Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim
Speaker 1: Stenebek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: All right, we'll get this. Global cybercrime costs are set
Speaker 2: to reach ten point five trillion, that's right, trillion with
Speaker 2: the T trillion dollars each year by twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2: So that's up from three trillion in twenty fifteen. And
Speaker 2: that's according to data from Cybersecurity Ventures and that was
Speaker 2: cited in a report out from EY last year.
Speaker 3: Just think about that recent computer hack that shut down
Speaker 3: many services at MGM's casino hotels. The company said that
Speaker 3: that hack alone, Carol, is going to reduce third quarter
Speaker 3: profit by about one hundred million dollars. So that's real money.
Speaker 2: Here, absolutely, So cybercrime and protecting data in the cloud
Speaker 2: is something our next guest knows a lot about. Sanjay
Speaker 2: Punin is the CEO at Cohesiity. It's the data security
Speaker 2: and data management platform. He's also the former CEO at
Speaker 2: the cloud computing and visualization or virtualization tech company VMware.
Speaker 2: He joins us here in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker Studio. Welcome, Welcome,
Speaker 2: how are you?
Speaker 1: Thank you Tim and Carol for having me on.
Speaker 2: Hey, listen before we get into kind of security, cybercrime,
Speaker 2: all that good stuff. It's interesting times for anybody who's
Speaker 2: running a company, whether it's the focus on geopolitical and
Speaker 2: the unrest and the concerns obviously first and foremost the
Speaker 2: impact on lives, but also the uncertainty that also creates
Speaker 2: about kind of the global outlook. There's also concerns about,
Speaker 2: certainly here in the US, about the rate, environment, the economy.
Speaker 2: From your vantage point, how would you describe the global
Speaker 2: outlook right now?
Speaker 1: I think it's a tremendous opportion for leadership. I think
Speaker 1: as a CEO and I was COO of VMware, we
Speaker 1: had thirty five thousand employees. As president SAP one thousand employees.
Speaker 1: Both were global companies. My company here is smaller, two
Speaker 1: thousand employees. But in important companies cybersecurity, it's a time
Speaker 1: for leaders to lead with empathy. I have employees who
Speaker 1: have who are Israeli friends who have in Israel, and
Speaker 1: I think in Israel everybody knows somebody who knows somebody
Speaker 1: who's affected a greed, either who's a hostage or diet
Speaker 1: or somebody infected. And the other side of the debates
Speaker 1: also being effected now on gods if you look what's happening.
Speaker 1: So this is a time where we get to lead,
Speaker 1: first off, condemning terrorism, but also leading with empathy. It's
Speaker 1: a tremendous opportunity for us to be as leaders empathetic,
Speaker 1: listening to our employees. And I've always believe the great
Speaker 1: greatest companies are the ones who take care of the
Speaker 1: employees and take care of their customers, and that's what
Speaker 1: I seek to do a CEO.
Speaker 3: It's also a business story, and we're Bloomberg, so we
Speaker 3: got to talk about the business side of this. But
Speaker 3: we spent a lot of last week talking about Israel
Speaker 3: being a hub for cybersecurity. They made a lot of
Speaker 3: advances there and there are a lot of tech companies
Speaker 3: in Israel. There's prominent ones that have been bought by
Speaker 3: US companies. Do you have any exposure to Israel? Do
Speaker 3: you work with any Israeli companies right now?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 1: Absolutely, we work with a lot of In fact, a
Speaker 1: big part of our cybersecurity strategy is partnership with many
Speaker 1: Israeli companies Big ID, dig Sira, CenTra, folks in the
Speaker 1: cybersecurity of data security. There companies who are physically located there.
Speaker 1: Whiz I talked to them, I talked about the CEOs.
Speaker 1: I've sent them messages, checked to see how they're doing
Speaker 1: the heart of innovation of security. It's not a very
Speaker 1: big country in terms of population, a few million people,
Speaker 1: but they have an intense program by which people who've
Speaker 1: served in the Israeli defensive forces are often focused on
Speaker 1: security then start companies. So we're working very closely with them,
Speaker 1: every one of them. This is a tough time for
Speaker 1: them and their attentions first to their families, but I
Speaker 1: do believe Israel be resilient. The innovation will continue to grow,
Speaker 1: and you know the many of them do business with
Speaker 1: companies like us. We partner with them, so I expect
Speaker 1: it to be something that will be resilient over time.
Speaker 2: Sanjai, I mean they are used to, you know, instability
Speaker 2: in the region, no doubt about it. This takes it
Speaker 2: to a whole other level and another scale, and that's
Speaker 2: certainly what we've heard the feedback in terms of this
Speaker 2: latest conflict between Israel and Hamas. Having said that, when
Speaker 2: you had those conversations, we're leaders there saying we expect this,
Speaker 2: this is something different. This is going to be a
Speaker 2: longer period of instability or what are they saying.
Speaker 1: It's a nine to eleven time moment. It's not anything
Speaker 1: close to, you know, anything they expected, so whether it
Speaker 1: was the first and the feather and so on. But
Speaker 1: I think listen, you know, if you think about the
Speaker 1: threat cybersecurity threat, it's different from you know, some of
Speaker 1: the ways in which we're seeing nation state actors. I
Speaker 1: think this is a focus on physical security. So if
Speaker 1: we come back to kind of some of the stats
Speaker 1: you led the show off with, that will continue. I
Speaker 1: don't see cyber criminals the nation state actors from which
Speaker 1: were which which are by the way, from a different
Speaker 1: set of countries. This isn't Hamas, it's it's Russia, it's China,
Speaker 1: it's North Korea. The past, we don't see that, which
Speaker 1: I mean the nation state actors are the biggest threat
Speaker 1: to cybersecurity. So the biggest Yeah, those countries are the
Speaker 1: ones are the ones, mostly Russia at fact in the past.
Speaker 1: But and much of we haven't seen an uptick in
Speaker 1: that signal of those just because of the Hamas. Ramas
Speaker 1: is much more of a low. It's not like Habas
Speaker 1: is doing cybersecurity threats against the US. They're focusing much
Speaker 1: more low tech, you know, sort of missiles and things
Speaker 1: of that kind. But I think we have to always
Speaker 1: stay vigilant because the bad guys are going to look
Speaker 1: for any moment first. They just have to be successful once.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about cybercrime. Now, we have to be successfu
Speaker 1: all the time. You look at you talked about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you hear that hotel over again from cybersecurity experts.
Speaker 3: I mean they're talking about how you always have to
Speaker 3: be vigilant because they only have to be successful once.
Speaker 3: Switching geographies a little bit to talk about Russia, Ukraine.
Speaker 3: Russia the source of much cybercrime. What do you see
Speaker 3: on your platform from attempts at hacking from Russia?
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's twenty ransomware attempts every second. You talked about
Speaker 1: a few of the hotel chains that have been affected recently.
Speaker 1: I think every organization needs to build a prevention and
Speaker 1: detection mechanism and a recovering mechanism. I give an exampley.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of analogies between fighting cybercrime and fighting disease.
Speaker 1: If someone told you Tim, I'll never get a cold,
Speaker 1: You'll be like, well, give me some of your DNA,
Speaker 1: the more important question is how quickly can you recover
Speaker 1: from a cold? So what we advise our clients is
Speaker 1: to ensure that you have the best detection prevention that's
Speaker 1: basically detecting do you have a cold. But then in
Speaker 1: our case, if you are one of those hotels that
Speaker 1: got affected, you want to recover really quickly because then
Speaker 1: if you get affected, you've got all your data ready.
Speaker 1: And that's what we focus on cyber recovery and cyber resilience.
Speaker 1: So while a lot of the prevention and detection technologies
Speaker 1: will be helpful and continue to be the ones that
Speaker 1: put OUCT defenses up, you also want to be in
Speaker 1: place where if you do get hit, and it may
Speaker 1: sometimes not be a matter of if, but when you
Speaker 1: have a very fast recovery and that's what we so
Speaker 1: assume you're going to get hit, how would you recover quickly.
Speaker 1: That's the big part of what we help our clients with.
Speaker 2: So who are your typical clients.
Speaker 1: We have four thousand customers, some of the biggest Fortune
Speaker 1: one hundred customers, But these are companies like Nationwide, like Broadcom,
Speaker 1: like Nvidia, like Salesforce. Many of the largest customers and
Speaker 1: financial services have been extremely successful for US, and these
Speaker 1: are all companies who do invest in security. Cybersecurity is
Speaker 1: often a top priority of spending, so we fit in
Speaker 1: that mode of sort of, you know, protecting the world's data.
Speaker 1: Our mission is to protect the world's data from cyber criminals.
Speaker 2: One thing I wonder Sanjay, two things artificial intelligence and
Speaker 2: have you seen an uptick as a result of that
Speaker 2: and kind of creeping into our narrative and conversation in
Speaker 2: a big way this year? And then secondly, since the
Speaker 2: Hamas Israel conflict, have you seen an uptick in people
Speaker 2: calling you or upping some of what they some of
Speaker 2: the work that they do with you.
Speaker 1: Any world crisis is a moment where I think our
Speaker 1: vigilance needs to be higher. And we've not seen an
Speaker 1: exact correlation because of amster nations state crime, but I
Speaker 1: believe our vigilant should be higher. The last thing we
Speaker 1: want to do is let our guard down. That's absolutely
Speaker 1: the case. So my advice to people is, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not just because of a Hamas but look at
Speaker 1: what happened with the Las Vegas Strip hotels.
Speaker 2: Just keep your vigilance high so when you see something
Speaker 2: like that in the headlines. Do you get an uptick
Speaker 2: or the I'm just curious if you see it directed.
Speaker 1: We haven't seen a signific of just in the last man.
Speaker 1: Remember it's last Saturday or two Saturays go when this
Speaker 1: all start. We haven't seen a signatte but we are
Speaker 1: all vigilant. One of our board members is a gentleman
Speaker 1: named Kevin Mandiir who's one of the biggest cyber fighters
Speaker 1: in the world. His company, called Mandian, sees a lot
Speaker 1: when something gets hit Congress, the government usually calls him,
Speaker 1: so he's not bored. I called him, talked to him.
Speaker 1: We keep pretty close eye on it, and my perspective
Speaker 1: is stay vigilant because it could go up and go down.
Speaker 1: The point is that, I think on the other part
Speaker 1: of your question late to AI, I think it's a
Speaker 1: tremendous opportunity for us to harness the best out of
Speaker 1: our artificial intelligence, especially Jenner of AI, and treat it
Speaker 1: a little bit like that age old question about a matchtick.
Speaker 1: Is fire a blessing or a curse? Okay, a pyromatics?
Speaker 1: You could turn the house and fire, but it's going
Speaker 1: to keep us warm. We've got as the tech leaders
Speaker 1: in the industry, we've got to find the ways to
Speaker 1: put guardrails around this. We call it responsible AI. Put
Speaker 1: guardrails around it so that people can't do irresponsible things
Speaker 1: with it, but still harness its potential, which I think
Speaker 1: this is generali is the most fundamental invation I've seen
Speaker 1: in twenty thirty years.
Speaker 2: I'm curious what a guardrail means. We're running out of
Speaker 2: time twenty seconds, twenty five seconds? What is a guard
Speaker 2: rail like?
Speaker 1: What keeps the train on tracks? Right? That's what a guardrail.
Speaker 1: It's a set of rails that ensures that the technology
Speaker 1: can't be abused.
Speaker 2: So you can have a guardrail but still tap into potential.
Speaker 1: That's exactly what good responsible tech companies like US and
Speaker 1: Microsoft and Google and others are doing. And that's where
Speaker 1: focus on. Our gender of AI technologies is far ahead
Speaker 1: of everybody else industry, but we're guardrailing it with what
Speaker 1: we call a responsible AI framework.
Speaker 2: Interesting stuff come back soon, Thank you very We would
Speaker 2: love Sandra. Yeah, really interesting conversation. Sandrei Punin, he's the
Speaker 2: CEO at Cohesity