 Welcome to today's session of the AWS startup showcase. The next big thing in AI, security and life sciences. Today we're featuring Protegrity for the Life Sciences Track. I'm your host for theCUBE, Natalie Erlich. And now we're joined by our guest, Rick Farnell, the CEO of Protegrity. Thank you so much for being with us. Great to be here. Thanks so much, Natalie. Great to be on theCUBE. Yeah, great. And so we're going to talk today about the ransomware game and how it has changed with kinetic data protection. So, you know, the title of today's video segment makes a bold claim. How are kinetic data and ransomware connected? So first off, kinetic data, data is in use. It's moving. It's not static. It's no longer sitting still and your data protection has to adhere to those same standards. And I think if you kind of look at what's happening in the ransomware kind of attacks, there's a couple of different things going on, which is number one, bad actors are getting access to data in the clear and they're holding that data ransom and threatening to release that data. So kind of from a integrity standpoint, with our protection capabilities, that data would be rendered useless to them in that scenario. So there's lots of ways in which kind of backup data protection, really wonderful opportunities to do both data protection and kind of that backup mixed together really is a wonderful solution to the threat of ransomware. And you know, it's a serious issue and it's not just targeting the most highly regulated industries and customers. We're seeing kind of attacks on pipeline and ferry companies. And really there is no end to where some of these bad actors are really focusing on and the damages can be in the, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars and last for years after from a brand reputation. So I think if you look at how data is used today, there's that kind of opposing forces where the business wants to use data at the speed of light to produce more machine learning and more artificial intelligence and predict where customers are going to be and have wonderful services at their fingertips. But at the same time, they really want to protect their data. And sometimes those architectures can be at odds. And at Protegody, we're really focusing on solving that problem. So free up your data to be used in artificial intelligence and machine learning while making sure that is absolutely bulletproof from some of these ransomware attacks. Yeah, I mean, you bring a really fascinating point that's really central to your business. Could you tell us more about how you're actually making that data worthless? I mean, that sounds really revolutionary. So, and it sounds novel, right? To kind of make your data worthless in the wrong hands. And I think from a Protegody perspective, our kind of policy and protection capability follows the individual piece of data in a matter of where it lives in the architecture. And we do a ton of work as the world does with Amazon Web Services. So kind of helping customers really blend their hybrid cloud strategies with their on-premise and their use of AWS is something that we thrive at. So protecting that data, not just at rest or while it's in motion, but it's a continuous protection policy that we can basically preserve the privacy of the data, but still keep it unique for use in downstream analytics and machine learning. Right, well, traditional security is rather stifling. So how can we fix this and what are you doing to amend that? Well, I think if you look at cybersecurity and we certainly play a big role in the cybersecurity world, but like any industry, there are many layers. And traditional cybersecurity investment has been at the perimeter level, at the network level, keeping bad actors out. And once people do get through some of those fences, if your data is not protected at a fine-grained level, they have access to it. And I think from our standpoint, yes, we're last line of defense, but at the same time, we partner with folks in the cybersecurity industry and with AWS and with others in the backup and recovery to give customers that level of protection, but still allow their kinetic data to be utilized in downstream analytics. Right, well, I'd love to hear more about the types of industries that you're helping and specifically healthcare, obviously a really big subject for the year and probably now for years to come. How is this industry using kinetic protection at the moment? So certainly as you mentioned, some of the most highly regulated industries are our sweet spot. So financial services, insurance, online retail and healthcare, any or any industry that has sensitive data and sensitive customer data. So thank for saying last name, credit card information, national ID number, social security number, blood type, cancer type. That's all sensitive information that you as an organization want to protect. So in the healthcare space specifically, some of the largest healthcare organizations in the world rely on integrity to provide that level of protection, but at the same time give them the business flexibility to utilize that data. So one of our customers, one of the leaders in online prescriptions, and that is an AWS customer to allow a wonderful service to be delivered to all of their customers while maintaining protection. If you think about sharing data on your watch with your insurance provider, we have lots of customers that, bridge that gap and have that personal data coming in to the insurance companies all the way to, in a use case in the future, looking at the pandemic, if you have to prove that you've been vaccinated, you talk about some sensitive information. So you want to be able to show that information but still have the confidence that it's not going to be used for nefarious purposes. Right. And what is next for our integrity? Well, I think continuing on our journey, we've been around for 17 years now and I think the last couple, there's been an absolute renaissance in fine grain data protection or that connected data protection and organizations are recognizing that continuing to protect your perimeter, continuing to protect your firewalls and that's not going to go away anytime soon. Your access points, your points of vulnerability to keep bad actors out, but at the same time, recognizing that the data itself needs to be protected but with that balance of utilizing it downstream for analytic purposes, for machine learning, for artificial intelligence, keeping the data of hundreds of millions if not billions of people safe, that's what we do. If you were to add up the customers of all of our customers, the largest banks, the largest insurance companies, largest healthcare companies in the world globally, we're protecting the private data of billions of human beings. And it doesn't just stop there. I think, you asked a great question about kind of the industry and yes, insurance healthcare retail where there's a lot of sensitive data that certainly can be a focus point but in the IoT space kind of if you think about GPS location or geolocation, if you think about a device and what it does and the intelligence that it has and the decisions that it makes on the fly, protecting data and keeping that safe is not just a personal thing. We're stepping into intellectual property and some of the most valuable assets that companies have, which is their decision-making on how they use data and how they deliver an experience. And I think that's why there's been such a renaissance if you will in kind of that fine-grained data protection that we provide. Yeah, well, what is Protegrity's role now in future-proofing businesses against cyber attacks? I mean, you mentioned really the ramifications of that and the impact it can have on businesses but also on governments. I mean, obviously this is really critical. So there's kind of a three-step approach and this is something that we've certainly kind of felt for a long, long time and we work on with our customers. One is having that fine-grained data protection. So tokenizing your data so that if someone were to get your data, it's worthless unless they have the ability to unlock every single individual piece of data. So that's number one and then that's kind of what Protegrity provides. Number two, having a wonderful backup capability to roll kind of an active-active AWS being one of the major clouds in the world where we deploy our software regularly and work with our customers, having multi-regions, multi capabilities for an active-active scenario where if there's something that goes down or happens you can bring that down and bring a new environment up. And then third is kind of malware detection and the rest of the cyber world to make sure that you rinse kind of your architecture from some of those agents. And I think when you kind of look at it, ransomware, they take data, they encrypt your data so they force you to give them Bitcoin or whatnot or they'll release some of your data. And if that data is rendered useless, that's one huge step in kind of your discussions with these nefarious actors. You could release it, but there's nothing there. You're not going to see anything. And then second, if you have a wonderful backup capability where you wind down that environment that has been infiltrated, prove that this new environment is safe, have your production data rolling and then wind that back up. You're back in business. You don't have to notify your customers. You don't have to deal with the ransomware players. So it's really a three-step process but ultimately it starts with protecting your data and tokenizing your data. And that's something that Pategrity does really, really well. So you're basically able to eliminate the financial impact of a breach. Yeah, honestly, we dramatically reduce the risk of customers being at risk for ransomware attacks, 100%. Now, tokenizing data and moving in that direction is something that it's not trivial. We are literally replacing production data with a token and then making sure that all downstream applications have the ability to utilize that and make sure that the analytic systems and machine learning systems and artificial intelligence applications that are built downstream on that data have the ability to execute. But that is something that from our patent portfolio and what we provide to our customers, again, some of the largest organizations in retail, in financial services, in banking and in healthcare, we've been doing that for a long time. We're not just saying that we can do this and we're in version one of our product. We've been doing this for years supporting the largest organizations with a 24 by seven capability. Right, and tell us a bit about the competitive landscape. Where do you see your offering compared to your competitors? So kind of historically back, let's call it an hour ago maybe even before cloud even became a thing in hybrid cloud. There were a handful of players that could acquire it into much larger organizations. Those organizations have been dusting off those acquired assets and we're seeing them come back in. There's some new entrants into our space that have some protection mechanisms whether it be encryption or whether it be anonymization. But unless you're doing fine-grained tokenization you're not going to be able to allow that data to participate in the artificial intelligence world. So we see kind of a range of competition there. And then I'd say probably the biggest competitor now is customers not doing tokenization. They're saying, no, we're okay. We'll continue protecting our firewall. We'll continue protecting our access points. We'll invest a little bit more and maybe some governance but that fine-grained data protection maybe it's not for us. And that is the big shift that's happening. You look at kind of the beginning of this year with the solar winds attack and the vulnerability that very large and important organizations found themselves the last few weeks with all the ransomware attacks that are happening on meat processing plants and facilities shutting down meat production, pipeline stopping oil and gas and kind of that. So we're seeing a complete shift in the types of organizations and the industries that need to protect their data. It's not just the healthcare organizations or the banks or the credit card companies. It is every single industry, every single size company. Right. And I got to ask you this question. What is your defining contribution to the future of cloud scale? Well, ultimately we kind of have a charge here at Protegory where we feel like we protect the world's most sensitive data. And that's when we come into work every day that's what every single employee thinks at Protegory. We are standing behind billions of individuals who are customers of our customers. And that's a cultural thing for us. And we take that very serious. We have a maniacal customer support supporting our biggest customers with the fall, the sun, 24 by seven global capability. So that's number one. So I think our part in this is really helping to educate the world that there is a solution for this ransomware and for some of these things that don't have to happen. Now, naturally with any solution there's going to be some investment. There's going to be some architecture changes but with partnerships like AWS and our partnership with pretty much every data provider data storage provider, data solution provider in the world that we want to provide fine-grained data protection, any data in any system on any platform. And that's our mission. Well, Rick Farnell, this has been really fascinating conversation with you. Thank you so much. The CEO of Protegory, really great to have you on this program for the AWS startup showcase talking about how ransomware game has changed with the kinetic data protection. Really appreciate it. Again, I'm your host, Natalie Orlick. Thank you again very much for watching.