from our studios in the heart of Silicon Valley Palo Alto California this is a cute conversation hi and welcome to the cube Studios for another cube conversation where we go in-depth with thought leaders driving innovation across the tech industry I'm your host Peter Burris one of the dominant considerations that every business faces today is how do they work through the complex outcomes associated with cybersecurity as they find new ways to use their data and apply it to new classes of customer and market problems this is not a small problem especially given that so many bad actors out there are now also seeing a company's data as a potential enormous source of value now to see what businesses are doing to try to achieve those complex outcomes while at the same time lowering their overall security risk we've got a great conversation first off welcoming back Eric Herzog who's the chief marketing officer and vice president of worldwide storage channels from IBM storage Eric welcome back to the queue yeah thank you love to come and Eric you bought with you a really distinguished individual kaeleen Sanchez as vice president of IBM worldwide Systems lab service and some technical universities Colleen welcome back to the cube thank you so let's get the quick update where are we in this world of the outcomes of businesses seeking let's start with you what what our business is trying to do with cybersecurity today protect data and ensure that we provide a certain level of security levels to enable the overall end-to-end protection holistically so it's really important that we enable a full stack hence the strong partnership with Eric and I too and also the global team to pull together solutions then enable data protection so let's talk about the reasons why it's becomes that much more acute or that needs to become that much more acute because we've got we've got the reality that everybody's going to get penetrated in the next year of any size that it takes a long time often to figure out that you have been penetrated you've got new types of attacks the old ones of just kind of know phishing and whatnot while still prevalent so a problem now we've got ransomware and we've got a lot of new types of actions that bad people are taking what are some of the things that we're trying to protect ourselves from these days so the B's thing is you mentioned ransomware it's like this idea that we want to protect and also act as a worm so to speak to provide an abstraction layer to enable protection holistically of any given solution because data can be everywhere nowhere so yeah there's discussions about it's the new oil it's not the new oil necessarily it's pervasive it's everywhere so our data from our perspective can be in any device any media type and we need to figure out how to protect it at its core and so you see it as a full stack that just means we have to go lower in layers in order to protect the overall data so kind of what you're saying is that the more the security is closer to the data the more the data itself is secure the less reliant we are on policy which can lead to human error or human mistakes which could allow folks come in I got that right you're correct it's smart data it's this idea that it's multiple pieces and multiple owners of a maker checker policy that keeps the overall solution accountable that doesn't diminish the need for policy but Eric it certainly raises the specter or the spectrum of the fact that increasingly the smart folks within a business that are insuring or trying to diminish risk and ensuring assurance of the data need to start looking at how storage or the role that storage plays in this overall security framework I got that right yeah if you think about a traditional company their approach is we need to get security software to keep the bad guys out and they mean it's the Chiricahua for when we are breached to track them down talking to several CIOs at even midsize companies let alone the fortune 500 is sometimes it takes them days even weeks as you said to know they've even been training penetrated yet track it down while they're doing that imagine someone coming into your house and the police don't show up for 10 minutes even though your alarm went off and by the time the police go your house is totally empty and IBM stores you make sure that that doesn't happen it's as if everything is bolted down everything is locked and if they do steal something for example it's say write once read many technology they can't really use it right because it's wormed they can't change it so it's almost as if your TV required a fingerprint and even if they stole it they couldn't use your TV and that's the kind of thing I want to do is be pervasive and get enterprises as well as even small and mean courts to realize an overall cyber resiliency and security strategy involves keeping the bad guys out email will track them down but when they are in the house making sure everything is secure and essentially nothing can be stolen or utilized of your incredibly valuable data so using your metaphor of making sure the TV is bolted down or whatever is is bolted down that's however doesn't diminish the business's ability to move the TV if they want to if they have the rights and privileges to do so so let's talk about how the new tooling of storage is being bought together with some of the new services approaches to achieve these complex outcomes how is IBM looking at storage and storage related technologies as a as a foundation for achieving the new outcomes that the businesses want so for my services perspective we go in and partner with our core technologies within the storage portfolio to enable like something like bare metal to enable the armor around the overall solution we work to with the client to understand their pain points etc and how we optimize the solution to substantiate that we provide highly resilient flexible access to data but at the same time it's protected now this is a fast changing world and it's there's there's an enormous expertise both on the good side and the bad side obviously you've got you've got a development background talk a little bit about how IBM is relying on customers relying on universities other sources of deep knowledge about security issues and then translating that into IP that then finds itself into places like Eric storage portfolio so so we have processes like for instance the technical universities so we have discussions with an extended set of worldwide engineers and scientists to talk about specific important pain points related to cyber security so when we obtain that data we provide the training we collect information and then we provide or funnel that back into Eric's portfolio from an IBM storage perspective so Eric look you've you're an old man for an act as amaya as am i and so that is one area where security has not been an afterthought it's not been that separate how to what degree has that relationship between security and data and storage of permeated the way that you think about solutions solution directions and engaging your customers with your value propositions so one of the big things we've done is make sure that our security is across the entire portfolio primary data flash disk secondary data disk or tape and in fact as you know IBM is known for its hybrid multi cloud storage technology capable of easily and transparently tearing out to multiple public cloud providers when that data is in flight sure site better be encrypted so we've made sure that where this ransom where malware protection data encryption rest across the entire portfolio right once read many technology things like FIPS 140 - - which is a very important federal specification around security malware and ransomware protection with air gapping both to tape but also to cloud so we've made sure that the security aspect of storage is pervasive primary storage secondary storage cloud storage whatever you're doing your storage will always be secure so when they do breach the wall and they track the bad guy down as they're rooting around your file your block your object storage it's secure and they can't get anybody from the data you still can but they can't steal that data from you and that's a critical capability of spreading it beyond just the mainframe we have great technology with our new safeguard copy product we brought out last year that does incredible things to secure data but in fact we make sure that all sorts of security and resiliency technologies from an IBM perspective are spread even into our lowest end product our store wise 50 10 e has full data rest encryption encryption and flight so all those technologies everyone from the very entry products all the way up to our high-end product the DES family and everything in between yeah well one of the things about digital business is we're discovering new ways of leveraging data and unanticipated avenues to try to generate additional business and one of the things we've seen as we talk to customers is that increasingly that means that the weakest link in your security chain is going to be it's going to be instrumental at defining your overall security policy so treating security is an option is because you can secure something over here is increasingly difficult as you find new ways of integrating data so how is IBM helping to get customers to see that so I would say two points from lab services perspective as well as our business partners we we take on a consultative discussion or partnership so we learn from our clients and partners and users as much as they learn from us and we provide offerings to really explore that full stack to make that data smarter as we discussed before so digital business is happening it's transforming very rapidly IBM talks about the rise of the incumbents as they bring some of these digital native capabilities into their business I'm going to ask each of you for the one thing that you think is going to be most important for customers to think about this relationship between data storage and security Eric I'll start with you what do you think is the one thing that people need to start thinking more about over the course next year storage is not an afterthought in your secure strategy killing how about you co-create with our end users to enable the full and and prediction as you mentioned before and as you co-create don't forget that storage is intrinsic to whether or not it's secure or not great conversation thank you both for being here Eric Herzog's the chief marketing officer and vice president worldwide storage channels at IBM storage Colleen Sanchez is the vice president IBM worldwide Systems lab services and technical universities once again thank you both for being here and talking about this crucially important area thank you for having us thank you alright and once again I'm Peter Burroughs and until next time this has been a cube conversation [Music] you