 From around the globe, it's theCUBE, covering Fortinet Security Summit, brought to you by Fortinet. Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Fortinet Security Summit at the Fortinet Championship here in Napa. I'm Lisa Martin and I'm very pleased to welcome back to theCUBE Kenzie, Founder and Chairman and CEO of Fortinet. Ken, welcome back to the program. Thank you, Lisa. We're happy to be here after almost two years and yeah. I know it's great to see you in person. I was saying before we went live, I forgot how tall you are. So this is a great event, but I want you to talk to me a little bit about some of the amazing growth that Fortinet has seen. 500,000 customers, close to 30% year on your growth, continuing to post solid earnings. Stock has more than doubled this year. What are some of the things that you attribute this growth to and what do you think in your opinion differentiates Fortinet? I think some of the more strategic, long-term investment we made, starting paying off like we're still the only company actually develop ASIC chip, which can making a huge computing power advantage compared to using software to all the security function computing. Because security tend to need about like a certain hundred times more computing power to process the same data as routing switching. So that's where for the network security, definitely the ASIC chip a huge advantage and we invest it very early and take a long term and also a big investment and so far starting paying off. The other thing we also keeping a lot of innovation and internal organic growth for the company instead of do a lot of acquisition and that's also starting making all these different products integrate well, automate together well and that's also driving the huge growth not just network security, but also we see the fabric also has grow more fast. Interesting, so you're really keeping it organic which is not common a lot of these days we see a lot of acquisitions but one of the things a lot of growth another thing that we do know that's growing is the threat landscape I was mentioning to you before we went live that I spoke with Derek Mankey a couple times this summer and John Madison and the Global Threat Landscape Report showing ransomware up nearly 11 times in the last year. Of course we had this rapid transition to work from home and all these devices on accessing corporate networks from home. Talk to me about some of the security challenges that you're helping customers deal with. I think during the pandemic definitely you'll see a lot of security issues starting to come up because work from home we do really need to remote access a lot of important information a lot of important data there and the same time the ransomware attacks starting like I mentioned 11 times compared to like one to two years ago all this driving all this new technology for security so now you cannot just secure the board anymore so you have to secure the whole infrastructure both the internal do a lot of internal segmentation and also go outside secure the one like ST1 the 5G connection and how to secure work from home and their trust and their trust network access environment all these drive a lot of security growth so we see that yeah it's a pretty healthy market It's definitely a healthy market that's one thing looking at it from that lens what are some of the customer conversations how have the customer conversations changed are you now talking with different levels in organizations security being a board level conversation discussion talk to me about how those conversations have evolved yeah security now become very important part of IT and pretty much our top one top two on IT spending now and at the same time whether work from home or some other definitely see the board level conversation right now because you can see if there's a security issue for the company the damage can be huge so that's where the security awareness especially ransomware is very very huge and plus the supply chain issue some other attack on infrastructure so we see a lot of security conversation in the board level in the CEO in the executive level now compared to before it's more IT conversation so it's a drive to huge awareness of security and that's also we see everybody is starting to concern the security now yeah and I'm sure I imagine that's across every industry yes yeah you're pretty much out of vertical and especially a lot of new area traditionally they don't have much security like some SMB some consumer some traditional OTIOT space now it's all security starting to get more very important for them now so let's talk about here we are the security summit at the Fortinet Championship give me your perspective on the PGA-Fortinet relationship first I think it's a golfers outdoor event sports especially during the pandemic that's probably become the most favorite spot and for me also I've been golfing for 30 years never a very good golfer but I love the sports on the other side we see sometimes there's a walking with a lot of a customer a lot of a partner they say hey if we can combine some business and there is certain activity especially outdoor that's also be great and also helping the branding and that's also the way we can contribute back to the community so they say hey then that's first time for us we just love it, guys is going it's great to be outdoors right at Fortinet it's doing an event outdoors showing that yes you can do that safely but also I also hear from some of your other team members that it's a very culturally synergistic relationship the PGA in Fortinet yes exactly, yeah that's where we love this golf and especially walking with a different partner and different customer and also all the team working together so it's a team sports kind of on the other side it's outdoor and all you enjoy so combine walking activity all together everybody love it something that so many of us have missed Ken for the last 18 months or so so we're at the security summit there's over 300 technology leaders here talk to me about some of the main innovations that are being discussed definitely we see security setting little covered whole infrastructure and especially in a lot of environment traditionally no security cannot be deployed like internal segmentation because internal network can be 10 to 100 faster than the one connection so has to be deployed in the internal high speed environment whether inside the company or kind of inside the data center inside the cloud on the other side like a lot of one connection traditionally like whether it's the one or the traditional like cable modern DSL they also need to be combined with security and also in the zero trust access environment to very supporting work from home and also a lot of OT operation technology and a lot of other IoT space utility all these different kind of like environment need to be supported sometimes recognize the environment so we see security setting deployed everywhere whether the new smart city or the like connect the car environment and we just see become more and more important that's also kind of we starting call we call been a secure driven networking because traditionally you can see to this networking just give you the connectivity and speed so they treat everything kind of a no difference but with security driven networking you can make in a networking decision more based on the security function like different application or different content different user different device even different location you can make a different kind of network decision so that's we see is a huge demand right now can make the whole environment whole infrastructure much secure that's absolutely critical that pivot to work from home was pretty much overnight a year and a half ago and we still have so many people who are permanently remote remote probably will be permanently and a good amount will be hybrid in the future some TBD amount and one of the challenges is of course you got people suddenly from home you've got a pandemic so you've got an emotional situation you've got people multitasking they've got kids at home trying to learn maybe spouse is working they're trying to do everything via video conferencing and collaboration tools and the security risks there are huge and we've seen some of that obviously reflected in the nearly 11x increase in ransomware but talk to me about what Ford announced yesterday with Linksys to help on that front in a considerable way yeah that's where we totally agree with you the work from home or kind of hybrid way to work in pretty much will become permanent and that's where how to make in home environment more kind of supporting this remote working and especially like when you have a meeting there are some other things may going on in home activity and also sometimes the data you access can be pretty important pretty confidential that's where whether in the zero trust environment or making the home connection more reliable more secure it's all very very important for us that's where we're happy to partner with Linksys and some other partner here to support in this hybrid working environment to make work for home more secure and that we see is a huge opportunity huge opportunity in a lot of industries I had the pleasure of talking with Linksys CEO Harry Dewhurst just an hour or so ago and I asked him what are some of the verticals since we know from a security and a ransomware perspective it's just wide open right nobody's safe anymore from it but what are some of the verticals that you think are going to be early adopters of this technology government, healthcare, schools I think pretty much all verticals starting to see this work from home and it's very very important for us there's a few top vertical traditionally finance service is spent a lot of money healthcare spent a lot of money on security so they are still the same and we don't see that change much on the other side a lot of high-tech company which is also one of the big verticals for us now I see maybe half or even more than half the employee they want to work from home so that's also making they say they call home branch now so it's just make home office just secure and reliable as a branch office and at the same time certain government and certain education vertical and they all starting to see it's very very important to do this remote they'll trust access approach and at the same time working with a lot of service provider to supporting this both the ETNA and also the SASE approach so we are only companies only SASE company partner a lot of a service provider we do believe long-term all the service provider they have the best location best infrastructure best team to supporting SASE which we also build ourself if the customer don't have a service provider we're happy to support in them but if they have a service provider we also prefer they go to service provider to supporting them because we also want to have a better ecosystem and then making everybody like benefit has women's situation so that's what we see is whether they'll trust SASE or SASE we're happy to work with all the partner to make everybody successful and where are customers in that evolution from traditional VPN to ZTNA for example are you seeing an acceleration of that given where we are in this interesting climate? Definitely because work from home is if you try to access use VPN you basically open up all the network to the home environment which sometimes not quite secure not very reliable right so that's where you see the ZTNA you can access a certain application in the certain like environment there and same time leverage ST1 that's also a huge technology advantage you can load a cost at a multiple link and balance among different costs different connection and different reliability there it's a huge advantage Definitely one of the many advantages that Fortinet has so this afternoon there's going to be a as part of the security panel that you and several other Fortinet execs are on taking part in a Q&A what are some of the topics that you think are going to come up and as part of that Q&A? I see for certain enterprise customers definitely the ransomware attack how to do the internal segmentation how to securely do the remote access work from home is very important for some service provider we also see how to support them for the CIC environment and certain whole infrastructure security whether the 5G or the ST1 because ST1 has a huge demand and we grow very fast we become a leader in that space it's very very important for them we also see like a different vertical space some come from healthcare some come from education they all have their own kind of challenge especially like there's a lot of OTIO device in healthcare space need to be secured and same thing for the OTIO space Tremendous amount of opportunity one thing I want to ask you to get your opinion on is the cyber security skills gap it's been growing year over year for the last five years I know that just last week Fortinet pledged to train one million professionals in the next five years you guys have been focused on this for a while I love that you have a veterans program I'm the daughter of a Vietnam combat veteran so that always warms my heart but is that something is the cyber security skills gap something that customers ask you Ken, how do you recommend we solve this? Yes, we have been doing this for over 10 years we have the program we call the network security expert program at a different level so we have trained over a million people we also committed to traditional million people because there's a huge shortage of the skills of the security expert there so we do work with over like a four, five hundred university globally and same time we also want to offer the free training to all the people interested especially all the veterans and others like even high school graduate high school student there and the same time anyone want to learn the cyber security we feel that that's work space very exciting space and the world fast growing space also still have a huge shortage globally there's a three to four million shortage of the skilled people in the space which is a world fast growing space and so we're very happy to support all the training education with different partner and same time try to contribute ourselves I think that's fantastic we'll be excited to see over the next five years that impact on that training one million and also to see it to your point with how much the industry is changing how much, how fast supporting that's growing there's a lot of job opportunity out there I think it was Sandra who said that I was talking to her this morning that there's no job security like cyber security and it's really true if you think about it yeah totally agree yeah like remember a few years ago when we started first time to do all this interview I said hey it's a very very hot space now it's getting hotter and hotter more people interested now and very thank you the Cube and you give all the support in all these years and we're happy to be here absolutely it's our pleasure well I know you are paired up you said tomorrow with Phil Mickelson for the Pro Am that's pretty exciting Ken I'm not sure I'm a very good golfer but I'll try my best you'll try your best I'm sure it will be a fantastic experience thank you for having the Cube here for bringing people back together for this event showing that we can do this we can do this safely and securely and also what Ferdinand is doing to really help address that cyber security skills gap and really make us more aware of the threats and the landscape and how we as individuals and enterprises can help sort to quiet that storm yeah also we'll be happy to be here and also a big honor to be part of the program and the same time we also want to thank you a lot of partner a lot of customer and join us together for this big IPJ event and thank you for everyone absolutely you guys are a big partner-driven organization I'm sure the partners appreciate that Ken thank you so much thank you thank you Lisa for Kenzi I'm Lisa Martin you're watching the Cube from the Ferdinand Security Summit in Napa Valley