>>Welcome back to the doctor khan cube conversation. Dr khan 2021 virtual. I'm john for your host of the cube of mulch, Donny co founder and CTO and see so for accurate hot startup hot company. Uh, thanks for coming on the cube for dr continent and talking cybersecurity and cloud native. Super important. Thanks for coming on, >>appreciate john. Thanks for having me. >>So here dr khan. Obviously the conversations around developer experience, um, making things more productive. Obviously cloud scale cloud native with docker containers with kubernetes all lining up right in line with the trend that's now going mainstream and all commercial enterprises. I mean developer productivity security is a huge times thing if you don't get it right. So, you know, shifting left is that everyone's talking about, but this is a huge challenge. Can you, can you talk about what you guys do at your company and specifically why it relates to this conversation for developers at dr khan. >>Sure. Um, so john as we understand today, there are millions of uh, you know, code comments that are happening in cloud native environments on daily basis. Um, you know, in a recent report, Airbnb reported, they've checked in 125,000 plus times ham charts in an ear. And what that means is that, you know, the guitars revolution is here. Uh, and that also means that, well, you got your kubernetes clusters sinking up with infrastructure as code, such as ham chart customized and yarrow files right almost several times a day now, what that also means is that the opportunity to make sure that your clusters are being deployed securely by these infrastructure as code templates and deployment has called template is available before the deployment happens and not after the deployment. Also, in order to reduce the cost or detecting security challenges. The best option and opportunity is during the development time and during the deployment time, which is the pipeline time and that's what we offer. We shift your cloud, native security posture detection to left. We detect all your security posture related issues while the code is in development in the design phase as well as while it is about to get deployed, that is within the guitars pipelines or your traditional develops pipelines and not only with detect where we sell feel the code as well, specifically infrastructure as code. So we detect the problems and we fix the problem by generating the remediation code which we like to call it as remediation is called. The detection mechanisms like all this policy is called. That's the primary use case that we offer. We help developers reduce the cost of remediation and also meantime to the mediations for security problems >>and actually see them a boatload of hassle to going back and figure out how they wrote the code at that time. And kind of what happened always is a problem. Um, I gotta Okay, so I'm gonna get into this policy is code. You mentioned that also you mentioned Getafe's revolution. Let's get to that in a second. But first I want you to explain to the folks what is cloud native security and what does that mean? And what kind of attacks emerge as that surface area becomes apparent? >>Absolutely. So cloud native security is a very interesting new paradigm. Uh it's not just related with one single control pain like take, for example, Cuban haters, it's not just that, it's also the supply chain elements that go into the deployment of your cloud native clusters. Like see if kubernetes cluster you need to secure not just the application code which is running inside your container images, but also the container image itself, then the pod, then the name space, then the cluster. And also you need to do all the other cyber hygienic, high generated things that we were doing previously. So it's so much of complexity because availability of different control planes, you need to be able to make sure that you are doing security, not just right, but at a very, very cost effective in a very, very cost effective manner. And the kind of attacks that we are predicting we're going to see in cloud native world are going to be very different from what we have seen so far. Especially there's a new attack type that I am have coined. I call that as cloud native waterhole attack. What it means is that imagine that most of the cloud native infrastructures are developed out of a lot of different open source components and pieces. So imagine you're pulling up a container image from a open source container agency and that continued which contains a man there container image can directly land into your cluster and not only can enter into your so called secure cluster environment. Usually the cluster control planes are not exposed to internet but deployment of one supply chain element like a Mallory's container image and exposed to an entire cluster. And that's what is waterhole attack when it comes to chlorinated water hole attacks to supply chains. So these are some very innovative and noble attacks that you know, we Uh you know, predict are going to come to our weigh in next 12-18 months. >>So you say it's a waterhole attack. That's the that's the coin term that you've made. So basically what you're saying is the container could be infected with all the properties that is containing into a secure cluster. It's almost been penetrated like malware would or spear phishing attack, it targets the cluster and then infects it. >>So not only that because your continuing images that you're pulling in um from your registries registries can be located anywhere right? If you do not do proper sanitization and checking off your supply chain components such as a continuing image, it can land insecure zones like this. So not only in a cluster, it can become part of a system named space very soon and and that's where the risks are that, you know, you had a parameter, you know, at least of some sort when it was non cloud native environments. And now you have a kind of false sense of security that I have equivalent is cluster, which sort of air gap in one way like there's no exposure to internet of the control plane control being a P. I. Is not supposed to Internet, that doesn't mean anything. A container enters into your cluster can take over the entire cluster. >>All right, so that's cool. So I love that attacks kind of attack. So back to cloud native security definition. So you're defining cloud native security as cloud native clusters. Is it specific around kubernetes or what specifically the cloud native security? What's the category? If the if water holds the attack vector, what's cloud native security means? >>So what it means is that you need to worry about multiple different control planes in a cloud native environment. It's not just a single control pain that you have to worry about. You have to worry about your uh as I said, kubernetes control plane, you have service measures on top of it, You could have server less layers on top of it and when you have to worry about so many different control pains, but it also means is that the security needs to become part of and has to get baked into the entire process of building cloud native environment, not afterthought or it shouldn't happen after the fact. >>See the containers for containers that watch the containers security for the security to watch the security. So you get so let's get we'll get to that. I want to get back to the solution, but one more thing. Um this one piece. So your c so um there you have a lot of shops in there from your background, I know that. Um So if if people out there, other Csos are looking at expanding, You know, day one day 2 ongoing, you know, ai ops get upstate to operate what everyone call it cloud native environments. How do they consider figuring out how to deploy and understand cloud need to secure? What do they have to do if you're a c So knowing what, you know, what steps are you taking? >>Yeah, it's funny that, you know, there's a big silo today between the sea, so organizations and the devops and get ops teams. Uh so the number one priority, in my opinion, that the sea so s uh you know, have to really follow is having visibility into the uh developers. So developers who are developing not just code but also infrastructure as code. So there is a slight difference between writing python code versus writing uh say ham charts or customized templates. Right? So you need as a see saw, you know, see so our needs to have full visibility into Okay, out of 100 developers, how many do I have who are writing deployment as code? And then how many of them are continuously checking in code and introducing security issues? Those issues have to be visualized while the issues are written in code and as they are getting checked into the repositories, so catch the security issues while the code is getting checked into the repository. And the next best stages catch the issues while the pipelines are picking up the code from the repository. So sisters needs to have visibility into this. I call it as shift left visibility for CSOS. So sisters need to know, okay, what are my top 10 developers who are writing infrastructure as code? How many of those developers are committing wonderful code. How many of these pull requests which have been raised have got security violations? How many of them have been fixed and how many have not been fixed? That's what is the visibility that can uh you know, provide opportunities to seize organizations to >>react and more things to put KPI S around two to understand where the gaps are and where the potential blind spots are. Okay, shift left visibility to see. So if you've got the get ups revolution, you got the waterhole attacks. You have multiple control planes obviously complex. The benefits of cloud native though are significant and people doing modern applications are seeing that. So clearly this is direction that everyone's going. The consensus is clear. So how do you solve this? You mentioned policy as code. I'm kind of connecting the dots here. If I'm going to understand what's going on in real time as the code is in flight as it's checking in. For instance, this is kind of in the pipeline as you say. So this has to be solved. What is the answer to this? Because it's clearly the way people want it. No one wants to come back and say we got hacked or development being pulled off task to figure out what they fixed or didn't do what's the policy is code angle? >>So um you know, of course, you know, there could be more than one ways to solve this problem. The way we are solving this problem is that first thing we are bringing all top type of infrastructure as code and the control planes into a single uniform format, which we like to call it as cloud, as code. The reason why we do that so that we can normalize the representation of these different data sets in one single normalized format. And then we apply open policy agent which is a C N C F uh graduated project, which is kind of the de facto standard to do any kind of policy is called use cases in the cloud native world today. So we apply open policy agent to this middleware that we create, which basically brings all these different control plane data, all the different infrastructures code into anomalous format. We apply O P A and we use policies to apply uh Opie on this data this way. What happens is that we write, for example, we want to write a policy, you don't want certain parts to be exposed to Internet in a given name space. You can write such a policy. This policy, you can run on life cluster as well as on the hand charts, which is your development side of the artifact. Right. Because we're bringing both these datasets into middleware. So in short, one of the solutions that we are proposing is that different control planes, different infrastructures, code has to be brought into a normalized format. And then you apply frameworks like Opie a open policy agent to achieve your policy is called use cases. >>What is the attraction for this direction? O. P. A. In particular obviously controlled planes. I get that. I can see the benefit of having this abstraction away with the normalization. I think that would enable a lot of innovation on top of it. Um Makes a lot of sense, totally cool. What's the attraction? What's the vibe? Are people reacting to this? Uh Some people might say whoa hold on, you're taking on too much uh your eyes are bigger than your stomach. You're taking on too much territory. Whoa, slow down. I can I I want to own that control plane. There's a lot of people trying to own the control plane. So again it's a little bit of politics here. What's your what's your thoughts on the momentum? What's the support, what's it look like? >>Yeah, I think you are getting it right, the political side of things. So, um, you know, one responses that, look, we have launched our open source project contour a scan uh last year and uh you know, we're doing pretty well. It's a full opium based uh in a project which allows you to do policies code on not only new cloud control planes, like, you know, kubernetes and others, but also the traditional control planes provided by CSP s like cloud security, cloud service providers. So parents can can be used not just for hand charts and customized, but also for terra form. What we are uh promoting is open culture. With scan. We want community to contribute, become part of it. Um yes, we are promoting a middleware here uh but we want to do it with the help of the community and our reaction what we're getting is very very good. We are in our commercial offering also we use opa we have good adoption going on right now. We believe will be able to uh you know with the developer community, you have this thing going for us. >>I love cloud as code. It's so much more broader than infrastructure as code and I'll see the control plane benefits. You know when I talk to customers, I want to get your reaction to this because I really appreciate your experience and and leadership here. I talked to customers all the time and I wont say name, I won't name names but they're big, big and fintech and you'll big and life sciences in other areas. They all say we want to bring best to breed together but it's too hard to make it all work. We can get it done, but it's a lot of energy. So obviously building code and getting into production that is just brute force. Anyway, they got to get that done and they're working on their pipe lining. But getting other best of breed stuff together and making it work is really hard. Does this solve that? Do you, are you helping solve that problem? Is this an integration opportunity? >>Yes, that and that is true and we have realized it, you know, uh long back. So that's why we do not introduce any new tooling into the existing developer workflows, no new tool whatsoever. We integrate with all existing developer workflows. So if you are a, you know, modern uh, you know, get off shop and you're using flux or Argo, we integrate terrace can seamlessly integrated flux in Argo, you don't even get to know that you already have what policy is called enabled if you're using flux Argo or any equivalent, you know, getups, toolkit. Likewise, if you are using any kind of uh, you know, say existing developer pipeline or workflows such as, you know, the pipelines available on guitar, get lab, you know, get bucket and other pipelines. We seamlessly integrate our motor is very, very simple. We don't want to introduce one more two for developers, we want to introduce one more per security. We want to get good old days, >>no one wants another tool in the tool shed. I mean it's like, it's like really like the tool shit, they get all these tools laying around. But everyone again, this is back to the platform wars in the old days when I was younger. Breaking into the early days of the web platforms were everything you have to build your own proprietary platform Wasn't some open source being used, but mostly it was full stack. Now platforms are inter operating with hybrid and now Edge. So I want to get your thoughts on and I'm just really a little bit off topic. But it's kind of related. How should companies think about platform engineering? Because you now have the cloud scale, which in a way is half a stack. You don't really if you're gonna have horizontal scalability and you're gonna have these kind of unified control planes and infrastructure as code. Then in a way you don't really need that full stack developer. I mean I could program the network. I don't need to get into the weeds on that. I got now open policy agent on with terrorists. Can I really can focus on developing this is kind of like an OS concept. So how should companies think about platforms and hiring platform engineers and and something that will scale and have automation and all the benefits and goodness of the cloud scale. >>Yeah, I mean you actually nailed it when you began uh we've been experienced since we've been experiencing now since last at least 18 months that and if I were specifically also, I'll touch based on the security side of things as well. But platform engineering and platforms, especially now everything is about interoperability and uh, what we have started experiencing is that it has to be open. The credibility any platform can gain is only through openness interoperability and also neutrality. If these three elements are missing, it's very hard to push and capture the mind share of the users to adopt the platform. And why do you want to build a platform to actually attract partners who can build integrations and also to build apps on top of it or plug ins on top of it? And that can only be encouraged if there is, you know, totally openness, key components have to be open source, especially in security. I can give you several examples. The future of security is absolutely open source, the credibility cannot be gained without that. A quick example of that is cystic. I mean, who thought they were gonna be pulling such a huge, you know, funding round, of course that all is on the background of Falco, Right? So what I'm trying to play and sing and same for psyllium, Right? So what I'm clearly able to see is the science are that especially in cybersecurity community, you are delivering open source based platforms, you will have the credibility because that's where you will get the mindshare developers will come and you know, and work with you of course, you know, I have no shame naming fellow vendors right, who are doing this right and this is the right way to do it. >>Yeah. And I think it's it's totally true and you see the validation on that just to verify your point out that we have a little love fest here on open source, it's pretty obvious the the end user communities are controlled not the hard core and users like the hyper scholars, you know, classic enterprises are are starting not only contribute participate but add value more than they've ever have. The question I want to ask you is okay. I totally agree on open as data becomes super important because remember data is only as good as what you have and the more data the better the machine learning the better the data scale, um, sharing is important. So open sharing kind of ties into open source. What's your thoughts on data? Data policy, is this going to extend out into data control planes? What's your thoughts there? I'd love to get your input. >>We are a little little bit early in that thought. I think it's gonna take a little while uh for you know, the uh for the industry bosses to come to terms to that uh data lakes and uh you know, data control planes eventually will open up. But you know, I I see there is resistance in that space today uh but eventually it's gonna come around. You know, that has because that would be the next level of openness, you know, once the platforms uh in a mature as an example right today. Um you want to write uh you know, any kind of say policies for your same products, right. Uh you have the option available to write policies and customized, you know, languages. But then many platforms are coming up which are supporting policy is developed in in languages which are open and that's data which is going to open up, you know very soon. So you will not be measured in terms of how many policies you have as a product, but you will be measured. Can you consume? Open policies are not so i that it is going to go there, it's going to take a little while, but I think he is going to move that. >>It makes sense. Get the apparatus built on the infrastructure side. Once you have some open policy capability that's going to build an abstraction on top of it, then you can program data to be more policy driven or dynamic based upon contextual behavioural dynamics. So it makes a lot of sense. Oh, great insight here, love the conversation, Congratulations on your success. Love the vision. Love the openness. I'll see. We think uh data as code is big too. Obviously media's data where CUBA is open. We have we have the same philosophy. So thanks for sharing. Love the vision. Take a minute to plug the company. What are you guys looking to do? Uh you guys hiring, take a minute to put the plug out for the for the company? >>Absolutely. We are absolutely hiring great ingenious, you know, a great startup mind folks who want to come and work for a very, very innovative environment. Uh we are very research and development, you know driven and have brought various positions available today. Um we are trying to do something which has not been attempted before. Our focus is 100% on reducing the cost of security. And uh you know, in order to do that, you really have to do things that previously were not in development environments. And that's where we're going. We're open source uh, you know, open source initiatives, big open source lovers and we welcome people come in and apply our positions, >>reduce the cost of security, do the heavy lifting for the customer with code and have great performance, that's the ultimate goal. Great stuff. Cloud need security, threat modeling, deV stickups, shifting left in real time. You guys got a lot of hard problems you're attacking? >>Um well, you know, some of the good things uh that we're doing is also because of the team that we have right. Most of our co team comes from very heavy threat modeling, threat analysis and third intelligence background. So we have we're blending a very unique perspective of allowing developers to tackle the threats, which they're not supposed to even understand how they work. We do the heavy lifting from threat intelligence point of view, we just let the developers work on the code that we generate for them to fix those threats. So we're shipping threat intelligence and threat modeling also to left. Uh we're one of the first companies to create threat models just out of infrastructure is called, we read your infrastructure as code and we create a digital twin of your cloud late at one time, even before it has been actually built. So we do some of those things which we like to call it just advanced bridge card prediction where we can predict whether you have reach parts a lot in your runtime environment that would have been committed. >>And then the Holy Grail obviously the automation and self healing um is really kind of where you've got to get to. Right, that's the whole that's the whole ballgame, right? They're making that productive. Oh, thank you for coming on a cube here. Dr khan 2021 sharing your insights, co founder and CTO and see so. Oh much Danny. Thank you for coming on. I appreciate it, >>monsieur john thank you for having >>Okay Cube coverage of Dr Khan 2021. Um your host, John Fury? The Cube. Thanks for watching. Yeah.