 Live from Barcelona, Spain, it's theCUBE. Covering Cisco Live 2020. Brought to you by Cisco and its ecosystem partners. Okay, welcome back everyone. It's theCUBE's live coverage here in Barcelona, Spain for Cisco Live 2020. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE with my cohost, Jim Miniman. We've been talking about the value of data for many, many years and privacy and today's data privacy day is super important here every year, the past couple years and the routine at Cisco has some answers for us. Our next guest is Robert Waidman, director, data privacy and economic security and trust organization at Cisco. Robert, CUBE alumni, welcome back. Good to see you, thanks for coming back on. Thank you, great to see you again. So, you know, we've had great chats in the past. You know it's my favorite topic, the value of data, the role of data. We all believe data-driven organizations. You guys just put out your annual report which is privacy to profit. We asked a question here in theCUBE, what's the value of data? That's the holy grail. But you guys actually got some progress on this and narrowly defying around privacy, what's it worth with privacy? If you invest in privacy, there is an ROI. We've seen similar reports on diversity, investing in these areas that look like impact mission-based items actually have economic value. You guys have new data on our return on investment and privacy. Share us the results. Happy to do so. And we've been on this journey for three years to try to understand where the value is coming from from privacy, putting protections in place. We first saw that it was showing up in terms of better sales motions, right? We're having fewer sales delays because organizations put privacy in place. Last year we started looking some of the security benefits that those organizations that invested in privacy were seeing fewer and less costly breaches, for example, and less records exfiltrated. So the idea of getting your data house in order was translating into business value. This year we've not only validated those results from the past two years, but we've now taken it to the next step to have actually a return on investment on those privacy investments. So our survey this year, which we put out yesterday, was based on 2,800 companies, 2,500 of which knew about privacy at their organizations, and we asked them about their investments, we asked them about the benefits that they thought they were getting, some intangible ways and awesome, some intangible ways, like competitive advantage or operational efficiency, things that are hard to quantify. Overall results on that, the average organization spends $100 on privacy, they're getting $270 back. It is a great investment. I don't know how many investments they have that have that kind of return, but in this environment, in this, where we're seeing the customers who want these kinds of protections, it's a great investment. It's an omnidirectional kind of forcing function. Think about it. I wanted to ask you, how do you see some of the categories? Because I can certainly see the benefit of just people who are afraid of their privacy and their data. You see a lot of train wrecks in the industry from Facebook to other things where users are in control, right? They want to be in control, that's the trend. So I can see the halo effect of saying, well, this company's got good privacy, I like that company. It's almost a modern kind of table stakes, like going green or something like that. Is there areas that pop out in the survey where the ROI must have in terms of privacy? What was some categorical? Well, this idea of building your loyalty and trust of your customers is something that we had explored. In fact, there's a companion piece that we just put out a few weeks ago exactly on this issue of the consumer interest in having that available to them. And I would say we wouldn't take it for granted until recently most people have said, privacy is dead and I don't know who has access to my data and I don't know what's controlling it. But the combination of GDPR, which swung the pendulum a little bit back so that users again had the ability to know what data companies had about them, and in some cases to modify or delete it, started that trend. The CCPA in California carries that a little bit further. And what we saw in this companion survey around individuals was fascinating because we saw people that are more active. They're saying, not only do I care about privacy, which most people will say that, I will spend time and money, which many people may say that. But the real test was here that they've made a change, that they've changed a provider or someone that they work with over their data practices or data policies. And what that's saying to us is there's an active community. We're calling them privacy actives. It's a third of the population today who are standing up to say, I now know that I have some control over how my data is used. Therefore, think about the companies and how they relate to that. Their customers are saying to them, I'm not going to work with you and I'm not going to do business with you and I want to only work with companies who I know how the data is being used. It's now become an important priority. It's part of the brand. It's part of the overall customer experience so customers aren't going to take it. I think you're understating the numbers too. I believe what you just said is only going to be amplified because with social networking and what we're seeing with virality and even just the fake news and disinformation there's also information that could go viral. Like, hey, this company, the buyer swing, the influence that these groups could have could be a force multiplier on impact, negatively and positively. Right, and I think that actually I would bear that out as well. So even though I described the third of people who already have made that change, there's another 30 plus percent who said the first two, they just haven't made that change yet. Maybe they aren't comfortable with doing it yet or they haven't had the opportunity. So again, this is something that all companies need to pay attention to and B, it's going to be fundamentally part of the overall experience. If you don't have the privacy right, you're like not in business. And again, I think that's a positive trend getting to the, creating the conditions in the world that I think we all want to live in where when I share my information with somebody who uses it well, I'm happy with that. If I share it with somebody who misuses it I don't want anything to do with them. And that's I think what we all think how it should work. Yeah, that's really fascinating. And I love what you're saying about how the consumers are getting involved. I was a little bit concerned that things like GDPR and CCPA were going to be like the old, software except this to use it. Nobody reads it, nobody pays any attention to it. I just opt in to anything. So what advice do you have users that you make sure that you're working with companies that are going to be using your data correctly and get involved if they're not? Well, first thing they should do is be aware of the regulations and the rights that they have. I mean, the awareness even of GDPR in Europe runs under two thirds, right? So it's not something to take for granted that everybody knows about what they can do it. So the first thing is know what you can do, ask for the data if you're not sure and ask the questions about how your data is being used. If the company is not completely upfront and transparent with how the data is being used and I don't mean a 20 page consent document which you can't figure out what they're doing, then you should be either not doing it or asking those questions and you should have comfort that there are a lot of other consumers out there that are doing the same. So make sure you're doing that. Cisco tries to work very hard to share with our customers exactly how data is used in all of our products, why he published the data privacy maps and the data privacy sheets to kind of make that easy on our customers. But in any business, that's something that a consumer should be asking, a customer should be asking and the company should be supplying. Simply in transparency, the number one complaint that individuals still have today is they don't understand what companies are doing with their data. I mean it's just mind boggling and that's I think again the advice I'd give them is you've got to get that right. How does Cisco do it? What do you guys do? What do you offer people? I mean like, let's just say people want to check. What was the mechanism that you guys are putting in place? Because I have no idea, WebEx, my video's going to be facial recognition or my pack is being routed through Cisco routers or being sniffed out. How do you guys put that transparency out there? Well you like many customers ask those questions and so we started creating and publishing these privacy data sheets which were relatively streamlined, fairly short documents that you could go through and say, okay I understand where the data's going. And we've done that on a whole bunch of the most requested products. We've taken that another step to make them now very visual. I think we talked, we just launched that a year ago where we tried to make them look like subway maps where you have sort of color coded ways that data flows through the system and those are available. Anybody can come get them from trust.sysco.com on the website, publicly available. So our customers who are interested in a product don't have to go down the road and see, well is this going to be my needs? They can get almost all of their questions answered through that. Yes, there may be some additional questions we want to answer later, like through the lawyers and through the conversations, but we at least have a mechanism for giving them most of that information up front. Yeah, I love that trust was something that was front and center in the keynote this morning. I'm curious Robert, with Cisco's position in the marketplace, the ecosystem you have is either something Cisco can lead or they're in the industry consortium to have kind of like a better business bureau. It's, I should be able to go there and say, is this a reputable company? Am I okay doing business with them from a privacy standpoint? Are there any initiatives in the works or is that something you might foresee going forward so that I know, oh hey, this is somebody that it makes sense for me to work with? I mean, it's an interesting idea of, you know, that could be created around that. I mean, I think where we are today is there's still a huge value, you know, of the government playing a role. I mean, the idea of GDPR and other regulations, if you have too much of it, it may not be helpful. But in today's environment, because the consumer can't always trust the company to do what they say they're going to do, you may not even be able to figure it out from the policy to begin with. But the government's role is to make sure that they're doing what they say they're going to do and therefore consumers want government involved in that. So again, there's a role to see fines and see penalties, means that some of the guys are at least being... Well, I wonder even, you look at some of the fragmentation of the internet today, is there something that, you know, government or intergovernmental, kind of like the organization that runs the internet today, if there would be some room for them to be involved in something like that. I know it's a big audacious thing, but it is something that the general public companies, they don't trust most corporations with their information. Right. And it's a nice idea, especially in an environment where we want to avoid 50 different state legislative environments that companies are going to have to comply with. I mean, so far, if we go back to our study, we see this very positive return on privacy investment. If we get 50 more state laws that people have to comply with, that's very quickly going to get negative, right? So as although consumers are demanding it more and it's more part of the brand, if we have too much regulation, we'll start to see that around. So again, your idea of consolidation having a single way is a positive idea. In your report, I saw that, you know, GDPR, then CCPA, oh, China's doing something, Brazil's doing something. It's going to be, well, from it's going to become onerous on the supplier and the consumer side if there isn't some commonality between them. Fully agree. That's right. Well, I got the report here, folks. Check it out. It is an amazing report. Every year, the team does an amazing job. This year, it's about privacy ROI. This proves that good hygiene, whether it's privacy, hiring, practice, diversity, inclusion, inclusion and diversity has payoff and this is the new modern era. I want to switch gears on that note because Robert, we always love to talk about your role. You're a data privacy and economics. So privacy and economics, ROI, get that, security and trust organization. The economic value is a big part of your study here. I think it's just scratching the surface and I want to give you an example and I want you to react to it. It's having a conversation with a big time venture capitalist who just changed his job to start a fund for impact investing for profit. And one of his focus area is economics around self-governing communities around policing some of these regulation issues. So if there's so much regulation, business could get stunted. There's a trend going on now. It's do kind of lead it into it where communities are going to start to govern the brands as a check based on buyer behavior. So there's real signals that users are reacting to companies, policies with data or whatever, there, whether it's environment, whatever. People are making purchasing decisions and organizing. That's going to change the economics which is a top line impact, not just so much a cost structure to have certain regulatory policies. This is a venture capitalist. What's your reaction like? He's investing in this direction. He thinks it's going to be big. Your thoughts? Well, I think there's evidence for that. Again, it's the idea that a company is more valuable because of some of the things that we're talking about was also we actually asked that question. Did respondents think that their company was more valuable because they had progressed along the privacy dimension? Because you think about the loyalty and trust they've built with their customers, aside from the operational benefits and maybe the compliance benefits as well. So I would say evidence for companies thinking that they themselves are further along and those companies that have gone more than just the minimum, that it's sort of becoming a little more mature, a little more accountable from their privacy programs are getting the best returns. We talked about that $270 on a hundred. If you're investing a little more and going up that curve, it's $310 on that hundred. So again, better return on your investment, more loyalty and value, and you see your company as being more valuable. So I think there's strong evidence for that happening. Again, how that actually works operationally and other question, but there's something there. Stu and I were talking about how advertising and how social network and media is all changing. And one of the things that you're driving at is that advertise used to be an attention game. Get on TV, spray the message around. What you're teasing out and what Stu was talking about earlier in our other session is that influence and reputation is a new benchmark. So it's not so much know my brand, my key rating or brand impression, it's reputation. You're getting at something that's really interesting around reputation, which is swinging buying behavior. This is a new dynamic. Yeah, I think that reputational aspect is such an important part of the brand and even doing business and why this whole issue, I mean, the idea of privacy becoming a central tenant of the company and the brand and the overall experience is kind of what we're seeing as that pendulum swings back to the consumer and the ability to make those choices. It's becoming more and more important for the companies to get that right and have that be part of it. That's the value of the company, again, the value of the overall relationship. So I think that's a positive direction. I really appreciate you coming on. I want to get your thoughts. Last question, what's your vision of where we are today in the world? You look around and you have to be happy with some of the things. And then you look at things like Facebook's going through a change. Jeff Bezos' phone was hacked via video on WhatsApp. You got the political environment. You have this entire trust equation. And it's just, it's a dynamic time. Your vision of how trust and data privacy and the economics and all your role, what do you see happening? What's your vision? I'm very optimistic about where it's going. I mean, I think we see ups and downs and we see setbacks. You know, we see millions of records get exposed on users and they get concerned about things. But I think we're trying to put the right processes and controls in place so that those controls and so the right things do happen with data. All trying to create that world that we all want to live in that when our data is shared, it's used appropriately. So it's not going to be a smooth upward curve. You know, but again, I think that idea of not only the legislative process where our governments are seeing that consumers need these protections, that we can't go it alone. We need help with the companies that we work with. You know, and the idea that they're willing to take it more into themselves. I mean, the fact that, you know, governments and companies who are concerned about the regulations and individuals themselves would share the responsibility for creating all of those protections is, I mean, that makes me very positive about where it's going. And as politicians from all around the world, whether it's the United States or other countries have to figure out how much regulation to put on the tech companies, this is the flash point of where industry could do their part and be part of the solution, not just be regulated, hopefully. Too much regulation kills entrepreneurs, in my opinion, but that's my opinion. It would kill ROI here too, right? ROI, yeah. Down the toilet. Okay, theCUBE covers you, bringing all the great conversations here at Barcelona, day to privacy day. This is a big part of our society now, and there's now evidence that it's worth investing in privacy thanks to Cisco's report, good ROI. Of course, great ROI if you stay with theCUBE for more action after this short break.