live from Orlando Florida it's the cube coverage conf 18 got to you by spunk welcome back to Splunk kampf 18 hashtag Splunk conf 18 you watching the cube the leader in live tech coverage we go out to the events we extract the signal from the noise I'm Dave Volante with my co-host Stu many men we love to talk to the customers too we've had seven out of ten of our interviews today have been with the customers Tony Alessandra was here as the chief architect at the co-operators group limited insurance company up in Canada leader in that field Tony thanks so much for coming on the yeah it's great to be here thanks for having me so we were talking off-camera about some of the innovation that's going on in Toronto and want to get to that innovation is actually in your long title yeah there's the time but tell us about your role as chief architect and then some of the other areas that you touch yes certainly so my primary role at the co-operators group is to serve as chief architect for the group of companies and so it's a fancy term to mean that I influence how we invest in technology and process for our strategy and for our operational imperatives I also have responsibility for information security within our organization so I have a great team led by a C so at the co-operators group and essentially our role is to to protect the data of our clients right we have a million unique clients across Canada that entrust us with a lot of personal and confidential data we have thousands of financial advisers throughout the company and so we have retail outlets throughout the entire geography of Canada and essentially we collect a lot of data and and with respect to policies for commercial businesses for private clients for subscribers etc and I also manage an innovation portfolio for the organization and so it's actually I'll work with our business stakeholders within the organization to figure out how we could accelerate new businesses accelerate new capabilities with the use of technology who's excited that's a big big big role that you have if I want to send the the regime you have for security say the seaso reports to you yes sir and there's a set CIO there right there is yeah so I report to the to the executive vice president and CIO of the co-operators group of companies and and my responsibility within the organization is to report back to our CIO on all the responsibilities that I talked to you about okay so this the C so technically reports up through the CIO and C so reports up through me into the CIO yeah which is that's a whole other interesting discussion maybe if we have time we could talk about that absolutely um so a lot of data I mean we think about insurance company regulated you got your claim systems which are critical you have your agent systems which are also critical different types of data both data on customers but when you talk about the data that you guys collect where's it come from what are you trying to do with with that data yes so so you know I'll start I'll start with the motive right the problem that we're trying to solve and so I'll say first and foremost we're an insurance company we offer assurance and protection to our clients right and so in the process of offering assurance and protection to our clients you know they entrust us with massive amounts of data like you know as we as we mentioned before but we'll also need to set a good example because a lot of the assurance some of the assurance that we offer to our clients is also cyber protection we offer cyber insurance to our clients we need to set a good example we need to demonstrate resilience right Splunk is a primary tool in our Arsenal where we're showing our clients that we have good resilience to be able to detect and respond to security threats when they happen that's part of our mandate right so our responsibility with respect to using Splunk is to collect data from all of our major systems within our organization we use Blonk to monitor we use Blanc to detect and we also use Splunk to respond when something is going on what is this is really interesting you're being proactive about from your you know from an actuarial standpoint you rate your risk you're being very proactive when many if not most insurance companies would do is say ok what what's the history yeah and are there any high-profile breaches and yeah as opposed to what you're doing like sounds like you're really inspecting what the policies and the procedures and the technology of your clients is I think you hit on an important point right and so the important point is that you know the the the art of actuarial science is to rely on a lot of history in the past you know to predict the risks of the future but the reality is that model is falling apart very quickly because there is very little history for cyber threats and the other aspect of it is its inconsistent its evolving and it's changing on a regular basis right and so that's why you use platforms like Splunk use platforms like spunk to detect new threats and to end to in sort of to advance new correlations what should we be concerned about which threats are relevant to us which ones can we ignore and unless you have good platforms to do correlation unless you have good automation you're gonna need a large army of people to chase things that may not be relevant to either you or your clients so Tony your industry usually has quite a bit of M&A as to kind of fund the growth that's going on curious how does Splunk in your data strategy fit into M&A type a quiz yeah yeah and so I think that's one of the biggest potential uses of Splunk for us right and so the way that insurance is evolving right now is insurance companies are all trying to figure out how they get involved in the loss prevention game right in the past it's all been about assurance right it's all been about protection and so when you think about the Internet of Things is one of the biggest untapped opportunities for insurance companies it's all about data right so smart homes smart buildings cars outfitted with telematics so it's every history you wearing wearable devices so in terms of health and you know a health insurance and life insurance protection etc all of this data is meaningful to offer value to clients beyond what we've been able to do in the past one of the things we've looked at I know the industry is looking at is well how do you value that data is that something your company's gotten into yeah absolutely and so you know part of what we need to figure out is how to model that data to give the right level of engagement to the customer so to create that two-way engagement with the customer right how am i doing how am i driving is the weather a threat for me in in the in the foreseeable future in terms of things that I need to protect is there a hailstorm coming you know should I should I you know have alerts and and and you know provide you know ask clients to move some of their valuables indoors I mean all of these are things that will increase that engagement with our clients because face it with insurance your clients engage with you two times a year right two major time policy renewal and if they're unfortunate enough to have a claim right we need to have a but we need to have a better game much more proactive game with them so you're in other ways a risk consultant with your your clients right yeah so describe that so you client comes to you says they're interested or you go to them they're interested in in in in a security you know insurance where does it start do you ask them you have Splunk do you advise them as to what are you going to look at their policies and procedures well how does it work so so I think you know Splunk is one of those valuable assets that enables the capability right insurance you know the game is becoming all about data having massive amounts of data and being able to use that data to help assess the risks for a client properly right because without having good data everything is a great guest these days I mean with climate change with cyber risks evolving with customers preferences changing data is going to be the meaningful difference in terms of understanding what risks a client has what the probability is and how to write a meaningful policy for them where they're engaged and they understand it well enough as well understand it well enough to prevent some of their losses and that's really the issue that we're trying to figure out how do we help clients understand their risks and then prevent losses prevent or minimize losses for them and and what role does Splunk play in that you you know your your your client are you a an advisor or you encourage your customers to use belong counters at all so we're talking about our future roadmap right now and this is what we're trying to figure out what's blanc this is where we see the strategic opportunities with blah right and so when we look at the co-operators the way that co-operators has been using Splunk in the past is for their security sim we were one of the very first large companies in Canada to put our security sim on Splunk we were the very first large company in Canada to put our sim in Splunk clout right and so we we you know we're very proud with being able to work with Splunk for for charting that course right for setting the example our next course is how do we leverage a platform as powerful as Splunk now to give value to our customers we're protecting our customers data assets and now it's about returning valuable insights back to the customers in terms of loss prevention that's our forward-thinking approach in terms of how we stay ahead in terms of leveraging this as a unique asset as a unique capability so your leader you've got street cred you can now extend that to your client base I mean for an insurance company risk you know chaos is just cash as I like to say it's opportunity for you guys and to the extent that you can help clients mitigate that risk to win-win it's essentially for them the reduction in expected loss it can actually hate to say this but could actually pay for the insurance which is let's take attractive it's a massive win and I think you know the other part you know that people need to think differently about is the way that people consume insurance will change dramatically as well in the next tenure so and so where you think now that you know your typical home and auto insurance you will buy an annual policy well the reality is that Home Sharing car sharing ride-sharing insurance will change to what we call episodic oh right and so essentially you'll be consuming insurance for an activity right and the only way that you'll be able to sort of drive that activity in a meaningful way is to have a lot of data on that activity right where are you driving how did you drive you know what what are the risks associated to when you're driving in the geography that you're driving where are you renting out your home what are the rooms to which client and so understanding all of those elements give us the best opportunity at giving you just in time insurance for the right risks surance as a service I love it personalized for me I mean the model generally item as a consumer is broken it's very bespoke my insurance company doesn't know who I am it's just to check a bunch of boxes off and they sent me another form every year and advised some new things and I don't even know what half the time they are that's exactly right right then the and the only way you're able to personalize is to have all of that data on an individual on a company on an event right so we give you insurance for you based on your needs based on your risks Tony we know there's a lot of AI happening up in the Toronto area yeah maybe our audience might not know tell them a little bit about that and how you're thinking about AI and what interest you have and what's Blanc's talking about when they talk about AI yeah you're absolutely right I mean there's a loop there's a massive amount of artificial intelligence activity in the Toronto Kitchener corridor within southern Ontario I would say it's early days for insurance in terms of how we leverage AI I think you know some of the early wins for us have been what we refer to as chat BOTS or virtual assistants right helping clients so this is basically speed and convenience for clients right clients need to know something very quickly very predictive short-tailed answers we're there for customers who choose to do that where it's going next is helping clients assess risk and predict outcomes associated to risks right and so there's a lot of different use cases that we're working there partnerships with startups partnerships with mainstream organizations like Splunk is an important partner for us in this area and of course academic institutions that are investing right this is all part of it for the sales channel for the risk channel for claims processing so imagine being able to submit a claim on a mobile device gathering all that data being able to correlate that data to say we've seen this before right based on the correlation here's your damages we could processes as quickly here's the experts you need to go to here's the restoration facilities that you'll engage those are massive opportunities for client service and for an ability for an insurance company to settle things quickly right we're talking about weather before it's obviously a changing dynamic has a change variable and maybe it's it's model Abel I don't know but but clearly weather incidents are on the rise have caught companies and probably insurance companies you know a little bit off guard you know climate change etc the boiling seas this we've heard yeah what do you guys what's your position on that how do you accommodate that and pass it on to your customers and well I think this is what we're well known for right and so first of all we're not gonna be able to control the weather but what we'd be able to do is prevent it from getting worse right and so when you'll hear the leadership within our organization talk especially our CEO our CEO is very passionate about building resilient communities and that starts with making sure that we're building communities in the right spots not in flood plains not in areas of high risk of forest fires or or other things that you could you know potentially prevent you know within a certain geography and so that's first and foremost right and so we're a leader in this space in Canada how do you become a leader in this area you collect data understand the geography understand the trends associated to the understand the future risks associated to those geographies based on weather trends and then lobby governments builders entrepreneurs everybody land development consortiums to say we need to build communities in better places we need to build more resilient communities and then thereafter it's making sure that you're leveraging data to be able to predict and minimize losses for clients in those areas right and that's what you'll use weather data for right who do I need to alert we have threats on the way what can we prevent how do we minimize these losses for Canadians I think the big risk that we all need to understand if the weather continues to change at the same pace are our you know people will not be able to afford the risks right and so the insurance will rise exponentially and and you know will we we won't have a sustainable model for the future so it's clear for you guys it's really all about the data one of the challenges that a lot of companies in your industry have is the data it's about the data for them to insurance companies you could argue our you know IT companies in many respects they develop products that are put together by technologists but a lot of the data is in silos yeah as Splunk allowed you to break down those silos and and is that yet part while you're a leader well like I could talk about what's where Splunk has been able to to offer us that that that ability is with security right and so we have data we have information security log data associated to our systems and our application everywhere on Prem our partner sites in our agency offices on different endpoint devices in the cloud with our different service providers so what Splunk has been able to do is us to be able to aggregate that data consume that data build valid use cases and to correlate that and raise proper alerts right that's our main priority right now is to build resilience with information security that knowledge will take us to these other areas that we want to do in offering now the value back to our clients right embed that value into our product offerings is our next logical step awesome Tony thanks very much for coming on the cube really appreciate it you're welcome it's good to meet you in the pleasure have the leaves changed in Toronto its Toronto by the way stew no tea it's coming it's coming fast Dave a lot a force to Minutemen thanks for watching we'll be right back after this short break you're watching the cube from Splunk Kampf 18 [Music]