (John) Okay, that's awesome. >> And then we also have another program called We Power Tech, and that really is a program to help open up the talent pool again to women to underserved communities, to people of different ethnic backgrounds who might not see themselves in technology because they don't see themselves as computer programmers on TV or whatever. >> Or they don't see their peer group in there, or some sort of might be an inclusion issue. >> Right and we're looking at if you take educate and We Power Tech, we're looking at that full pipeline of talent all the way from kids who are deciding should I pursue computer science or not, all the way through to professionals and getting them to try to stay in technology. >> So you guys are legit on this. You're not going to just check the box and focus on narrow things. A lot of companies do that, where they go oh we're targeting young girls or women. You guys are looking at the spectrum broader. >> Yep. And we're really looking at different communities and helping people to find their community in technology so that they can find supportive networks and also find people to mentor them or find people to mentor who are elsewhere. >> How big of a problem is it right now in today's culture and in the online culture to find peers and friends to do work like this? Because it just doesn't seem to me like there's been any innovation in online message groups. Seems like so 30 years ago. (Tricia laughs) >> Yeah. I think it is tough and I think there are somethings that we're trying to break through. For instance, a lot of the role models out there are the same people over and over again. We're trying to find new role models. And we find that through our customers. We find customers who are doing interesting work and we're trying to cultivate their voice and help put them on stage. >> New voices because it's new things. Machine learning, these are new disciplines. Data science across the board. >> Yeah, and one of the things that I love about the technology is it really is has democratizing affect. If you have an idea, you can make that idea happen for very little money, with just your ingenuity and your ability to stick to it. >> I got to ask you the hard question. Shouldn't be hard for you, but Amazon is gritty. It's been called gritty by me, hustling, but they're very good with their money. They don't really waste a lot in marketing. >> Yeah we're frugal. >> Very frugal, but you're very efficient, so I got to ask your favorite gorilla marketing technique. Cause you guys do more with less. >> (Tricia) We do. >> Once been criticized in Wired magazine. I remember reading years ago about they were comparing the Schwag bag to Reinvent. (Tricia laughs) Google almost gave out phones. It's kind of like typical reporter, but my point is you guys spend your money on education to engineers. You don't skip on that, but you might not put the flair onto an event, but now you guys are doing it. >> I think there are two things. So one of them is the aesthetic of our events. We typically do have a very stripped down aesthetic and we've made frugal look cool. I think that's one of the things I learned when I came here was go ahead and have the concrete floor and put quotes from customers there instead of paying to carpet it. So don't waste money on things that don't add value that's one of the core tenants of what we do in marketing. >> Get a better band instead of the rug. You guys have always had great music. >> We do always have great music. >> Tricia, tell me about your favorite program or project you've done a lot over the years. Pick your favorite child. What's your favorite? You have a lot of great stuff going on. Do you have a favorite? >> I think that my favorite is probably the City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge which is something we've done every year for the last four years. And we really went and asked cities, "Tell us what you're doing with our technology." Because we weren't sure what they were doing cause it's not very expensive for cities to run on us. We found that they were doing incredible things. They were doing water monitoring in their cities to help improve the quality of life of their citizens. They were delivering education more effectively. They were helping their transportation run in a more effective way. New York City Department of Transportation was doing really cool citizen facing apps to help them manage their transportation challenges and also cities all around the world. We've had people put in things about garbage management in Jerusalem and about lighting management in a Japanese city. We've had all kinds of really interesting stories come out and I just love hearing what the customers are doing and this year we added a Dream Big category where we said, "If you had the money, what would "you do with technology in your city?" and we've been really thrilled to be able to offer grants and fund some of those things to help cities get started. >> That's awesome. Not only is it engaging for them to engage with you through the program, it's inspirational. The use cases are everything from IOT to every computer. >> Yeah and we've also had partners submit as well, and we've learned about things like parking applications that cities are putting in place to help their citizens find better parking or all kinds of really interesting. How to keep track of the tree and do a tree census in their cities. Things like that. >> Maybe I'll borrow that and give you credit for it as a Cube question. What would you do if you had unlimited money? >> Exactly. (John laughs) Well the great part is that most of the cities find out that they can do what they want to do with very little money. They think it's going to be millions of dollars and then they realize, "Oh my gosh, it's going to be hard "for me to spend this 50 thousand dollar grant "because it doesn't cost that much." >> That's awesome and you got a big event coming up in June. Public Sector Summit again. Any preview on that? Any thing you can share? I'm sure it's a lot of things up in the air. >> A lot of really cool things. We are very excited to have some of our great customers on stage again. We're also this year going to have a pre day where we're going to feature Air and Space workloads on AWS. So that's going to be really interesting. I think we're going to have Blue Origin there and we're going to talk about what it's going to take to get to the next planet. >> And certainly that's beautiful for Cloud and also a huge robotics trend. People love to geek out on space related stuff. >> Yep. >> Awesome. Well the Cube will be there. Any numbers? Is it going to be the same location? >> It's going to be the same location at the Convention Center June 20th and 21st. We're going to have boot camps and certification labs and all that kind of stuff. I expect we'll grow again, so definitely more than seven thousand people. >> How big was the first one? >> Oh my gosh, the first one was in a little hotel conference room. I think there were a hundred and 50 people there. (Tricia laughs) >> Sounds like Reinvent happening all over again. We've seen this movie before. >> (Tricia) Yep. >> Tricia, thanks so much for coming on the Cube here. In the headquarters of Amazon Web Services Public Sector Summit in Washington DC. We're in Arlington, Virginia, right next to the nation's capital. I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching. (techno music)

>> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at Data Privacy Day at Twitter's World Headquarters in downtown San Francisco. Full-day event, a lot of seminars and sessions talking about the issue of privacy. Even though Scott McNealy in 1999 said, "Privacy's dead, get over it," everyone here would beg to differ; and it's a really important topic. We're excited to have Michelle Dennedy. She's the Chief Privacy Officer from Cisco. Welcome, Michelle. >> Indeed, thank you. And when Scott said that, I was his Chief Privacy Officer. >> Oh you were? >> I'm well acquainted with my young friend Scott's feelings on the subject. >> It's pretty interesting, 'cause that was eight years before the iPhone, so a completely different world than actually one of the prior guests we were talking about privacy is an issue in the Harvard Business Review from 125 years ago. So this is not new. >> Absolutely. >> So how have things changed? I mean that's a great perspective that you were there. What was he kind of thinking about and really what are the privacy challenges now compared to 1999? >> So different. Such a different world. I mean fascinating that when that statement was made the discussion was a press conference where we were introducing Connectivity. It was an offshoot of Java, and it basically allowed you to send from your personal computer a wireless message to your printer so that a document could come out (gasp). >> That's what it was? >> Yeah. >> Wireless printing? >> Wireless printing. And really it was gyro technology, so anything wirelessly could start talking to each other in an internet of things world. >> Right. >> So, good news bad news. The world has exploded from there, obviously; but the base premise of, can I be mobile, can I live in a world of connectivity, and still have control over my story, who I am, where I am, what I'm doing? And it was really a reframing moment of when you say privacy is dead, if what you mean by that is secrecy and hiding away and not being connected to the world around you, I may agree with you. However, privacy as a functional definition of how we define ourselves, how we live in a culture, what we can expect in terms of morality, ethics, respect, and security, alive and well, baby. Alive and well. >> (laughs) No shortage of opportunity to keep you busy. We talked to a lot of people who go to a lot of tech conferences. I have to say I don't know that we've ever talked to a Chief Privacy Officer. >> You're missing out. >> I know, so not you get to define the role, I love it. So what are your priorities as Chief Priority Officer? What are you keeping an eye on day to day as well as what are your more strategic objectives? >> It's a great question. So the rise of the Chief Privacy Officer, actually Scott was a big help in that and gave me exactly the right amount of rope to hang myself with. The way I look at it is, probably the simplest analogy is, should you have a Chief Financial Officer? >> Yeah. >> I would guess yeah, right? That didn't exist about 100 years ago. We just kind of loped along, and whoever had the biggest bag of money at the end was deemed to be successful. Where if somebody else who had no money left at the end but bought another store, you would have no way of measuring that. So the Chief Privacy Officer is that person for your digital currency. I look at the pros and the cons, the profit and the loss, of data and the data footprint for our company and for all the people to whom we sell. We think about, what are those control mechanisms for data? So think of me as your data financial officer. >> Right, right. But the data in and of itself is just stagnant, right? It's really just the data in the context of all these other applications. How it's used, where it's used, when it's used, what it's combined with, that really starts to trip into areas of value as well as potential problems. >> I feel like we scripted this before, but we didn't. >> Jeff: We did not script it, we don't script the-- >> So if I took out a rectangle out of my wallet, and it had a number on it, and it was green, what would you say that thing probably is? >> Probably Andrew Jackson on the front. >> Yeah, probably Andrew Jackson. What is that? >> A 20 dollar bill. >> Why is that a 20 dollar bill? >> Because we agree that you're going to give it to me and it has that much value, and thankfully the guy at Starbucks will give me 20 bucks worth of coffee for it. >> (laughs) Exactly. Well which could be a cup the way we're going. >> Which could be a cup. >> But that's exactly right. So is that 20 dollar bill stagnant? Yes. That 20 dollar bill just sitting on the table between us is nothing. I could burn it up, I could put it in my pocket and lose it and never see it again. I could flush it down the toilet. That's how we used to treat our data. If you recognize instead the story that we share about that piece of currency, we happen to be in a place where it's really easy to alienate that currency. I could go downstairs here and spend it. If I was in Beijing I probably would have to go and convert it into a different currency, and we'd tell a story about that conversion because our standards interface is different. Data is exactly the same way. The story that we share together today is a valuable story because we're communicating out, we're here for a purpose. >> Right. >> We're making friends. I'm liking you because you're asking me all these great questions that I would have fed you had I been able to feed you questions. >> Jeff: (laughs) But it's only that context, it's only that communicability that brings it value. We now assume as a populous that paper currency is valuable. It's just paper. It's only as good as the story that enlivens it. So now we're looking at smaller, smaller Microdata transactions of how am I tweeting out information to people who follow me? >> Jeff: Right, right. >> How do I share that with your following public, and does that give me a greater opportunity to educate people about security and privacy? Does that allow my company to sell more of my goods and services because we're building ethics and privacy into the fabric of our networks? I would say that's as valuable or more valuable than that Andrew Jackson. >> So it's interesting 'cause you talk about building privacy into the products. We often hear about building security into the products, right? Because the old way of security of building a bigger wall doesn't work any more and you really have to bake it in at all steps of the application: development, the data layer, the database, et cetera, et cetera. When you look at privacy versus security, and especially 'cause Cisco's sitting on, I mean you guys are sitting on the pipes, everything is running through your machines. >> That's right. >> How do you separate the two, how do you prioritize, and how do you make sure the privacy discussion is certainly part of that gets the right amount of relevance within the context of the security conversation? >> It's a glib answer that's much more complicated, but the security is really in many instances the what. I can really secure almost any batch of data. It can be complete gobbley gook zeroes and ones. It could be something really critical. It could be my medical records. The privacy and the data about what that context is, that's the why. I don't see them as one or the other at all. I see security and security not as not a technology but a series of verb things that you actually physically, people process technologies. That enactment should be addressed to a why. So it's kind of Peter Drucker's management of you manage what you measure. That was like incendiary advice when it first came out. Well I wanted to say that you secure what you treasure. So if you treasure a digital interaction with your employees, your customers, and your community, you should probably secure that. >> Right. But it seems like there's a little bit of a disconnect about maybe what should be treasured and what is the value with folks that have grown up. Let's pick on the young kids, not really thinking through or having the time or knowing an impact of a negative event in terms of just clicking and accepting the EULA and using that application on their phone. They just look at in a different way. Is that valid? How do they change that behavior? How do you look at this new generation, and there's this sea of data which is far larger than it used to be coming off all these devices, internet of things, obviously. People are things too. The mobile devices with all that geolocation data, and the sensor data, and then oh by the way it's all going to be in our cars and everything else shortly. How's that landscape changing and challenging you in new ways, and what are you doing about it? >> The speed and dynamics are astronomical. How do you count the stars, right? >> Jeff: (laughs) >> And should you? Isn't that kind of a waste of time? >> Jeff: Right, right. >> It used to be that knowledge, when I was a kid, was knowing what was in A to Z of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Now facts are cheap. Facts used to be expensive. You had to take time and commit to them, and physically find them, and be smart enough to read, and on, and on, and on. The dumbest kid is smarter than I was with my Encyclopedia Britannica because we have search engines. Now their commodity is how do I critically think? How do I make my brand and make my way? How do I ride and surf on a wave of untold quantities of information to create a quality brand for myself? So the young people are actually in a much better position than, I'll still count us as young. >> Jeff: Yeah, Uh huh. >> But maybe less young. >> Less young, less young than we were yesterday. >> We are digital natives, but I think I am hugely optimistic that the kids coming up are really starting to understand the power of brand: personal brand, family brand, cultural brand. And they're feeling very activist about the whole thing. >> Yeah, which is interesting 'cause that was never a factor when there was no personal brand, right? You were part of-- >> No way. >> whatever entity that you were in. >> Well, you were in a clique. >> Right. >> Right? You identified as when I was home I was the third out of four kids. I was a Roman Catholic girl in the Midwest. I was a total dork with a bowl haircut. Now kids can curate who and what and how they are over the network. Young professionals can connect with people with experience. Or they can decide, I get this all the time on Twitter actually. How did you become a Chief Privacy Officer? I'm really interested in taking a pivot in my career. And I love talking to those people 'cause they always educate me, and I hope that I give them a little bit of value too. >> Right, right. Michelle, we could go on for on and on and on. But, unfortunately, I think you got to go cover a session. So we're going to let you go. >> Thank you. >> Michelle Dennedy, thanks for taking a few minutes of your time. >> Thank you, and don't miss another Data Privacy Day. >> I will not. We'll be back next year as well. I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE. See you next time.

(soft click) >> Hey, welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at downtown San Francisco, at Twitter's World Headquarters. It's a beautiful building. Find a reason to get up here and check it out. But they have Data Privacy Day here today. It's an all day seminar session, series of conversations about data privacy. And even though Scott McNealy said, "Data privacy is dead, get over it." Everyone here would beg to differ. So we're excited to have our next guest Eva Velasquez. Shes' the President and CEO of ITRC, welcome. >> Thank you, thank you for having me and for covering this important topic. >> Absolutely, so what is ITRC? >> We are the Identity Theft Resource Center. And the name, exactly what it is. We're a resource for the public when they have identity theft or fraud, privacy data breach issues, and need help. >> So this begs an interesting question. How do people usually find out that their identity has been compromised? And what is usually the first step they do take? And maybe what's the first step they should take? >> Well, it's interesting because there isn't one universal pathway that people discover it. It's usually a roadblock. So, they're trying to move forward in their lives in some manner. Maybe trying to rent an apartment, get a new job, buy a car or a house. And during that process they find out that there's something amiss. Either in a background check or a credit report. And at that point it creates a sense of urgency because they must resolve this issue. And prove to whoever they're trying to deal with that actually wasn't me, somebody used my identity. And that's how they find out, generally speaking. >> So, you didn't ask their credit scores. Something in a way that they had no idea, this is how they. What usually triggers it? >> Right, right, or a background check. You know, appearing in a database. It's just, when we think about how pervasive our identity is out there in the world now. And how it's being used by a wide swath of different companies. To do these kind of background checks and see who we are. That's where that damage comes in. >> Talking about security and security breaches at a lot of shows, you know. It's many hundred of days usually before companies know that they've been breached. Or a particular breach, I think now we just assume they're breached all the time. And hopefully they'd minimize damage. But an identity theft, what do you find is kind of the average duration between the time something was compromised before somebody actually figures it out? Is there kind of an industry mean? >> It's really wildly inconsistent from what we see. Because sometimes if there is an issue. Let's say that a wallet is stolen and they're on high alert, they can often discover it within a week or 10 days. Because they are looking for those things. But sometimes if it's a data breach that they were unaware of or have no idea how their information was compromised. And especially in the case of child identity theft, it can go on for years and years before they find out that something's amiss. >> Child identity theft? >> Mhmm. >> And what's going with? I've never heard of child identity theft. They usually don't have credit cards. What's kind of the story on child identity cut theft? Which is their PayPal account or their Snapchat account (laughs). >> Well, you're right, children don't have a credit file or a credit history. But they do have a social security number. And that is being issued within the first year of their life because their parents need to use it on their tax returns and other government documents. Well, because the Social Security Administration and the credit reporting agencies, they don't interface. So, if a thief gets ahold of that social security number. That first record that's created is what the credit bureaus will use. So they don't even need a legitimate name or date of birth. Obviously, the legitimate date of birth isn't going to go through those filters because it is for someone who's under 18. So, kid goes all through life, maybe all through school. And as they get out and start doing things like applying for student loans. Which is one of the really common ways we see it in our call center. Then they come to find out, I have this whole credit history. And guess what? It's a terrible credit history. And they have to clean that up before they can even begin to launch into adulthood. >> (chuckles) Okay, so, when people find out. What should they do? What's the right thing to do? I just get rejected on a credit application. Some weird thing gets flagged. What should people do first? >> There's a couple things and the first one is don't panic. Because we do have resources out there to help folks. One of them is the Identity Theft Resource Center. All of our services are completely free to the public. We're a charity, non-profit, funded by grants, donations, and sponsorships. They should also look into what they might have in their back pocket already. There are a lot of insurance policy writers for things like your home owners insurance, sometimes even your renters insurance. So, you might already have a benefit that you pay for in another way. There are a lot of plans within employee benefit packages. So, if you work for a company that has a reasonable robust package, you might have that help there as well. And then the other thing is if you really feel like you're overwhelmed and you don't have the time. You can always look into hiring a service provider and that's legitimate thing to do as long as you know who you're doing business with. And realize you're going to be paying for that convenience. But there are plenty of free resources out there. And then the last one is the Federal Trade Commission. They have some wonderful remediation plans online. That you can just plug in right there. >> And which is a great segway, 'cause you're doing a panel later today, you mentioned, with the FTC. Around data privacy and identity theft. You know, what role does the federal government have? And what is cleaning up my identity theft? What actually happens? >> Well, the federal government is one of the many stakeholders in this process. And we really believe that everybody has to be involved. So, that includes our government, that includes industry, and the individual consumers or victims themselves. So, on the government end, things like frameworks for how we need to treat data, have resources available to folks, build an understanding in a culture in our country that really understands the convenience versus security conundrum. Of course industry needs to protect and safeguard that data. And be good stewards of it, when people give it to them. And then individual consumers really need to pay attention and understand what choice they're making. It's their choice to make but it should be an educated one. >> Right, right. And it just, the whole social security card thing, is just, I find fascinating. It's always referenced as kind of the anchor data point of your identity. At the same time, you know, it's a paper card that comes after your born. And people ask for the paper card. I mean, I got a chip on my ATM card. It just seems so archaic, the amount of times it's asked in kind of common everyday, kind of customer service engagements with your bank or whatever. Just seems almost humorous in the fact that this is supposed to be such an anchor point of security. Why? You know, when is the Social Security Administration or that record, either going to come up to speed or do you see is there a different identity thing? With biometrics or a credit card? Or your fingerprint or your retina scan? I mean, I have clear, your Portican, look at my... Is that ever going to change or is it just always? It's such a legacy that's so embedded in who we are that it's just not going to change? It just seems so bizarre to me. >> Well, it's a classic case of we invented a tool for one purpose. And then industry decided to repurpose it. So the social security number was simply to entitle you to social security benefits. That was the only thing it was created for. Then, as we started building the credit and credit file industry, we needed an initial authenticator. And hey, look at this great thing. This is a number, it's issued to one individual. We know that there's some litmus test that they have to pass in order to get one. There's a great tool, let's use it. But nobody started talking about that. And now that we're looking at things like other type, government benefits being offered. And now, you know, credit is issued based on this number. It really kind of got away from everybody. And think about it, it used to be your military ID. And you would have your social security number painted on your rucksack, there for the world to see. It's still on our Medicare cards. It used to be on our checks. Lot of that has changed. >> That's right it was on our checks. >> It was, it was. So, we have started shifting into this. At least the thought process of, "If we're going to use something as an initial authenticator, we probably should not be displaying it, ready for anyone to see." And the big conversation, you know, you were talking about biometrics and other ways to authenticate people. That's one of the big conversations we're having right now is, "What is the solution?" Is it a repurposing of the social security number? Is it more sharing within government agencies and industry of that data, so we can authenticate people through that? Is it a combination of things? And that's what we're trying to wrestle with and work out. But it is moving forward, I'll be it, very very slowly. >> Yeah, they two factor authentication seems to have really taken off recently. >> Thankfully. >> You get the text and here's your secret code and you know, at least it's another step that's relatively simple to execute. >> Something you are, something you have, something you know. >> There you go. >> That's kind of the standard we're really trying to push. >> So, on the identity theft bad guys, how is their behavior changed since you've been in this business? Has it changed dramatically? Is the patterns of theft pretty similar? You know, how's that world evolving? 'Cause generally these things are little bit of an arm race, you know. And often times the bad guys are one step ahead of the good guys. 'Cause the good guys are reacting to the last thing that the bad guys do. How do you see that world kind of changing? >> Well, I've been in the fraud space for over 20 years. Which I hate to admit but it's the truth. >> Jeff: Ooh, well, tell me about it. >> And we do look at it sort of like a treadmill and I think that's just the nature of the beast. When you think about the fact that the thieves are they're, you know, they're doing penetration testing. And we, as the good guys, trying to prevent it. Have to be right a hundred percent of the time. The thieves only have to be right once, they know it. They also spend an extraordinary amount of time being creative about how they're going to monetize our information. The last big wave on new types of identity theft, was tax identity theft. And the federal government never really thought that that would be a thing. So when we went to online filing, there really weren't any fraud analytics. There wasn't any verification of it. So, that first filing was the one that was processed. Well, fast forward to now, we've started to address that it's still a huge problem and the number one type of identity theft. But if you had asked me ten years ago, if that would be something, I don't think I would have said yes. It seems, you know, so, you know. How do you create money out of something like that? And so, to me, what is moving forward is that I think we just have to be really vigilant for when we leave that door unlocked, the thieves are going to push it open and burst through. And we just have to make sure we notice when it's cracked. So that we can push it closed. Because that's really I think the only way we're going to be able to address this. Is just to be able to detect and react much more quickly than we do now. >> Right, right, 'cause going to come through, right? >> Exactly they are. >> There's no wall thick enough, right? Right and like you said they only have to be right once. >> Nothings impenetrable. >> Right, crazy. Alright Eva, we're going to leave it there and let you go off to your session. Have fun at your session and thanks for spending a few minutes with us. >> Thank you. >> Alright, she's Eva Velasquez, President and CEO of the ITRC. I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching theCUBE. Catch you next time. (upbeat electronic music)