Innovation to Ease Compliance Burdens – Scott Craig, Hyland Software

This is Textron TV. Hi everybody. This is Mike Rothman general manager of text growing research here with another episode of tech strong TV.

I am pleased to be joined by Scott Craig. He is VP of product management at Highland and we are going to chat a little bit about compliance. I know it the most exciting thing you're gonna hear about today for sure.

But we do have a pretty cool discussion about you know, kind of where things are going how we're going to really ease a lot of the compliance burden that things that a lot of folks are facing and you know kind of very brainstorm and and chatting debate a little bit about, you know, different options we have so so Scott, welcome to Tech strong TV. How are you doing? I'm great.

Yeah. Thank you for having me today. Yeah, you bet so we'll be great.

You just kind of introduce yourself a little bit and and the company we never make assumptions in terms of you know, who knows what what companies are about so if you can do that and then we'll kind of Dive In Yeah, sure. So, um Island software's been around for over 20 years. We're in the content Services platform space and so we help companies solve problems around managing content making sure that it is secure compliant and then connect it to their critical business processes.

And and so we do we do a lot around essentially enabling and and content information related to a number of different Industries Healthcare government financial services. So this topic around compliance is something we run into all the time and that's a great place to start right Scott, you know, again, my background is is one of security and you know kind of it's I'll call it evil step sibling, right, you know kind of compliance hard to really separate the two of those, you know, the Him everybody wants to focus on security. But the reality is, you know, you also have to pay attention to compliance.

I think in today's environment where we have you know, so many different types of attackers. We have so much, you know, so so many highly kind of covered and and high profile data breaches and and data loss. We kind of forget that compliance is still a thing but knows as you said, right, you know, you're in the content business and helping folks manage a lot of that content and some of that content I would gather is intellectual property is you know, kind of protected health information is, you know, kind of private, you know, customer data so compliance still a thing.

Yeah. You haven't seen a lot of you know, although we haven't been talking about it folks still, you know have to worry about that stuff, right? Absolutely.

It's gotten so much more complicated too as the world's become become Global even more Global right? I mean gdpr you talked about personal identifiable information. Whether that's Health Care Financial Services, even higher education government, but you know, then you get into you get into regulatory specificity around certain industries that that can be you can be very challenging and and you know, the other thing too is is with more digital experiences the other areas accessibility running into a lot more of that too.

We've got a lot more remote workers and the compliance and accessibility and security as you said, they're all kind of related reminders have their own unique challenges as well. Yeah, that's right any specific, you know verticals that you're seeing that you know kind of a little bit out ahead or a little bit behind or have their head stuck in the sand, right, you know, I certainly have you know, kind of dealt with enough people are like, oh, you know and then you know, the assessor is about to show up, you know in two weeks and then it's all hands on deck. Oh my God, we're not ready.

So Businesses you guys deal with you know kind of more structured about it, or is it just we've been doing it for so long that it's just kind of part of the operational motion that a lot of these organizations, you know have implemented. It's a great question. I do think that there are Industries.

That are further ahead and and what I'm gonna mean by that is as you said, there's something kind of baked into if you're a Healthcare company, right? You're not gonna be lackadaisical about about patient information you just are but where are you on the technology adoption? Curve?

I'd say Health Care is further behind Industries. It's like financial services are further ahead. And you know, so we talked to banking customers we talk to customers in wealth management.

We're just investment firms and things like that when they're looking at things like red Tech. They're absolutely applying Ai and ml to do a whole range of things. It could be fraud detection.

you know had an interesting customer recently that For compliance reasons is required to put out a report every day of the total Capital ratio report something which I have no idea what that really does, but they have to do it every single day. It was a huge manual effort and they found you know, throw a couple robots at this identify where the data is and we cut that time down and we have our workers focused on way more important tasks reduce me and we could be more compliant because we don't have people manually going through spreadsheets figuring out this stuff. So I see the red Tech kind of financial services industry pretty far ahead on the healthcare side obviously very concerned about it.

But the application of AI to identify personally identical information automatically off of documents and either redact that or tag it as appropriate is something that's still done fairly manually in that space today. So it's kind of to to different sides of the coin there. Yeah.

Yeah. No, and so explain for I have not heard the term reg Tech before maybe because I you know, Again, is that companies that are in the you know, regulated business or those specific solutions for folks like their regulation requirements? Yeah, regulatory Technologies, which essentially help automate being compliant with those regulations.

Got it in particular Financial Services. I think is ahead of the curve in that regard and they've been digitizing modernizing their systems for the last five plus years. And so, you know, you're much more likely to run into a fully automated or AI Centric solution in those spaces then you know, maybe in some other Industries and I want to kind of circle back around to you know, some of the solutions and and where you know some of these new analytics techniques really fit into what we'll call Reg Tech now see I learned something new every day.

That's why I love to do these interviews God and that, you know, there's terms. I'm not familiar with and I get to learn and chat with more people. So this is fantastic.

One of the things you kind of, you know, keyed on, you know, kind of the increasing globalization of you know, a lot of the technology environment. I also want to you know, kind of pick your brain a little bit about what this Evolution to SAS has meant you know for regulated data, right because you again I look at it from a security standpoint 99% of the time right? So I'm like well as my data goes all over the place, obviously that creates an issue in terms of understanding what my attacks surface is because now I got to know where my data is and it's not in this, you know, comfy confines of my corporate Network anymore.

Right? It's all over the place and you know, give somebody a credit card and it can be anywhere at this point. So obviously that's got to have, you know, kind of a major impact on on how you thinking and you know, we talk about SAS, right but infrastructures of service, you know, kind of moving workloads and other applications into Cloud hosting platforms.

So how have you seen that impact, you know kind of how your clients are thinking about this, you know compliance and regulation challenge. It's it's a fantastic question. I I see it a number of different areas where The move disass is driving completely different Behavior around compliance and and one good example is so Highland is a global company.

We serve customers all over the world, but we have to be pretty sensitive about a customer whose data is in Europe has to stay in Europe or even in some cases in the country where it originated it can't be Copied over to the United States. So we're so part of where we can apply some content analytics some Ai and ml is to geo-tag. Make sure we know where data is coming from and make sure it is stored in the appropriate places from a geographic perspective.

That's just one example, but you know Healthcare companies like we do a lot of business and Healthcare and moving patient data to the cloud introduces a whole other level of complexity and and the reality is is this has to happen. There are laws. Now that require hospitals to provide patient data to patients when they ask for it and how do they want to interact on my mobile phone on my on my laptop on my iPad whatever that device may be.

And so we now have to we now have to think about what compliance looks like in that environment. What what does it mean when I give you your patient records? And I'm transferring that ownership to you to in many regards but you know making sure that the content is secure.

That only the correct people get access to it. It is it's a tremendous challenge. We see this though, you know, I'll give you another example in higher ed.

You know, we this is this kind of an interesting one. We have a solution that does blockchain anchored credentials. Because their schools like Harvard and MIT where that degree.

Is very very meaningful and you and I know we could probably go on our computers and we could create I remind my diploma from Oxford, right and and everyone think I'm right my brother did that years ago. So don't that one hits a little close to home. But yeah, but if we can blockchain anchor that and we can credential it then when I say, I've got my degree from in my case Colorado College, you can go check that out.

You can verify that it's real and that then helps a company avoid hiring somebody or giving someone a job or or whatever based on qualifications. Maybe they don't really have so I'm I mean, there's so many different ways that that technology can help with these problems the AI can help identify where there are risks. They can help properly put things in the right places so that you know the right people and get it access to things but it can also just help with the actual chain of authority and record.

So a lot of really interesting use Is out there. Yeah. No, that's good.

Let's dig into that a little bit because in again I just went When anybody ever says classified data and use the machines to you know, kind of automate a lot of that stuff. Yeah. I mean my, you know kind of BS detector, you know kind of starts to go off like crazy because it's always been hard right and and I remember back to you know, kind of the DLP days right data loss prevention, you know type of Technologies and oh we can look at the data and we'll know when it's leaking and it's just like no what you know is about 50, you know, 90% false positives in terms of you know, kind of classifying data wrong or flagging stuff that's you know, legitimate business, you know process.

But again that was years ago, right? So has the analytics, you know, improve to the point where you know, we really can use ml to and AI types of Technologies to be able to more predictably, um, identify these kind of data types and and get in the way at least flag them right before they they go often to a situation where they're exposed. Absolutely.

Absolutely. And I mean listen, there are There are risks. I think that the smart implementations of AI and ml have meters kind of built into the process to understand what your risk level is.

So if I'm 90% confident, is that good enough to let it go through or do I need 99 or do I need 100% I don't know what that you know, it depends on the industry and the use case but you know, you can always do that, but if you think about it. You know, I don't know the last time you deposited to check but you know, I do almost all of that now in my mobile phone, me, too. And there's risks with that but the reality is is that we do a lot today with transferring data with capturing data.

They get shared with institutions. That we work with or we then vend with yeah, that is using Ai and ml to recognize the information extract it classify it and then put it in the correct system. So we see it all the time, you know when you get to kind of the Stealth driving car Lane, right that starts to get pretty sophisticated.

But the reality is the tools to really accurately classify extract. And and do the data analysis on on this is is gotten has gotten quite a bit more mature in the last few years. Yeah.

That's that's great to hear because you know, let's just say it didn't work as well as it needed to you know back in the day and and obviously one of these things and especially with compliance. It's not one of those, you know aspects. It's a, you know, call necessary evil.

What have you right? But it doesn't really add value to the organization think it's only take away value for sure. Right?

I mean, you know, if you have some type of you know, kind of major issue or regulatory fine or something along those lines that can be obviously very problematic but it's not gonna help you sell more stuff to customers, right? So so you want to do it in a way that is most efficient, right? What without sacrificing on Effectiveness and making sure that you don't have to spend like, you know, kind of a thousand years getting ready, you know for the audit or the assessment.

Know every time and I think it is, you know kind of heartening to hear on the content side right as things continue to spread right our data continue to spread to all these different places that you know, we're starting to see some Evolution and advancement in terms of the the capabilities that we have to stay on top of this and really just make the process of all this reporting and and Regulatory overhead make that a little bit more manageable, right so we can really focus on the stuff that helps, you know our businesses grow. So with that Scott and any other, you know kind of parting thoughts yet you have about you know, kind of AI, you know SAS and you're from Colorado what the ski season's gonna look like, I mean, you know, it's all good really from text on TV. We're interested and everything.

Well, the skisism has gotten started. So yeah, the some of the lips are open and I can't wait to get out to the Soaps myself. I mean, I think the only thing just to kind of wrap up this discussion is you know, it has been a rocky road.

I think you you make a great point about that that I think companies have gone into this with huge projects to implement Ai and ML and a lot of times, you know, I've found that that's been a it's been a difficult journey and I do think that you know, when when we survey customers the vast majority are looking to lower the cost of doing these things and and so you need a complete business picture the cost of maintaining these Solutions is not in substantial you don't just put these in and they don't just run forever effectively. You have to continue to maintain them. So I think you know, you got to choose the right partner to work with and you need to think about it holistically, but there are Many different ways that these these Technologies can help companies even just improve the day-to-day life of the knowledge, you know, the worker sitting at their desks not doing all the manual activities have them focus on higher value.

It's good for everybody. So it's it's really an exciting time to be in the space. It's a topic.

I I love to talk about and I have a feeling like well have plenty of opportunity for for future discussions around this. Yeah. I'm looking forward and so this is a lot of fun.

So with that thank you to Scott Craig VP of product management at Highland. Is it Highland software? com is the place to go?

Yeah. com go visit, you know Island here what they're doing on the, you know, again content management side and some of the compliance things with that and with that we'll wrap up another interview for Tech strong TV, and we will send it back to the studio.