Techstrong Gang – January 10, 2025

Hey, everyone. Happy Friday. Is it freezing where you are?

Everyone else is. You're watching Text Drunk Gang. Good morning everyone.

Happy Friday. Oh, maybe it's good afternoon where you are. I don't know, but happy Friday to you.

Anyway, talent sh from Techstrong, and you're watching Textron Gang, we've got a great show lined up for you this Friday. We're going from mountains to the sea and to the desert, everywhere in between to bring you the greatest, the what was the old a, b, c wide world of sports, the agony of defeat and the thrill of victory. Uh, let me introduce you to our text on gang lineup for today.

First of all, it's his first show for the new year as part, uh, you know, with the gang. Unfortunately, he's had some nautical issues, but he will persevere. Uh, he's our cybersecurity expert.

Great guy, Chris Blas. Hey, Chris. Welcome.

Good to see you all and nautical issues for the record. All are always good. Yeah, Yeah, yeah.

Well, at least it's sunny. That's right. At least it's sunny today.

Yes. Could be worse. Could be worse.

But thanks from being on. I know you've been going through some, getting the stuff ready and taking time out to do this. Appreciate actually, Chris, while I got you on too, I, I got word yesterday that your podcast is finally gonna be on text Drunk tv.

That's right. Every Wednesday now, an episode of the Inevitability Ker podcast goes live. And, uh, the first, uh, episode with Heather McMahon, who as fascinating as you get, is out there.

So each week, you know, we pick somebody, we talk to 'em about some interesting topic, and we try to look back where we've been, how we got to where we are right now, what today looks like, and with that, see what we can say about the future. So I'm really looking forward to doing more of that. We got some round tables coming up.

It's gonna be a lot of fun. Very cool. Glad to see it get done.

All right. Moving from the seat of the mountains, well, the mountains of Westchester County. Anyway, they're more hills.

Uh, our chief content officer who has a, a better internet connection today, so where he's actually gonna be able to participate. Mike Vard. Hey, Mike.

How are you Crossing fingers and toes, but yeah, here, we're here. All right. Good to have you.

Back on. And then moving from the hills of Westchester to the valleys of silicon, our resident royalty, John Schwartz. Hey, John.

How are you? Hi, I'm good. Hey, on a serious note though, I wanna send some positive thoughts, Bidens and Condolences to our friends in Southern California who are enduring these, these horrible wildfires.

I'm just, um, exchanging some texts with a cousin in Studio City who's, um, quite concerned and might be evacuating. So I just wanted, I just wanted to mention that it's really, really horrible out here. Yeah.

I, I don't know, you know, a hundred mile an hour winds is just spreading this thing around. Like, I guess only mean, I don't, I don't mean to be a downer, but I just, it's Something No, no. You know, touching all of this.

Yeah. This is climate change, another aspect of climate change and sustainability and why we should care about green initiatives and and so forth. Absolutely.

So all in there. Absolutely. Um, yeah, our hearts and prayers, and I hate that it's such a cliche.

Thoughts and prayers go out to them, but No, you know, I, I think, you know, the government's doing what they can, but this, this is unfortunately an annual thing now, uh, as a result of climate change. And, you know, we have our own issues here in South Florida as a result of climate change, as will, I guess everyone. And we've gotta adjust to a new normal and then create some, some heartache.

Anyway, thank you John, for bringing that up. And then, you know, moving from Silicon Valley to the deserts of, of Las Vegas, were a small town, a stop over for GIS on their way back from out west. Hmm.

Was made into the gambling mecca of the world. There's not even a statue. Um, just doing a little godfather riff there.

Our, our eye on the eye on the prize. Lady on the street at CES, Lisa Martin. Hey, Lisa, how are you?

Hey, Ellen. I'm great. CES has been just outstanding.

There's so much to see. I can't even comprehend it. Absolutely.

Well, we're going to hear all about it. That's actually our, our, uh, first block today. Why don't we go right to it, Lisa, there's, there is, there's more than we could shake a stick at as they say.

But give us, give us your, take some of your big stories on CES 2025. Yes. So I had to show Flora yesterday, got a lot of steps in which I knew I would, and you have to plan your CES because, and their website is great at really looking at exhibitors and understanding whether there are sessions, whether are there are exhibitors getting shuttles to and from different locations.

'cause it's all over the strip. Hundreds of thousands of people here. The excitement level, I think it's even more than last year.

It's absolutely back from Covid. But some of the things that I discovered yesterday, age tech, I didn't know that was a thing. Digital health, I saw lots on digital health.

We saw technologies that are helping to really scale the, um, optometrists, um, uh, issue in terms of too many optometrists re retiring, not enough in school. We saw some crazy fitness trends there. And, uh, just some all around very cool textile computing technologies.

I wanna start with Ibob. This is a, um, a company that John and Mike turned me onto the other day. This is what's helping scale the optometry kind of deficit, if you will, in terms of practitioners.

It's like a, a kiosk, kind of like an at m machine that does eye exams with all of 20 seconds. It does also, and this is all self serve. Think of these at malls, uh, at Costco eye exam locations, Walmart, and they are, uh, in r and d for, for testing for like glaucoma, for example, retinal scans.

They can detect issues and if they do detect an issue with the health of your eye, they won't send the prescription to the provider. They will tell you to go see an eye, an eye doctor or an ophthalmologist. But a really cool way of solving this challenge there.

I even, um, put my glasses and they have a, like this little portable, uh, thing that can evaluate your current, um, prescription and understand, um, what it is and how they would modify that based on the current eye scan. So really cool optics technology there. They weren't doing any AI washing.

This isn't an AI product, but it was very cool to understand how they're solving this, um, this gap with optometry and really helping people to get prescriptions and kind of separate the eye exam or the, the need for ophthalmologists from prescriptions and making things just faster to the consumer on the age tech side. John, do you remember that company called Skip with Joy that we uncovered the a i pants a few months ago? Remember that John?

Yes. I went to their session. They were in the age tech section that was actually sponsored by A A RP.

Um, very cool technologies sponsored by Age Tech and A A RP, uh, yesterday at the show. They're doing, um, it's it's move wear and they've got this exoskeleton with this tiny motor and really efficient batteries that helps you really ascend up, say if you're hiking or going upstairs, it reduces the load on joints by 40% when you're coming down. They're also doing work to not only make the product more efficient, more integrated into, um, fabrics like, uh, textiles from, from ARC eRx, which is their current partner, but they're doing work for Parkinson's patients.

So they're gonna be doing an exoskeleton pan with the motor in the hip to allow Parkinson's patients to have more stability and mobility. So it was just a great session there. I also found a company called Mayan, M-Y-A-N-T.

This is the company that is a textile computing company. And it, it starts literally with looking at fabrics and yarn and really presenting a new way of AI optimized health options from babies to elderly people. So they're looking at using textile wearables to help prevent sids, for example, all the way to detecting AFib.

And basically what their platform does is it creates a digital replica of our bodies, which is allowing AI to continuously monitor and optimize health in real time. You could sign up your family through your app. It was just really cool because those are things that you just don't see every day.

Very cool. Very cool. I I, Alan, I also found the BM BMW for You did.

Okay. This, uh, I did, I went specifically when I saw the BMW, I'm like, I gotta go for Alan, uh, and myself selfishly too. So BMW and Amazon are partnering, this was in the Amazon wing.

They had an X three, the current X three. Um, and it's it, and it's an Alexa powered BMW assistant. And what's really cool about it is it uses technology.

It uses AI and LLMs to allow not just the driver, but other voices, one their programmed to be able to interact with the vehicle to say, for example, uh, we did a great demo yesterday where it said where the, the, uh, the demo, uh, organizer said, find the nearest, um, gas station near me, and it found a number of gas stations near the Las Vegas strip. And he changed his mind. So you can reason with it, change his mind and said, actually find me the nearest gas station that has the cheapest gas and a car wash.

So very cool to interact with it that way. It is actually in market now. And as the years go on, they will be offering it in more models.

It's not a subscription. This is an included service from BMW, which I thought was fantastic. I also saw probably what might be a competing product from a company called Cardone.

They're based in Tel Aviv and their spatial awareness AI technology is actually taking what BMW and Alexa are doing a step further where they've got a single, uh, solution that would integrate with say, a car manufacturer. So you don't even know as the car driver because they're, they're a B2C company. But what it does is it actually is able to detect all the different voices within an, within an automobile from giving it prompts to turn the car on, turn the volume up, roll the left passenger side window down, things like that.

I got a great demo of it in an SUV full of people and it was able to recognize each individual voice. And they are actually partnering this year with the largest auto manufacturer in Asia. Couldn't say who.

I have a feeling I know who it is. So really cool voice recognition assistance there. And I did find the flying cart, Alan, I'm going today to check it out for you, but it doesn't look Jetson's like, I don't think it can fold up into a briefcase That doesn't fold up to a suitcase.

It's a, it's be good with that. Yes. Hey, I, I did discover a new, um, oxymoron at CES that I think both Chris and, uh, Alan will have something to say about, they're tossing the term around boating intelligence and apparently Brunswick is showing AI and the AI will dock your boat for you.

So I know you guys have both had issues with this in the past. So, um, easy, Easy there, big fella. I, i, it so many things in that, right.

You know, so as, as you guys know, you know, I've been building Alexa into these boats, right? I can control a lot of these, you know, gadgets and devices and motors and pumps and so forth, you know, just by saying the words that it's interesting how to use that and how mature it isn't. And it has not been right.

But Lisa, like you're saying, you know, what we're seeing at CES right now is examples of where we're going with this. Because if, if some hacker like me can cobble together available parts and do this much, then a generation forward, a year or two forward, a step or two forward, that combines with, because it is convenient. It's beyond the hacker phase and the consumer phase when you can literally just say, you know, I, I could, I don't wanna take up all the time 'cause we have enough, uh, topics to cover, but so much of, of the, the, the evolutions that have been coming along in the last couple decades are happening together right now.

And CES and what we're seeing in the consumer side is, is such a strong indicator, I think of a lot of the opportunities, challenges, you know, where we're going in the next five, 10 years. And it's kind of amazing. You know, the one thing that's interesting to me is, and it's, it's happening in CES and it's happening with other, other types of examples of companies they're finding, especially in healthcare, there are a lot of shortages as, as Lisa alluded to with the optometrists, hence IBO for the, for the exams.

Same thing with dent the dental industry. So we're starting to see, uh, robots or AI systems that are either doing the work of humans or at least assisting them because of healthcare area of concerns. And it kind of brings me to this weird, I mean, almost kinda a a what we see at this consumer show in a sense is, I, I want to pay homage to, to a, at the pop culture reference, if you can indulge me on this one.

So remember the movie the graduates, there's, there's a scene in a hotel where a group of young people hurdle into the hotel and then later you see the older people leaving the hotel, like this transformational process. And a sense, CES kind of to me, gives me this long-term lens of humans going into a job and then the robots and essentially replacing them eventually, or at least assisting them. And it seems like we're in this long-term transition that Jensen Wong Wong, uh, referenced in his keynote, like the physical AI and the idea of doing work with autonomous vehicles, warehouses, uh, healthcare, et cetera.

It's like this, we're on the on-ramp to this in incredible kind of new world in several years where the workforce is gonna change significantly. John, I I, one word for you, Plastics. No plastics was there.

Oh, AI was now, but here's to you, Mrs. Robinson. I I agree though.

I I think, I think in many ways, Lisa, you said it's CES is back. Right? It's bigger than be and better than even before Covid.

I bet. But it's also, we, this is a year where we're seeing a lot of the technology that we've been talking about as tech people make its way into mainstream. And it's, it's creating some really, uh, some really cool, cool possibilities now Cool is cool, but it's not necessarily successful unless it's must have not nice to have.

Hey, hey Lisa, did you see any of these robots that people are talking about all over the place? I haven't yet. I think they're at the LV convention center, and that's where I'm headed today.

As I, I, I've heard some great stories. I've been following some great folks on X who are looking at some of these really advanced, um, techniques and, and products. And I wanna be able to understand that.

One of the things I also found, though, from a company called Withings and Digital Health, this is a direct to consumer products. They, they have really cool, smart watches that don't look like a typical smartwatch. They're very attractive.

They've got, uh, blood pressure machines, um, other ways of, of doing like urinalysis for example. And they have a prototype of a product called Omnia, where it's a giant screen. It reminded me of that fitness mirror that could be placed in health clouds, doctor's offices that would be able to then do a full body scan, evaluate your cardiovascular health, for example.

That's kind of the closest that I got Mike, but I will be checking out some of those robots today. Right. There's one that I'll confess that I've never owned a watch, And I know PS Oh, was there getting like $175,000 robot that CNET says is almost human.

That sounded kind of eerie. And also this humanoid robot companion that you can fit into a suitcase. It's just like mind blowing type of stuff.

It'll Be, I think that's at the conjunction center in one of the halls. So I'm gonna be checking that out today. Hmm.

The medical technology fascinates me the most. I mean, I've been thinking about this since I was a kid. You get this demographic bulge, this the boomers, they get to this spot where they're all getting elderly 50 years from now.

Now you know, when technology moves along, how much of that sci-fi stuff do we get? And it's, and again, Lisa's mentioned a whole bunch of 'em already. It's like just, Ima, we're right at that point right now where we can still accept the idea that maybe I've got some terrible disease and I get blood work every six months and I'm gonna wait six months.

But right now, in, in a couple years and five years and 10 years, that'll seem just ridiculous. Why am I not getting measurements every single day? Why am I not, why do I not have a graph of my blood pressure 24 hours a day for the last six months?

I do. Why do I have to go and eat once every three, you know, weeks, no building in I, uh, and now you can Yeah, I, well, you absolutely look, I I, I have my aura ring and my watch and all of these things, and I do, I track my sleep. I track my daytime activities and stress levels and all kinds, you know, You know.

Yeah. I think the company needs a, an Allen blood pressure metering graph that we can just keep track of Lunch. I, I have it on my, in my app, I mean, but, um, and Right.

And we're calling into That now. So, so we're getting to the point where these technologies are off the shelf. So now the next wave is build it into your hat, right?

Everything you wear gives you your bio, uh, your, your health, not just special real Wearable technology that's that mm-hmm. Tracks our health. Mm-hmm.

That's actually interesting. Ibo Yeah. Well, I, I, I bought, actually, one of the reasons they, they did the, the company, um, is because it takes so long to get an appointments, uh, eye exam, physical exam.

Yes. And I think now, I mean, you know, it's like this, the, the immediacy of your health is so important. I mean, there's a doc, the documentary that we've heard about, the tech CEO who wants to live forever.

I mean, he has, he's spending $2 million a year on his health, but it's just like, there's gonna be things available to us that are going to be less expensive and more immediates and more convenience, and we'll be able to track our health almost on a daily basis. Absolutely. And share it with your healthcare provider as well.

Yeah. Right? That's, that's another big thing about it.

And quite frankly, look, I think the whole healthcare provider game is going to change because Yeah. You know, like this optometrist kind of machine, well, it, it, you know, rather than fill your prescription, it's gonna send it to a, a real life human to confirm its fines. Right?

It does. Yes. That's immediate step, because quite frankly, the machine will do it better than with less mistakes than the human will at scale.

Yeah. And Faster. Yes.

And faster. So I, I think so Lisa, thanks for that. You know, now, now you're on the hook to tell us about robots next week.

So You got it. Sign me up and flying cars and flying my chief priorities for today. Cars and flying cars, Rosie.

All right. Uh, let's take a break here on Textron Gang, and we'll come back and we'll talk about, uh, someone broke into the cheese head store. My God, what will, what?

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And Green Bay Packer fans have had an insult added to injury. First, they lost the last regular season game against the Bears, and now I have to travel to Philadelphia in the cold to go play a playoff game this week. But then they also were informed that the online store for the Packers had been hacked and that a lot of their details may have been stolen by the cyber criminals.

That, as far as I can tell, according to reports, went in and actually compromised the code on the website. So Chris, um, I know we've been talking about deficit ops forever in a day, but are we gonna see a lot more of these types of attacks in 2025 where, you know, it's the actual code that somebody used on a website is gonna be compromised? Is yes.

Too short an answer for our, for our purposes here today? I mean, yeah, right. And, and you know, and you know, as I'm perhaps saying too much, but we're always going through phases, right?

We're going through the phase right now where we've been able to get away with sloppy coating for, I don't know, forever. And that's been falling because the big, the biggest fire was something else. And now we're at this point and is, as you know, I'm spending most of my time looking at supply chain and it's, you know, it's not all just about supply chain.

You know, you can make right, wrong, bad code. Um, but our lack of ability to see what we have and where it came from is untenable, right? We have to get to the point where we have a better idea of what we're running, right?

And then we just say this over and over and over again in cybersecurity. It's like, up to this point, we've been fine and everybody said we had to do the thing. It's like, well, what we've said is sooner or later you'll have to do the thing.

Now you have to do this thing. So now, yes. Yeah.

Knowing the code you have, knowing what shape it's in, you know, this is not 1998 anymore, right. You actually have to pay attention. So I, I got a few things.

First of all, Mike, do not feel sorry for the Green Bay Packers having to go play in the cold with the Philadelphia Eagles. It's probably the Eagles who are at the disadvantage. The Packers.

The Packers are the cold weather team in the NFL, right? Uh, secondly though, the fact that they altered the, you know, they actually hacked the, the, the code of the store itself in addition to, to exposing the customer's names screams to me as some sort of, not terrorists, but, you know, look, I'm pointing the finger at Chicago Bears Fence. The only ones in that they didn't make the playoffs, they did get some revenge in that they won this last game.

But the other three teams are playoff bound and, and the Bears, the bears stunk this year. So I, there's your motive. They had the opportunity, they were playing Green Bay this weekend, so you got motive and opportunity.

I'm looking for alibis, right? Where they have no alibi. I I, I'm gonna point the finger at the Chicago Bears here.

What you have to ask the question. There are so many other teams and they all have online stores and they all probably have similar issues. So why are you picking on the Packers?

So there has to be some correlation, right? That's What I'm saying. So, So, but I actually, I have a theory about this.

So the Packers are one of the more well-known, I'm not sure if they're one of the more valuable NFL teams, but they're one of the more well-known teams that sell a lot of merchandise. And that brought me back to something that the CIO of the Cowboys, the Dallas Cowboys said a few months ago during an interview, he said something that was really interesting to me. He said that the, the true value in moneymaking enterprise for the team be beside the obvious TV revenue is their merchandise sales, and that their id it departments spend as much time and money on it as anything else.

It's a treasure trove of data. And I actually think in a sense it'd be a value rich target. So in a sense, the Packers, at first I thought why the Packers?

And then I started thinking about the Skype, the Cowboys and the merchandise. And, and especially among the more well-known teams. Well, the, the Packers are the only publicly owned team you could actually buy shares in the Packers bank.

So, um, so least Lisa, is this a marketer's worst nightmare to wake up one morning? And, you know, you got the big game coming up and suddenly the website's down. And I got a feeling a lot of marketers are gonna be dealing with this in the future.

It's absolutely a challenge that marketing and security have to partner to, to really understand how to message it. One thing that kind of caught my attention, I don't, I don't know if it did any of you guys, is that this breach happened in September October through certain payment methods. So if you use like a gift card or Amazon Pay, or I think PayPal, you were fine, but they disclosed it in December, and I thought usually we hear about breaches and the disclosure is so much farther down the road.

Um, in fact, the San Francisco 49 ERs, John, were breached in 2022. 22,000. Uh, individuals had like personal, like social security information taken.

But marketing can really help here, Mike, to your point, from a messaging perspective, to help those affected. And this is about 8,500 Packers fans understand what was shared, how they can help credit monitoring, protection services and things like that, so that this doesn't just become routine. It is a messaging and marketing, um, arena where they can really help to, uh, asage some of the concerns that are currently obviously there.

Right? Well, all I have to say is, thank God I'm a New York Giants fan. 'cause no one cares about us this year.

Parents, yeah. Merchandise sales haven't been as great lately. Yeah.

Chris, Can you get a second? I'm Just gonna end, you know, because I've, I've been the vendor in these sort of situations where there's some massive security thing is my, my products, my, uh, my fault and very strong feelings about this. You own it, own it.

Large, right? You're saying Lisa. Yeah.

Marketing is huge. Absolutely. But you know, the, you know, there's, there's, if you're gonna sustain this, you're really gonna build trust.

You have to actually mean it because it's easy to sound good. But if you mean it, then I will, then it'll last. Right?

I, I'm trying to figure, find, find a way to say, this doesn't sound too hallmark. You're absolutely right. This was bad.

Go over the top. Don't give, you know, if you'll say, we will not only give you credit monitoring, we're gonna send you shoes. I don't know, something, you know, just, just own it all the way.

Still more value. Been furious about it, right? Yep.

It, it, whatever that costs you is nothing to compare to the reputational Sitting on a world. Brett fav, uh, jerseys. Get rid of them.

Thank everyone in the Bob Jersey. Number, free Ticket, whatever, you know, make a, make a statement and mean it. Yep.

All right. Well, good luck to the cheese heads out there, and good luck to all the playoff teams this weekend. Especially my Pittsburgh Steels who are the largest underdogs in the, in the playoffs this weekend.

I think we're about nine and a half point underdogs traveling to Baltimore to play our arch rival nemesis the Ravens. Um, but maybe we got something up our sleeve. We'll find out.

I'll talk about it on Monday. Um, let's take a break here on Textron Gang, and we're gonna move away from football and Cheeseheads to ai. What else is new?

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Be there. Hey guys, we're back. And we're gonna talk a little bit about AI and cybersecurity.

So we have an article over on Security Boulevard contributed by one of the thought leaders at, at, uh, Malwarebytes. And it talks about how cyber criminals will soon be using AI to create more zero day vulnerabilities. 'cause they can scan with the code and discover something and then launch an attack almost instantaneously.

And, uh, the article is posing the fact that this whole thing is gonna dramatically escalate in terms of timelines. We're also seeing, however, that the providers of security platforms like torque or adding, uh, AI agents into their platforms to automate some of the workflow and the response. Um, Chris, what's your assessment and what's going on here?

I know we've been in an arms race for cybersecurity as long as I can remember, but this seems to be escalating. Well, you know, security is always, you know, always in a conflict. That's literally the, the definition of it.

And this, I think in the security community, we need to get past the eye rolling stage into the wrench turning stage, right? You know, this hearkens on the, well, what am I gonna use to protect me from rogue ai, my own ai? Yes.

In fact, that's what you're going to do, right? You know, you need to expect the the adversaries. You're going to use these automated tools with these characteristics that speak to scale and speed and so forth.

And if you're gonna respond by hand, you are going to lose, right? So I think this year and next year will, you know, my industry will, will embrace that more. You know, because it, and again, it's the obvious sort of thing.

It sounds so cliche. It's like, I'm being attacked by cheese. What do I need?

Well, you need more cheese. It's like seriously? It's like, yeah, yes.

You know, AI is the problem. So what you need to fix the problem is ai, you need to automate Yourself. You said, if I'm being attacked by cheese, I need more mice, Right?

Right. Or crackers. You said, let me, I I was gonna go with Packer fans, but yeah, I'm with Back to the Packer leave Packer fans.

So Stop the Bear Fans. First of all, if you don't think that the hackers are already using ai, not just to make better phishing emails, which they certainly are, but also to do more fuzzing and, and and prodding to find zero days. 'cause they don't make zero days.

They find zero days by testing, and then once they find a zero day, they write an exploit for it, right? And so if you don't think they're using AI to help find more zero days and and write exploits for it, you're kidding yourself. Of course they are.

You know, and this is, this is the double-edged sword of technology when it comes to cybersecurity. Every time we find something that can help us, you know, the, the adversaries are not dummies. They're smart.

You know, they're not dumb like that. And, and they, they use it too. And, and this has been one of my big fears, frankly, with ai, is that boy in the wrong hands, these guys can do some serious damage.

And, and Kristen's, right? We need, we're gonna need to deploy AI bigger, better, faster than the bad guys to stay. Just to stay even, not even to stay one step ahead.

There's a why don't, Sorry about that. It is doing the same work, right? You know, as a, as an attacker.

And again, you know, security is, is always yin and yang. There's defense and offense. You know, we by any definition, literally any definition of we are sometimes the attackers, you know, I wanna be able to attack, you know, people that are pausing a threat to me or whatnot.

And, and you know, this, this is you. We wanna do the same thing, you know, as an attacker, I have way too many options. I wanna use automation, AI in this case LLM call.

What you want to narrow down those options to the number of things that I can really focus on as a defender, I want the same thing. So in the same way that these tools do in, in fact present a lot of risks, they present exactly the same set of opportunities. So it really depends on how you choose to use them.

So Alan, do you think we're prepared to spend the amount of money required to make this defense? Or is this gonna be a year where we stand on our hands a little bit and wait to see how hard we're gonna get whacked around before we respond? Chris, how long you in security?

30 something years. I'm coming up on 30 myself. In all of those years, have you ever heard a security person say, oh no, we have too much money, we're fine.

No, no, of course we don't have enough money or resources. You know, if you ask the security people will there, I think a better question is, will there be substantial resources thrown at this and spent on using AI to hone our security postures and processes and so forth? You bet.

Here's what I'm interested in. I probably won't get a better feel for this till the RSA conference later this year. Um, we're gonna see innovation around AI and security.

Are we gonna see a new crop of security startups that are bringing this innovation? 'cause that's usually where innovation lives in security, right? It's not, You know, there there was some, there was something, sorry to to, there was, there was a company, there's a company called Code Intelligence in Germany that on Thursday introduced, uh, an AI agent that autonomously finds bugs and vulnerabilities and unknown code.

Yeah. I mean, so we're gonna start seeing more of these types of companies, Perhaps. There's no doubt we're gonna see it.

My question is where coming from, I mean, it's right, because generally speaking, the security companies that you know and love aren't where that innovation takes place, right? You're not gonna see Cisco, Palo Alto, McAfee, uh, you know, the, the big security guys Sentinel one necessarily innovate. They usually buy innovation.

So I'm, I'm interested to see next crop of code, code intelligence type of companies who are native AI natives who, you know, are, are utilizing this technology to, to improve us. And, and then by the next RSA after that, they'll all be worn up by those big guys. 'cause that's how, that's how security works.

Um, but you know, it, it, we, for the last couple years, Chris, you've probably heard this too, at RSA and black hat, you know, the, the kind of mantra's been, well, where's the innovation? Where's something where, where's the next big thing here? And I, I hope this year we actually see that what is, you know, where, where the innovation is.

I'm all for, I'm all for these tools that help you find these vulnerabilities, but I ask the question, who's gonna fix 'em again? Ai, well, if you Narrow on down, you, you know, we have people fixing things that don't need be fixed now, but you don't really know which they are, right? So I think that's, I think we get a, a lot more efficiency in the existing resources being applied to things that have otherwise been overlooked.

Um, and to your question, Nowlan, I I am done. I'm advising a, an AI startup right now called Radian, you know, looking at ai, AI for compliance, AI compliance, which I think is an interesting spot. So yeah, I think those, I think we'll see across the startups.

Yeah, that'll be great. We, because we could use it in all honesty, right? We could use some new Yeah, well, it depends who you talk to, I guess, right?

Um, I, I remember when, you know, we had seven or 800 venture backed cybersecurity companies and, and my friends would say, oh, we only need 300 at most. These guys are gonna go outta business. Then I heard the same thing at about 2,500 venture backed cyber security companies.

Then I think the last count I saw there was about 7,500 either public or venture backed cyber security companies. So it seems like you could have enough. So we'll see, call, Call me dubious.

But I think a lot of those patches created by the AI systems are gonna break a lot of things, and it's gonna be interesting times. It won't be dog. Well, if you, in digital twinning, you could actually maybe make sure you don't have another crowd string kind of thing, right?

I, I think is a good technology for, for testing patches. Mm-hmm. Um, yeah, I Know, I, I say I think, you know, this year, we'll, we'll see some people, to your point, Mike, you know, getting this, you know, notably wrong and the only advice you can have, don't be them Every year, right?

Yeah. So it want nothing new there, but you know, slowly but surely, it's, it's the cybersecurity chacha. You take two steps forward, one step back, but over the course of time, like evolution, you know, it, it moves along ever so slowly it moves forward.

Those of you who are about to patch, we salute you. Okay, east. Alright guy, I, if we don't have anything else, we'll, we'll, we'll call it a wrap on this edition of the gang.

Lisa, thanks for the report. Vegas, enjoy your next day there, Chris. Thank You.

My pleasure. Ah, it's our pleasure, Chris. Good luck with the boat, man.

I hope, I hope you headed down this way soon and it warms up and it warms up a little by then. Mike John, as always, thank you for joining us. Thank you all for joining us.

As usual, we have a full day of Techstrong TV immediately following today's gang, so stay tuned on that. Um, we'll be back next week with our full lineup once again, but have a great weekend everyone, and uh, we'll speak to you soon. This is Alan Shimel.

We're out.