[music] Parag Thakore: I would say encourage security buyers and security people to also start thinking about performance characteristics and optimization and whether that infrastructure can deliver that for them or not. And they don't need to be experts, it's a very simple question in terms of, "Hey, can I get this high-performance connectivity from this Cloud security that I'm purchasing or that security vendor that I'm looking for?" So I think ease of operations and that high-performance connectivity is something that security should also look at as a criteria when they look at security platforms.
[music] Producer1: Hello and welcome to Security Visionaries. You just heard from today's guest, Parag Thakore, SVP of Borderless WAN at Netskope. As the evolution of business models continues, CIOs need to start thinking about converging the responsibilities of networking and security teams and simplifying the end user journey. Netskope is doing just that by collaborating with SD-WAN leaders to deliver fast, secure, and cost-effective access for branch and remote users. Before we dive into Parag's interview, here's a brief word from our sponsor.
Producer2: The Security Visionaries Podcast is powered by the team at Netskope. At Netskope, we are redefining Cloud, data and network security with a platform that provides optimized access and zero trust security for people, devices, and data anywhere they go. To learn more about how Netskope helps customers be ready for anything on their SASE journey, visit netskope.com.
Producer1: Without further ado, please enjoy Episode 21 of Security Visionaries with Parag Thakore, SVP of Borderless WAN at Netskope and your host, Mike Anderson.
Mike Anderson: Welcome to today's episode of the Security Visionaries Podcast. I'm your host, Mike Anderson. I'm the Chief Digital & Information Officer here at Netskope. Today I'm excited to be joined by one of my peers here, Parag Thakore. Parag, how are you doing today?
Parag Thakore: I'm doing great. Thank you Mike and thanks for inviting me.
Mike Anderson: Yeah, absolutely. Obviously, you joined us almost a year ago from our acquisition of Infiot and you now serve as our senior vice president of our borderless SD-WAN group. Tell us a little bit about your journey and then your journey into Netskope and a little about your background in the networking and security space.
Parag Thakore: Sure, Mike. So my background actually in networking goes back in the Cisco days where there were service providers that I would deal with who would use MPLS networks. And actually, if you look at the MPLS trend, it started more from voice, VOIP. So when data networks and voice networks were converging together, that's where the MPLS market was created and I was a part of that journey creating the ISR Gen 1, ISR Gen 2, which were like branch office routers. And until 2009-2010, MPLS was exploding, which is where everyone was buying MPLS for many-to-many connectivity needs.
Parag Thakore: And suddenly, at that point there was a inflection point where if you look at Cisco, they were acquiring a lot of voice and video endpoint companies and that demands very high video, very high bandwidth for voice and video to run on that. So if you look at our video call, each video stream would be 10 megs and MPLS link would be one and a half megs and it would cost $400 a month. So that's where we started thinking from more of like, "How do we help customers so that it can be more cost-effective for them to run these networks?" Because you can't upgrade your MPLS bandwidth to that extent because that was gonna be really expensive.
Parag Thakore: So I left Cisco at that point and I became the VP of products and also the founding member of a company called VeloCloud Networks, which is one of the market-leading software-defined WAN companies. The word SD-WAN didn't exist. We created that market. Right now it's a pretty big market, people know about it. So from there, what SD-WAN gave is this whole commodity bandwidth, commodity broadband links, and you could run your networks over it rather than MPLS and it gave you that reliability over Internet links and easily manage your branch offices.
Parag Thakore: What it didn't give you and which is where we started Infiot was more about this many-to-many connectivity because what we saw was the enterprise perimeter was expanding. In fact, I remember a conversation where I was presenting SD-WAN and the customer said, "Man, I didn't understand a single word of SD-WAN." And to look into the problem, we said, "Okay." You go out to their factory floor and they point to this big machine and they say, "That's my new branch and inside the branch I have sensors." Or if you look at all of us working from home today, those are extensions of your branch offices or you look at the multicloud environment. So what we noticed is SD-WAN was not designed for this many-to-many world and that's where we got out after the acquisition. VeloCloud got acquired by VMWare. Right after the acquisition we got out and started Infiot and then from there on, Infiot got acquired by Netskope as of last year.
Mike Anderson: That's great. It's been a... And it's an amazing journey. I heard that a lot of the, what we see as the software-defined WAN companies out there today have roots back to that same Cisco team you were on years ago before even founding VeloCloud. So a lot of good talent in that team for sure.
Mike Anderson: So probing in a little bit more, I know we, when we looked at the market obviously from a Netskope standpoint, we've been looking at SASE and for the longest time we were delivering one side of the equation, which was the Cloud security stack and then obviously, as you were looking at the SD-WAN business or the borderless SD-WAN business, that many-to-many, it made a nice coupling to bring together as companies look at the whole "What does a single vendor SASE market look like as we go forward in the future?"
Mike Anderson: So you've been here almost a year now. So talk to me a little bit about your current role at Netskope and what are some of the things that you're really focused on? What are some of the big things you feel like now with this merge of security service edge and SD-WAN, if you think about the SASE architecture, what are the cool things you're working on maybe in that context of that many-to-many you just brought up?
Parag Thakore: Yeah, so I'm the senior vice president for the borderless SD-WAN group, also including SASE where one of our theme is to deliver the same level of consistent performance and secure connectivity everywhere. Whether Parag or Mike as a user is in our office or we are in a cafe or we are in a home office, no matter where we are, now as a single company, we are able to deliver that high-performance and secure connectivity for all these use cases. So really building that platform play wherein ease of use is super critical because you're now dealing with the network team and the security team together and how do you bring these things together so that it's very simple, it's agile, it's cost-effective so it brings your cost down. But more importantly, if you think from a use case perspective, it's all the way from office to the cafe to your home or your multicloud environment and delivering that performance and secure connectivity for all these use cases.
Mike Anderson: That's great. You know I geek out. We've had so many conversations. I geek out on all the technology that you brought to the table to combine with what we have here at Netskope. A lot of our listeners may be going, "Okay, I thought our theme this year was security as a team sport." And I think that you hit the nail in the head when you talked about this really starts to converge the networking and security capabilities in a platform approach. What's your take on the whole notion of security as a team sport?
Parag Thakore: Yeah, I think absolutely. So there's a bit of interesting history there. If you look back in 2010-2013, when we started this SD-WAN journey, at the same time, if you look at it, Netskope and few other vendors were on that Cloud security journey doing the SSE stack. Now back then, one of the notion of SD-WAN in 2010s was, "Okay, I'll give you a direct Internet breakout from every single branch." Now in that process, I was party to that problem, by the way, where I said, "You know what, we will give you good enough security in every single branch." And good enough security is never good enough. We all know that.
Parag Thakore: And with time it has been proven that if you distribute security down to every single branch office, probably it's much more harder to manage because one, it is super distributed and it's very complex from manageability perspective and on the other spectrum, people were backhauling their traffic just for security needs. There were two solutions in the market: Either backhaul and you have performance issues or you bring good enough security down to the branch office, which again has certain challenges for the network vendors. Right now you need to manage distributed security. That's where I think this whole notion of SASE and SSE sweetly splits in because with time it's been proven that Cloud security and SASE in particular is the right way to build your network and security together and these teams have to come along and they have to partner together to build this right framework and architecture.
Mike Anderson: 100%. I've seen this playing out a lot too 'cause you start thinking about, particularly SD-WAN, if you don't have the right partnership between network and security, you could even bypass the security controls that your security team is invested in to complete that whole SASE story. You could have SD-WAN connecting wide open to the Internet and traffic's not even riding over your security service edge, that Cloud edge for security so that it requires close coordination. So what advice would you have for networking teams that you've worked with in the past as they think about security? I know you talked about it becomes heavy at the edge but what advice would you have? Any tips you could offer?
Parag Thakore: Yeah, you need to look at, sit down with your security peers and come down with set of requirements that you want to dive from network security. You have to sit down as a group and decide what you want, what the priorities are and come up with that right architectural framework.
Mike Anderson: 100%. It's funny, I joked, I made a prediction on a previous podcast that we were gonna have a new job title emerge 'cause I've seen 80% of organizations that still reports into the CIO even though they may also obviously, sit on committees on the board. At the same time though, I've seen CIOs converging their infrastructure team and their security team back together, which is funny 'cause it's almost like a re-convergence 'cause that if you look at where the security budget originally came from 20 years ago, security originally sat as part of the networking group. And so the prediction was we're gonna have a title called Chief Information and Security Officer and we're basically, you've got both of those but we'll see if that plays out.
Mike Anderson: You brought up a really good point. As I think about it, oftentimes our teams end up getting organized not necessarily by capabilities but organized by tools that we own versus those capabilities. And obviously, as we know, the only constant in life is change, and so what's happening is that those capabilities are converging and the tools are converging at the same time and we have to make sure that as the capabilities and the tools converge, we also think about how those teams converge to drive more efficiency in the organization. So the operating models have to change inside our companies as well.
Parag Thakore: And I think Mike, that is where you brought up like, "What's the exciting work we are doing?" That exact convergence is what we are working on because network guys care about high-performance connectivity, security guys care about airtight security. How about we give you both? And how about we give you both not just for one use case but we give it to you for all use cases? And you get all these people on the table and say you can get this one single converged architecture, which is Cloud-native, Cloud-ready for your Cloud apps, for your on-prem apps and across the board and do it for both sides.
Mike Anderson: 100%. I think a lot of times too we get into, you talked about originally you had to educate the market on what SD-WAN was, right? And I know we've gone through that as well 'cause Security Service Edge is a new term in the last two years that the market's had to absorb as well. It always goes back to if I'm a business leader or a CIO, I need to be able to have secure Internet connectivity in the most efficient cost-effective way possible, right? And that is really what SD-WAN brings me and now I can add in the most cost-efficient and secure way possible to get traffic from any device to any device. So I think that becomes a very good message that can be taken out of the market as we think about what does SASE deliver and also SASE in the context, obviously, of what we do here at Netskope.
Mike Anderson: When you look at those functions and responsibilities, obviously, as we see convergence, you start to have Wi-Fi in these devices, you start to have, what would be considered traditional LAN capabilities. How do you think companies should think about that from an operating model standpoint? How should that play in?
Parag Thakore: Yeah, I think you need flexibility from an operating model perspective. The old school models from a business model perspective doesn't fly. You see people wanna deliver services at subscription. People, do they have flexibility on per user pricing? Some people do a bandwidth-based pricing. So I think it is all converging, it's all coming together, but that flexibility and agility is critical from that perspective.
Mike Anderson: We talked about the advice you'd give to people on the networking team. What advice would you give to CIOs and then the, obviously, the security leaders that report to them, the CISOs or even CISOs that report outside the CIO. What advice would you give to them around how they can help as they think about these evolving operating models and changing and converging of capabilities?
Parag Thakore: Yeah, if you look at it like you're chatting with some of the well-known analysts and from a CIO perspective, they need to make SASE a priority. And as they make SASE a priority, it forces down things down underneath because if you're looking for a better simplified network and if you're looking for something that is secure and gives you that high-performance connectivity, SASE has to be one of the top priorities, which it is by the way, when in fact, one of the analysts did a recent survey where SASE was top three technologies across the board, across CIOs and we're talking about not just network security, we're talking about across the board.
Parag Thakore: So we are seeing that and as CIOs make that SASE priority, they make sure that "Hey... Yeah, we could be dual vendor" because not everything is gonna change overnight. So it's gonna be crawl, walk, run phase where initially you are going to have dual vendor strategy and as you simplify things and go into that single vendor side of things, things will start to converge. So how do you reorganize your teams, how do you assign budgets to the right teams so that that decision becomes more simplified? So have that owner and to your point, have that one person own the decision and there is this new title that is emerging. I think that is critical because when that happens, there is somebody who is accountable for that project and he needs to make sure that both sides are driven equally to make that project successful.
Mike Anderson: 100%. And I think one of the things that always comes up, it's like a lot of people when we pivoted to this work-from-home model, a lot of people that had SD-WAN projects, there was a number of people that deprioritized them. There were some that prioritized them higher. I always told people like, "Look, when you go back into your office, if you don't have SD-WAN, all that video traffic that's running on Teams today is now gonna be hair pinned over your network and those circuits are gonna get overloaded." And I guarantee you, the first day someone goes back in the office, you're gonna hear people complaining about "Why is my Microsoft Teams or my Zoom call worse in the office than it is at home?" And it's definitely changed.
Mike Anderson: If we think about the pandemic, we had this, it accelerated people moving to more digital capabilities where those were things they built themselves in public Cloud or they went to SaaS applications. We saw this explosion in digital media, digital engagement, video rich capabilities, and then we also saw obviously hybrid work, which I believe the latest stat we've seen is roughly about 70% of companies expect to maintain a hybrid work policy going forward for how they drive work. How has that changed your view? Maybe how did that influence as you were building Infiot and then now what you're doing at Netskope, how did that impact how SD-WAN had been originally thought of? What problems does it help me solve now in this new hybrid world and these new workloads and things running in public Cloud and the video piece, all those things that we just described?
Parag Thakore: Yeah. So Mike, if you look at it, there are two fundamental challenges. One is what I call as a architectural challenge and the second is what I call as a functionality level challenge. If you take the first one, which is an architectural challenge, you are spot on. What I tell people is you cannot patch your way to a better network or better security. It was like a hodgepodge. When COVID happened, people started working from home, the IT team was scrambling, they did what they could do and put things together. Just throw more resources, throw more servers, you just throw things at the problem. But was that the right way to design that to begin with?
Parag Thakore: And if you look back, I think what you mentioned is absolutely right wherein you go to a branch office and you get SD-WAN and when you go home, SD-WAN vendors were selling appliances for home users, at the same time there was ZTNA client, at the same time there was an SSE client, at the same time you had multiple agents sitting on your laptop doing things and you have a box at your home to give you that high-performance connectivity. So if you think from a multi-product perspective, these are too many products. So from Netskope perspective, what we have done something which is really good from a platform perspective, firstly, it's one software, one platform, one policy, one architecture, wherein the person could be at home sitting on a laptop with an endpoint agent, there is one agent that runs on your laptop, which gives you both endpoint SD-WAN and it gives you this SSE functionality and ZTNA functionality all coming in from a single agent.
Parag Thakore: So that way you don't have this multiple point products, you don't have to carry hardware with you wherever you go. You can get this SD-WAN functionality running on your laptop as a full-blown software. Plus you have the same experience in the branch office because as the same user goes into a branch office, you don't want, again, a fragmented experience. So if you look at this example that you just brought up, wherein a Zoom user, you can say, "Hey, this is a high-priority application in branch." But the minute you go home and you are using your traditional VPN client, you cannot say Zoom or Office 365 or RingCentral is high priority. So how do you converge these architectures so that again, for home user, it is the best solution that you have from a software agent perspective, and then when you go into a branch, you still have a branch device do the things for you?
Parag Thakore: And the same thing applies, by the way, in multicloud, we saw a slew of vendors appear just for multicloud connectivity, for app-to-app connectivity, and then there are other vendors who were just doing wireless WAN. So how do you build this one software, one policy, one architecture so that that software can be running in your branch office from very small to multi gig as an endpoint on your laptop or it could be a wireless WAN for your cellular or it could be in your multicloud environment? And that's key. And then on top of it, you layer all of these connectivity services with security. So that's key for success from a SASE perspective.
Mike Anderson: Parag, those are great insights. When we think about architecture, one of the things we think about, especially in security is complexity is the enemy of security. And so when we have different architectures for every way someone works, it not only creates complexity for our teams, complexity in our tech stack, but it creates more troubleshooting problems for our users that are working from home. And so, definitely, the ability to simplify the architecture and as my favorite quote "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication" it allows them to get that scale and it allows people to work the same way regardless wherever they work and it takes a lot of the... Eases the complexity for my teams that have to support those users that are really just trying to get their work done from wherever they're working from.
Mike Anderson: One of the really interesting use cases and I know you've got some other use cases you could share but one of the ones that resonated to me because we feel it here at Netskope is we have support agents working from home, and some of those support agents may be living by themselves, they may be living with roommates, they may be living with family members, they may have kids in the house that are streaming or working from home as well, and so as we think about that, we wanna make sure that when our support agents are supporting our customers, we wanna make sure they have a quality voice experience when they're providing support. We don't wanna have disruption in that. And so talk to me a little bit about that use case and how we address that problem and how SASE in general, in this new context we look at, helps solve that problem.
Parag Thakore: Yeah. Mike, you remind me of a interesting story that I had with a customer where back in my previous life, I sold 25,000 hardware units to end customer for working from home to deliver high-performance connectivity for these contact center agents. And what we realized, after a year into the roll-out, I reached out to the customer and said, "Hey, how's the roll-out going?" And so said, "Terrible." I said, "Why?" He said that, "Every time a contact center agent leaves, these agents leave, we have to chase them down to return the units. We give them a $400 Dell laptop with Windows Microsoft operating system running on it and I have a $2000 SD-WAN device running where just to give them that performance and connectivity."
Parag Thakore: And that's where the light bulb triggered, how about I give you that same agent which gives you not just performance but also security for those agents? People want to monitor is the agent working full-time or is he watching Netflix? How productive are these agents working from home, how is the optimization or how is that voice and video, which what you brought up. And how is maybe even some sort of securities functions, control channel for these voice and video, and we have security for that.
Parag Thakore: So it's that high-performance secure connectivity for agents or it could be for employees as well and we see a big market around it. We are probably the only ones at Netskope who has this industry's first, what I call as SASE client, and reason I call it as industry's first SASE client is if you look at it, there are vendors who do SD-WAN appliances like I spoke, there are vendors who do SSE and SSE clients. When you look at SASE, the definition is built from SD-WAN and SSE, but nobody has SD-WAN and SSE 100% software running on the laptop. So from that perspective, we are the only ones and industry's first in fact, to have this SASE client running on your laptop, and it gives you that high-performance connectivity and security no matter where you go, including branch offices, as you come into a branch office, we realize that there are multiple users in a branch office, so you do need a device and we ship you a device for your branch office needs, for your multi-gig needs.
Mike Anderson: It's a great one, and the last thing you wanna do is have more assets you have to go recover back from your employees. I've seen a lot of even IT leaders basically saying, "I'm gonna buy a laptop for an employee," and then once its three-year useful life is up, they can keep that laptop, we'll give them a stipend and we'll go buy a new laptop and we'll do the same thing over again. And so it's interesting, so the last thing we'll do is just have more capital assets that we have to maintain or recover 'cause if they leave before that three years is up, they wanna recover the asset, obviously, and re-deploy it to another user in the organization.
Mike Anderson: When I think about the unified agent, some of the things that's been exciting is we've always looked at our security service edge as bringing contextual awareness to all the different transactions and decisions that I make for a user coming from our traditional, this SSE client. Now as you look at the SD-WAN and bring that together to bring a true SASE client, I know you've been doing some exciting work on taking that context down to the SD-WAN capabilities as well. Can you talk a little bit about that and how does that help the hybrid workforce?
Parag Thakore: Sure Mike. If you look at it, you cannot prioritize or secure what you cannot detect. That's the bottom line. And what we have seen in the past is if you look at SD-WAN vendors and when SD-WAN started back in 2013, there were less and less Cloud workloads back in 2010. The Cloud was still emerging. And if you look at most SD-WAN vendors today, they'll talk to you about, "Hey, we support a few thousand applications at best, 2000-3000 applications."
Parag Thakore: At Netskope we have a world-class Cloud discovery engine from an SSE perspective, as an example, and we support over 60,000 applications from a security perspective. Now we bring that same context down to the SD-WAN, we have that same zero trust engine that was built for SSE, we brought that down to SD-WAN, and it's not just about applications but it's also applications and application risks, user-user risks, device and device risk. So these are different elements which is much broader than what SD-WAN was designed for originally. And with that, what happens is now, if you look at it, you get much broader contextual awareness no matter where the user is, even if the user is in a branch, can I create in a large branch more of an identity-oriented policy? Can I look at the identity risk? Can I look at the device risk and quarantine the device?
Parag Thakore: People who are doing segmentation in SD-WAN base based on VLANs and IPs, and I say, "Hey, yeah, but we have hyper context segmentation." Wherein you don't have to do it based on VLANs and IPs, you don't even know what IoT devices are there in your branch environment, and we can scan all those devices and quarantine those devices as an example, or we can prioritize over 60,000 apps and Cloud apps, which no other vendor can do out there. So net-net of it for me is all the work that we are doing is around, "Hey, you really can't secure or prioritize what you can't discover and that includes users, applications, devices, and much broader than what SD-WAN was originally designed for."
Mike Anderson: Yeah, and I know you and I've talked about this, it's the adding also that capability in the future to do that prioritization also based on sanctioned or unsanctioned applications 'cause that way I check the one box and it forces collaboration amongst teams because people say, "Hey, for some reason every SaaS application seems to be running slow." Well, maybe you're not using sanctioned ones or we need to be partnering more on those. So it kind of forces some conversation because people naturally may have a worst experience with applications that are just brought in from the outside versus things where they've been vetted by security programs and IT leaders to make sure they're safe and secure. And so I think that brings some interesting opportunities as well.
Mike Anderson: So Parag, I wanna pivot and ask you another question. So when you think about SD-WAN, we talked about what's important for network teams, but what's important for security teams is they've to look at there's technology stacks and consolidation opportunities because consolidation has always been an opportunity for IT. How does this present an opportunity for some consolidation, which is now key for them as well?
Parag Thakore: Yeah, I think the security team to me, and I think it comes from security team and also for CIOs, they must bring Cloud network and security together. That's the bottom line. So Cloud has to come in, the network has to come in and security has to come in. So now when security team looks at it, how easy is it to integrate and operate the entire network? That's where it's a teamwork between the network and security teams because you cannot pick a security infrastructure in silos without thinking of how the network will tie into it because both go hand-in-hand together because end of the day, you don't want your network peers to have a real complex deployment from a integration perspective.
Parag Thakore: So I think that simplicity is what the security team should be thinking of, like at Netskope we tell security teams and network teams. We have this world-class new age infrastructure. That's a great example. We are in over 67 regions, probably very low latencies worldwide from a end user to our POP perspective. That's a great example wherein this whole Cloud on RAM both for security and for optimization reasons, whether it's you're optimizing voice or video or you're trying to secure your web and SaaS applications, you need to think about it all. And does that infrastructure give you both of the things that you need from that network and security perspective?
Parag Thakore: So I would say encourage security buyers and security people to also start thinking about performance characteristics and optimization and whether that infrastructure can deliver that for them or not. And they don't need to be experts at some very simple question in terms of, "Hey, can I get this high-performance connectivity from this Cloud security that I'm purchasing or that security vendor that I'm looking for?" So I think ease of operations and that high-performance connectivity is something that security should also look at as a criteria when they look at security platforms.
Mike Anderson: Ese es un gran consejo porque cuando piensas en esta consolidación, lo mencionaste antes, el modelo tradicional para implementar seguridad y redes en endpoints era otro agente y otro agente y otro agente, y se convierte en esta fatiga del agente para TI. equipos porque cada vez que actualizan el sistema operativo de su MacBook o cada vez que quieren implementar una nueva versión de Windows o parchear una máquina, deben probar todas esas aplicaciones diferentes en sus dispositivos y, por lo tanto, esta convergencia es importante porque la consolidación siempre ha estado ahí para los sistemas tradicionales. Los equipos de TI siempre están buscando la consolidación. La seguridad ha estado agregando herramientas, pero ahora también están considerando la consolidación. Por lo tanto, esto proporciona una excelente manera de impulsar realmente esa verdadera consolidación en la seguridad y las redes y deshacerse de la fatiga de los agentes en el endpoint.
Mike Anderson: Quiero pasar a otra pregunta. Una de las cosas de las que hablamos a menudo desde el punto de vista de Netskope es sobre este concepto de crear mejores ciudadanos digitales. Por eso queremos que las personas no hagan clic en cosas en las que no deberían hacer clic, que no introduzcan nuevas aplicaciones que no estén aprobadas, cuya seguridad no haya sido examinada, que se asocien con su departamento de TI y seguridad. equipos en iniciativas de transformación digital. ¿Cómo ve ahora esta convergencia de SASE y SD-WAN unificados y llevar esos principios al punto final? ¿Cómo cree que eso ayudará a promover mejor esa ciudadanía digital y cómo?
Parag Thakore: Eso es absolutamente crítico, Mike, porque si crees que ahí es donde se desarrolla la mayor parte del SSE, lo que mencionaste es para usuarios remotos que trabajan en sitios remotos y podrías hacerlo. Y ahora, cuando la misma persona entra a una oficina, quieres que la misma seguridad digital entre con esa cosa, que se respete esa ciudadanía dentro de una sucursal. Así que creo que ahí es donde también entra en juego toda la noción de esta seguridad de confianza cero consciente del contexto, en la que quieres saber quién es el usuario, quieres saber la identidad del usuario, no solo cuando el usuario es remoto, sino también cuando el El usuario está en el sitio para que usted pueda promover esa ciudadanía digital, y cuando el usuario entra a una sucursal, ¿entro con un dispositivo administrado o no administrado o tengo estos puntos finales de IoT riesgosos que debería estar haciendo? cuarentena para?
Parag Thakore: Creo que hacia allí se dirige la solución SD-WAN de próxima generación, tener realmente esta solución WAN definida por software de confianza cero y consciente del contexto y reducirla y reducirla tanto desde la perspectiva del rendimiento como de la seguridad, como ambas cosas juntas. Creo que eso es lo que va a promover esto aún más.
Mike Anderson: Definitivamente es un gran consejo y lo espero con ansias. También me entusiasma implementarlo internamente porque quiero que todos nuestros 2500 empleados de Netskope sean excelentes ciudadanos digitales. Hablaste sobre SD-WAN de próxima generación. Quiero llevarnos al siguiente segmento de nuestro podcast de hoy, en el que lo llamamos de regreso al futuro, saca tu bola de cristal. ¿Y cree que los líderes de seguridad y TI, los CIO y los CISO habrían esperado haber invertido antes en esta SD-WAN de próxima generación, como usted llama a este SASE unificado, y por qué cree que ese es el caso?
Parag Thakore: Absolutamente. Si piensa desde la simplicidad operativa, simplificando su red, sin tener estos productos de múltiples puntos y teniendo que mantenerlo en fases continuas, es una molestia. Cuando hablamos con el CIO, nos dicen: "Oye, tengo estas múltiples pilas de seguridad y luego tengo estas múltiples pilas de red, solo para conectividad de aplicación a aplicación en multinube o solo para conectividad remota o solo para alta -Conectividad de alto rendimiento y te envío un electrodoméstico". Si das un paso atrás y observas dónde están las soluciones hoy, incluso ahora mismo, verás que están completamente fragmentadas.
Parag Thakore: Entonces, reunir estas cosas, tener arquitecturas nativas de la nube, no tener lo que yo llamo SD-WAN Gen 1, son soluciones completas, SD-WAN completa. Y realmente desea pasar a una solución SD-WAN delgada, ya sea un agente o un software en su sucursal, es este efecto el que llamo cuando desea mover la red a la nube, un buen ejemplo es la seguridad ya se ha movido. a la nube y desea acercar la informática al usuario. Entonces, estas aplicaciones livianas que desea implementar, quiero implementar una aplicación XYZ, casi como una tienda de aplicaciones en su iPhone, eso es lo que se está acercando al usuario, pero todas estas funciones de red pesadas se están moviendo cada vez más en la nube. Entonces, es este fenómeno de deshacerse de la SD-WAN gruesa, como tener esta rama delgada, soluciones SD-WAN delgadas. Creo que si tuviera que apostar, creo que ahí es hacia donde se está moviendo el mundo y esta solución de rama delgada, donde la red está en la nube y la computación se agrupan cada vez más cerca de donde está la fuente de datos.
Mike Anderson: Creo que es una gran predicción. Uno de los que ha sido extremadamente relevante en este momento ha sido la IA generativa y todos están observando eso y cómo funciona aquí. Tengo estas ideas en el futuro como si preguntaras: "¿Por qué no funciona mi red?" Y me dirá: "Estas son las cosas que debes hacer para solucionar los problemas de tu red". Ya no necesito llamar al servicio de asistencia. ¿Qué cree que será lo más importante para la gente más allá de lo que acabamos de hablar? ¿Cómo influye eso y qué desearía la gente haber hecho con la IA generativa y cómo influye eso en toda la pila de seguridad de la red?
Parag Thakore: Sí, si nos fijamos en las operaciones impulsadas por la IA, que es hacia donde el mundo también se está moviendo hacia donde quiero saber cuándo un usuario se queja, ¿podemos decirle al usuario de antemano que tiene demasiadas aplicaciones abiertas en su computadora portátil y que es Realmente no es la red sino su dispositivo el que es un problema porque la CPU de su dispositivo es muy alta o si es un problema con Wi-Fi en su casa o si el problema es realmente con el dispositivo o con su WAN, y luego, ahora, combinando la red y la seguridad juntas, ¿dónde está ese problema exacto? Entonces, tener un único proveedor que lo haga por usted lo ayuda en ese marco y comentarios porque al tener el lado de la red y la seguridad, sabemos dónde están los problemas, dónde están los puntos débiles. Entonces creo que ahí es donde se quieren simplificar las cosas para los usuarios finales porque, al final del día, el usuario final es su cliente y quiere asegurarse de que la vida sea lo más simple posible para estos usuarios desde una perspectiva de conectividad.
Mike Anderson: No, 100%. Bueno, este ha sido un gran episodio. Una de las cosas que siempre hacemos al final de cada uno de nuestros programas es ir a lo que llamamos nuestro segmento de éxito rápido. Así que quiero hacerte algunas preguntas rápidas para que podamos conocerte un poco mejor porque realmente disfruté el tiempo aquí y nuestros oyentes también. Entonces, la primera pregunta para usted es: ¿cuál es el mejor consejo de liderazgo que haya recibido?
Parag Thakore: Yo diría que es de mi mamá. Así que mi mamá es mi líder y era una líder servidora, y de hecho, vendió su casa solo para conseguirme un boleto de avión aquí a Estados Unidos para poder estudiar aquí y hemos visto todo tipo de cosas. Así que ella ha sido una líder de servicio y para mí se trata de asignar tareas, arremangarse y ayudar al equipo, donde le asignas la tarea al equipo pero también estás trabajando realmente para ellos, ellos no están trabajando para ti, y luego te arremangas y haces el trabajo y eso para mí es fundamental. Y la otra es aprender rápido y fallar rápido. Está absolutamente bien cometer errores, pero debes ser honesto, humilde y transparente para admitir tus errores y también perdonarlos. Así que creo que para mí cada decisión que he tomado en mi vida personal o en mi vida empresarial ha estado rodeada de un liderazgo de servicio.
Mike Anderson: Eso es genial. Parece que tu mamá hizo un gran trabajo allí y una de las mejores líderes para las que he trabajado me preguntó en nuestras reuniones individuales, ella me decía cómo puedo ayudar y qué debería preocuparme. Que fueron dos grandes preguntas. Me encanta el consejo que te dieron allí, es realmente esa mentalidad de liderazgo de servicio. Entonces, la siguiente pregunta es que nos alejamos de los consejos de liderazgo, de modo que si pudieras comer una cosa, solo podrías comer una cosa por el resto de tu vida, ¿cuál sería?
Parag Thakore: Oh hombre, creo que será comida callejera en Bombay. Así que vuelvo a Mumbai y estoy en alguna calle comiendo pescado o charlando, pero definitivamente es comida callejera en Mumbai.
Mike Anderson: Eso es genial. Tuve la oportunidad de pasar un tiempo en Mumbai en mi último viaje a la India. Sin embargo, no tuve la oportunidad de probar la comida callejera, así que tienes que guiarme hacia la comida correcta. La siguiente, ¿cuál es tu canción favorita y qué nos dice sobre ti?
Parag Thakore: Bien, creo que será "No te preocupes, sé feliz". Obviamente, ese es nuestro Bob Marley favorito. Así que creo que la canción habla por sí sola, es simplemente relajada, relajada en la vida. Habrá problemas, has visto altibajos y simplemente debes dar un paso atrás y disfrutarlo.
Mike Anderson: Ese es un gran consejo. Creo que fue un consejo tan bueno de Bob Marley que Bobby McFerrin también creó su propia versión con "No te preocupes, sé feliz" allá por los años 80. Parag, ha sido un placer tenerte en el episodio de hoy del podcast Security Visionaries. ¿Hay algún comentario final que le gustaría dejar con nuestra audiencia, algunas conclusiones que le gustaría que extrajeran de nuestra conversación?
Parag Thakore: Creo que la conclusión número uno, que se discutió y se insistió mucho en esto, es que se debe unir la red de la nube y la seguridad. SASE está sucediendo, SASE está convergiendo y es muy importante tener un diálogo con sus arquitectos de red, con su equipo de seguridad, hacer que eso suceda e incluso crear ese nuevo rol que haga converger estas cosas. Pero la nube, la red y la seguridad se están uniendo, eso está sucediendo más rápido de lo que parece y está sucediendo ahora, así que invierta su tiempo en eso y busque esa experiencia de alta calidad cuando defina los requisitos para los usuarios finales, sucursales, multinube, vea cómo puedo. Simplifique mi red y mi seguridad mientras lo hace.
Mike Anderson: Bueno, definitivamente es un gran consejo. Nuevamente, realmente aprecio tu tiempo en este episodio.
Parag Thakore: Gracias. Gracias mike.
Mike Anderson: Sé que disfruté la conversación de hoy con Parag mientras nos explicaba SASE y Borderless SD-WAN y su viaje. Tres conclusiones clave que saqué de nuestra conversación. La primera es que miramos a SASE, la gente realmente debería acelerar su trabajo en esta área porque realmente existe una oportunidad de impulsar la simplificación dentro de sus organizaciones para deshacerse de la fatiga de los agentes, para realmente converger en todas esas capacidades de seguridad y red. Y eso trae la segunda parte que aprendí de esto: asegurarnos de que reunimos a nuestros equipos y los ayudamos a trabajar juntos de una mejor manera. Y puede ser un equipo multifuncional o pueden ser todos trabajando bajo el mismo líder, pero es importante que esos equipos trabajen juntos en esta convergencia y se aseguren de revisar sus modelos operativos al mismo tiempo para buscar otros. formas de ser eficiente y, nuevamente, liberar talento, liberar personas para que se concentren en desarrollar nuevas capacidades para su organización.
Parag Thakore: Y lo último, pero no menos importante, según analizo esto es que si invertimos en SASE y lo hacemos de la manera correcta, nos permitirá ofrecer mejores ciudadanos digitales y creará una sociedad mejor, más consistente y experiencia segura de los empleados para nuestra gente, ya sea que estén trabajando en casa, en una cafetería o en una sucursal.
Parag Thakore: Espero que hayas disfrutado el podcast de hoy. Sé que lo hicimos. Mucha información excelente y estoy seguro de que tendremos Parag nuevamente en un episodio futuro. Y quiero agradecer a todos nuestros oyentes por sintonizar este episodio de nuestro podcast Security Visionaries, y sintonicen nuestros episodios futuros. Tenemos nuestra biblioteca completa de todos nuestros episodios disponibles en Netskope y en todas las diferentes plataformas de podcasts populares. . Soy su anfitrión, Mike Anderson, CIO y director digital de Netskope. Qué tengas un lindo día.
[música] Productor2: El podcast Security Visionaries está desarrollado por el equipo de Netskope. Rápida y fácil de usar, la plataforma Netskope proporciona acceso optimizado y seguridad de confianza cero para personas, dispositivos y datos dondequiera que vayan, ayudando a los clientes a reducir el riesgo, acelerar el rendimiento y obtener una visibilidad inigualable de cualquier actividad de aplicaciones privadas, web o en la nube. Para obtener más información sobre cómo Netskope ayuda a los clientes a estar preparados para cualquier cosa en su viaje SASE, visite netskope.com.
Productor1: Gracias por escuchar a Security Visionaries. Tómate un momento para calificar y reseñar el programa y compartirlo con alguien que conozcas y que pueda disfrutarlo. Estén atentos a los episodios que se publican cada dos semanas y nos vemos en la próxima.
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