 Welcome everyone to JSA TV live the live streaming newsroom for telecom and data center professionals I'm Jamie Skado Kataya CEO and founder of JSA and joining me today. I'm very excited to introduce you to Sean Blair President of Mutare Sean welcome to JSA TV live. Yeah, thanks for having me Jamie. It's really a pleasure to be here We are honored. We are honored for your time. So let's go ahead and jump right into it Tell us a little bit first about Mutare So Mutare is we'll start with the actual word itself It's derived from Latin and it means to change to adapt to mutate and we are we consider ourselves a 33-year-old startup software company Still have a great entrepreneurial Feel to it and yet we've been around for going on our fourth decade Our founder Tracy Powell and our longtime president Ben Crown are still active actively involved in the business And one of the unique things and exciting things about Mutare is we're actually owners of the company as well we have an ESOP program and That ensures our long-term viability and it really gives every employee a sense of ownership and adds that kind of extra focus and commitment We're a unified communication software company. We've done a lot with voicemail speech to text Texting platforms things of that nature, but we're always constantly evolving and In order to just serve our customers. It's a continually changing landscape or a mutating world And you know this really leads to some of what we're going to talk today because now we find our Latest solution and focus is on securing the voice channel from recent attacks and vulnerabilities Yeah, I love that and I love Mutare to change Your vision your mission for the company Notably Mutare's voice traffic filter. I hear it helps companies really Protect their voice networks from a rapidly rising threat and boy. Do we know this one? It's called Vishing not fishing with an F, but vishing with a V. Can you tell us what is vishing and how big is this problem? Yeah, or even let's take it step back Fishing with a pH is a pH the common exposure for email Sam and things of that nature. There's also smishing which is derived around texting from the SMS but you're right, this is voice fishing or vishing and You know, let's take the early days of email people just love the new platform And you really didn't have a need to filter or protect it but the more that the platform was used the more it invited the bad actors to come in and find ways to exploit it and Now you couldn't even operate an enterprise without some type of secure Filtering and protection of your email. Well, what we're approaching is the vulnerability that exists around the voice channel And that is the vishing and you wouldn't You wouldn't have an email system as I mentioned without protection We're finding a lot of people are vulnerable to vishing attacks And you say, you know, folks are vulnerable. What type of companies in particular? And which specific industries are being impacted the most by vishing with a V? Yeah, I think really anybody can be vulnerable But right now it's the people who have to answer the phone There are some early versions of protection that are really just about blocking the call But there are a lot of Businesses and industries that don't have that luxury hospitals are a great example. I mean God forbid they blocked an emergency call that really was legitimate So they must answer the phone nurses stations must answer the phones the patients rooms So you have to be able to protect those we're seeing interest as well in the higher education where you have all the new students that come on and there's the interaction with administration and interaction with You know donors alumni the teachers I'd say contact centers people that operate big calling centers They have to have those calls come in we're also seeing a lot of interest with law firms. I give a lot of credit to law firms They always seem to be at the bleeding edge of technology And they have to answer their phone and then financial institutions and that can range from the traditional banks to even Cryptocurrency in fact, I just recently read this month that the cryptocurrency exchange coin base Actually successfully fended off a vishing attack But their security team was on it But still the bad actors got into their phones They were got into the phone system pretending to be the internal IT staff to try to trick an employee out of their logging credentials So that's an example of a vishing attack and these are the industries where we're really seeing a lot of interest They tend to be at the forefront of protecting themselves because they have to answer the phone That's an incredible example as many examples, but particularly the last one so timely So tell me now. What what makes Mutare's voice traffic filter unique? Well, one of the things is this is a constantly evolving world, right? So you can't just put a solution out build a wall if you will and expect it to fend off everything So it's all about the flexibilities and kind of the rules that we put into it And we generally take a you know a do-no-harm approach Yet we're trying to it's ironic because we're trying to prevent people from harming the enterprise what this means is you don't just block a call but you really stop it at the networks edge and Voice so much of voice is coming through the network traffic unlike the old, you know phone line days So you have to approach the problem Dynamically and what we've done it in its simplest form think of voice traffic filter as a firewall for the voice And we have multiple layers of protection including Proprietary dynamic database that does quick look-ups We have a voice capture for anybody that's been on the internet and you get a challenge to pick this the pictures of a boat or picture pictures of a car that's actually behind the scenes a A capture that is proving that you're not a robo Person so on a phone call you want to challenge that call if you think it's a robo call And then we have something called threat radar which tries to monitor the traffic that's coming on all of these are Tools designed to handle the traffic. It's not an infrastructure play It's not a piece of equipment that you have to rip it up rip in or rip out This is actually a tool that monitors the traffic and it's designed to allow each customer in each industry to Take the approach that they want based on what's happening with the call So it's all about Flexibility and building a solution that will be ongoing because the bad characters are very very smart They're tenacious and they learn like crazy. So you have to build it dynamically Yeah, I love that you have to be flexible to catch those bad guys out there who you know can move on a dime So as president of Mutare Sean what have you learned about this shade that has shocked you the most? Do I have to choose just one? You know, I think the the first part is we talked to a lot of really really smart people in security You know coming from unified communications We have a certain set of expertise and a lot of that is about putting a solution in and the solution can run for years Without a problem in the world of security. They have their head on a swivel. In fact, if a security person is feeling confident That's probably the time they should be most worried. So for me Knowing that skill set just how unprepared customers are in enterprises for voice defense In a sense, they built this huge cyber defense fortress and they've got an unlocked backdoor and that's the voice sector The other thing I've noticed is the voice hacks They've always traditionally been viewed as being carried out by individuals and in fact I believe it was uber and one other large company actually it was a Teenager that had gotten into the network, but the more important threat is coming from just Organizations and what these bad actors are doing is they're collecting data on all of us And then they take that data and they have a very socially engineered attack. They're making themselves look very Convincing and at the end of the day, it's the employees. It's human interaction that tends to trigger the hack itself They just need to get in and get you to click on something or get you to Not realize that you've added malware and they're actually tracking your keystrokes and these these companies are very well organized They have their own company themselves and training departments and recruiting But a majority of them are actually located in countries that don't have an extradition law With the US and that makes it so much harder because they're almost untouchable and they know this and that's That's what creates this relentlessness and how bold they are Another one that I just read about today was that the US Marshall's office Was actually compromised in ransomware now. I don't know if that was a viscine attack But you talk about bold and that's what they're doing and companies are just back on their heels Yeah, yeah, I mean this is the stuff that's in headlines today And like one of our viewers just Texted us here. It won't happen to me until it does Very very true very true. Yeah, how many times do you you listen to a news program and the first thing out of their words? I never thought it would happen to me. So, you know, we find The early adopters of these technologies that I described before they really do understand it and they're looking for a solution There's like any kind of Protection software or cyber defense it takes some iterations and we know that we're kind of at the early stage of it But our job is to try to get our customers protected before it becomes a threat to them and you mentioned Voice defense which I loved What overall trends are you seeing in voice network security or voice defense? If you will That you're seeing today that you know, we should keep an eye out for in 2023 You already gave a few great examples, but um, are there any overall trends that we should be aware of? Yeah, it's a it's a great question. We we tend to do a lot of research on this There are areas of research that we pull together We also do our own annual survey where we go out and talk to customers Usually at security conferences to derive some information. Some of the stats are pretty scary Right now based on our intelligence and research Almost nine percent of all inbound traffic on average is what we call unwanted Now that may be just robo calls or political calls, but it also could be something very more Visiting and nefarious in nature But you think about if you're getting a million or two million calls into your contact center every month That's a lot And then some of the early data tells us that almost 40 percent of all vishing attacks are actually successful And for a successful attack, it doesn't mean it brings down your entire network It just means somebody has gotten in and gotten some data And they're going to use that data and roll it forward to go for an even bigger attack If you get credentials of an entry level employee Your target may be the cfo right to get to where the money is or get to where the the ip is And so those are Those are very real stats. We also have seen year over year About a five hundred and fifty percent increase in vishing attacks And so that's telling us that this is a channel that the bad actors are actually seeing some success in I think also the trend that we're seeing is you know hybrid work post-covid is here to stay I know there's initiatives to try to bring employees back in but the reality is that's made the end points of an enterprise Go out exponentially and you're seeing companies Last pass which is a password protection company They've had a a hack and a breach uber robin hood twilio Recently I've seen local school districts that had their network compromised and had to take down everything including their phone systems which are tied to the network and There's no school which i'm sure for kids is is a great thing But it creates an administrative nightmare and you're talking about local school districts You know, how can we help them get better prepared? Two other trends that we see are probably the one big trend is the contact centers as I mentioned You know, these are basic call centers very sophisticated They bring in large volumes of calls. They're trying to address their customers A lot of them are going what's called ccasts into the cloud And they rely on metrics and data and kpis But there's so much traffic unwanted traffic that's coming in there that it's really just Wrecking havoc with their actual stats and then of course you've got the security aspect of the contact So those are a list of four or five trends that pop into my head incredible incredible and scary The data data speaks for itself Yeah So can you share with us any information about you know, looking at 2023 your crystal ball any new projects or exciting updates on the horizon from Atari this year Yeah, um, and Maybe a little bit of back history real quick mitari. We have a tremendous blue chip blue chip customer base But it's almost like intel in the early 90s. Nobody really knew they had That particular product until they started the intel inside campaign Most people don't realize that they are probably using some type of a mitari product already in their industry or in their in their company So for us, we've always relied on working through integrations and partnerships And so with voice traffic filter one of our big focuses Is to roll out the integrations within those ccasts and what's also known as ucasts Systems that's where a lot of things are going to the cloud So we're working with those vendors to You know, basically present our product suite And so we may end up having customers that don't even know that they're using us once again And that's a role that we're actually comfortable with as long as our products are being Used and benefited. We don't really care how we get through there. So that integration is important We're also rolling out a mobile app which will help with all those numerous end points I mentioned in the hybrid work world think of think of a healthcare environment all the nurses and doctors They all have phones those are all vulnerable end points And because of that we want to try to put that protection out there So that the phone doesn't even ring if it shouldn't and we all get the potential spam I look down at my phone my personal phone and it says potential spam It's like really why did it have to ring if you know it's spam if they really need me they'll leave a voicemail So it's it's things like that. That's the mobile app. We're rolling out. We're also adding international number filtering Obviously just like other email systems and things you have to be able to conform to international standards So we're adding that to our dynamic database And I guess the last thing we'd be working on is whatever new methodology the bad actors come up with They're just as innovative if not more than the companies they're going after So we have to stay nimble and alert we find ourselves having our head on the swivel Just like our security customers do Well, I know i'm sleeping better at night knowing you are out there and mutare is is uh is on the job So before we go, can you please tell our viewers where they can go to learn more about mutare's voice traffic filter? Yeah, well, you'd expect me to add the cliche of go to our website But in this particular case, we really do want people to educate themselves on what vision is and what's happening So if they if they come to our website, you'll obviously go to the voice traffic filter landing page I think you'll find a lot of resources in there that may help you understand How we view the problem take a look at our annual survey The one we did from last year. We've got a new one Coming up We're actually going to go out to a couple conferences and derive that data again people in the field that are actually Out there, you know talking about where they think things are headed We'll obviously post that out on there You know one of the things that we found interesting was Quoted from the federal trade commission. They actually estimated in 2020 That the loss of fraud through the voice channel was 3.3 billion I'd be willing to bet and I haven't seen the latest data from them because it usually lags But that number is going to grow exponentially For other other people out there enterprises If you're going to be at the rsa show very very big security show in san francisco next month We will be exhibiting there. We're also at cisco live, which is back in back in person It's just nice to have those conferences back But that's in las vegas and one of the unique things is we've been invited into both The collaboration village, which is where we usually exist But the security team has invited us into their village So we're actually going to be in two spots within the cisco live We're back in vegas two weeks later at the contact center week for any of your folks that might be of contact center nature and they're interested and I think the last thing I would say is We offer a free voice traffic We call it assessment of vta where we can take your Call data from let's say the last six months and we run it through the program and actually produce a report that shows you What the traffic would have looked like And it's quite eye-opening. We've had customers that have had anywhere as like three percent unwanted traffic Do I think our current record is we had a very large foundation that had 82 of their inbound traffic Was unwanted either nefarious in nature or just the robo call stuff So we're actually able to offer something to the customer with their data that shows exactly what's happening underneath their notes Because look at the end of the day everybody always talks about employees are the most valuable resource that a company has But in this case, they're also the weakest link in the cyber defense chain And training just isn't enough you really do have to look at solutions Just like that email spam filter I talked about that has become the standard You really need to start eliminating that unwanted voice traffic In a manner that you the organization wants not a kind of static solution Well, well said well said and to echo our chat board here Of another linkedin viewer chiming in great insights. Sean really appreciate your time and energy and passion and protection Thank you again so much for your time and and what an incredible lineup of conferences It's absolutely going to be a successful 2023 for you. I can feel it Um, and thank you viewers for tuning in here on to jsa tv live Be sure to follow us on linkedin and twitter always of course And you guys stay safe. Happy networking. Thanks, jamie