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Speaker 2: Hey listen, I'd just fresh off his panel. They talked
Speaker 2: about AI and security. Is Philip Vnables. He's chief information
Speaker 2: security officer at Google Cloud. Joining us here in studio.
Speaker 3: How are you all good.
Speaker 4: It's a good day to be here, great place, great
Speaker 4: a great event.
Speaker 3: It is a great event.
Speaker 2: Listen OURBI team they just kind of dig into really
Speaker 2: the specifics of stuff.
Speaker 3: I want to just first start.
Speaker 2: We asked this from our other guest from the Bloomberg
Speaker 2: AI event, and that is when you think about the
Speaker 2: global macro. Here we are in a day where we
Speaker 2: are obviously taking cues actually most days out of news
Speaker 2: from Washington, and whether today it's on tariffs, what of
Speaker 2: tariffs or the global macro think is really top of
Speaker 2: mind for you in what you do on a daily basis.
Speaker 4: So I'm not really kind of involved in the side
Speaker 4: to really kind of talk about tarrorists, but we know
Speaker 4: when you look at the kind of the global geopolitical situation,
Speaker 4: one of the things we see all of our customers
Speaker 4: around the world, they're looking to us for help on
Speaker 4: defending their cyber security, whether it's from criminals or nation states.
Speaker 4: And again they look in any conflict, now, all conflict
Speaker 4: has a cyber security dimension, and so they're looking to
Speaker 4: us as a leading security provider, whether it's on our
Speaker 4: own platform or with our tools to help them.
Speaker 2: Does it pick up because of the tensions that we're
Speaker 2: seeing right now between the US and formally or still
Speaker 2: it's allies, like, are you seeing any kind of uptick?
Speaker 4: Not at this stage either. I mean, and that's not
Speaker 4: necessarily a good news story because there's a constant backdrop
Speaker 4: of cyber attacks all around the world that many companies
Speaker 4: defend against, and so do we, and we help all
Speaker 4: these companies defend themselves.
Speaker 5: But have you've seen a change in perhaps nation states
Speaker 5: such as Russia making attacks or trying to find vulnerabilities
Speaker 5: in your system just in the last couple of months,
Speaker 5: as we've seen a change in policy Russia from the
Speaker 5: not any distinct new level.
Speaker 4: But again there's a constant background level of attack you
Speaker 4: do see, in particular see Russia targeting the supply chains
Speaker 4: of organizations helping the Ukraine war effort. Interesting but that's
Speaker 4: generally kind of all companies involved in that. We defend
Speaker 4: our platform every day against the myriad of attacks.
Speaker 5: Is would you say that there are certain geographies that
Speaker 5: produce more of these attackers? Like where geographically are you defending?
Speaker 4: I mean, I think organized criminals are all around the world.
Speaker 4: There's various concentrations. The big four nations we look at
Speaker 4: all the time as source of attacks Russia, China, North Korea, Iran,
Speaker 4: But cyber offense is a global phenomenon, not just.
Speaker 5: Those those who's the most sophisticated.
Speaker 4: I think, you know, you look at China's attacks recently
Speaker 4: and some of the well publicized events, the so called
Speaker 4: vault typhoon and salt typhoon events that have originated in China.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think a lot of these nations are
Speaker 4: quite sophisticated. I think China has been the more aggressive
Speaker 4: and assertive in recent times. Russia has got a history.
Speaker 4: But they're all they're all still still maintaining their offense.
Speaker 2: All right, So what does wiz brig you I got
Speaker 2: to say when this deal crossed the Bloomberg term, of course,
Speaker 2: you guys thirty two billion dollar acquisition. Whiz a startup
Speaker 2: biggest cybersecurity focused.
Speaker 3: Deal in history. Why do this deal? What does it
Speaker 3: bring you guys?
Speaker 4: Well, so it's all about multi cloud. So one of
Speaker 4: the things we encounter in our support for our customers
Speaker 4: is most of our customers are running on multiple clouds.
Speaker 4: They have on premise environments, they have multiple SaaS companies,
Speaker 4: and the big important thing is how do they maintain
Speaker 4: a layer of security consistently across all of that. Wiz
Speaker 4: has grown a tremendous product and business to do that.
Speaker 4: We already have been focused on multi cloud security, multi
Speaker 4: cloud operations, multi cloud tooling, and so it's a natural
Speaker 4: affinity for us. How do we support customers where they
Speaker 4: are in multiple clouds? That's the big impetus.
Speaker 3: Is AI going to complicate all of this language models?
Speaker 2: And it just feels like the buildout continues fill and
Speaker 2: whether it's on premise or not.
Speaker 4: I mean, we think AI actually gives a defenders a
Speaker 4: more structure, structurally gives defenders an advantage versus attackers. Right now,
Speaker 4: attackers are using AI, they're using it for misinformation, disinformation, frauds,
Speaker 4: many things. But from a defensive purpose, AI empowers defenders
Speaker 4: because we have the data, we have the context. We
Speaker 4: have the ability to use it unique to our organization,
Speaker 4: and our customers are finding that, and so there's a
Speaker 4: structural advantage in how defenders use AI. Now, of course
Speaker 4: they've got to take advantage of that advantage obviously, but
Speaker 4: generally speaking, we're seeing more advances in the defensive use
Speaker 4: of AI than we're currently seeing on offensive use of AI.
Speaker 4: But the attackers are going to make use of AI
Speaker 4: in the future as well.
Speaker 5: Can you characterize how many steps in general you are
Speaker 5: ahead of the most advanced attackers.
Speaker 4: It's hard to do a kind of comparison like that
Speaker 4: because you always have to look at specific attacks. But
Speaker 4: the thing, main thing we're focused on with our threat
Speaker 4: in intelligence capability, our defensive capability is just constantly, relentlessly
Speaker 4: upgrading our infrastructure and then providing that security upgrade to
Speaker 4: our customers through our platform and products.
Speaker 5: How quickly are things moving right now, especially on the
Speaker 5: AI front. I speak to some folks in the AI
Speaker 5: world who say we're making leaps and bounds within twelve
Speaker 5: week periods at this point. The piece of innovation is unbelievable.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I mean, I think the pace of innovation
Speaker 4: is increasing, whether it's on model development, whether it's on
Speaker 4: the platforms that run the models, that contain the tooling
Speaker 4: to let people get the best out of the models,
Speaker 4: all the way up through what we're seeing now in
Speaker 4: a revolution of how we're deploying AI agents to orchestrate
Speaker 4: business processes and ultimately parts of our lives. And we're
Speaker 4: all working very hard to look at how do we
Speaker 4: make sure the agent environment is secured in the same
Speaker 4: way that we would expect.
Speaker 2: How fast is all of this happening, The changes, the
Speaker 2: challenges like we keep up Deep Seek and how that
Speaker 2: was you know earlier this year kind of a rethink
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, And I'm just curious how you
Speaker 2: guys are seeing it, because you're dealing with a day
Speaker 2: in and day out. We obviously get the headlines, We
Speaker 2: get the announcements from the different companies and try to
Speaker 2: keep up and watch what investors are doing.
Speaker 3: But I'm just curious.
Speaker 4: So we're seeing it in terms, I mean, where one
Speaker 4: of the few companies that has the whole stack of AI,
Speaker 4: from the models to the hardware, to the software, to
Speaker 4: the platform infrastructure, and so we see in every part
Speaker 4: of what we do, constant innovation and meeting customer expectations
Speaker 4: and future custom in demand. We also see it because
Speaker 4: we host many other models on our platform. A big
Speaker 4: part of the value is the platform we bring where
Speaker 4: customers can choose not just our models, but other models
Speaker 4: as well.
Speaker 2: So what's right in the narrative that's being talked, certainly
Speaker 2: in the investment world, what's maybe wrong?
Speaker 4: I don't think and not really seeing anything that's wrong.
Speaker 4: I think mainly people are looking across the environment and
Speaker 4: seeing how can we make best use of this technology
Speaker 4: to fit our particular business need. And we're seeing more
Speaker 4: and more prizes with our help, getting more sophisticated about
Speaker 4: how quickly they cannot just tap into the innovation but
Speaker 4: make that innovation productive in their business.
Speaker 5: You mentioned the agentic side of things, and I want
Speaker 5: to talk there a little bit as far as defense
Speaker 5: and offense go. Something that I could imagine concerning people
Speaker 5: in your position would be the information that agents have
Speaker 5: and the information that agents are given. How do you
Speaker 5: ensure that what agents are doing, whether from a consumer
Speaker 5: perspective it's booking a vacation or booking flights, which you
Speaker 5: can do, you know, with Chad Shept's two hundred dollars
Speaker 5: a month plan how do you make sure that the
Speaker 5: information that they have stays safe, stays secure and it
Speaker 5: really isn't used for bad stuff.
Speaker 4: Well, so it all comes down to who's building those agents,
Speaker 4: And this is why I think it's important in this
Speaker 4: environment to.
Speaker 3: Be well, the way it's going, everybody's going to be
Speaker 3: able to know that's right.
Speaker 4: And so ultimately you're going to have like the tools
Speaker 4: we provide people help people build agents that have privacy properties,
Speaker 4: are controlled, are secured. But ultimate we're all going to
Speaker 4: be responsible for making sure we look at the you know,
Speaker 4: the agents we choose to use should have a degree
Speaker 4: of trust from the companies we get them from. Now,
Speaker 4: we and many other companies are working on multiple different
Speaker 4: standards and frameworks to equip everybody through the platforms with
Speaker 4: the ability to run agents securely. But there's a lot
Speaker 4: of work still to be done on how you would
Speaker 4: delegate your privilege to an agent to act on your behalf,
Speaker 4: and everybody's working on it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the autonomous right I mean in terms of agents
Speaker 2: and like being able to kind of keep going and
Speaker 2: make decisions and stuff like that.
Speaker 4: True, well, and make decisions under the constraints you give it.
Speaker 3: Right, the pull in stuff that you don't necessarily want
Speaker 3: them to do right.
Speaker 4: And how how a company constructs an agent to act
Speaker 4: on your behalf and give you the transparency and feedback
Speaker 4: about what you wanted to do is going to be
Speaker 4: a key differentiator for companies that build these things.
Speaker 5: Hey, thirty seconds before we let you go, I always
Speaker 5: like to ask people in your position for one tip
Speaker 5: on how we can stay safe in this new cyber world.
Speaker 4: So use talking about gain here. Use the platforms and
Speaker 4: the security defaults we built into the platforms. So we
Speaker 4: spend a lot of time thinking about how we ship product,
Speaker 4: how we ship platforms. We make the defaults as strong
Speaker 4: as we can to protect people who come onto the platform.
Speaker 4: Use the defaults, use the secure by design that we
Speaker 4: provide and that people go along with.
Speaker 3: All right, grit stuff, Thank you awesome, so appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Phil Vennable's Chief Information security Officer, Google Cloud, joining us
Speaker 2: here in studio