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>> Presenter: From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto and Boston,
connecting with thought leaders all around the world,
this is theCUBE CONVERSATION.
>> Hi everyone, welcome to this special CUBE CONVERSATION
I'm John Furrier, Host of theCUBE here in Palo Alto,
California in our studios,
we have a remote guest here talking about cybersecurity
and all the industry trends
and the recent news and announcements
around Fortinet with John Madison CMO
and Executive Vice President of products at Fortinet
John, great to see you, welcome back to theCUBE.
Great to have you back for some commentary
around what's going on in the trends and your recent news.
So thanks for coming on.
>> Thanks John, nice to see you again.
>> So you guys had earnings, congratulations again
another successful results, you guys are doing well.
Cyber is super important and that's the top conversation,
cloud computing, cloud native,
we're living in a pandemic.
New things are exposed.
Clearly the environment has changed
in the past four months in a major, major way.
So a lot of demand, a lot of needs out there from customers.
So you guys had some earnings and you also have an update
on your Fortinet OS67.0 platform with major updates.
Let's quickly hit the news real quick.
What's the hot topic?
>> Yeah, well you're right.
Things have accelerated in some ways
in this cybersecurity world
and we had the recent solar winds incident
that's also made people look really, really closely
at their cyber security strategy and architecture.
We announced our results yesterday for Q4.
For Q4 we had over 20% product growth
which is the key, of course, the future growth.
We also, for the full year in 2020 past 3 billion
in billings for the first time for the company.
And we're really proud of that.
We're proud for a lot of reasons with our people
and our team, but also another company
that goes and makes large acquisitions to boost revenue
and billings growth.
We've done it predominantly organically
over the last 20 years.
And so we're very proud of our achievement
and obviously a big thank you to our partners,
our employees, and our customers.
>> We also have been covering you guys for many, many years.
Congratulations, well deserved good products
win the long game, as we say on theCUBE,
and that's a great Testament, but now more than ever
I really want to get your thoughts
because everyone that I talked to
is really kind of sitting back saying,
"Wow, look what's happened in the past three,
six months in particular, a lot of sea change in both
on the technical landscape, the intersection with society
obviously with cyber, you mentioned solar winds
that's been kind of hanging around.
More data's coming out about how pervasive that was
and how native it was for many months.
So what's out there, we don't even know what's next.
So this is causing a lot of people to take pause
and reevaluate their environment.
Can you share your perspective
and how Fortinet sees this playing out
and how that you are advising your customers?
>> Yeah, well, we're leaving compliance
and regulatory to one side for now
because that's also a driver cybersecurity
and focus on the two main drivers.
One is the threat landscape, and I hinted a bit around
that supply chain attack
which affects a lot of people in solar winds incident.
They got hold or got onto
a device that has privileged access
across a lot of servers and applications.
And that's exactly what they wanted to get to.
So state-sponsored ABTS, there's still volume out there.
We still see now ransomware doubling every six months
but that's very scary.
The threat landscape around state sponsored.
Now, the other driver of cybersecurity
is the infrastructure.
And whether that be end point.
So as you know people are working from home as I am
for the last eight months.
So there's a on and off network, end point kind
of a zero trust architecture there
that people are looking towards.
On the network side, we've seen these edges develop.
And so whether it be the one actual one edge,
line edge, CloudEdge, data center edge
even OT edge, those need protecting.
So that's a big challenge for customers.
And then also on the cloud side
where the applications have moved to cloud,
but different types of cloud, multi-cloud
I've even seen building cloud recently.
So that's a very adaptive area.
So challenging for the customer
in the terms of the threats and weaponized threats
as well as the ability to cover all the different parts
of the attack surface going forward.
>> It's interesting, we've been living in a generation
in the technology business around,
you just get a tool for that.
Every hammer looks for a nail, that's the expression.
Now more than ever
when you have this no perimeter environment,
which we've been talking about for many years,
that's not new.
What is new is that everyone's now thinking
about architectural systems approach to this
and thinking systematically
around the platform of what their business is.
So in your announcement that you guys just released
for OS67.0, there's really some meat on the bone there.
You have the secure access, edge SASE
and then the endpoint protection
which are defined categories by the analyst.
But those are the areas that are super hot.
Can you translate that into the architectural equation
because you and I were talking before we came on camera
around how it's not just one thing
there's multiple layers to this.
Could you break that out for us please?
>> Yeah. If you look at historically
and I'm now coming up to my 20th year in cybersecurity.
Before Fortinet I worked for an end point company.
If you go back a while and I can,
between 2000, 2010, the Endpoint Vendors
were the the big cybersecurity players
because Endpoint was where the data was and everything else.
And then over the last 10 years
the network security vendors, the next gen firewalls
have been the most important vendors out there.
And it's also reflected in revenues and market cap
and everything else.
What we're going to see over the next 10 years
is the platform.
And that platform can't be just an endpoint platform.
It can't be just a network security platform
or just the cloud platform, because you only,
you're only seeing and defending and protecting
a part of the overall we call digital experience.
Whether it be a device in the factory,
whether it be a person dialing
in from somewhere or connecting from somewhere
through the network and through to the applications
you've got to measure that digital experience.
And so that's going to be very important
to be able to provide a platform that sits across
all your devices users, across your whole network
including new networks like 5G and across the applications
and in the cloud.
So the platform to us extends across all those areas.
We've been building that platform on what we call
our FortiOS operating system.
The latest release is 7.0, which released yesterday.
It obviously upgrades and extends all parts of the platform
but we did major parts of the release yesterday were
around SASE, which of course is the CloudEdge.
So we're adding that CloudEdge to our component.
We did acquire a company Opaque Networks a few months ago
that's now we've integrated that technology.
And then just as importantly on the access side,
a zero trust network access capability
for giving access per application.
In fact, again, with this, I've talked a bit about
in the past about all these Gartner acronyms
I don't think zero trust network access
is the right wording for it.
It should be application access,
because that's all we are going to move to.
Application specific access
versus just getting on the network
and getting access to everything.
But something that gives you context.
So those are the two big things, but there's 300 plus
new features across networking end point in cloud
across management, inside the resource.
It's a major release for us.
And it gives us our customers the capability
to really protect that attack surface
from the end point to the cloud.
>> Yeah, there's a lot of meat in there,
from that release, I've got to say.
but it's basically you're saying
devices and users have access.
That's been around. There's been tools for that.
You hire people, you get some tools.
Network access, it's been around. It's getting evolving.
Now apps in the cloud, cloud native is a hot area.
And people that I talk to,
I want to get your reaction to this comment
that I hear from people and customers
and CXOs and developers.
"Hey, we bought a tool for that. We hired a bunch of people.
They mainly left, or the environment changed.
We bought another tool.
And then we bought a tool for that.
We bought a tool for that."
And then you have this kind of tool shed mentality,
where they have tools that don't even have people
to run them.
So you have this problem there
kind of tools need to be upgraded.
And then you have this hot trend of observability
on the app side, where now you have new data coming in
on the application side, those are new tools.
You got all kinds of stuff and competing for that.
How do you talk to that customer?
Because this is what the customer hears
all this noise, all this action.
They need to have it.
They got to have the staff, they got to be trained up.
What's going on there?
What's your reaction to that?
And how do you talk to customers who have this problem?
Well, it's a big problem for them.
Because, and by the way
when I speak to a lot of customers about cloud
they don't go to cloud because it's cheaper.
It's not, it's actually more expensive.
But they go to cloud to give them more agility
because they want flexibility
in the way they deploy applications as they go forward.
And again, this pandemic has made a lot of companies realize
they need to be more flexible
in the way they deploy IT resources
and faster in the way they bring up new services
and applications.
And so, but there's quite a few elements I say
of cybersecurity and networking, which to me
and to us are just features.
You shouldn't be buying 40 different networking
and cybersecurity vendors.
You just can't staff and maintain that.
And so we do see some things consolidated and converging
into a single platform.
We're a leader in the magic quadrant
for SD WAN or a leader for network security
or a visionary in WIFI.
And many of the times in each of those magic quadrants,
it's a different vendor or if it's the same vendor
it's a different platform.
For us it's the same platform in each one.
And we pride ourselves in building not only
best of breed capabilities, but also it's the same platform
same management system, same API.
And that gives the customer some capabilities
in trying to manage that.
What we say to customers is not a question
of going from 40 vendors down to one
That's no good,
but go from 40 vendors down
to maybe seven or eight platforms
but make sure those platforms can inter-operate.
They can share policy,
and they can share threat intelligence.
And that's why customers are looking
to more of an architectural approach to cybersecurity
but also they feel cybersecurity
and networking are starting to converge at the same time.
>> One of the biggest stories we're covering these days
in 2021 besides the pandemic
and how people are going to come out with a growth strategy
that's secure, trusted and scalable,
is the rise of the new executive in business
in the enterprise where they're more tech savvy, right?
You see executives like Satya and Intel.
Intel, rise with the CEO of Microsoft.
Andy Jassy rise up to the CEO of Amazon
and you're seeing lawmakers in DC become more techie,
less lawyer-oriented.
So you seeing the rise of a business techie person.
And I think this speaks to this holistic fabric philosophy
you guys have as you talk to customers,
when they look at the business impact of cybersecurity,
for instance you mentioned solar winds earlier.
I mean, these are deadly company killing events.
This is real. So it's not just an IT problem.
It's a business problem.
How do you guys talk to customers,
obviously that you have the security fabric
and you're stitching things together?
What's the conversation
when you talk to customers like that?
>> One interesting thing I've noticed,
and I do quite a lot of customer calls each week,
executive briefings and pretty early on,
I noticed that both the infrastructure networking
with the CIO team and the cyber security
the CSO teams run on the same video call
and that's got more and more as we've gone on.
And I think what companies have realized is that
if they want to move fast, they can't have these silos
or this layering of capabilities.
Then when they build something
they needed to build it securely from day one
and have that as a joint team.
And so I don't think the teams are not merged
but they're definitely working more closely.
And I think the responsibility of reporting back
into the board level gain is not just,
it's just an IT project.
Oh, by the way, we've got a security project.
It's the same project.
And I think that's again,
points to this convergence of networking and security.
>> Yeah. The silos got to be broken down.
That's been a theme that's been more highlighted
more than ever the benefits and the consequences
of doing it or not doing it are clear to people
especially at all levels of the corporation and tech.
That brings up my favorite conversation.
I always ask you whenever you're back on theCUBE
giving me an update on what's going on with Fortinet
I got to ask you how it's going with data,
because data again is the consistent theme
we always talk about, how we're exposing that data,
how we're protecting that data,
the role of data as people continue to get more data
and figure out how to use machine learning
how to use AI, how to democratize it
all kinds of things are happening around data.
What's the latest in your opinion?
>> Yeah, I think there's progress,
but I always say there's progress on both sides.
The cyber criminals, big AI networks and machine learning
just to counter what the cyber security companies are doing.
I think right now we're processing
hundreds of billions of events on a weekly basis.
We've got the largest install base of network security
out there over 500,000 customers.
And so processing that event,
it's going well in that
we're able to determine really quickly
for specific threat factors in specific geographies
that this battle good.
It's about a good file. It's about a good URL.
It's a vulnerability that's associated with Stevia.
So we're able to kind of do use machine learning and volume
against a specific application to get a good result.
The key going forward for us,
and I think for the whole industry
is using the AI to start to discover campaigns in the wild
like the solar winds ones, which is going on
without anybody knowing.
And that takes a lot of compute,
takes a lot of threat intelligence
and the AI piece needs to understand
the relationship between the different elements
of threat vectors,
the command and controls and everything else
to get you that result.
I do think a couple of things.
One is the cybersecurity industry, and I've said this before
on this broadcast is
are not walking together as they should.
And sharing this threat intelligence across the industry.
As soon as they find something, I actually applaud Microsoft
on the solar wind side, they got information out
really quickly and did well.
And so we did the same.
I think the industry needs to do more of that
more proactively.
(indistinct) And then I do think that,
again, that I see a lot of companies
cybersecurity companies claim a lot of things
without any evidence that it works whatsoever.
(indistinct)
>> The world's got to call them out
the consequences of not having,
things work as they're advertised
and or sharing them, your point about sharing.
There should be some recognition
for folks that are actually being fast on the sharing side.
It's not like... We need our own militia
against the bad guys.
That's what's kind of going on here.
So great stuff.
I got to get your thoughts on the edge real quick.
I know we talked about it briefly.
You broke it down to three categories
device users, network, and then apps in the cloud.
The hottest topic on our recent CUBE on cloud editorial
virtual event we had was the edge.
And edge being industrial edge.
And also, just the edge of the network with humans
and users and devices.
How are you seeing the current situation out there?
A lot of hype, obviously the reality of that,
that we're in a distributed network,
the internet and the web and the cloud cloud natives coming.
What's Fortinet's thoughts?
What's your thoughts on how the edge is evolving
and what people should pay attention to when they look at
as they're architecturally planning for building out
and managing and securing the edge?
>> Given this a zero trust conversation
on users and devices and given that people are familiar
with the cloud and how they're going to use cloud.
I think the network is becoming a really important
very important area.
And some people say, "Oh, don't worry about the network,
just go to the cloud."
The network is very important
in providing that digital experience,
but what's happening with the network
is it's being stretched.
It's being extended into factories.
It's opening up on the winning side.
You've got people now working from home.
You've got that edge that used to be
just the data center edge is now CloudEdge and SAS edge.
And so you have to pay close attention to those edges.
Now what you can't do is say,
"Oh, I know we've got all those edges there.
Let me overlay some security on each edge,"
because it's going to be different the way you deploy that
in on a wifi device versus a CloudEdge.
And so what you need to look towards is convergence
of a capability either of the CloudEdge or the WAN edge
or the LTE edge, it's got to be
converged networking, and security.
Otherwise it's too operationally inefficient,
too complex to do.
And so I think this is a really important subject
and area for customers because as I said at the beginning,
it provides that digital, we acquired a company called
(indistinct) a few months ago, which actually focuses
on the digital experience monitoring marketplace.
What are users actually going through in terms
of availability and quality and performance all the way
from their device, all the way back into the application?
I think that's very important.
And the network edges have to be secured,
where you can only do it through a converged solution.
>> Yeah, that's a great point
Architecturally, you might have a good technology
or product look on paper
but the complexity is the vulnerability.
That's a really, really great point.
John always great to have you on.
Thanks for coming on, sharing the update.
Before we end,
I'll give you a quick minute to plug the news you had.
Quickly put a plug in for the release you guys just put out
around the new FortiOS 7.0 the features.
What's the most important point about that release?
Share, take a minute to explain.
>> Yeah. FortiOS 7.0 Zero is our big release
our operating system is big news because it allows us
FortiOS to sit at any edge across the network,
whether it would be the one edge CloudEdge,
data center edge.
We've extended it into the CloudEdge
with SASE in this release.
We're also bringing in
zero trust network access capabilities
but overall it includes 300 features
across the network, Endpoint in cloud.
So a very important release for us
and our customers and partners.
>> John, great to have you on theCUBE again
and get the news.
You guys doing a great job, congratulations on your earnings
but more importantly, congratulations on the product success
and how you guys are thinking about it as a platform.
That's what customers want.
And you guys are continuing to do a great job there
and congratulations from the news.
Thanks for coming on.
>> Thanks Jim.
>> Again, John Furrier here
inside theCUBE for CUBE Conversation
getting the update on Fortinet and cybersecurity.
Look for our cybersecurity coverage on SiliconANGLE.com.
And of course, theCUBE's coverage
continuing to talk to the thought leaders
and the people making things happen,
securing our networks and our cloud
and deploying cloud native applications.
Thanks for watching.
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