 From around the globe, it's theCUBE, covering Fortinet Security Summit. Brought to you by Fortinet. Welcome back to theCUBE. Lisa Martin here at the Fortinet Championship Security Summit. Napa Valley has been beautiful and gracious to us all day. We're very pleased to be here. I'm very pleased to welcome a first-timer to theCUBE, Rupesh Chakshi, VP AT&T Cybersecurity and Edge Solutions at AT&T Cybersecurity. Rupesh, welcome. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me, Lisa. I'm looking forward to our conversation today. Me too. First of all, we're in Napa. We're outdoors. It's a beautiful venue. No complaints, right? We're at a golf PGA tournament. Very exciting. Talk to me about the AT&T-Fortinet relationship. Give me a good insight into the partnership. Sure, sure. So as you said, you know, beautiful weather in California, Napa. It's my first time. So it's kind of a new experience for me. Going back to your question in terms of the relationship between AT&T and Fortinet, a long-lasting, you know, 10-plus years, you know, hand-in-hand in terms of the product, the technology, the capabilities that we have brought together in the security space for our customers. So a strategic relationship. And I'm so thrilled to be here today as Fortinet invited us to be part of the championship. Tom, talk to me. So your role, VP of AT&T Cybersecurity and Edge Solutions, give me a dive into what's in your purview. Sure, sure. So I sort of, you know, run the P&L or the profit and loss center for product management for all of AT&T, cybersecurity and Edge Solutions. And the whole concept behind putting the teams together is the convergence in networking and security. So, you know, we are supporting the entire customer continuum, whether it's the Fortune 50, the Fortune 1000 to mid-market customers, to small businesses, to, you know, government agencies, you know, whether it's a local government agency or a school district or a federal agency, et cetera. And my team and I focus on bringing new product and capabilities to the marketplace, you know, working with our sales team from an enablement perspective, go-to-market strategy. And the whole idea is about, you know, winning in the marketplace, right? So delivering growth and revenue to the business. And competitive differentiation. Yes. So we've seen so much change in the last year and a half. I know that's an epic understatement, but we've also seen the proliferation at the Edge. Yes. What are some of the challenges that you're seeing and hearing from customers where that's concerned? Joe, as you stated, right? There's a lot happening in the Edge. And sometimes the definition for Edge varies when you talk with different people. The way we look at it is, you know, definitely focused on the customer edge, right? So if you think about many businesses, whether I'm a quick-serve restaurant or I'm a banking institute or a financial services or an insurance agency or I'm a retailer, et cetera. You know, lots of different branches, lots of different transformation taking place. So one way of approaching it is that when you think about the customer edge, you see a lot of virtualization, software-driven, a lot of IoT endpoints, et cetera, taking place. So the cyber landscape becomes more important. Now you're connecting users, devices, capabilities, your point of sale system to a, you know, multi-cloud environment and that, you know, encryption of that data, the speed at which it needs to happen, all of that is very important. And as we think ahead with the 5G and Edge compute and what that evolution revolution is going to bring, it's going to get even more excited because to me those are kind of like, you know, playgrounds of innovation, but we want to do it right and keep sort of, you know, cyber and security at the core of it so we can innovate and keep the businesses safe. How do you help customers to kind of navigate Edge cyber security challenges and them not being synonymous? That's a great, great question. You know, every day I see, you know, different teams, different agendas, different kind of ways of approaching things and what I tell customers and even my own teams is that, look, we have to have a blueprint, an architecture, a vision, you know, what are the business outcomes that we want to achieve, what the customer wants to achieve and then start to look at that kind of technology, kind of convergence that is taking place and especially in the security and the networking space, significant momentum on the convergence and utilize that convergence to create kind of full value stack solutions that can be scaled, can be delivered so you are not just one and done but it's a continuous innovation and improvement and in the security space you need that, right? It's never going to be one and done. No, I think we've seen so much change in the last year we've seen obviously this rapid pivot to work from home that was particularly overnight for millions and millions of people. We're still in that to a fair amount. There's a good amount of people that are still remote and that probably will be permanently. There's those that are going to be hybrid and a threat landscape has exploded. I was looking at and talking with Forty Guard Labs and the nearly 11X increase in the last 12 months in ransomware is insane and the ransomware as a business is exploded so security is a board level organization for businesses I assume in any industry. Absolutely, absolutely. I agree with you. It's a board level conversation. Security is not a technology problem. Not about picking a tool. It's about the business risk and what do we need to do? You mentioned a couple of interesting stats, right? So we've seen two things I'll share. One is we've seen 440 petabytes of data on the AT&T network in one average business day. So 440 petabytes of data. People don't know what a byte is. So you can imagine the amount of information. So you can imagine the amount of security apparatus that you need to protect and defend and provide the right kind of insights. And then the other thing that we have seen along the same lines of what you were mentioning is significant ransomware, but also significant DDoS attacks, right? So almost like we would say around 300% plus DDoS mitigations that we did from last year, year over year. So a lot of focus on protecting the customers, securing the endpoints, the applications, the data, the network, the devices, et cetera. The other two points that I wanna mention in this space, again, going back to all of this is happening, right? So you have to focus on this innovation at the speed of light. So artificial intelligence, machine learning, the software capabilities that are more forward-looking have to be applied in the security space ever more than ever before, right? That means do the... We're seeing alliances, right? We're seeing this sort of crowd sourcing going on of shit on the good guy's side, right? You see the national security agencies kind of leaning in and saying, hey, let's together build this concept of a digital trust because we're all gonna be doing business whether it's a public-to-public, public-to-private, private-to-private, all of those different entities have to work together. So having security in a digital trust is important. Do you think that the Biden administration's fairly recent executive order is driving the catalyst of that? Absolutely. And I give the president and the administration a lot of kudos for kind of taking it head-on and saying, look, as a nation, we need to take care of this. And I think the other acknowledgement that it is not just one team or one company or one agency, right? It's a whole ecosystem that has to come together, not just national at the global level because we live in a hyper-connected world, right? And one of the things that you mentioned before was like this hybrid work. And I was joking with somebody the other day that just in reality, the word is location, location, location, I think in network security and networking, the word is hybrid, hybrid, hybrid, because you got a hybrid workforce, a hybrid cloud, you have a hybrid, you have a hyper-connected enterprise. So we're going to be in this sort of, you know, hybrid work for quite some time. We are and it has to be secure and organized. You know, all the disruption of folks going to remote work and trying to get connected, one, be on video conferencing, kids are in school, spouse working, maybe kids are gaming. That's been, the connectivity alone has been a huge challenge. You know, Fortinet is doing a lot there with Linksys, especially to help that remote environment because we know a lot of it's going to remain. But in the spirit of transformation, you had a session today here at the Security Summit. You talked about transformation and transformation plan. We talk about that word at every event, digital transformation, right? Infrastructure, transformation, IT, security. What context were you talking about transformation in it today? What was the transformation plan mean for your customers? That's a great question because I sometimes feel, you know, overused term, right? Then you just take something and add it. It's IT transformation, network transformation, digital transformation. But what we were talking today in the morning was more around sort of, you know, again, going back to the network security and the transformation that the customers have to do. We hear a lot about SASE and the convergence we are seeing, you know, SDVAN take off significantly from an adoption perspective, application aware experiences, et cetera. Customers are looking at doing things like internet offload and having connectivity back into the SAS applications. Again, secure connectivity back into the SAS applications which directly ties to their outcomes. So the three tenants of my conversation today was, hey, make sure you have a clear view on the business outcomes that you want to accomplish. Now the second was work with a trusted advisor and AT&T in many cases is providing that from a trusted advisor perspective. And third is that going back to the one and done, it is not a one and done, right? This is a continuous process. So sometimes we have to be thinking about, are we doing it in a way that we will always be future ready? Will we always be, you know, able to deal with the security threats that we don't even know about today? Yeah, you bring up the term future ready and hear that all the time. And you think, man, we really weren't future ready when the pandemic struck. There was so much that wasn't there. And when I was talking with Fortinet earlier, I said, you know, how much has the pandemic been a catalyst for so much innovation? I imagine it has been the same thing that you've seen. Absolutely. And you know, I remember, you know, early days, February, March, where we're all just trying to better understand, right? What is it going to be? And the first thing was, hey, we're all going to work remote. Is it a one week? Is it a two week thing? Right? And then if you're like the CIO or the CISO or other folks, you're worried about, how am I going to give the productivity tools, right? Businesses in a one customer we worked with, again, to back to innovation was said, hey, I have 20,000 call center agents that I need to take remote. How do you deliver connectivity and security? Because that call center agent is the bloodline for that business, interacting with their end customers. So I think, you know, it is accelerated what would happen over 10 years and 18 months. And it's still unknown, right? So we're still discovering the future. That's, there will be more silver linings to come, I think. I wanted to pick your brain on SASE adoption trends. One of the things I noticed in your abstract of your session here was that according to Gartner, the convergence of network and security into the SASE framework is the most vigorous technology trend coming out of 2020. Are you seeing that? That's a big description, most vigorous. It's a big, big description, a big statement. And we are definitely seeing it, you know, we saw some of that in the second half of last year as the organizations were getting more organized to deal with the pandemic and the change. And coming into this year, it's even more accelerated. And what I mean by that is that, you know, I look at sort of, you know, three things, right? So one is going back to the hybrid work, remote work, work from anywhere, right? So how do you continue to deliver a differentiated experience, highly secure to that workforce? Because productivity, human capital, very important, right? The second is that there's a back and forth on the branch transformation. So yes, you know, restaurants are opening back up, retailers are opening back up. So businesses are thinking about how do I do that branch transformation? And then the third is explosive business IoT. So the IoT endpoints, deeper into manufacturing, into airports, in many industries, we continue to see that. So when you think about Sassi and the framework, it's about delivering a framework that allows you to protect and secure all of those endpoints at scale. And I think that trend is real. I've seen customer demand. We've signed a number of deals, we're implementing them as we speak across all verticals, healthcare, retail, finance, manufacturing, transportation, government agencies, small businesses, mid-sized businesses. Nobody's exempt. Nope, nope. Not at all. Talk to me about, Kirst, you've been at AT&T a long time. You've seen a lot of innovation. Talk to me about your perspectives on seeing that and then what do you think is a silver lining that has come out of the acceleration of the last 18 months? So you know, I get the question, you know, I've been with AT&T a long time, right? And I still remember the day I joined AT&T Labs. So, you know, it was one of my kind of dream coming out of engineering school. Every engineer wants to go work for a brand that is recognized, right? And I drove from Clemson, South Carolina to New Jersey, Holmdel. And I'm still, you know, you can see I'm still having the smile on my face. Yeah, you are. So I've, you know, think innovation is key and that's what we do at AT&T. I think the ability to kind of move fast, you know, I think what the pandemic has taught us is the speed, right? The speed at which we have to move, the speed at which we have to collaborate, the speed at which we have to deliver. So agility has become, you know, the differentiator for all of us and we're focusing on that. I also feel that, you know, there have been times where, you know, product organizations, technology organizations, you know, we struggle with jumping this sort of S-curve, right? Which is, hey, I'm holding on to something. Do I let go or not let go? And I think the pandemic has taught us that you have to jump the S-curve. You have to accelerate because that is where you need to be. And in a way, going back to the sassy trend, right? It is something that is real and it's going to be there for the next three to five years. So let's get ready. I call that getting comfortably uncomfortable. Yep. No business is safe if they rest on their laurels these days. Yep, absolutely. I think we've learned that. Speaking of speed, I want to, I want to get kind of your perspective on 5G where you guys are at. And when do you think it's going to be really impactful to, you know, businesses, consumers, first responders? The 5G investments are happening and they will continue to, you know, happen. And if you look at, you know, what's happened with the network, what AT&T has announced, you know, we've gotten a lot of kudos for our 5G network, for our mobile network, for our wireless network. And we are starting to see that innovation. And that innovation, as we anticipated, is happening for the enterprise customers first, right? So there's a lot of, you know, robotics or warehouse or equipment that needs to sort of, you know, connect at a low latency, high speed, highly secure sort of, you know, data movements, compute edge that sits next to the campus, you know, delivering a very different application experience. So we're seeing that, you know, momentum. I think on the consumer side, it is starting to come in and it's going to take a little bit more time as the devices and the applications catch up to what we are doing in the network. And if you think about, you know, the value creation that has happened on the mobile networks is like, if you think about companies like Uber or Lyft, right, did not exist. And many businesses, you know, are dependent on that network. And I think it will carry on and I think in the next year or two, we'll see firsthand the outcomes and the value that it is delivering. You go to a stadium, AT&T Stadium in Dallas, you know, 5G enabled, you know, the experience is very different. I can't wait to go to a stadium again and see if the mobile game or live music, I think that sounds great. Rupesh, thank you so much for joining me today, talking about what AT&T is doing with Fortinet, the challenges that you're helping your customers come out at the edge and the importance of really being future ready. Yes, thank you. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you having me. And thanks for Fortinet to invite us to be at this event. Isn't that nice? Yes, thank you, Fortinet. For Rupesh Takshi, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE at the Fortinet Championship Security Summit.