The Importance of Trust in the Digital Landscape | DigiCert Trust Summit 2023

This is Textron tv. Hey everyone. Welcome back to our live coverage of the DigiCert Trust Conference here at Resort World in Las Vegas.

Um, we've got a two four for you here. We, we, as things happen when you're going live, TV schedules get messed up. And so in, in order to stay on schedule, I've asked these two gentlemen to appear together.

Who knew they worked together at one point, right? Not today. Let me introduce you first.

To my near right, we have Sean Sweeney. Mm-hmm. Sean is in charge of the field CSO group over at Oracle.

And, and that makes 'em a field cso, I guess as well. CISO wouldn't Be the field Cso, the field C, with a capital V. And, um, and, and to Sean's right, is Vishal Amin Min, uh, v Vishal Amin the gm.

I can't even read my chicken scratch here. Se Security Solutions from Microsoft Federal. That's right.

That's Right. Gentlemen, welcome to Tech Drunk tv. Thanks for having Oh, thanks for being with us today.

Yeah. Thanks for having us. Yeah, This is great.

Thank You. So, before we jump into what you spoke about today, what's going here? Let's talk about the connection.

Yeah. You guys work together, give, give us some of the history. Give us some of the Sean and, uh, Vishal journey here.

Yeah, yeah. No, I, I, I remember when we first met, and I think it was before you were at Microsoft, wasn't it? Or I Think it was before.

Yeah, Probably before. And, uh, uh, but then, you know, he came to Microsoft. I'd been there for a little while.

Right. And, uh, we, we had some syncs. It's very common, you know, and Oracle does it too.

Right. You know, you, you come into the business, you get to know your colleagues, you build your network. And so Michelle and I had the, the pleasure to, to meet that way and, uh, work together inside Microsoft.

And, uh, uh, he pinged me yesterday actually on LinkedIn, which, I mean, anyone that's ever sent me a LinkedIn message knows, like, It's hard to get a message in today. Yeah. I was gonna find, I don't too many same day responses, But I saw it, and it, it was just, you know, it was, it was meant to be.

So Sometimes, and then you guys were not s honestly, they were not supposed to be together on this. It was supposed to be two separate interviews. It just, I think it's, it's, it's a testament to our community.

I mean, when we met, we both have two entirely, entirely different backgrounds. And at the time of the organization we worked for was really investing in my mind, uh, in talent and people in a diverse sense. So you have two different people from very diverse backgrounds being brought together.

And at the time, um, this was in, uh, 20 19, 20 20 timeframe, there was a huge investment in cybersecurity at the time from industry in general. Yeah. And the teams, the team that we were on, very diverse, very dynamic group of people that were former CISO, industry professionals, individuals that weren't in cyber.

So it was an awesome place to be. And, uh, many of those individuals I think I still keep in touch with. Yeah, I do.

I do too. I, I was just texting with a, a couple of them this week. So it's, uh, we'll stick together for always.

'cause that's the way this industry, You know, sometimes, and I've had this in my career too, sometimes you just catch lightning in a bottle. Yeah, right. It's very hard to duplicate.

You could bring those same people together again in a different company, but kismet, right? Yeah. Things are different.

And it just doesn't gel like that. Absolutely. Um, so that, that's great.

I'm glad you, I mean, look, the fact that we have Oracle and Microsoft sitting here, you know, I know Larry. And, uh, yeah. Well, it's like Larry and cio, Just a few.

Yeah. You know, It's down the ladder, right? Not too many.

Not too many. Not too many. We know None of you own a Hawaiian island.

I could vacation that or anything, right? I do not. No, no, I hear you.

Um, but that being said, I'm, I'm thrilled to have you back on here, to have you both on here. And, and the other thing is, look, I think it's a testament to DigiCert mm-hmm. And this trust conference that we have both Microsoft and Oracle and, and, you know, two senior people in the security, uh, programs that both of these companies both presenting here mm-hmm.

Right? And, and on here on Textron TV for our coverage. So I guess the logical question is, guys, what have you, what have you been presenting on?

I know, Michelle, you presented already, correct? Correct. Yeah.

We were doing the, I think we were both part of the, uh, different portions of the keynote with AMI today. And we both talked about, I, I would say pretty similar things. We're we're talking about trust, and we're talking about how to build that trust and retain the trust.

Um, for me, you know, I shared a little bit of a personal story today, but the premise of my talk today was basically to share that as an industry, we have digital signals. We have things that are prioritized and every business and every facet. Um, but at the end of the day, what we do is connected to the human.

And, and, you know, I mean, asked a great question today at the end of the keynote piece that I was on, which was, Michelle, what does digital trust mean to you? And he asked me that yesterday, and I had, I think I had a pretty lousy answer. 'cause I was just thinking about it.

He hadn't asked me that, and I probably should have forecasted that question. But I thought about it, and today I shared with him, I said, you know, digital trust really means human trust. And I believe with the world events, you, you look at Ukraine fighting for its democracy.

You look at the events, um, in the Middle East currently to build trust right now in this world of innovation and the world of technology, there's people, and if we can get people to trust processes, business processes each other, again, we've done our job. And we can do that digitally. And that's what Digital Trust can do.

It can give us that bridge to human trust. Yeah. That's, that's really, uh, I agree completely.

And I, I'll take it one step further and say that, uh, we also have a responsibility as cyber leaders to, to help people and help our users do the right thing. Right. Right.

And, and give them the, the guardrails that they need so they can, uh, get their jobs done and get their jobs done securely, and know that the systems that they're using are secure. And I used to always say at Microsoft, like, users are like water. Like, they'll follow the path of least resistance to get their job done.

So, you know, we gotta make sure we don't put too much friction, um, in, in place. And I, I think that plus, you know, the, the focus on the individual and kind of, uh, you know, earning their trust, reinforcing the need for trust is, is super important. Absolutely.

You know, look, I, I've been in technology 30 plus years, I'm not gonna lie to you. I'm a gadget boy. Mm-hmm.

You're talking about surface when the new surface comes out. Yeah. I bought them when the new Mac M two Max Pro.

I got it. This, I mean, I, I, I'm a gadget boy. I think there's a lot of people in our industry who are tech freaks.

And so we're attracted to shiny trinkets. Yeah. Shiny new objects.

You must Have seen me on stage. Yeah. Well, That's What I talked about, but it's about people.

Yeah. It is about, I, I'll give you a for instance. We had the, I think she was on stage two, the lady's former, uh, A C S O at Amazon.

Yeah. For Heart Lmi. I was talking to her, and we went to Exchange.

I said, I need to stay in touch with you. And I took out my phone, and I have on my phone this qr it's an app with a QR code that you could hit the QR code. And it, it, it adds me to your contacts.

Yeah. And in giving it to her, I hesitated, not that I didn't want her to have my contact, but I was afraid that she trusts me. Mm-hmm.

That this QR code I'm giving her is not malware or, or bad, or, you know, like, and, and she did, and she did. It added me to her contacts. And, you know, we'll, we'll stay in touch, but at, at its essence, we talk about what's going on in Ukraine in the Middle East and everywhere else.

It's that trust between people that is at the core of this. And, and if we lose sight of that, we, we miss out. Right.

'cause someone's just doing technology for technology sake. Right. Listen, you have to, you have to have that trust at the core of everything you do, whether it's digitally through a certification, whether it's a certificate, or whether it's a, um, whether it's on the edge, maybe more so where you're enabling, uh, multi-factor authentication.

Mm-hmm. Um, you know, and you're assuming compromise. You're assuming these things that trust has to be built into everything we do.

So when she gave you that ability that connected you, right. Right. It was without a thought.

And I think that's what we need more of in this industry is, number one, we need to ensure that that trust digitally is built into everything we do. But at the same time, that's the type of thought that we want. We want people to be able to go collaborate, to go communicate, to connect without worrying, without feeling like they're, they're, they're compromising anything.

Right. And that's, that's innovation. Right?

I mean, you look at you, and we won't get into it here, but you look at the partnership that Oracle and Microsoft made, um, you know, just, just recently mm-hmm. And it's not just two technology companies come together. They're two sets of customers mm-hmm.

Two types of customers that are doing things in the universe that maybe one of us is doing more so than the other. And to be able to bring those customers together and say, Hey, we trust each other to build with each other, to build off of each other. Mm-hmm.

And we want to do this so that you can continue to innovate. It's not about us, it's about them. Yeah.

No, that's, that's a powerful, powerful message. Sean, I don't wanna short trip. What did you, what did you talk about?

So, uh, you know, so I, I spent a little bit of time talking about the, the new partnership between Oracle and, and Digi Cert. They've, uh, are now hosting natively, uh, inside of O C I, uh, their platform, uh, backed by, you know, a dedicated H ss m um, services from, from Oracle. And so we, we talked a little bit about that, but we also talked about, uh, and this is like kind of the guardrails comment as well as the shiny objects comment.

You know, the, what are the gotchas in cloud security? Right. And, uh, you know, in, in security in general, I'll say one of, one of those gotchas, and this is what I talked about on stage, is that we security professionals get distracted by edge case scenarios and cases, cases, shiny objects.

'cause we say edge, now everybody thinks the edge. Yeah. Okay.

Corner cases stand Up, but corner cases Fair enough. And, uh, corner cases that, I mean risk that could be realized with the likelihood, um, It's about managing that risk if it's so remote, concentrate on meat and potatoes. Yes.

Table stakes, right? Yep. Digital trust, I agree.

Know, make all the plumbing. Mm-hmm. Uh, you know, that stuff is important.

And then you can, I'm not saying don't do those corner cases, but let's do the basics first. Amen. So spend time with that.

And then, you know, the other key thing, and I've got a, a session tomorrow where I'm gonna try to, you know, drive home the point of like your cloud providers, and I know Microsoft does this. 'cause I was there, and I know Oracle's doing this, is helping customers protect themselves and, and to do so as simply as possible. Right.

Because there's so much complexity and it, the gray space between all these tools is where customers get themselves in trouble. Yeah. And in, in cloud all up, it's, you know, misconfiguration is where people get themselves in trouble.

And so shared responsibility Yes. But shared fate. Yes.

And it, so it's our job, and I'll be sharing with the audience tomorrow, you know, ways that we're innovating to, to help them help themselves. Love it. You know, we talk about shared trust.

We sit here, the three of us, right? Mm-hmm. I'm older than you two.

I can't help but think that there's a generational element in, in, in trust models. I think Gen Z, whatever you wanna call younger people today, they want to, they want to trust. They want to have that frictionless world.

Yeah. I, I think older people do too. But we, we have been so hammered about, Hey, don't click on that link.

Mm-hmm. Don't do this, don't do that. Don't share this.

You know, HIPAA and, you know, everything else we've heard, I, I've been in security 30 years, right. Graham Leach Bliley. And, you know, going back, I, I really believe that with a new generation, we we're gonna have a new, a another chance of doing trust better.

I would agree with that. I know. And especially as like a, you know, I'm, I'm the tail end of Gen X, so I was born to be skeptical.

I was also left alone at home way too much. Whatever they call, you know, do you know where your kids are? Do they have to put that on the news?

That, just to remind people. But, uh, but I, I have a 17 year old, right. I'm a single dad and, and I'm raising a 17 year old daughter.

And Yeah, she definitely does. She, she wants to trust, she needs some guidance though, right? Like, she needs something that can tell her that this is legitimate or Yeah.

You are legitimate. Um, and I, I think we can provide that to humans users mm-hmm. My daughter, um, in, in a way that, you know, the same way you see the little lock symbol right up at the top of a, when you're in a web browser.

Sure. Right. It that, that You take that for granted.

Yeah. But I remember when that wasn't there. Right?

Yeah. Well, and I noticed when it's not Right. Yeah.

Without, Without scaring him. Right. Yeah.

'cause I think, well, yeah. The chief FUD doesn't, the chief, The, yeah. The, the chief, uh, digital trust officer from Takeda spoke today mm-hmm.

As well. Wonderful individual. And he said something, and I wrote it down, um, to share with my teams was we need to not make decisions or be in places of influence based off of fear, yet we have to do it off of value.

Right. The, the timing of us being able to trust things shouldn't be limited to where we are now. I, I personally believe where we're worried about ransomware attacks, where we're worried about, where we're worried about incidents and compromises of identity.

Instead, when do you, when do you, when do you see people in a position? It's when they're adding value. Right.

Not scaring them into it. And I think when going into your topic, when we're talking about the new generation of folks Right. We don't wanna scare them into trust.

We want to show them why it's valuable. And I think that's a point that was hit home pretty well today. Yeah.

In the summit. Yeah. That resonated with me too.

'cause I, you know, when I was an operational cso, I'll admit, you know, early on in my career, I was, uh, a bit of that Doctor Doom. I I was wonderful ade Yeah. How you look, How do you look in stripes?

I can send you the Jail. Yeah. I was called the guy that put the No, in technology.

Yeah. Which is, uh, I should, you know, look, if you've Been in security more than 10, 15 years, we've all been there. You've got that.

You've got that. But I learned, absolutely learned to, to, to flip that, right? Because that's fear isn't what motivates people.

No. It shouldn't be what motivates people. So, um, so yeah.

I, I, I think that's key. I I think another thing that you both sort of bid around the edges, but I want to bring it home to our, our audience is this, I don't care how big the company you work for, whether it's Microsoft or Oracle or DigiCert or Amazon. Mm-hmm.

It takes the entire community, the entire ecosystem, especially today where we have multi-cloud, hybrid cloud, you know, new Stacks, edge endpoint mobile, not there. There's such, I mean, we, it's like that movie, right? Anytime from anywhere mm-hmm.

Whatever, you know, the movie I'm talking about. Um, we, we need to have trust built into that entire equation. Absolutely.

And well, and, and you see like public facing examples in that, and you know, what our two companies announced, but the, the other thing that's really cool is behind the scenes, there's so much collaboration that goes on between Oracle Threat Intelligence Center and Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center, and, you know, we're, we're all in this together, right? Correct. So, um, so just know, I want the audience to know that there's a lot of that that goes on behind the scenes to their benefit, um, that isn't necessarily publicized.

Absolutely. Guys, we're running low on time. You both have mentioned not only your own talks, but what you've heard mm-hmm.

From other sessions here at DigiCert, uh, trust Summit. What would you say to our audience at home, why they should make sure this is a must stop for them next year? You know, that's a really good question.

I, I think, uh, I, I I would say that, you know, you should be here because Digital Trust is the foundation and everything is built on top of that in, in this interconnected, uh, you know, technology heavy world. And, you know, not to get biblical right, Uhhuh, but like, I know what happens when you build a house on sand, right? It, it doesn't end well.

So, you know, we want that solid foundation. Um, and, uh, although I'm not sure if I just confused the Bible or in, I don't a Goldilock story, but it's fine. The point's The same.

It's all, some people will tell you they're all fairy tales, but that's a whole nother story. Vishal, how about you? No.

You know, there's so many amazing conferences and events around the world that you can go to from, you know, the Cipher Brief and National Security one, or R State Conference where, I mean, we're there every Year. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

But I'll share that whether, whether someone feels it's valuable or not, I found today so valuable because of the depth and the transparency of conversations around security. We weren't just talking about an endpoint, we weren't just talking about applications. We weren't just talking about identity or active directory.

We were talking about the core of trust Yeah. Within it. And when we want to relate that trust to business outcomes, this type of intimacy here was really amazing to see.

So I really do encourage anyone listening to be part of this. I mean, I, I'm taking a lot out of it and I'm excited about the next day. Yeah.

And well, what excites me too there is, is that, you know, ultimately selfishly, I, I want security professionals here so that they can continue to evolve and enable their businesses while still securing their businesses. Right? Love it.

Um, and uh, it's places like this where, where that starts to happen and, and just gets fostered and, and continues. Absolutely. Guys, thank you so much for being on Tech UNK tv.

We will, well we put on our SecOps event every year at R s A in Moscone on Monday, but we're also on broadcast Alley all week doing this. Okay. So if you're at R S A this year, please, Please look us up.

We'll come on together again. Yeah, let's do it Again. We're go on.

Make the day before. See if he answers me. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, guys, thank you again so much. No problem.

Michelle. I'm in, uh, Microsoft GM security, Microsoft Federal, Sean Sweeney, the Field CSO of the Field CSO team at Oracle. We're gonna take a break.

We're live in Las Vegas for DigiCert trust. Uh, conference will be back in a minute.