um i'd like to move on now to our next topic which is talking a little bit about um you know some
software some platforms products that have emerged to monitor remote employees so obviously a lot of
employees are still working from home a lot of enterprises certainly here in the united states
are adopting at least hybrid models you know you've got some people in the office you've got
some people at home it's a very popular um policy to allow remote work but with that that also
means that you know you can't always be checking over the shoulder of your employees to see what
they're accessing and your those employees are not always necessarily on the corporate network
so there's one tool in particular and lucas i'm going to throw this to you again
um called the island browser this is sort of i think indicative of perhaps a larger trend um of
the these types of products so can you speak just to what this specific browser is yeah it's
being called an enterprise enterprise browser and what that means is basically gives the
it gives it administrators some control over what sites you can enter what data you can share
even down to something as granular as taking a screenshot it can block that
if necessary and the reason it's important now is like you said with a hybrid workforce
working from home with the adoption of more adoption of the cloud companies are going to sas
and so they don't have a firewall necessarily they don't have a physical data center where
they can protect their business applications from prying eyes and from employees either
intentionally or unintentionally sharing that data and so what this browser does is it gives them
a level of control that can be dialed up or dialed down and it does it at the entry point at the
browser where they're going to get the information from the application from the business application
whether it happens to be on-prem or from a sas provider it's kind of i thought it was a really
cool way of doing it they're not the only one there they were actually the first in development
but another company called talonworks announcement back in october so there's two down so we've got
a groundswell we've got two of them um but yeah so there's two it's i think it's a great idea because
it's less um onerous it's less heavy-handed than some of the firewalls that were that were being
used by companies out there that literally tracked everything what would happen was they first see
the traffic and the problem then they'd have to discover whether this was a problem and then
they'd have to go back out and do something about that or just block it all together this one's cool
in that it's based on chromium and so an employee can just download it to their computer like
zoom or any other application takes you know a minute to download and then they can just use
it as a chrome browser it looks no different and it would do nothing until i t decides okay we're
going to have to restrict your use of this particular hr application or this particular
erp application or crm application whatever it happens to be salesforce um so when you
go to try to access this online we're going to have certain parameters that you aren't going
to be allowed or are going to be allowed to use yeah you know it's interesting because you know
to your earlier point juliet about employee monitoring you know the browser that i think
based on what lucas has reported the idea behind this browser is not so much to actually actively
watch what employees are doing right which is you know it's like it's employee monitoring adjacent
if you will because um but i mean there is a serious issue here because given the distributed
workforces that we have now the hybrid workplace you know it has to figure out how best to keep
track of where all that company data is going where it's being stored how it's being shared
and this is a a sort of elegantly simple way to help do that because it basically keeps employees
from doing something that they shouldn't do while they're surfing rather than as lucas was just
making the point you know you see some traffic and you've got to backtrack and try to figure
out where's that traffic coming from where's that data going is it intentional is it you know and so
it's a it's a really interesting uh tool for the toolbox i guess is the way i would describe this
yeah absolutely i was talking to one user who's been uh piloting this for quite a
while now i think six six or more months and they purchased um 4 000 seats for the software
but they've only rolled it out to about 100 employees because they're you know they're
being careful they have they have all the typical stuff all the other firewall technology but uh the
um chief information security officer absolutely loves this product and he definitely wants to roll
it out to the rest of the company because it's not so heavy-handed it's easy uh it's fast and
easy to use like i said it's just a download you don't have a server that's controlling it and the
employees don't feel like it's it's as invasive as other control mechanisms because like i said
you can use it just as a chromium browser without you know any uh security whatsoever or it might
just based on your role secure some things like this particular business application or it might
just stop you from say uploading a document to the web something is acceptable it's interesting
because you know with a browser one of the big issues that has come up around employee monitoring
and employee surveillance is that companies need to tell their employees what they're doing totally
you know and that issue of like transparency and communication doesn't always work out you know
companies just start rolling these these sort of monitoring tools out and they're checking to
see if you're on on at your computer if you're on slack if you're you know developing almost
a profile of your work habits whereas with the browser here you just do your work and
basically you've got guard rails that the browser lets it put in place you might not even ever bump
up against those guardrails but when you do the company knows that like okay or knows enough or
the browser knows enough to tell you no you can't do that you know i do i think it's fascinating
that you can't even do a screenshot lucas isn't that cool yeah that's i mean that the browser
could have that built in that you can't screencap what's on you know what's in the browser yeah so
you've got a customer list that you happen to be in for whatever for like salesforce or something
and you try to take a screenshot of that and go whoa whoa you don't have authorization to do that
you can't just be taking screenshots and sending that out to whoever it's what stops you from
doing that it's it's that feel of not being super invasive like not watching everything you're doing
but certain uh functions uh you're not supposed to be doing on this application that's what it stops
sure i would imagine that um the cso for example that you spoke to lucas i don't know
there's obviously you know a cyber security case here and an enterprise security case i
think like at first glance and as you know taking the position of a potential employee i do think i
would be curious and i would probably think like oh okay are they not gonna know you know every
time i spend five minutes scrolling on twitter and are they gonna know that like i just tried
to make a dinner reservation while i was at work um and i would i would imagine that there's a real
that there needs to be a balancing act between you know maintaining enterprise security but also not
infringing on employee privacy um so they know at least what what can and can't be done i'll go
ahead lucas well i was going to say one of the one of the things they're looking at doing they
haven't uh island hasn't included in this yet and the user has not used yet is for contractors and
uh consultants so third-party uh non-full-time employees that's a good point who need access to
what could be sensitive information and like you said i love the term guardrails can you know there
are certain guardrails they're going to put up to not allow them to share this information outside
of the company and only temporarily so it's not it's not like a firewall that they're always
bumping up against when they're trying to do the work yeah i think what i i think what impressed
me about this and this goes back to what you were just saying juliet that you know i think companies
in 2022 most companies have come to realize that productivity does not necessarily mean that you're
sitting in front of your computer from nine to five you know those days have kind of fallen by
the wayside and so you know the idea that okay maybe you're checking twitter maybe you ordered
food out for lunch or whatever i think a company is probably less interested in that and more in
you know are you actually accessing websites that could be dangerous to corporate data
and to what they're doing you know and and that's what i like about this because it it you're not
telling the employees we don't trust you you're in some ways you know if this is rolled out right and
communicated properly you're telling employees you know we have certain standards that we have
to meet certain guidelines rules guardrails whatever and we're gonna put those there
we're not doing this to like try to restrict what you do you know around non-corporate stuff we're
not watching where you go we're just keeping you from accessing sites that we have decided
could be unsafe or you know or competitive or something like that yeah and i would think too
that there's uh um a regulation issue here like you know privacy regulation like a ccpa gdpr and
you know to your point lucas saying you know you can't take a screenshot of a customer list or um
a a user list that is a big that's a big privacy no no so i can see the application in in that
sense i think i just have sort of one more question on this topic and i'm going to ask it to
you ken which is kind of you know in a time where like i've mentioned employees are working you know
still working remotely or in a hybrid environment more than ever it's a really desirable policy for
employees that are perhaps looking for new jobs to be able to be fully or mostly remote
and i think similarly there's i mean there's also a talent shortage you know employees talent can
really have their say and i would imagine that a lot of talent is our is coming into new jobs and
saying okay i want to use xyz device and i want um you know these policies and i'm going to be using
like you know this operating system whatever it is and how does something i don't know this is maybe
just a rhetorical question but it's you know how does you know forcing this sort of tool this sort
of you know quote unquote enterprise browser i don't know how does that you know bode for
the employee i guess this isn't just like a theoretical big question but if you have
any thoughts i'm interested no i i get what you're what you're talking about one of the
big issues that's come up as we've gotten into this new hybrid workforce and as you know we've
gone through the great resignation where a lot of people are changing jobs moving up changing
careers whatever is this whole idea of you want to keep your best and brightest you want to hire the
best and brightest and a lot of forward-thinking companies are realizing that employee choice
is is an important part of that you know allowing employees again within the confines of what the
company needs to you know to say well you know i'm happy to come work for you but you know i need a
mac or i really want windows or i need my android phone or whatever and i you know i don't know the
company that people are approaching new jobs and companies with like their favorite browser
in their background you know no i mean it but it i mean you are getting to an important point
which is employee choice is is a big deal and and that again you know to go back to it's sort
of what i had said earlier i think the important thing about this particular about island browser
is it doesn't feel like it's a restriction on you i mean it keeps you from doing some things but it
you know now if somebody really wants to come in and insist that they've got to use safari
or you know they can't possibly do their job without firefox ie yeah or you know i.e or edge
they're going to have a pretty hard case to make you know and i think and i think it would have a
very solid response and saying look you know we can work with you on different hardware uh
laptops phones whatever but when it comes to how we do our work our job with
browsers we need to have this browser in place and you know this is something you're right that you
know i can see for financial services industries healthcare industries the kind of industries that
have certain that are heavily regulated and this is a way of sort of you know applying
a patina of regulation over your browsing while protecting you know the company data
right yeah it's one of the things that the ciso i talked to about uh this product he's piling
right now he said he's had absolutely no pushback whatsoever from end users i just want to read you
one quote real quick all right he said we can put this browser on your desktop and it's kind of just
there try it out use it get used to it let us know if there's any blatant anything blatantly missing
now try salesforce through this can you use salesforce or workday through it
you're good awesome now i'm going to enforce some rules and you can only use this browser for that
so it's it's as simple as it's been as simple as that he says here here's a chromium browser check
it out try it out no restrictions whatsoever is it working okay now try that business application
with it is that working are you cool with that so you can draw it out incrementally and then dial up
the security you need yeah i'd be interested to see how you know this tool specifically
but other tools in general um what what more rolls out because it now really is obviously
the perfect time to be rolling out anything um i mean especially remote security related but
um we just took like a previous video that we've done i actually sort of on the topic of like
remote work and security did a video uh in maybe december before the new year um with one of the um
cso editors in the uk talking about vpn alternatives and that was also a
really interesting approach um there were some interesting points there about making sure that
you were employees who are working remotely are accessing you know the corporate network
and accessing secure data securely so i'll link that in description for anyone who is interested
um otherwise thank you both so much for calling in and chatting about these two topics i think
there's some really interesting info here certainly more in the future to talk about
on the arm front and on the room you know remote monitoring tool front i'm sure there will also
be more to talk about because things will roll out so thank you both so much for calling and i really
appreciate it a pleasure and thank you all so much for watching this episode of today in tech if you
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best to get back to you i'd especially like to hear anyone's you know first-hand experience
using a remote monitoring tool or sure let's call it a remote monitoring tool and i'm using
the island browsers as an example so thank you all so much for watching and we'll see you next time