WEBVTT - The State of the Cybersecurity Industry 0:00:00.000 --> 0:00:01.920 All right, folks, we want to get to some news today. 0:00:02.200 --> 0:00:04.800 DP World. It's one of the world's largest port operators, 0:00:04.800 --> 0:00:07.760 struggling to work through a backlog of thirty thousand shipping 0:00:07.760 --> 0:00:10.720 containers piled up at ports across Australia as the company 0:00:10.720 --> 0:00:14.360 resumes operations after a cyber attack. This is definitely our world. 0:00:14.440 --> 0:00:18.160 And on top of that, something like AI, artificial intelligence, 0:00:18.200 --> 0:00:22.400 which by twenty twenty five, according to some research, lack 0:00:22.440 --> 0:00:25.200 of talent or human failure, will be responsible for over 0:00:25.280 --> 0:00:29.280 half of significant cyber incidents that will be AI. 0:00:29.960 --> 0:00:32.199 Well, we are living in difficult times. We've got a 0:00:32.200 --> 0:00:35.520 perfect voice on all of this. Our next guest participated 0:00:35.520 --> 0:00:37.400 with you, Carol in the recent nine to eleven Memorial 0:00:37.440 --> 0:00:40.760 and Museum Summit on Security. A conversation with you on 0:00:40.920 --> 0:00:43.519 cyber threats and understanding the impact that they can have 0:00:43.680 --> 0:00:44.440 on organizations. 0:00:44.440 --> 0:00:46.000 And we do want to point out the museum supported 0:00:46.000 --> 0:00:48.159 by Michael our Bloomberg of course, founder of Bloomberg LP 0:00:48.200 --> 0:00:51.400 and Bloomberg Philanthropies. Great to be talking once again with 0:00:51.479 --> 0:00:54.160 Wendy Thomas. She's CEO at Secure Work. She's on Zoom 0:00:54.480 --> 0:00:56.920 from Atlanta, Georgia. Wendy, it is good to have you 0:00:57.000 --> 0:00:58.760 back with us. It does feel like, you know, we 0:00:58.800 --> 0:01:01.800 were prepping this morning and talking about you coming on, 0:01:01.960 --> 0:01:04.680 and it's like every day there's something in terms of 0:01:04.720 --> 0:01:08.440 cyber attacks set the landscape. It's become kind of part 0:01:08.480 --> 0:01:10.840 of the norm of our world. But talk to us 0:01:10.840 --> 0:01:14.040 about cyber threats, the kind of trends we are seeing, 0:01:14.120 --> 0:01:17.360 where they're coming from, the typical kinds of incidents, if 0:01:17.360 --> 0:01:18.440 you will, And welcome back, by. 0:01:18.319 --> 0:01:22.200 The way, thank you, glad to be here. Look, I mean, 0:01:22.400 --> 0:01:24.520 the average cost of a breach for a business in 0:01:24.560 --> 0:01:26.399 the US here to date this year is nearly ten 0:01:26.440 --> 0:01:30.840 million dollars apiece, and the global cost of cybercrime it's 0:01:30.880 --> 0:01:32.920 expected to be three x what it was just a 0:01:32.959 --> 0:01:35.960 decade ago. We're talking about a transfer of wealth in 0:01:36.000 --> 0:01:38.640 the wrong direction that's probably the greatest in our history. 0:01:39.240 --> 0:01:41.199 So when we look across the landscape, to your point, 0:01:41.280 --> 0:01:44.600 it is happening every single day. We're tracking about one 0:01:44.680 --> 0:01:48.160 hundred and thirty five active threat groups and their activities 0:01:48.200 --> 0:01:52.680 are bucketed primarily into traditional cybercrime right just looking to 0:01:52.800 --> 0:01:57.560 extract profits. Nation state activity, which is clearly up in 0:01:57.600 --> 0:02:01.720 the wake of geopolitical events, and then activists who are 0:02:01.760 --> 0:02:05.800 concerned about those events and making their voice heard through 0:02:06.280 --> 0:02:10.919 a variety of cyber attacks. So we see those activities continuing, 0:02:11.360 --> 0:02:15.000 and as those three sets of actors continue to leverage 0:02:15.320 --> 0:02:20.040 tried and true techniques scanning for software vulnerabilities and exploiting those, 0:02:20.400 --> 0:02:24.040 stealing credentials to log in and parade as someone else, 0:02:24.840 --> 0:02:28.000 and then sending those fishing emails which we've all received 0:02:28.200 --> 0:02:32.000 around certain topics. You click on those and then you've 0:02:32.000 --> 0:02:35.240 given them access to the castle. So we just see 0:02:35.280 --> 0:02:40.320 the same actors using the same attack vectors and continuing 0:02:40.320 --> 0:02:41.120 to be successful. 0:02:41.320 --> 0:02:47.000 Wendy, is there some sort of geographical profile of these 0:02:47.440 --> 0:02:50.000 different state and non state actors, I mean, is there 0:02:50.000 --> 0:02:51.400 a part of the world that they tend to come 0:02:51.400 --> 0:02:52.680 from or is it truly global? 0:02:54.840 --> 0:02:58.480 Well, we certainly see them sourcing talent around the globe, 0:02:58.760 --> 0:03:03.800 but in terms of state actors and cybercrime groups, we 0:03:03.880 --> 0:03:07.160 see those coming out of China and Russia primarily respectively, 0:03:07.560 --> 0:03:11.400 but certainly Aroan, North Korea and others are active on 0:03:11.440 --> 0:03:15.240 the cyber stage. But cyber criminal groups, which are purely 0:03:15.320 --> 0:03:19.280 profit motivated, they do source talent, and unfortunately they use 0:03:19.320 --> 0:03:22.280 some of the same business models that our businesses do 0:03:22.520 --> 0:03:27.760 ransomware as a service, where different groups specialize in either 0:03:28.280 --> 0:03:32.280 stealing those credentials, writing the malware, or other pieces of 0:03:32.320 --> 0:03:38.240 the supplied attack chain. They are able to specialize and 0:03:38.280 --> 0:03:42.400 then create business models for easy access for less sophisticated 0:03:42.800 --> 0:03:47.360 criminals to smash and grab and extract those rents. 0:03:47.640 --> 0:03:49.880 And they're moving more quickly right the time that they 0:03:50.120 --> 0:03:52.720 breach into your network and then the time they do 0:03:53.120 --> 0:03:56.080 some kind of attack. I remember a statistic when we talked. 0:03:56.080 --> 0:03:58.240 It's now I think something like less than a day, 0:03:58.320 --> 0:03:59.520 less than twenty four hours. 0:04:01.240 --> 0:04:04.160 It is on average this past year. It's from the 0:04:04.240 --> 0:04:07.400 time of intrusion to the time of breach, it's less 0:04:07.440 --> 0:04:10.440 than twenty four hours. It was about five days a 0:04:10.520 --> 0:04:13.920 year ago. And what we see, unfortunately, is that in 0:04:14.000 --> 0:04:17.760 about ten percent of those cases it's less than five hours. 0:04:18.279 --> 0:04:22.599 And so when we talk to CEOs and CIOs about 0:04:22.640 --> 0:04:27.560 protecting their organization, it really is all about time, time 0:04:27.640 --> 0:04:31.440 to detect, time to respond, and that's where the power 0:04:31.560 --> 0:04:36.080 of artificial intelligence really comes into play to turn that 0:04:36.200 --> 0:04:37.440 back against the adversary. 0:04:38.200 --> 0:04:40.560 How does the AI? How does that work? When it 0:04:40.560 --> 0:04:43.880 comes to AI? I mean, take us through the process here. 0:04:45.680 --> 0:04:47.839 Sure. So when you think about a technology like secure 0:04:47.880 --> 0:04:53.760 works has where we're using artificial intelligence to really model 0:04:53.800 --> 0:04:57.200 and amplify what we see in terms of adversary behavior 0:04:57.320 --> 0:04:59.720 inside of a network. So it's one thing to use 0:05:00.120 --> 0:05:03.360 ware to detect when they're deploying malware in an organization, 0:05:03.880 --> 0:05:06.920 but it's another thing to know that the CEO's behavior 0:05:07.000 --> 0:05:11.839 online or accessing certain information is unusual or anomalists. AI 0:05:11.960 --> 0:05:16.039 can help you not only understand what's anomalists, but put 0:05:16.080 --> 0:05:18.440 together much more data more quickly to say that it 0:05:18.480 --> 0:05:21.880 is both anomalists and malicious. And the ability to detect 0:05:21.880 --> 0:05:25.200 that quickly, to prioritize that, to raise it up to attention, 0:05:25.839 --> 0:05:28.560 and then for the system to orchestrate the response to 0:05:28.600 --> 0:05:33.400 protect the network is incredibly important. Speed security has to 0:05:33.440 --> 0:05:35.239 move the speed of business, Wendy. 0:05:35.279 --> 0:05:38.400 When you guys have either a new client or existing client, 0:05:38.520 --> 0:05:42.039 I mean tell us are most are a lot of organizations. 0:05:42.040 --> 0:05:45.200 It could be nonprofits as well as publicly held companies 0:05:45.320 --> 0:05:49.640 or small companies, midsized companies. Are they? I guess I'm 0:05:49.680 --> 0:05:53.400 asking are most institutions unprepared under prepared? 0:05:55.839 --> 0:06:01.040 Unfortunately, most organizations are more vulnerable than they and it 0:06:01.080 --> 0:06:03.560 may be that they've done a great job of protecting 0:06:03.640 --> 0:06:08.919 their own assets, but they are inextricably linked with other vendors, 0:06:08.960 --> 0:06:13.640 other suppliers, and thinking about your security as having to 0:06:13.720 --> 0:06:17.760 secure those who are interoperating with your organization and your 0:06:17.839 --> 0:06:21.080 systems as much as you secure your own castle is 0:06:21.120 --> 0:06:25.400 probably the most important. But the good news is that 0:06:25.680 --> 0:06:30.800 most cyber attacks, especially from cyber criminals, are absolutely opportunistic 0:06:31.320 --> 0:06:34.720 and so just creating some degree of friction that makes 0:06:34.720 --> 0:06:37.680 it more difficult for them to find that on locked 0:06:37.720 --> 0:06:41.240 back door goes a long way in terms of, if 0:06:41.320 --> 0:06:45.760 not preventing breaches, absolutely mitigating the impact to the business. No. 0:06:45.880 --> 0:06:48.000 I remember when we talked and I came in kind 0:06:48.040 --> 0:06:52.680 of hot and heavy into our studio on the Monday, 0:06:52.760 --> 0:06:55.560 was after sixty Minutes had aired a report. It was 0:06:55.600 --> 0:06:57.640 about the Five Eyes and this was the five security 0:06:57.680 --> 0:07:02.880 service heads or spy chiefs the US, UK, Canada, Australia, 0:07:02.960 --> 0:07:05.800 New Zealand, New Zealand and they had taken a trip 0:07:05.800 --> 0:07:08.360 to Silicon Valley and they were talking about the greatest 0:07:08.360 --> 0:07:11.400 threat to innovation in the countries of the Five Eyes, 0:07:11.440 --> 0:07:15.720 and that was the threat and specifically Chinese industrial espionage, 0:07:15.720 --> 0:07:18.720 which I think is kind of timely considering this week 0:07:18.760 --> 0:07:23.560 we've got the meeting of President g and President President Biden. Frontemies. 0:07:23.600 --> 0:07:26.200 If you will need each other but also are very 0:07:26.200 --> 0:07:28.360 wary of each other, I think is a safe way 0:07:28.400 --> 0:07:32.800 of saying. But this idea of digital attacks, cyber attacks 0:07:33.320 --> 0:07:38.360 about getting into an organization industrial espionage, whether it's IP, 0:07:39.160 --> 0:07:41.600 you know, strategy at a company. I mean, is this 0:07:41.680 --> 0:07:43.080 happening more and more. 0:07:44.760 --> 0:07:48.320 So? China is absolutely the most active nation state that 0:07:48.360 --> 0:07:52.000 we see from a cyber perspective, and we watched them 0:07:52.000 --> 0:07:55.160 evolve over time. So in the past, those threat groups 0:07:55.200 --> 0:07:58.280 have had a reputation for sort of smash and grab, 0:07:58.760 --> 0:08:02.400 so steal that intellectual property around something that's important of 0:08:02.520 --> 0:08:07.720 electric battery development or even agricultural innovation and scale, and 0:08:07.800 --> 0:08:10.480 so that emphasis was really about just achieving the objective 0:08:11.000 --> 0:08:14.360 as quickly as possible. But what we've seen more recently 0:08:14.480 --> 0:08:16.840 is that a growing number of Chinese threat groups have 0:08:16.960 --> 0:08:21.400 demonstrated an increasing focus on stealth and operational security and 0:08:21.440 --> 0:08:25.520 their intrusions, and so it is often difficult for organizations 0:08:25.560 --> 0:08:27.800 to know that the Chinese are in fact inside of 0:08:27.840 --> 0:08:32.240 their networks and able to over a sustained period of 0:08:32.280 --> 0:08:36.920 time not only collect information, but determine what information is 0:08:37.000 --> 0:08:40.040 most valuable and important to them, and do so leaving 0:08:40.040 --> 0:08:44.600 a minimal intrusion footprint by leveraging a set of defense 0:08:44.679 --> 0:08:50.080 evasion techniques that we've seen increasingly in place. 0:08:50.920 --> 0:08:52.640 Hey, one thing, Wendy, I always like to ask people 0:08:52.679 --> 0:08:56.360 in your positions are just how you conduct yourself as 0:08:56.400 --> 0:09:01.080 a normal consumer online. You know what is possible, you 0:09:01.120 --> 0:09:03.720 know what to watch out for, of course, but you 0:09:03.760 --> 0:09:07.600 also probably do online banking, and you probably have many, 0:09:07.640 --> 0:09:11.760 many passwords for consumer facing websites. How do you do it? 0:09:14.320 --> 0:09:18.680 I do have a little extra vigilance around my online 0:09:18.720 --> 0:09:22.520 activities and persona as you might imagine. First and foremost, 0:09:22.559 --> 0:09:26.920 I do use separate devices for doing things like online banking. 0:09:27.520 --> 0:09:29.800 One of the most important things you can do is 0:09:29.880 --> 0:09:34.880 absolutely difficult and unique passwords for your online activity. I'm 0:09:34.880 --> 0:09:38.960 sure all of you have received emails where your password 0:09:39.040 --> 0:09:43.160 has been stolen, and therefore if it is able to 0:09:43.200 --> 0:09:46.640 access any other application online that you're using, it's really 0:09:46.679 --> 0:09:50.360 important that you have a diversity of passwords and that 0:09:50.400 --> 0:09:54.120 you have secured the location of those passwords. No putting 0:09:54.160 --> 0:09:56.560 those in your phone notes or that type of thing 0:09:56.600 --> 0:10:00.720 when they're accessible. So for me, it's those things plus 0:10:00.800 --> 0:10:04.680 just vigilance being very thoughtful around the emails that I get. 0:10:05.280 --> 0:10:07.920 I rarely click on links even though they appear to 0:10:07.920 --> 0:10:11.040 be from family members or others. But it's just about 0:10:11.080 --> 0:10:16.199 a heightened awareness and carefulness in terms of your digital. 0:10:15.880 --> 0:10:18.040 Foot two factor authentication always. 0:10:19.200 --> 0:10:22.240 Always, there are very inexpensive ways for you to be 0:10:22.280 --> 0:10:25.160 able to do that that aren't just necessarily your your 0:10:25.200 --> 0:10:28.240 phone versus your iPad, but things like ub keys and 0:10:28.280 --> 0:10:31.720 others are are a great way to just provide that 0:10:31.840 --> 0:10:34.800 extra layer of friction. As I said, lock that back 0:10:34.840 --> 0:10:38.080 door and that cyber criminal will move to a much easier, 0:10:39.080 --> 0:10:39.840 easier target. 0:10:39.920 --> 0:10:43.640 What about like you mentioned, strong and unique passwords, I will, 0:10:43.760 --> 0:10:46.400 I will. I've used for a decade a password manager. 0:10:46.440 --> 0:10:50.080 It is the most painful process. I will tell you 0:10:50.160 --> 0:10:54.000 that do you use a password It's the only way 0:10:54.000 --> 0:10:56.199 to It's the only way to have strong and unique passwords. 0:10:56.400 --> 0:10:57.880 I mean, do you do is that? Do you agree? 0:10:57.960 --> 0:10:59.079 Is that the only way to do it? 0:10:59.080 --> 0:11:02.040 It is a great way is to use a password manager, 0:11:02.040 --> 0:11:04.640 but even those are not full proof. So again, as 0:11:04.679 --> 0:11:09.080 you think about defense and layers of your environment, so 0:11:09.160 --> 0:11:14.280 that physical multi factor authentication in addition to the password managers. 0:11:14.760 --> 0:11:18.520 It's just that diversification of multiple steps in the process, 0:11:18.559 --> 0:11:21.760 which to your point is not very fun, but it 0:11:21.840 --> 0:11:25.680 is a way to prevent your identity or or your 0:11:25.800 --> 0:11:28.480 financial access to be stolen. 0:11:28.559 --> 0:11:30.040 You know how much fun I am, Carol. I once 0:11:30.080 --> 0:11:32.840 got password managers form my parents for Christmas one year. 0:11:32.920 --> 0:11:33.960 That's how much fun I am. 0:11:34.679 --> 0:11:38.800 You are a good son, That's really Oh my god. 0:11:38.840 --> 0:11:41.079 We do a lot of talking about passwords and protecting, 0:11:41.440 --> 0:11:44.640 certainly at home. What are there you know, it's interesting 0:11:45.200 --> 0:11:47.000 a lot of your businesses in the US, but your 0:11:47.040 --> 0:11:50.760 global and I'm just curious. You know, in terms of 0:11:50.920 --> 0:11:53.520 the growth of your company you're publicly held, you know 0:11:53.720 --> 0:11:56.959 where is you know where is the business side growing 0:11:57.000 --> 0:11:58.120 the most for you guys. 0:12:00.120 --> 0:12:02.640 So you're right. So cure Works is about forty percent 0:12:03.280 --> 0:12:06.280 outside of the US, and we definitely see the fastest 0:12:06.320 --> 0:12:09.960 growth outside of the US in terms of security maturity. 0:12:10.000 --> 0:12:14.040 A lot of US organizations, especially financial institutions, were early 0:12:14.080 --> 0:12:19.719 adopters of cybersecurity defenses for both reasons of protecting their 0:12:19.760 --> 0:12:23.120 business as well as for compliance reasons, and we see 0:12:23.120 --> 0:12:28.240 that adoption accelerating pretty rapidly outside of the US, not 0:12:28.480 --> 0:12:31.520 just as new laws are put in place around requiring 0:12:31.559 --> 0:12:35.680 certain cybersecurity elements and data protection elements, but also just 0:12:35.720 --> 0:12:40.240 as those organizations come under attack and realize how important 0:12:40.240 --> 0:12:42.600 it is to make the investment, and that making the 0:12:42.640 --> 0:12:47.360 investment and prevention is much less expensive than a breach. 0:12:47.840 --> 0:12:49.400 And I am curious too. We talked a little bit 0:12:49.440 --> 0:12:52.199 about AI, you know, and I know when we first talked, 0:12:52.240 --> 0:12:56.559 we got into this, you know, and I kicked off 0:12:56.920 --> 0:13:01.000 our conversation about Gartner. And by twenty twenty five, lack 0:13:01.040 --> 0:13:03.280 of talent or human failure will be responsible for over 0:13:03.320 --> 0:13:06.960 half of significant cyber incidents. By twenty twenty five, the 0:13:06.960 --> 0:13:11.880 consumerization of AI enabled fraud will fundamentally change enterprise attack service, 0:13:12.120 --> 0:13:15.400 driving more outsourcing of enterprise trust and focus on security 0:13:15.520 --> 0:13:19.480 education and awareness. So AI, the good, the bad, and ugly, 0:13:19.559 --> 0:13:22.400 Like we all like to talk about, how is AI 0:13:22.520 --> 0:13:26.040 being helpful for you guys as you move forward, how 0:13:26.120 --> 0:13:30.160 is it also the preventing or presenting new challenges in 0:13:30.240 --> 0:13:32.480 terms of digital attack cyber attacks? 0:13:33.960 --> 0:13:36.400 Well, as you and I have discussed, I absolutely view 0:13:36.600 --> 0:13:39.560 AI in the lens of the power and the peril. 0:13:40.360 --> 0:13:44.640 And when I think about the power, it absolutely has 0:13:44.760 --> 0:13:51.280 enabled us to process protections for organizations faster. You can 0:13:51.280 --> 0:13:55.440 collect more data, filter through more quickly, translate chat on 0:13:55.480 --> 0:13:59.679 the dark web more quickly, and understand context around planned attacks. 0:14:00.160 --> 0:14:02.720 All of those things are really powerful to again, as 0:14:02.800 --> 0:14:05.800 I said, to text something quickly and respond in an 0:14:05.840 --> 0:14:09.520 automated way so that that dwell time of twenty four 0:14:09.559 --> 0:14:13.360 hours or five hours it doesn't translate into a breach 0:14:13.440 --> 0:14:16.680 for you. The paral side of that is we certainly 0:14:16.760 --> 0:14:21.520 see the ability for adversaries to leverage AI to attack, 0:14:22.160 --> 0:14:26.520 and whether it's the use of things like deep fakes 0:14:26.680 --> 0:14:31.600 or even just making those phishing emails more believable, more 0:14:31.720 --> 0:14:36.600 visually accurate. The language is exactly the way that your 0:14:37.680 --> 0:14:40.160 institution would speak to you. They might have a little 0:14:40.160 --> 0:14:43.240 bit of personalized information in there. And so when we 0:14:43.280 --> 0:14:49.080 think about the thread actor community sharing learnings around how 0:14:49.120 --> 0:14:53.440 to use AI, answering questions and forums with each other 0:14:53.600 --> 0:14:57.080 about how to best leverage this new technology to attack, 0:14:57.640 --> 0:15:04.400 we absolutely have to as a as a set of individuals, citizens, companies, 0:15:04.600 --> 0:15:10.120 security companies, and as governments think about collaborating together as 0:15:10.160 --> 0:15:14.840 a community to advance both AI and our protections against 0:15:14.880 --> 0:15:18.560 its use against those of us who are trying to 0:15:18.640 --> 0:15:19.560 use it in the right way. 0:15:20.160 --> 0:15:25.640 We're speaking right now with Wendy Thomas. She is the 0:15:25.680 --> 0:15:29.160 CEO at Secure Works, joining us on zoom from Atlanta. Wendy, 0:15:29.640 --> 0:15:32.000 before we let you go, give me an idea of 0:15:32.000 --> 0:15:35.000 the way that budgets have shifted around IT spending or 0:15:35.040 --> 0:15:38.080 security spending such as this just in your time at 0:15:38.120 --> 0:15:40.920 Secure Works, you know in terms of percentages, like when 0:15:40.920 --> 0:15:44.080 the c suite is planning out the next year, next 0:15:44.080 --> 0:15:46.560 five years, how much of that funding now, how much 0:15:46.560 --> 0:15:50.000 of their spend is going to keeping their own systems safe. 0:15:51.720 --> 0:15:54.600 So we think about it in terms of IT spend 0:15:54.600 --> 0:15:57.040 as a percent of revenue, and then security spend as 0:15:57.080 --> 0:16:00.080 a relative percentage of that it spend. And in the 0:15:59.880 --> 0:16:03.360 times of everyone digitizing their business, and particularly when we 0:16:03.400 --> 0:16:08.200 went through remote work during COVID, that digitization spend accelerated. 0:16:08.720 --> 0:16:11.640 But what we've seen particularly is that the security portion 0:16:11.720 --> 0:16:14.440 of that it spend, it can now be as much 0:16:14.480 --> 0:16:18.040 as forty or fifty percent of that which is just 0:16:18.080 --> 0:16:20.520 a function right now of where the investment needs to 0:16:20.560 --> 0:16:24.160 go relative to the threat in the landscape. That will 0:16:24.200 --> 0:16:27.640 normalize over time, but it is definitely growing as a 0:16:27.920 --> 0:16:30.640 as a percent of revenue. Just given the environment in 0:16:30.680 --> 0:16:33.000 which all these organizations are operating. 0:16:33.720 --> 0:16:35.560 It's interesting to see the way that it's shifted. 0:16:35.760 --> 0:16:36.080 Yeah. 0:16:36.120 --> 0:16:40.720 Absolutely, I mean anecdotally, Carol. I mean, I don't know 0:16:40.720 --> 0:16:43.160 what it's it's gone from like front and center in 0:16:43.240 --> 0:16:46.640 terms of the way that we're trained to think about 0:16:47.000 --> 0:16:49.600 incoming emails, the way we're training to stay safe online. 0:16:49.640 --> 0:16:52.040 I mean, it's such a big part of what companies 0:16:52.080 --> 0:16:54.600 do these days, because, as you mentioned, the risks are 0:16:54.680 --> 0:16:55.280 so huge. 0:16:55.520 --> 0:16:58.280 Yeah, I think about it. You know, it's just everything 0:16:58.360 --> 0:17:01.320 is digital, everything is you know, it's so easy. There's 0:17:01.320 --> 0:17:04.359 probably so many entry points. And you're right, Danma mean, 0:17:04.440 --> 0:17:08.560 our security is pretty extreme, but you understand why, hey, 0:17:09.400 --> 0:17:12.440 in terms of the nitty gritty of your business. And 0:17:12.560 --> 0:17:14.800 you and I talked about this before, but since we've 0:17:14.840 --> 0:17:17.240 got you back again, we're in this. It was a 0:17:17.280 --> 0:17:20.480 funny market day, it was kind of quiet. We're waiting 0:17:20.520 --> 0:17:22.440 for a lot of things. When you look at the 0:17:22.480 --> 0:17:26.920 outlook six to twelve months, how does the economy feel 0:17:26.960 --> 0:17:28.919 for you guys? And you obviously have a lot of 0:17:28.960 --> 0:17:32.760 clients that play into so many different sectors of the economy. 0:17:32.880 --> 0:17:34.760 So how does it look or what are you hearing 0:17:34.760 --> 0:17:37.600 from them? 0:17:37.320 --> 0:17:41.920 We have seen pretty similar behavior, i'd say, throughout this year, 0:17:42.040 --> 0:17:46.080 so nothing has changed in recent weeks per se. But 0:17:46.160 --> 0:17:50.080 what we see is a general level of optimistic caution. 0:17:51.000 --> 0:17:54.160 So it's not that businesses are not investing. They absolutely are, 0:17:54.880 --> 0:17:59.119 whether it's in security or digital transformation or other expansions 0:17:59.160 --> 0:18:01.639 of their business, but they are just doing so with 0:18:01.720 --> 0:18:05.480 a level of scrutiny around that spend to ensure that 0:18:05.680 --> 0:18:08.879 one they have the right partner and they do a 0:18:08.920 --> 0:18:13.840 lot of that through referenceable other customers. Two that they 0:18:13.880 --> 0:18:17.439 can measure the return on that investment, and three they 0:18:17.480 --> 0:18:20.760 have flexibility over time for that investment to remain valuable 0:18:20.800 --> 0:18:24.200 to their business as it can evolve with their changes 0:18:24.280 --> 0:18:25.960 and strategy and approach. 0:18:26.640 --> 0:18:29.000 All right, well, good stuff is always. Thank you so much. 0:18:29.160 --> 0:18:30.600 I'm so glad we were able to check in with 0:18:30.680 --> 0:18:34.040 you again and really appreciate all the time. Wendy be well. 0:18:34.080 --> 0:18:36.600 Wendy Thomas. She's the CEO of Secure Works, joining us 0:18:36.640 --> 0:18:38.400 on Zoom from Atlanta, Georgia,