Speaker 1: These sees Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Massier and Tim
Speaker 1: Stentovic on Bloomberg Radio. One of the great growth stories
Speaker 1: I think for the next decade twenty years. If I
Speaker 1: was you know, I gave my kids advice go into cybersecurity.
Speaker 1: Other than trust your gut, trust your gut, go into cybersecurity.
Speaker 1: It's it's like the plastics of the nine sixties. And
Speaker 1: explain that reference to deal later. Kara Sprague, executive vice
Speaker 1: president and chief product officer, she's into cybersecurity. The firm
Speaker 1: is F five. She joined us on Zoom from Seattle. Uh, Karen,
Speaker 1: give us an overview of kind of from your perspective
Speaker 1: at F five. How are how is corporate America? How
Speaker 1: are global corporations dealing with cyber security these days? Um,
Speaker 1: it just seems like because of the pandemic, maybe even
Speaker 1: more so, we put even more and more data and
Speaker 1: applications into the cloud. Absolutely, and thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1: What we have seen over the past several decades is
Speaker 1: just an increasing reliance of organizations on their digital verses
Speaker 1: and applications. And so what you see today is most
Speaker 1: companies their their fundamental business processes, the way that they
Speaker 1: engage with their employees, the way they engage with their customers.
Speaker 1: Those they are all facilitated by some sort of digital
Speaker 1: service or application, and the landscaper cybersecurity just continues to
Speaker 1: grow more complex. And so the reality is with this
Speaker 1: increasing dependence on applications and on digital services and the
Speaker 1: increasing sophistication and breaths of threat actors, it's becoming a
Speaker 1: very dangerous world out there. Let's talk about those threat
Speaker 1: actors in this dangerous digital world, because it seems like,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's been so many stories of the past
Speaker 1: few years, but a big story of the past few
Speaker 1: years is just how many cyber attacks there were, and
Speaker 1: it was really spread out very broadly when you think
Speaker 1: about some of the pipelines and of the other attacks
Speaker 1: that happened. I mean, is that the future that we're
Speaker 1: heading into is should that be something that you know,
Speaker 1: the average person should expect to see? Absolutely? And I
Speaker 1: think that future is is here today. Um, maybe it
Speaker 1: helps to think about some of these attacks in a
Speaker 1: few categories. We hear a lot about data breaches in
Speaker 1: the last year. Alan what we would say is that
Speaker 1: inadequate cyber security has resulted in almost two billion users
Speaker 1: passwords and and credentials falling into the hands of cyber criminals. UM.
Speaker 1: Just one example I would point to there was a
Speaker 1: very material breach at a service provider in Australia just
Speaker 1: a few months ago in which ten million customer records
Speaker 1: and not to open a bank account were taken and
Speaker 1: exceltrated through an API that was just not protected. UM.
Speaker 1: And so that speaks to why API security has become
Speaker 1: such an important topic. Another category of cyber threats we
Speaker 1: see are these bots UM. And so anybody who's who's
Speaker 1: really really excited like I am for the upcoming Taylor
Speaker 1: Swift tour UM is going to know that it was very,
Speaker 1: very difficult to get tickets UM, largely because there's all
Speaker 1: this automation which was pounding Ticketmaster in order to secure
Speaker 1: those hits on their own and then be able to
Speaker 1: resell them in the in the gray market. UH. And
Speaker 1: so boss is another major threat, and that affects everything
Speaker 1: from the sneakers that your kids might be trying to buy,
Speaker 1: UH to UH, you know, stuffing fraudulent credentials into various
Speaker 1: UM places to try and figure out and break into
Speaker 1: those accounts. UH. If you have a loyalty card or
Speaker 1: any other kind of thing that transacts financial information oftentimes
Speaker 1: boss or material problem there. And then the third category
Speaker 1: I would points to and it's one Katie that you
Speaker 1: you brought up is ransomware. UM. That was that was
Speaker 1: the issue at Colonial Pipeline. And what we see is
Speaker 1: that if cyber criminals get access to a network, they
Speaker 1: can install malware which allows them to uh take data
Speaker 1: and then encrypt that data and then hold that data
Speaker 1: for ransom uh forcing organizations to to pay them money
Speaker 1: in order to get the data back. And that affects
Speaker 1: a large number of organizations. We saw a lot of them,
Speaker 1: even going after hospitals in the past year. UH. And
Speaker 1: there was a recent example in a lay at a
Speaker 1: school where that the data from from students and parents
Speaker 1: was taken and that was particularly sad for me because
Speaker 1: what happened there was the hacker group eventually released that
Speaker 1: information on the employees and students, and for the children
Speaker 1: at least, it's going to be many years before they
Speaker 1: realized that many elements that are core to their digital
Speaker 1: identity have been out there on the open Internet for
Speaker 1: a long time. So, Karen, maybe I'm just glass half
Speaker 1: empty on this one. I just feel like it's this
Speaker 1: cybersecurity is is something that we as a society will
Speaker 1: never get ahead of. We will always be playing ketchup,
Speaker 1: we will always be plugging holes. Uh in in the damn?
Speaker 1: Is that the right way to look at it? Uh? Well,
Speaker 1: I think it will require constant vigilance and it requires
Speaker 1: us to consistently raise our game. But I mean, if
Speaker 1: you if you look at uh an analogy I sometimes
Speaker 1: think about is when broadly we adopted bar soak right,
Speaker 1: that immediately wiped out a large amount of the spread
Speaker 1: of disease, and we put in place other practices around
Speaker 1: you know, don't mix your drinking water with your with
Speaker 1: your stewage water. That was another practice that wiped out
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of pestilence and help communities stay stay healthier.
Speaker 1: And so if we think about cybersecurity in a similar way,
Speaker 1: there's just some standard practices that we can all start
Speaker 1: adopting that I think will make in general, the digital
Speaker 1: world a much safer place. Is there a sense that
Speaker 1: at the board level that you know, companies really have
Speaker 1: an appropriate appreciation for the investment required to ensure data
Speaker 1: security on an ongoing basis, I would say increasingly, so
Speaker 1: it's probably um I would expect that it is not
Speaker 1: uh uniform uniformly understood, but increasingly it is very much
Speaker 1: a board level topic, and and board members will prioritize
Speaker 1: ensuring that companies are protected from from ransomware type attacks,
Speaker 1: making sure that they can recover their operations and their
Speaker 1: operational environments even if a ransomware attack hits them, Ensuring
Speaker 1: that they have the right tools in place to detect
Speaker 1: data breaches and also remediate them. And then in the
Speaker 1: case of bots, there's technology out there that can solve
Speaker 1: in most in many ways the problem. And so we
Speaker 1: all know that the technology exists, and it's a matter
Speaker 1: of investment and putting the right prioritization to ensure that
Speaker 1: organizations implement them. And Kara, we're talking on December, just
Speaker 1: days away. What do you see is the biggest threat
Speaker 1: or risk from your vantage point? I think the biggest
Speaker 1: risk because we're you know, I think we're all looking
Speaker 1: at the macroeconomic clouds and and see some of some
Speaker 1: darkening signals, and I think the risk from a corporate
Speaker 1: perspective is that they choose to prioritize other things above
Speaker 1: their cybersecurity. And this is a thing that I just
Speaker 1: think we need to recognize is only going to require
Speaker 1: increasing focus, increasing diligence, going vigilance going forward. And so
Speaker 1: it's an area where I think it would be very
Speaker 1: smart for a company to continue to invest and to
Speaker 1: continue looking looking for solutions for he for what's hitting them.
Speaker 1: All right, Chart, really appreciate you taking the time. Kara Sprague,
Speaker 1: she's executive vice president and chief product officer for F five,
Speaker 1: which is a publicly treated company. F f I V
Speaker 1: is the ticket to put into your Bloomberg Professional terminals.
Speaker 1: She's joining us on the phone from Seattle, and boy,
Speaker 1: it just seems like you think about cybersecurity. If I
Speaker 1: was a board person, a C suite person, I'd be like, Guys,
Speaker 1: I know we have to prioritize spending, but this is
Speaker 1: something we cannot cut back on. Trust your gut again
Speaker 1: to cybersecurity. That is what I always say. This is
Speaker 1: the takeaways from today. This is Bloomberg