[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: Ottimo consiglio perché quando pensi a questa consolidazione, l'hai menzionata prima, il modello tradizionale per distribuire sicurezza e rete sugli endpoint era un altro agente, un altro agente e un altro agente, e diventa una stanchezza per i team IT perché ogni volta che aggiornano il loro MacBook OS o vogliono distribuire una versione New di Windows o patchare una macchina, devono testare tutte queste diverse applicazioni sui loro dispositivi e quindi questa convergenza è importante perché la consolidazione è sempre stata presente per i team IT tradizionali, che stanno sempre cercando di concentrarsi. La sicurezza ha aggiunto strumenti, ma ora stanno valutando anche la consolidazione. Questo offre un ottimo modo per guidare davvero quella vera consolidazione tra sicurezza e networking e eliminare la fatica degli agenti sull'endpoint.
Mike Anderson: Quindi voglio passare a un'altra domanda. Una delle cose di cui parliamo spesso dal punto di vista Netskope riguarda questo concetto di creare cittadini digitali migliori. Quindi vogliamo che le persone non clicchino su cose su cui non dovrebbero cliccare, non portino New app non approvate, che non sono state verificate per la sicurezza, e che collaborino con i loro team IT e sicurezza su iniziative di trasformazione digitale. Come guardi ora, con questa convergenza di quella SASE unificata e SD-WAN e portando quei principi fino al punto finale, come pensi che questo aiuterà a promuovere meglio quella cittadinanza digitale e come?
Parag Thakore: Quindi questo è assolutamente fondamentale, Mike, perché se pensi che sia lì che la maggior parte del SSE, come hai menzionato, è per gli utenti remoti che lavorano in siti remoti, e potresti farlo. E ora quando la stessa persona entra in un ufficio, vuoi che la stessa sicurezza digitale arrivi con quella cosa, che la cittadinanza venga onorata all'interno di una filiale. Quindi penso che sia qui che entra in gioco anche la nozione di sicurezza zero trust consapevole del contesto, dove vuoi sapere chi è l'utente, vuoi conoscere l'identità dell'utente, non solo quando l'utente è remoto, ma anche quando è in sede, così da poter promuovere quella cittadinanza digitale, e quando l'utente entra in una filiale, Sto entrando con un dispositivo gestito o uno non gestito, oppure ho questi rischi di endpoint IoT per cui dovrei fare una quarantena?
Parag Thakore: Quindi penso che sia lì che sta andando la prossima generazione di soluzioni SD-WAN: avere davvero questa soluzione WAN zerotrust e consapevole del contesto, definita da software, e abbassarla sia dal punto di vista delle prestazioni che della sicurezza, entrambe insieme, penso che questo sia ciò che promuoverà ulteriormente questa cosa.
Mike Anderson: È sicuramente un ottimo consiglio e non vedo l'ora. Sono entusiasta di implementarlo internamente perché voglio che tutti i nostri 2500 dipendenti di Netskope siano ottimi cittadini digitali. Hai parlato della prossima generazione SD-WAN, voglio portarci al prossimo segmento del nostro podcast di oggi, che è chiamarlo Ritorno al futuro, tirare fuori la tua sfera di cristallo. E pensi che i leader della sicurezza e dell'IT, i CIO, i CISO avrebbero sperato di aver investito prima in questa nuova generazione di SD-WAN, come chiami questa SASE unificata, e perché pensi che sia così?
Parag Thakore: Assolutamente. Se pensi alla semplicità operativa, alla semplificazione della rete, al non avere questi molteplici prodotti puntuali e a doverlo mantenere in fasi continue, è una seccatura. Quando parliamo con il CIO, ci parlano di: "Ehi, ho questi più stack di sicurezza, e poi questi stack di rete multipli, solo per la connettività app-to-app in multicloud o solo per connettività remota o solo per connettività ad alte prestazioni e vi sto inviando un appliance." Se ti fermi e guardi dove sono le soluzioni oggi, anche adesso, è completamente frammentato.
Parag Thakore: Quindi mettere insieme queste cose, avere quelle architetture cloud-native, senza quello che chiamo Gen 1 SD-WAN, sono soluzioni grasse, fat SD-WAN. E vuoi davvero passare a una soluzione SD-WAN slaga, che sia un agente o un software nel tuo ramo, è questo effetto che chiamo quando vuoi spostare la rete nel Cloud, un buon esempio è che la sicurezza è già stata spostata nel Cloud e vuoi avvicinare il calcolo all'utente. Quindi queste applicazioni leggere che vuoi distribuire, voglio distribuire un'applicazione XYZ, quasi come un app store sul tuo iPhone, è ciò che si avvicina all'utente, ma tutte queste funzioni di rete pesante si stanno spostando sempre di più nel Cloud. Quindi è questo fenomeno di eliminare le SD-WAN spesse, come avere soluzioni a ramo sottile e SD-WAN sottile, penso che se dovessi scommetterlo, è lì che il mondo si sta muovendo e questa soluzione a ramo sottile, dove la rete è nel Cloud e il calcolo si aggrappa sempre di più alla fonte dati.
Mike Anderson: Quindi penso che sia un'ottima previsione. Uno di quelli estremamente rilevanti in questo momento è l'IA generativa e tutti stanno guardando a questo e a come si inserisce qui. Ho queste idee in futuro, tipo che chiederai tipo, "Perché la mia rete non funziona?" E mi dirà tipo: "Queste sono le cose che devi fare per risolvere il problema della tua rete." Non ho più bisogno di chiamare l'help desk. Cosa vedi sarà la cosa più importante che le persone, oltre a ciò di cui abbiamo appena parlato, come si influenza questo e cosa avrebbero voluto fare riguardo all'IA generativa e come si inserisce questo nell'intero stack di sicurezza di rete?
Parag Thakore: Sì, se guardi alle operazioni guidate dall'IA, che è anche verso cui il mondo si sta muovendo, dove voglio sapere quando un utente si lamenta, possiamo dirgli subito che hai troppe app aperte sul portatile e che non è davvero la rete ma il dispositivo il problema perché la CPU del dispositivo è molto alta, oppure se è un problema del Wi-Fi in casa o se è il problema è davvero con il dispositivo o con la tua WAN, e ora, combinando rete e sicurezza, dov'è esattamente questo problema? Quindi avere un unico fornitore che lo faccia per te ti aiuta nel quadro e nel feedback, perché avendo la parte rete e sicurezza sappiamo dove sono i problemi, dove sono i punti dolenti. Quindi penso che qui si voglia semplificare le cose per gli utenti finali, perché alla fine della giornata, l'utente finale è il tuo cliente e vuoi assicurarti che la vita sia il più semplice possibile per questi utenti dal punto di vista della connettività.
Mike Anderson: No, al 100%. Beh, questo è stato un episodio fantastico. Una delle cose che facciamo sempre alla fine di ogni nostro show è andare a quello che chiamiamo il nostro segmento di hit rapido. Quindi voglio farvi qualche domanda rapida così possiamo conoscervi un po' meglio, perché mi sono davvero divertito con il tempo qui e anche i nostri ascoltatori. Quindi, la prima domanda per te: qual è il miglior consiglio di leadership che tu abbia mai ricevuto?
Parag Thakore: Direi che viene da mia madre. Quindi mia madre è la leader per me ed era una leader servitissima, e infatti ha venduto la sua casa solo per farmi prendere un biglietto aereo qui per gli Stati Uniti, così potevo studiare qui, così abbiamo visto ogni sorta di cose. Quindi è stata una leader servitù e per me si tratta di assegnare compiti, rimboccarsi le maniche e aiutare il team, assegnando il compito al team ma lavorando davvero per loro, loro non lavorano per te, e poi rimboccarti le maniche e portare a termine il lavoro, e per me questo è fondamentale. E l'altra è imparare in fretta e fallire in fretta. È assolutamente normale commettere errori, ma devi essere onesto, umile e trasparente per ammettere i propri errori e anche perdonarli. Quindi penso che per me ogni decisione che ho preso nella mia vita personale o lavorativa sia stata attorno a questa leadership di servizio.
Mike Anderson: Fantastico. Sembra che tua madre abbia fatto un ottimo lavoro lì e una delle migliori leader per cui abbia mai lavorato, durante le nostre sessioni individuali, mi ha chiesto come posso aiutarti e di cosa dovrei preoccuparmi. Che erano due ottime domande. Adoro il consiglio che ti è stato dato, è davvero quella mentalità di leadership servita. Quindi prossima domanda, stiamo partendo dai consigli di leadership, quindi se potessi mangiare una sola cosa per il resto della tua vita, quale sarebbe?
Parag Thakore: Oh cavolo, penso che a Bombay sarà cibo di strada. Quindi torno a Mumbai e sono in strada a mangiare un po' di pesce o a fare due chiacchiere, ma sicuramente a Mumbai è cibo di strada.
Mike Anderson: Fantastico. Ho avuto l'opportunità di trascorrere un po' di tempo a Mumbai nel mio ultimo viaggio in India. Non ho avuto modo di provare il street food però, quindi devi guidarmi verso quelli giusti. La prossima, qual è la tua canzone preferita e cosa ci dice di te?
Parag Thakore: Ok, penso che sarà "Non preoccuparti, sii felice." Ovviamente, il nostro Bob Marley preferito. Quindi penso che la canzone parli da sola, è semplicemente rilassata e rilassante nella vita. Ci saranno problemi, hai visto alti e bassi e devi semplicemente fare un passo indietro e godertelo.
Mike Anderson: Ottimo consiglio. Penso che sia stato un ottimo consiglio da parte di Bob Marley che anche Bobby McFerrin abbia creato la sua versione con "Don't worry, be happy" negli anni '80. Parag, è stato un piacere averti nell'episodio di oggi del podcast Security Visionaries. Ci sono commenti finali che vorresti lasciare al nostro pubblico, qualche cosa che vorresti che portassero via dalla nostra conversazione?
Parag Thakore: Penso che il primo punto da ritenere, discusso e discusso molto su questo, sia che bisogna unire la rete Cloud e la sicurezza. SASE sta accadendo, SASE sta convergendo ed è molto importante avere un dialogo con i tuoi architetti di rete, con il team di sicurezza, far sì che ciò accada, persino creare quel ruolo New che faccia convergere queste cose insieme. Ma cloud, rete e sicurezza stanno venendo insieme, questo sta accadendo più velocemente di quanto sembri e sta succedendo ora, quindi investi il tuo tempo in questo e cerca un'esperienza di alta qualità quando definisci i requisiti per utenti finali, filiali, multicloud, vedi come posso semplificare la mia rete e la sicurezza mentre ci sei.
Mike Anderson: Beh, è sicuramente un ottimo consiglio. Ancora una volta, apprezzo davvero il tuo tempo dedicato a questo episodio.
Parag Thakore: Grazie. Grazie, Mike.
Mike Anderson: So di aver apprezzato la conversazione di oggi con Parag mentre ci guidava attraverso la SASE , la Borderless SD-WAN e il suo percorso. Tre punti chiave che ho tratto dalla nostra conversazione. La prima è che guardiamo a SASE, le persone dovrebbero davvero accelerare il loro lavoro in questo ambito perché c'è davvero l'opportunità di semplificare all'interno delle organizzazioni per eliminare quella fatica degli agenti, per convergere davvero in tutte quelle capacità di sicurezza e rete. E questo porta al secondo aspetto che ho imparato: assicurarci davvero di unire i nostri team e aiutarli a lavorare insieme in modo migliore. E può essere un team cross-funzionale oppure tutti che lavorano sotto lo stesso leader, ma è importante che quei team lavorino insieme su questa convergenza e si assicurino che tu rivisiti i tuoi modelli operativi allo stesso tempo per cercare altri modi di essere efficienti e, ancora una volta, liberare talenti, liberare persone per concentrarsi sulla costruzione di New capacità per la tua organizzazione.
Parag Thakore: E ultimo ma non meno importante, mentre approfondisco questa situazione, se investiamo in SASE e lo facciamo nel modo giusto, ci permetterà di offrire cittadini digitali migliori e creerà un'esperienza per i dipendenti migliore, più coerente e sicura per i nostri dipendenti, che lavorino da casa, in un bar o in filiale.
Parag Thakore: Spero quindi che il podcast di oggi vi sia piaciuto. Lo so che l'abbiamo fatto. Molte informazioni ottime e sono sicuro che Parag tornerà in un prossimo episodio. E voglio ringraziare tutti i nostri ascoltatori per aver seguito questo episodio del nostro podcast Security Visionaries, e per favore sintonizzatevi sui nostri prossimi episodi, abbiamo l'intera libreria di tutti i nostri episodi disponibili su Netskope.com e su tutte le diverse piattaforme di podcast popolari. Sono il vostro conduttore, Mike Anderson, CIO e capo ufficio digitale di Netskope. Buona giornata.
[musica] Produttore2: Il podcast Security Visionaries è gestito dal team di Netskope. Veloce e facile da usare, la piattaforma Netskope offre accesso ottimizzato e sicurezza zero trust per persone, dispositivi e dati ovunque si trovino, aiutando i clienti a ridurre i rischi, accelerare le prestazioni e ottenere una visibilità senza pari su qualsiasi attività Cloud, web o applicazione privata. Per saperne di più su come Netskope aiuta i clienti a essere pronti a tutto nel loro percorso SASE , visita Netskope.com.
Produttore1: Grazie per aver ascoltato Security Visionaries. Prenditi un momento per valutare e recensire lo show e condividerlo con qualcuno che conosci e che potrebbe apprezzarlo. Restate sintonizzati per gli episodi che usciranno ogni due settimane e ci vediamo nel prossimo.
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