[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: Das ist ein toller Rat, denn wenn man über diese Konsolidierung nachdenkt, haben Sie es vorhin angesprochen: Das traditionelle Modell für die Bereitstellung von Sicherheit und Netzwerken auf Endpunkten bestand aus einem anderen Agenten und einem anderen Agenten und einem anderen Agenten, und das führt zu dieser Agentenmüdigkeit für die IT Teams, denn jedes Mal, wenn sie ihr MacBook-Betriebssystem aktualisieren oder jedes Mal, wenn sie eine neue Windows-Version bereitstellen oder einen Computer patchen möchten, müssen sie all diese unterschiedlichen Anwendungen auf ihren Geräten testen. Daher ist diese Konvergenz wichtig, da es bei herkömmlichen Geräten schon immer Konsolidierung gab IT-Teams streben immer nach einer Konsolidierung. Der Sicherheitsbereich hat Tools hinzugefügt, aber jetzt wird auch eine Konsolidierung in Betracht gezogen. Dies bietet also eine großartige Möglichkeit, eine echte Konsolidierung in den Bereichen Sicherheit und Netzwerk voranzutreiben und die Ermüdung der Agenten am Endpunkt zu beseitigen.
Mike Anderson: Ich möchte also zu einer anderen Frage übergehen. Eines der Dinge, über die wir aus Sicht von Netskope oft sprechen, ist das Konzept, bessere digitale Bürger zu schaffen. Deshalb möchten wir, dass die Leute nicht auf Dinge klicken, auf die sie nicht klicken sollten, dass sie keine neuen Apps einführen, die nicht genehmigt sind oder deren Sicherheit nicht überprüft wurde, sondern dass sie mit ihrer IT und Sicherheit zusammenarbeiten Teams bei Initiativen zur digitalen Transformation. Wie sehen Sie jetzt diese Konvergenz zwischen SASE und SD-WAN und die Umsetzung dieser Prinzipien auf den Endpunkt? Wie wird dies Ihrer Meinung nach dazu beitragen, die digitale Staatsbürgerschaft besser zu fördern, und wie?
Parag Thakore: Das ist also absolut entscheidend, Mike, denn wenn Sie glauben, dass dort der größte Teil der SSE stattfindet, wie Sie es angesprochen haben, handelt es sich um Remote-Benutzer, die an Remote-Standorten arbeiten, und das könnten Sie tun. Und wenn nun dieselbe Person ein Büro betritt, möchten Sie, dass dieselbe digitale Sicherheit mit diesem Ding hereinkommt und dass diese Staatsbürgerschaft in einer Zweigstelle gewürdigt wird. Ich denke, hier setzt auch die gesamte Idee dieser kontextbewussten Zero-Trust-Sicherheit an, bei der Sie wissen möchten, wer der Benutzer ist, Sie möchten die Identität des Benutzers wissen, nicht nur, wenn der Benutzer entfernt ist, sondern auch, wenn Der Benutzer ist vor Ort, damit Sie diese digitale Staatsbürgerschaft fördern können, und wenn der Benutzer eine Filiale betritt, gehe ich dann mit einem verwalteten Gerät oder einem nicht verwalteten Gerät hinein oder habe ich diese riskanten IoT-Endpunkte, die ich tun sollte? Quarantäne für?
Parag Thakore: Ich denke also, dass die SD-WAN-Lösung der nächsten Generation dorthin führt: wirklich diese kontextbewusste Zero-Trust-Software-Defined-WAN-Lösung haben und sie herunterfahren, und zwar sowohl aus Performance- als auch aus Sicherheitsgründen, wie beides zusammen Ich denke, das ist es, was dies weiter vorantreiben wird.
Mike Anderson: Das ist definitiv ein toller Rat und ich freue mich darauf. Ich freue mich darauf, es auch intern einzusetzen, denn ich möchte, dass alle unsere 2500 Netskope-Mitarbeiter großartige digitale Bürger sind. Sie haben über SD-WAN der nächsten Generation gesprochen. Ich möchte uns heute zum nächsten Abschnitt unseres Podcasts bringen, nämlich: Wir rufen zurück in die Zukunft und holen Ihre Kristallkugel heraus. Und glauben Sie, dass die Sicherheits- und IT-Verantwortlichen, CIOs und CISOs gehofft haben, sie hätten früher in dieses SD-WAN der nächsten Generation investiert, wie Sie dieses einheitliche SASE nennen, und warum ist das Ihrer Meinung nach so?
Parag Thakore: Auf jeden Fall. Wenn Sie an betriebliche Einfachheit denken, die Vereinfachung Ihres Netzwerks, den Verzicht auf mehrere Einzelprodukte und die Notwendigkeit, es in fortlaufenden Phasen warten zu müssen, ist das eine Qual. Wenn wir mit dem CIO sprechen, sagen sie uns: „Hey, ich habe diese mehreren Sicherheits-Stacks und dann habe ich diese mehreren Netzwerk-Stacks, nur für App-zu-App-Konnektivität in Multiclouds oder nur für Remote-Konnektivität oder einfach für High.“ -leistungsfähige Konnektivität und ich schicke Ihnen eine Appliance.“ Wenn man einen Schritt zurücktritt und sich anschaut, wo die Lösungen heute sind, selbst jetzt, ist alles völlig fragmentiert.
Parag Thakore: Wenn man also diese Dinge zusammenbringt, diese Cloud-nativen Architekturen hat und nicht das, was ich SD-WAN der 1. Generation nenne, sind fette Lösungen, fettes SD-WAN. Und Sie möchten wirklich auf eine dünne SD-WAN-Lösung umsteigen, sei es ein Agent oder eine Software in Ihrer Zweigstelle. Ich nenne diesen Effekt, wenn Sie ein Netzwerk in die Cloud verlagern möchten. Ein gutes Beispiel dafür ist, dass sich die Sicherheit bereits verlagert hat in die Cloud und Sie möchten die Rechenleistung näher an den Benutzer verlagern. Diese leichten Anwendungen, die Sie bereitstellen möchten, ich möchte eine XYZ-Anwendung bereitstellen, fast wie ein App Store auf Ihrem iPhone. Das rückt näher an den Benutzer heran, aber all diese leistungsstarken Netzwerkfunktionen verlagern sich immer mehr in die Cloud. Es ist also dieses Phänomen, fettes SD-WAN loszuwerden, wie etwa diese Thin-Branch- und Thin-SD-WAN-Lösungen. Ich denke, wenn ich wetten würde, dann denke ich, dass sich die Welt dorthin bewegt und diese Thin-Branch-Lösung, wo das Netzwerk angesagt ist Die Cloud- und Computing-Klumpen rücken immer näher an den Ort, an dem sich die Datenquelle befindet.
Mike Anderson: Ich denke, das ist eine großartige Vorhersage. Eines der derzeit äußerst relevanten Themen ist die generative KI, und jeder schaut sich das an und wie sich das hier auswirkt. Ich habe in der Zukunft solche Ideen, dass Sie sich einfach fragen werden: „Warum funktioniert mein Netzwerk nicht?“ Und es wird mir sagen: „Dies sind die Dinge, die Sie tun müssen, um Probleme in Ihrem Netzwerk zu beheben.“ Ich muss den Helpdesk nicht mehr anrufen. Was wird Ihrer Meinung nach die große Sache sein, die die Leute über das hinausgehen, worüber wir gerade gesprochen haben? Welche Rolle spielt das? Was werden sich die Leute wünschen, wenn sie es im Zusammenhang mit generativer KI getan hätten, und wie wirkt sich das auf den gesamten Netzwerksicherheits-Stack aus?
Parag Thakore: Ja, wenn man sich KI-gesteuerte Abläufe anschaut, in die sich die Welt ebenfalls bewegt, möchte ich wissen, wann sich ein Benutzer beschwert. Können wir dem Benutzer dann im Voraus mitteilen, dass auf Ihrem Laptop zu viele Apps geöffnet sind? Es ist wirklich nicht das Netzwerk, sondern Ihr Gerät, das ein Problem darstellt, weil die CPU Ihres Geräts wirklich hoch ist, oder ob es ein Problem mit dem WLAN in Ihrem Haus ist oder ob das Problem wirklich beim Gerät oder bei Ihrem WAN liegt, und dann, kombiniert Das Netzwerk und die Sicherheit zusammen, wo genau liegt das Problem? Wenn Sie also diesen einzigen Anbieter alles für Sie erledigen lassen, hilft Ihnen das in diesem Rahmen und Feedback, denn durch die Netzwerk- und Sicherheitsseite wissen wir, wo die Probleme liegen und wo die Problempunkte liegen. Ich denke also, dass Sie hier die Dinge für Endbenutzer vereinfachen möchten, denn letztendlich ist der Endbenutzer Ihr Kunde und Sie möchten sicherstellen, dass das Leben dieser Benutzer aus Konnektivitätsperspektive so einfach wie möglich ist.
Mike Anderson: Nein, 100 %. Nun, das war eine großartige Folge. Eines der Dinge, die wir am Ende jeder unserer Shows immer tun, ist, zu dem zu wechseln, was wir unser Quick-Hit-Segment nennen. Deshalb möchte ich Ihnen ein paar schnelle Fragen stellen, damit wir Sie ein bisschen besser kennenlernen können, denn ich und unsere Zuhörer haben die Zeit hier wirklich genossen. Die erste Frage an Sie: Was ist der beste Führungsratschlag, den Sie je bekommen haben?
Parag Thakore: Ich würde sagen, das ist von meiner Mutter. Meine Mutter ist also die Anführerin für mich und sie war eine dienende Anführerin, und tatsächlich hat sie ihr Haus verkauft, nur um mir ein Flugticket hierher in die USA zu besorgen, damit ich hier draußen studieren kann, also haben wir alles Mögliche gesehen. Sie war also eine dienende Anführerin und für mich geht es darum, Aufgaben zuzuweisen, die Ärmel hochzukrempeln und dem Team zu helfen, wobei man dem Team die Aufgabe zuweist, aber auch wirklich für sie arbeitet, sie arbeiten nicht für einen, und Dann krempeln Sie die Ärmel hoch und erledigen die Arbeit, und das ist für mich von entscheidender Bedeutung. Und die andere besteht darin, schnell zu lernen und schnell zu scheitern. Es ist absolut in Ordnung, Fehler zu machen, aber Sie müssen ehrlich und bescheiden sein und transparent sein, um Ihre Fehler zuzugeben und auch Fehler zu verzeihen. Daher denke ich, dass es bei jeder Entscheidung, die ich in meinem Privatleben oder meinem Geschäftsleben getroffen habe, um eine dienende Führung geht.
Mike Anderson: Das ist großartig. Es hört sich so an, als hätte Ihre Mutter dort großartige Arbeit geleistet und eine der besten Führungskräfte, für die ich je gearbeitet habe, hat mich in unseren Einzelgesprächen gefragt: Wie kann ich helfen und worüber sollte ich mir Sorgen machen? Das waren zwei tolle Fragen. Ich liebe den Rat, den Sie dort erhalten haben, es ist wirklich diese Einstellung der dienenden Führung. Bei der nächsten Frage orientieren wir uns an den Ratschlägen für Führungskräfte: Wenn Sie also eine Sache zu essen hätten, könnten Sie für den Rest Ihres Lebens nur eine Sache essen, welche wäre das?
Parag Thakore: Oh Mann, ich glaube, in Bombay wird es Streetfood geben. Also gehe ich zurück nach Mumbai und bin auf einer Straße, um Fisch zu essen oder ein bisschen zu plaudern, aber in Mumbai ist es definitiv Streetfood.
Mike Anderson: Das ist großartig. Auf meiner letzten Indienreise hatte ich die Gelegenheit, ein wenig Zeit in Mumbai zu verbringen. Allerdings hatte ich keine Gelegenheit, das Streetfood auszuprobieren, daher müssen Sie mich zu den richtigen Gerichten führen. Was ist Ihr Lieblingslied und was verrät es uns über Sie?
Parag Thakore: Okay, ich denke, das wird lauten: „Mach dir keine Sorgen, sei glücklich.“ Das ist offensichtlich unser Lieblings-Bob Marley. Ich denke, das Lied spricht für sich selbst, denn es geht einfach um die Entspannung und Entspannung im Leben. Es wird Probleme geben, Sie haben Höhen und Tiefen erlebt und möchten einfach einen Schritt zurücktreten und es genießen.
Mike Anderson: Das ist ein toller Rat. Ich denke, es war ein so guter Ratschlag von Bob Marley, dass Bobby McFerrin in den 80er-Jahren auch seine eigene Version davon mit „Don't care, be happy“ kreierte. Parag, es war mir eine Freude, Sie in der heutigen Folge des Security Visionaries Podcasts begrüßen zu dürfen. Gibt es abschließende Kommentare, die Sie unserem Publikum hinterlassen möchten, oder einige Erkenntnisse, die Sie aus unserem Gespräch mitnehmen sollen?
Parag Thakore: Ich denke, das Wichtigste zum Thema ist, dass Sie Ihr Cloud-Netzwerk und Ihre Sicherheit zusammenbringen müssen. SASE findet statt, SASE konvergiert und es ist sehr wichtig, einen Dialog mit Ihren Netzwerkarchitekten und Ihrem Sicherheitsteam zu führen, um dies zu ermöglichen und sogar eine neue Rolle zu schaffen, die diese Dinge zusammenführt. Aber Cloud, Netzwerk und Sicherheit vereinen sich. Das geschieht schneller, als es scheint, und das geschieht jetzt. Investieren Sie also Ihre Zeit und achten Sie auf dieses hochwertige Erlebnis, wenn Sie Anforderungen für Endbenutzer, Zweigstellen und Multicloud definieren. Sehen Sie, wie ich das kann Vereinfachen Sie mein Netzwerk und meine Sicherheit, während Sie schon dabei sind.
Mike Anderson: Nun, das ist definitiv ein toller Rat. Noch einmal: Ich schätze die Zeit, die Sie sich für diese Episode genommen haben, sehr.
Parag Thakore: Danke. Danke, Mike.
Mike Anderson: Ich weiß, dass mir das heutige Gespräch mit Parag gefallen hat, als er uns durch das SASE und das Borderless SD-WAN und seine Reise führte. Drei wichtige Erkenntnisse, die ich aus unserem Gespräch mitgenommen habe. Als erstes schauen wir uns SASE an. Die Leute sollten ihre Arbeit in diesem Bereich wirklich beschleunigen, denn es besteht wirklich die Möglichkeit, die Vereinfachung in Ihren Organisationen voranzutreiben, um die Agentenmüdigkeit zu beseitigen und alle Sicherheits- und Netzwerkfunktionen wirklich zusammenzuführen. Und das zweite, was ich daraus gelernt habe, ist, sicherzustellen, dass wir unsere Teams zusammenbringen und ihnen helfen, besser zusammenzuarbeiten. Dabei kann es sich um ein funktionsübergreifendes Team handeln oder es können alle unter demselben Leiter arbeiten. Es ist jedoch wichtig, dass diese Teams an dieser Konvergenz zusammenarbeiten und sicherstellen, dass Sie gleichzeitig Ihre Betriebsmodelle überdenken, um nach anderen zu suchen Möglichkeiten, effizient zu sein und wiederum Talente freizusetzen, Menschen freizusetzen, damit sie sich auf den Aufbau neuer Fähigkeiten für Ihr Unternehmen konzentrieren können.
Parag Thakore: Und zu guter Letzt, wenn ich mir das anschaue, wird es uns, wenn wir in SASE investieren und dies richtig machen, ermöglichen, bessere digitale Bürger zu liefern, und es wird ein besseres, konsistenteres und einheitlicheres Umfeld schaffen Sichere Mitarbeitererfahrung für unsere Mitarbeiter, egal ob sie zu Hause, in einem Café oder in einer Filiale arbeiten.
Parag Thakore: Ich hoffe, Ihnen hat der heutige Podcast gefallen. Ich weiß, dass wir es getan haben. Viele tolle Informationen und ich bin sicher, dass wir Parag in einer zukünftigen Folge wieder dabei haben werden. Und ich möchte allen unseren Zuhörern dafür danken, dass sie diese Episode unseres Security Visionaries Podcasts eingeschaltet haben, und bitte schalten Sie unsere zukünftigen Episoden ein. Wir haben unsere gesamte Bibliothek aller unserer Episoden auf Netskope und allen verschiedenen beliebten Podcast-Plattformen verfügbar . Ich bin Ihr Gastgeber, Mike Anderson, der CIO und Chief Digital Office bei Netskope. Ich wünsche ihnen einen wunderbaren Tag.
[Musik] Produzent2: Der Security Visionaries Podcast wird vom Team von Netskope betrieben. Die Netskope-Plattform ist schnell und einfach zu bedienen und bietet optimierten Zugriff und Zero-Trust-Sicherheit für Personen, Geräte und Daten, wo auch immer sie sich befinden. Sie hilft Kunden dabei, Risiken zu reduzieren, die Leistung zu steigern und einen unübertroffenen Einblick in jede Cloud-, Web- oder private Anwendungsaktivität zu erhalten. Um mehr darüber zu erfahren, wie Netskope Kunden dabei hilft, auf ihrer SASE-Reise auf alles vorbereitet zu sein, besuchen Sie netskope.com.
Produzent1: Vielen Dank, dass Sie Security Visionaries zugehört haben. Bitte nehmen Sie sich einen Moment Zeit, um die Sendung zu bewerten und zu rezensieren und sie mit jemandem zu teilen, den Sie kennen und dem sie gefallen könnte. Seien Sie gespannt auf die Episoden, die alle zwei Wochen veröffentlicht werden, und wir sehen uns in der nächsten.
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