Cloud Access Security with P0 Security’s Shashwat Sehgal

This is Textron tv. Hi everyone. Welcome back here to techron tv.

You know, we've been doing a, a whole series on the 10 finalists for the RSA Innovation Sandbox, which, you know, I think it's in its 18th or 19th year, and just has a tremendous record of picking some of the biggest names in security, uh, as they came up through the ranks to be in this innovation sandbox, uh, competition that they run every year. You know, there's one winner picked among the 10 finalists every year, but as I always like to say, just any of these finalists over the years, if you go back and look over the 18 years of the finalist, it's a who's who of security and making the finalist makes you a winner here, uh, in, in terms of this. So, with that being said, let me introduce you to Schwa Al.

Uh, Shawa is the CEO and Co-founder of a company called P zero Security, and they are one of the 10 finalists for this year's RSA Innovation Sandbox. Shawa, welcome to Techstrong tv. It's great to have you on here.

Nice to meet you, Alan. Great to be here. Great.

Um, so look, before we get into RSA and P zero security, let's, let's find out a little bit about you. You have a, kind of an interesting path here. I, uh, I think our audience would find it very interesting.

Why don't you kind of give us your kind of history? Yeah. Um, I, um, grew up in, uh, in, in New Delhi, in India, um, mm-hmm.

Studied computer science in school and was an engineer and a practitioner for, for a while before finding my way on into the business side of things. Um, so I've been in networking and observability, uh, and security and DevOps, you know, kind of those kind of spaces For the longest time, uh, started my journey at Cisco, uh, Cisco Meraki, where I led the SD WAN group. Um, mm-Hmm.

And then, um, after that, I went over to Splunk, um, and, and, and in both of these companies, you know, they were at the bleeding edge of, of cloud native development, right? And I saw firsthand, me and my co-founders, one of my co-founders is at, was from Meraki, the other one was from Splunk. We saw firsthand that while cloud native development was extremely powerful, it was also a little bit scary for the security teams, right?

Uh, at Splunk. Uh, I remember, uh, our security teams, uh, wanted us to, to, to implement some guardrails into the cloud around who has access to all our sensitive environments, uh, in, in production, in the cloud. Uh, and, and we found out, uh, that there were no good tools on the market that allowed engineers to, to, um, achieve just the right balance of security and, and, um, efficiency or engineering velocity.

So that's, that's kind of where our idea for P zero started, that, hey, we need to, uh, provide better tools for security teams to, to secure access to the cloud for all kinds of identities without affecting developer workflows. And that's, that's how the company got started. And fast forward a year and a half, here we are today.

Excellent. Excellent, excellent. So, you know, it, it's kind of ironic now that Splunk's part of Cisco officially, right?

You, you went the other way. You went from Cisco to Splunk. Um, now that deal was announced about a year ago, right?

The Cisco Splunk deal. So you were already out of Splunk when they announced it. Yeah, that's right.

I, i, I like to joke to others that I'm one of the very few people that I know that has worked at both companies before they became one entity. Uh, yeah. Yeah.

I, I, um, I left Splunk, uh, i I wanna say six months or so before the acquisition was announced. Mm-Hmm. Excellent.

And look, we wish that all of our friends at Splunk and Cisco, well, but let's talk a little bit about P zero security. You know, we were talking before we started the, uh, cameras. Um, every entrepreneur, every founder has a passion for their company.

You know, I, they, to put it in cloud native terms, they treat 'em more like pets than cattle. And I don't know if that's a good thing or not, but they feel like what they're doing is indeed special. That what they're doing is somehow gonna have a positive impact in this world.

Let's, let's talk about your motivation and passion behind P zero security. It's a, it is a great question, Alan. I, I think going back to what initially kindled that itch, uh, and, and not just me, but also my co-founders, right?

Uh, look, at the end of the day, we are a security company. Make no mistake about it. Our customers, our CSOs, our customers are security teams, right?

Uh, but the DNA of the company is fundamentally around making sure that we abstract security away for developers. What does that mean? At all of our companies, we saw firsthand that developers wanted to do the right thing, uh, in terms of security, but a, they are not knowledgeable.

And b, they, even if they know the best practices, uh, they are not, not, you know, the right tools to enable frictionless security with just not available on the market, right? So that was the prime motivation for us. We believe that developers should be liberated to do their best work by making security as, as an ex, uh, simple abstraction, right?

And that's what we wanna build. Starting off with identity security. We want to make it almost, uh, seamless and we want security to just work in the background.

Um, and, and, uh, starting off with cloud access, our goal is that cloud access for all kinds of identities should be as simple as possible without affecting developer workflows. Fair, fair. Um, here's a question.

I'm sure people out here who, you know, I, the other thing just right, I've been in tech for 30 years, so many tech people I know who haven't taken the plunge to be an entrepreneur to help start a company, often wonder, well, how, how did he do that? How did he, you know, what, like, what were the first steps? What, what, like, you know, in the movie, if you remember, close Encounters of the third Kind, right?

Richard Dreyfus has this vision of that mountain, and he sees that mountain and everything he does, and he builds it outta mud and everything. What was that kind of driving thing for you? Like, for our audience out here who maybe are, be entrepreneurs, wanna be founders, what explain to them?

Yeah. That moment that you er kind of time. I don't want to complicate things, honestly.

For me, it was the Nike moment, as I like to say it, because just do it. Just do it. Just do it.

The Nike moment, I agree with you. Sometimes you just, because, you know, this is another lesson I've learned over the course of my life, there's never a perfect moment if you wait for the perfect moment. It's like timing the stock market.

If you wait for the perfect moment, you miss your window. Yeah. Sometimes you do just have to just do it right and make the moment fit.

You don't fit the moment. Um, yeah, I mean, It's, it's a, it's a bit like, um, you, you know, you can think, uh, you can analyze as much as you want, but ultimately nothing prepares you for the experience. Um, like as much as actually just taking the plunge and, and, and, and going on with the flow.

That's, that, that's my experience been so far. Right? You can't sit back and wait for like, the best moment was five years ago.

The next best moment is today. Yep. Um, that's a great, great way of putting it right now.

And, and, and the worst movement may mean, may may be a week or a month or a year from now. 'cause you may have missed your window altogether. So speaking of Windows, let, let's talk about, and I don't mean the operating system, let's talk about RSA and in Innovation Sandbox this year, you guys have been on a journey, right?

It was just November, not that long ago, what, six, seven months ago that you went ga with your product, and here you are as a top 10 finalists in Sandbox. Um, give us a little insight into that. Sh what's that been like?

What, what was involved there? A lot of, uh, furious building behind the scenes. Uh, right.

Uh, we did go GA at Q Con in November, uh, but It was in Chicago. Yes, that's right. But if you rewind the clock, uh, further back, we actually started the company exactly one year before that.

So, um, our, our seed round of funding closed in November of 2022. And, and after that, it was just finding the right team, hiring the, making the right hires, uh, speaking to the right, um, early adopters, and then just building the product there on, right? So GA just happened to be the culmination of many months of, um, you know, long hours.

But you know, it as I like to say, it was just a moment in time, right? Uh, where, uh, it's, it was a good milestone, but in many ways it was just the cu culmination of a lot that happened before that, right? And after that, uh, of course we've been out there in the market speaking to more customers, not just our initial design partners and, and, and kind of building the product out from there.

Agreed. Um, you know, let me, let me give a quick background. As I mentioned earlier, most of our audience is pretty familiar with RSA conference and of course, RSA innovation sandbox, right?

But for those who aren't, this is a 19 year kind of program that's been running every year. Woman named Cecilia Marne Ye, who we interview every year, Cecilia was on a couple weeks ago, kind of runs the innovation program there. And in Sandbox, they're really looking to pick the winners of tomorrow, the security leaders of tomorrow.

And there's a very definitive process, right? The, the application process for Sandbox, and we've documented this with some of the other finalists. You know, there's, there's, there's written video and submissions, and there's a whole, uh, behind the scenes judging that goes on to just pick the Final 10, right?

As I said before, making the final 10 is, is a win, right? I, I forget how many hundreds of companies apply every year, but making the Final 10 is truly spectacular. And then at RSA itself, on the Monday of RSA week, which this week, this year will be May 6th, Monday, May 6th, there's a special kind of part of the expo floor dedicated to the Innovation sandbox, where if you're going to RSA, and we hope you are, and if you are, we're also putting on our DevSecOps AI event that say Monday at RSA Moscone at the Moscone, uh, center.

Um, but you can go and actually look at all 10 of these companies and speak to you and your team as well as the other finalists, and see for yourself what the RSA folks are pointing to is, you know, the very best of the best in the up and coming security companies, and then the judges themselves. And it's truly a blue panel, a blue ribbon panel of judges made up of, of former security execs and entrepreneurs and VCs and, you know, uh, security experts and so forth, uh, who go around that day and, and you pitch to them, right? You'll get a time on stage to pitch P zero security, and, and then they make their choice.

And the winners usually announced later in the afternoon, if I'm not mistaken. Uh, it's exciting, right? It's kind of, you know, it's kinda like going to the dog show a little bit.

Everybody's all brushed up clean, smelling good, and on their best behavior, right? Because this is this big, how are you getting ready for that days, Shara? Um, well, I mean, the truth is that, uh, as part of an entrepreneurial journey, right?

Um, you have to be prepared that every day is like that, Right? Yeah, that's true. Treating it as a special day, something outta the ordinary, in my opinion, is setting yourself up for failure, right?

Because you always have to be 120% of where you are in terms of readiness, in terms of, uh, making sure that, um, you know, uh, you are always, uh, going, prioritizing the right things. You are always putting your best foot forward in, in literally every aspect of company building and product building, right? Mm-hmm.

So much as I would like to say that, hey, this is a special day like no other. The the reality is that, uh, for most entrepreneurs and for most early stage companies, they have to make sure that every day, day is, is, you know, is is like that. But that doesn't mean to say that, hey, we are not, uh, practicing, we are not making sure that our pictures are polished, uh, far from it.

We, we are taking the, the utmost care in our messaging, in our, um, you know, in our delivery, making sure that hey, everything is rehearsed, everything is practiced, as I'm sure everyone else is, right? But the, the meta point being that, at least for us, um, you know, um, the way our company culture is that, you know, we always wanna make sure that we, we, you know, in, in, in just about every interaction with customers, we are delivering the value that they expect from us, right? And in, instead of, instead of, uh, a one off day or, you know, as I, as I like to tell my wife, Hey, every day is Valentine's Day.

Yeah, agreed. Um, that's a good way of looking at it. Shawa, we only have a few minutes left, a minute or two.

I wanna turn away from RSA in the sandbox, right? If you're interested in seeing Sha Schwa and ZP zero security at RSA sandbox, it is that Monday May 6th, please go in there. I think you could get in with any kind of expo only pass.

You don't need a full boat ticket. And we have free expo a code for a free expo pass. Uh, if you go to Techstrong Events and go over to the DevSecOps AI event page, I think we have the code up there for a free expo pass, and you can see P zero.

Let's turn back to the real market and real world, right? Be after RSA, what's the best way for people to engage with P zero and maybe give this thing a, a, a a test, right? Absolutely.

So, uh, we firmly, you know, one of our core founding philosophy is that we want to make our product as easy as possible for people to use. And usage doesn't mean that it's only easy to use for customers, even for prospects and people who are facing this problem, we try to make our product very easy to try. Uh, what does that mean?

Well, um, if you go to our website, there is a limited version of our product available as in our, in our sandbox, where you can just go in and, and click around to get some feel of the functionality, even though not all features will be available in the sandbox, but it'll at least give you an idea of, of what to expect, right? Uh, you can go one step further, you can contact us, and we, we are more than happy to set you up with a one month long fee trial, right? Um, our documentation is very robust.

We have taken, uh, good care to ensure that, um, any developer can use our documentation to, to essentially support themselves, right? Uh, but of course, if they, if they need more, more than that, if they need some white glove treatment, we are here to help. dev or signing up for a demo on, on our website, and we'll be more than happy to help.

Fantastic. Very cool. And the website again is P zero Dev.

Do Dev? Yes, that's right. DEV.

Yeah. And that's p the number zero, not ZERO, the number zero, right? That's Www dot P zero DV.

Got it. Thank you so much for coming up here on Techstrong tv. Best of luck.

Good luck, man, in this finalist. It would be amazing to win, but like I said, you're already a winner making the finalist. Keep it up and, and please come back and join us on Techstrong tv.

Thanks, Alan. Great to be here and, uh, looking forward to catching up again. Absolutely.

Great to meet you. Alright, this is Alan Hummel. We're on text tv.

We're gonna take a break right now. We'll be back. We've.