WEBVTT - Okta CEO Talks AWS Outages, Growing AI Threats

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<v Speaker 1>Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news, aws services are back

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<v Speaker 1>up and running. This morning's outage underscoring though the needs

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<v Speaker 1>for cybersecurity, I'll enter Octa as one player. The company

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<v Speaker 1>says it's business has grown alongside the acceleration of cloud services.

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<v Speaker 1>It now says it's on the lookout for rising AI

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<v Speaker 1>enabled threats. Joining me now is Tom McKennon, Octa CEO. Look,

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<v Speaker 1>anyone can have an outage, but if you're providing cloud

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<v Speaker 1>sources for thirty percent of you know, Corporate America and beyond,

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<v Speaker 1>it's a little concerning. What went through your head when

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<v Speaker 1>you saw this this morning?

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<v Speaker 2>Todd Well, I think about the world as layered into

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<v Speaker 2>different critical services. Cloud infrastructure is one critical service, and

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<v Speaker 2>as the lean, independent, neutral identity company, we're building this

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<v Speaker 2>identity service for the entire world, whether that's enterprises, whether

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<v Speaker 2>that's consumers, whether that's people building AI agents. We want

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<v Speaker 2>to be that identity infrastructure. It's important for CyberSecure, it's

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<v Speaker 2>important for business continuity, and it has to be reliable.

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<v Speaker 1>So how do you make sure that it's reliable.

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<v Speaker 2>Then a lot of redundancy and a lot of focus

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<v Speaker 2>and a lot of making sure we do exactly what

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<v Speaker 2>customers expect, whether it's backups, redundancy, and monitoring it continuously.

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<v Speaker 2>It's very important for us.

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<v Speaker 1>Now you are growing very very substantially. What you've ate

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<v Speaker 1>other people in San Francisco and how.

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<v Speaker 2>Many thousand around the world, six thousand global employees doing

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<v Speaker 2>a great job for our customers every day.

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<v Speaker 1>Well love to hear it, and how I hope they are.

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<v Speaker 1>How fast are you adding customers? And what's your pitch

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<v Speaker 1>versus another security identity security company?

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's an interesting perspective we have, and there's different

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<v Speaker 2>perspectives on. Some vendors want to sell you everything across

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<v Speaker 2>the entire application and platform stack. Some vendors want to

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<v Speaker 2>sell you everything across cybersecurity. We focus on identity, and

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<v Speaker 2>we focus on verifying who the people are in your company,

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<v Speaker 2>who the people are coming to your website as customers

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<v Speaker 2>or prospects, and now really with AI agents, we make

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<v Speaker 2>sure that that identity service is continuous across everything you're

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<v Speaker 2>trying to automate in your business with AI too, and

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<v Speaker 2>that's our focus. And beyond that, we focus on connecting

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<v Speaker 2>to everything else in the technology stack and letting our

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<v Speaker 2>customers choose what they want to use.

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<v Speaker 1>What is the scale of AI agents Okta expects in

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<v Speaker 1>the next twelve months.

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<v Speaker 2>It's starting out very strong, but it's going to be

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<v Speaker 2>growing significantly. When you think about what companies can automate

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<v Speaker 2>with these AI agents, how they can improve their top

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<v Speaker 2>line revenue, how they can cut costs, how they can

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<v Speaker 2>be more efficient, how they can serve their customers better,

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<v Speaker 2>it's got tremendous potential.

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<v Speaker 1>What about your exposure to chat GPT user growth? You

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<v Speaker 1>know how much of that you have and how is

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<v Speaker 1>it changing how you do business?

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<v Speaker 2>Well, I think chat GPT is the perfect example of

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<v Speaker 2>how much can be automated with AI. And when every

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<v Speaker 2>company looks at that, they think, hey, we can make

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<v Speaker 2>our customer experience better with adding chat GPT like capabilities,

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<v Speaker 2>we can make our employees more productive. So it's really

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<v Speaker 2>driving them to deploy, to deploy, to deploy, deploy more

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<v Speaker 2>AI technology, and that means more identity is required. Those

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<v Speaker 2>connections have to be secure, those connections have to be reliable.

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<v Speaker 2>So it's really an exciting time for the industry.

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<v Speaker 1>Is it still in the land grab phase? And if

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<v Speaker 1>that's the case, which I think I think it is,

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<v Speaker 1>then how do you make sure that you're the one

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<v Speaker 1>doing the grabbing.

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<v Speaker 2>Well, I think it's really important that everyone understands how

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<v Speaker 2>important identity management is to rolling up AI and AI agents.

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<v Speaker 1>I mean they only need one person to manage their identity, right.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, Well, it's important that the identity service connects to everything.

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<v Speaker 2>It connects to every application in the back end, every

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<v Speaker 2>development platform. One of the things about AI agents particularly

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<v Speaker 2>is how you build these things is changing very rapidly.

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<v Speaker 2>So we give our customers the ability to make sure

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<v Speaker 2>they have security, governance and visibility, and then let them

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<v Speaker 2>choose the rapidly evolving platforms behind the scenes to whatever

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<v Speaker 2>fits their needs. That's really core to everything we do,

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<v Speaker 2>that choice and that flexibility.

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<v Speaker 1>What did the Google wiz palaw All to cyber Arc

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<v Speaker 1>deal mean.

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<v Speaker 2>For you, Well, it's a different worldview. I think companies

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<v Speaker 2>try to consolidate around everything in cyber We think that

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<v Speaker 2>that's not the right approach. We think the right approach

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<v Speaker 2>is to consolidate on identity because it preserves the choice

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<v Speaker 2>of other cyber tools for customers. They're not locked into

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<v Speaker 2>one endpoint tool or one network security tool. They can

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<v Speaker 2>choose whatever is best for their business. And we'll keep

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<v Speaker 2>them more secure, especially as the thread environment is rapidly evolving.

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<v Speaker 2>The ability to choose the best cyber tool and not

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<v Speaker 2>be locked into a stack from one monolithic vendor is

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<v Speaker 2>very powerful and it's resonating with our customers. They cut

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<v Speaker 2>costs and standardize their identity workflows and use cases around Octa,

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<v Speaker 2>and then choose everything else around the rest of cyber

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<v Speaker 2>to best fit their needs.

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<v Speaker 1>All right, well, thank you so much for coming in today.

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<v Speaker 1>Told that is Todd McKinnon, CEO of Octa