(upbeat music)
>> Okay, welcome back everyone in live coverage here at
theCUBE,
Boston, Massachusetts, for AWS re:inforce 22
security conference
for Amazon Web Services.
Obviously reinvent the end of the years'
the big celebration, "re:Mars" is the new show that we've
covered as well.
The res are here with theCUBE.
I'm John Furrier, host with a great guest,
Ameesh Divatia, co-founder,
and CEO of a company called "Baffle."
Ameesh, thanks for joining us on theCUBE today,
congratulations.
>> Thank you.
It's good to be here.
>> And we got the custom encrypted socks.
>> Yup, limited edition >> 64 bitter
128.
>> Base 64 encoding. >> Okay.(chuckles)
>> Secret message in there. >> Okay.(chuckles)
Secret message.(chuckles)
We'll have to put a little meme on the internet,
figure it out.
Well, thanks for comin' on.
You guys are goin' hot right now.
You guys a hot startup, but you're
in an area that's going to explode, we believe.
>> Yeah.
>> The SuperCloud is here,
we've been covering that on theCUBE
that people are building on top of the Amazon Hyperscalers.
And without the capex, they're building platforms.
The application tsunami has come and still coming,
it's not stopping.
Modern applications are faster,
they're better,
and they're driving a lot of change under the covers.
>> Absolutely. Yeah.
>> And you're seeing structural change happening in real
time,
in ops,
the network.
You guys got something going on in the encryption area.
>> Yes >> Data.
Talk about what you guys do.
>> Yeah. So we believe very strongly that the next frontier
in security is data.
We've had multiple waves in security.
The next one is data, because data is really where the
threats will persist.
If the data shows up in the wrong place,
you get into a lot of trouble with compliance.
So we believe in protecting the data all the way down
at the field, or record level.
That's what we do.
>> And you guys doing all kinds of encryption,
or other things?
>> Yes. So we do data transformation, which encompasses three
different things.
It can be tokenization, which is format preserving.
We do real encryption with counter mode, or we
can do masked views.
So tokenization, encryption, and masking,
all with the same platform.
>> So pretty wide ranging capabilities
with respect to having that kind of safety.
>> Yes. Because it all depends
on how the data is used down the road.
Data is created all the time.
Data flows through pipelines all the time.
You want to make sure that you protect the data,
but don't lose the utility of the data.
That's where we provide all that flexibility.
>> So Kurt was on stage today on one of the keynotes.
He's the VP of the platform at AWS.
>> Yes.
>> He was talking about encrypts, everything.
He said it needs, we need to rethink encryption.
Okay, okay, good job.
We like that.
But then he said, "We have encryption at rest."
>> Yes.
>> That's kind of been there, done that.
>> Yes.
>> And, in-flight?
>> Yeah. That's been there. >> But what about
in-use?
>> So that's exactly what we plug.
What happens right now is that data at rest is protected
because of discs that are already self-encrypting,
or you have transparent data encryption that comes native
with the database.
You have data in-flight that is protected because of SSL.
But when the data is actually being processed, it's
in the memory of the database or datastore, it is exposed.
So the threat is, if the credentials
of the database are compromised, as happened back then
with Starwood, or if the cloud infrastructure is compromised
with some sort of an insider threat
like a Capital One, that data is exposed.
That's precisely what we solve
by making sure that the data is protected
as soon as it's created.
We use standard encryption algorithms, AES,
and we either do format preserving,
or true encryption with counter mode.
And that data, it doesn't really matter where it ends up,
>> Yeah.
>> because it's always protected.
>> Well, that's awesome.
And I think this brings up the point that we want been
covering on SiliconAngle in theCUBE,
is that there's been structural change
that's happened,
>> Yes. >> called cloud computing,
>> Yes. >> and then hybrid.
Okay. Scale, role of data, higher level abstraction
of services,
developers are in charge, value creations, startups,
and big companies. That success is causing now,
a new structural change happening now.
>> Yes.
>> This is one of them.
What areas do you see that are happening right
now that are structurally changing,
that's right in front of us?
One is, more cloud native.
So the success has become now the problem
to solve - >> Yes.
>> to get to the next level.
>> Yeah. >> What are those,
some of those? >> What we see
is that instead of security being an
afterthought, something that you use as a watchdog,
you create ways of monitoring
where data is being exposed, or data is being exfiltrated,
you want to build security into the data pipeline itself.
As soon as data is created,
you identify what is sensitive data, and you encrypt it,
or tokenize it as it flows into the pipeline
using things like Kafka plugins,
or
what we are
very clearly
differentiating ourselves with is, proxy architectures
so that it's completely transparent.
You think you're writing to the datastore,
but you're actually writing to the proxy,
which in turn encrypts the data before its stored.
>> Do you think that's an efficient way to do it,
or is the only way to do it?
>> It is a much more efficient way of doing it because
of the fact that you don't need any app-dev resources.
There are many other ways of doing it.
In fact, the cloud vendors provide development
kits where you can just go do it yourself.
So that is actually something that we completely avoid.
And what makes it really, really interesting is that
once the data is encrypted in the data store, or database,
we can do what is known as "Privacy Enhanced Computation."
>> Mm.
>> So we can actually process that data
without decrypting it.
>> Yeah. And so proxies then,
with cloud computing, can be very fast,
not a bottleneck
that could be.
>> In fact, the cloud makes it so.
It's very hard to - >> You believe that?
>> do these things in
static infrastructure.
In the cloud,
there's infinite amount
of processing available, and there's containerization.
>> And you have good network.
>> You have very good network,
you have load balancers, you have ways
of creating redundancy.
>> Mm.
So the cloud is actually enabling solutions like this.
>> And the old way, proxies were seen
as an architectural fail,
in the old antiquated static web.
>> And this is where startups don't have the baggage, right?
We didn't have that baggage.
(John laughs)
We looked at the problem and said, of course
we're going to use a proxy
because this is the best way to do this in an efficient way.
>> Well, you bring up something that's happening right now
that I hear a lot of CSOs
and CIOs and executives say, CXOs say all the time,
"Our", I won't say the word,
"Our stuff has gotten complicated."
>> Yes.
>> So now I have tool sprawl,
>> Yeah. >> I have skill gaps,
and on the rise, all these new managed services coming
at me from the vendors who have never experienced my
problem.
And their reaction is, they don't get my problem,
and they don't have the right solutions,
it's more complexity.
They solve the complexity by adding more complexity.
>> Yes. I think we, again, the proxy approach is a very
simple. >> That you're
solving that with that
approach. >> Exactly. It's very simple.
And again, we don't get in the way. That's really the
the biggest differentiator.
The forcing function really here is compliance, right?
Because compliance is
forcing these CSOs to actually adopt these solutions.
>> All right, so love the compliance angle,
love the proxy as an ease of
use, take the heavy lifting away,
no operational
problems,
and deviations.
Now let's talk about workloads.
>> Yeah.
>> 'Cause this is where the use is.
So you got, or workloads being run large scale,
lot a data moving around, computin' as well.
What's the challenge there?
>> I think it's the volume of the data.
Traditional solutions that we're relying
on legacy tokenizations,
I think would replicate the entire storage
because it would create a token wall, for example.
You cannot do that at this scale.
You have to do something that's
a lot more efficient, which is where you have
to do it with a cryptography approach.
So the workloads are diverse,
lots of large files in the workloads
as well as structured workloads.
What we have is a solution that actually goes
across the board.
We can do unstructured data with HTTP proxies,
we can do structured data with SQL proxies.
And that's how we are able to provide a complete
solution for the pipeline.
>> So, I mean, show about the
on-premise versus the cloud workload
dynamic right now.
Hybrid is a steady state right now.
>> Yeah.
>> Multi-cloud is a consequence
of having multiple vendors, not true multi-cloud
but like, okay, they have Azure there, AWS here, I get that.
But hybrid really is the steady state.
>> Yes.
>> Cloud operations.
How are the workloads and the analytics
the data being managed on-prem,
and in the cloud, what's their relationship?
What's the trend?
What are you seeing happening there?
>> I think the biggest trend we see is pipelining, right?
The new ETL is streaming.
You have these Kafka and Kinesis
capabilities that are coming into the picture
where data is being ingested all the time.
It is not a one time migration.
It's a stream.
>> Yeah.
>> So plugging into that stream is very important
from an ingestion perspective.
>> So it's not just a watchdog.
>> No. >> It's the pipelining.
>> It's built in.
It's built-in, it's real time,
that's where the streaming
gets another diverse access to data.
>> Exactly. >> Data lakes.
You got data lakes, you have pipeline, you got streaming,
you mentioned that.
So talk about the old school OLTP,
the old BI world.
I think Power BI's like a $30 billion product.
>> Yeah.
>> And you got Tableau built on OLTP building cubes.
Aren't we just building cubes in a new way,
or, >> Well.
>> is there any relevance to the old school?
>> I think there, there is some relevance
and in fact that's again, another place where
the proxy architecture really helps,
because it doesn't matter when your application was built.
You can use Tableau, which nobody has any control over,
and still process encrypted data.
And so can with Power BI, any Sequel application
can be used.
And that's actually exactly what
we like to.
>> So we were, I was talking to your team,
I knew you were coming on,
and they gave me a sound bite that I'm going to read
to the audience and I want to get your reaction to.
>> Sure.
>> 'Cause I love this.
I fell out of my chair when I first read this.
"Data is the new oil."
In 2010 that was mentioned here on theCUBE, of course.
"Data is the new oil, but we have to ensure
that it does not become the next asbestos."
Okay. That is really clever.
So we all know about asbestos.
I add to the Dave Vellante, "Lead paint too."
Remember lead paint? (Ameesh laughs)
You got to scrape it out and repaint the house.
Asbestos obviously causes a lot of cancer.
You know, joking aside, the point is,
it's problematic.
>> It's the asset. >> Explain why
that sentence is relevant.
>> Sure. It's the assets and liabilities argument, right?
You have an asset which is data, but thanks
to compliance regulations and Gartner says
75% of the world will be subject to privacy regulations
by 2023.
It's a liability.
So if you don't store your data well, if you
don't process your data responsibly, you are going to
be liable.
So while it might be the oil and you're going to get lots
of value out of it, be careful about the, the flip side.
>> And the point is, there could be the "Grim Reaper" waiting
for you if you don't do it right,
the consequences that are quantified would be being
out of business.
>> Yes. But here's something that we just discovered actually
from our survey that we did.
While 93% of respondents said
that they have had
lots of compliance related
effects on their budgets.
75% actually thought that it makes them better.
They can use the security postures
as a competitive differentiator.
That's very heartening to us.
We don't like to sell the fear
aspect of this. >> Yeah.
We like to sell the fact that you look better compared
to your neighbor, if you have better data hygiene,
back to the.
>> There's the fear of missing out,
or as they say, "Keeping up with the Joneses",
making sure that your yard looks better than the next one.
I get the vanity of that, but you're solving real problems.
And this is interesting.
And I want to get your thoughts on this.
I found, I read
that you guys protect more than a 100 billion records
across highly regulated industries.
Financial services, healthcare, industrial IOT,
retail, and government.
Is that true?
>> Absolutely. Because what we are doing is enabling SaaS
vendors to actually allow their customers to
control their data.
So we've had the SaaS vendor who has been working with us
for over three years now.
They store confidential data
from 30 different banks in the country.
>> That's a lot of records.
>> That's where the record, and.
>> How many customers do you have?
>> Well, I think.
>> The next round of funding's (Ameesh laughs)
probably they're linin'
up to put money into you guys.
>> Well, again, this is a very important problem,
and there are, people's businesses are dependent on this.
We're just happy to provide the best tool out
there that can do this. >> Okay, so what's
your business model behind? I love the success,
by the way, I wanted to quote that stat to one
verify it. What's the business model service, software?
>> The business model is software.
We don't want anybody to send us their confidential
data. We embed our software into our customers environments.
In case of SaaS, we are not even visible,
we are completely embedded.
We are doing other relationships like that right
now. >> And they pay you how?
>> They pay us based on the volume of the data
that they're protecting.
>> Got it.
>> That in that case
which is a large customers, large enterprise customers.
>> Pay as you go.
>> It is pay as you go, everything is annual licenses.
Although, multi-year licenses are very common because
once you adopt the solution, it is very sticky.
And then for smaller customers, we do base
our pricing also just on databases.
>> Got it.
>> The number of databases.
>> And the technology just reviewed low-code,
no-code implementation kind of thing, right?
>> It is by definition, no code when it comes to proxy.
>> Yeah.
>> When it comes to API integration, it could be low code.
Yeah, it's all cloud-friendly, cloud-native.
>> No disruption to operations.
>> Exactly.
>> That's the culprit.
>> Well, yeah.
>> Well somethin'
like
non-disruptive operations.(laughs)
>> No, actually I'll give an example of a migration, right?
We can do live migrations.
So while the databases are still alive, as you write your.
>> Live secure migrations.
>> Exactly.
You're securing - >> That's the one that
manifests. >> your data as it migrates.
>> Awright, so how much funding have you guys raised so far?
>> We raised 36 and a half, series A, and B now.
We raised that late last year.
>> Congratulations.
>> Thank you.
>> Who's the venture funders?
>> True Ventures is our largest investor,
followed by Celesta Capital,
National Grid Partners is an investor,
and so is Engineering Capital and Clear Vision Ventures.
>> And the seed and it was from Engineering?
>> Seed was from Engineering.
>> Engineering Capital.
>> And then True came in very early on.
>> Okay.
>> Greenspring is also an investor in us,
so is Industrial Ventures.
>> Well, privacy has a big concern,
big application for you guys.
Privacy,
secure migrations.
>> Very much so.
So what we are believe very strongly in the
security's personal, security is yours and my data.
Privacy is what the data collector
is responsible for.
(John laughs)
So the enterprise better be making sure
that they've complied with privacy regulations
because they don't tell you how to protect the data.
They just fine you.
>> Well, you're not, you're technically long,
six year old start company.
Six, seven years old.
>> Yeah. >> Roughly.
So yeah, startups can go on long like this,
still startup, privately held, you're growing,
got big records under management there, congratulations.
What's next?
>> I think scaling the business.
We are seeing lots of applications
for this particular
solution.
It's going beyond just regulated industries.
Like I said, it's a differentiating factor now.
>> Yeah
>> So retail,
and a lot
of other IOT related industrial customers -
>> Yeah. >> are also coming.
>> Ameesh, talk about the show here.
We're at re:inforce, actually we're live here on the ground,
the show floor buzzing.
What's your takeaway?
What's the vibe this year?
What if you had to share what your opinion
the top story here at the show,
what would be the two top things, or three things?
>> I think it's two things.
First of all, it feels like we are back.
(both laugh)
It's amazing to see people
on the show floor.
>> Yeah.
>> People coming in and asking questions and getting to
see the product.
The second thing that I think is very gratifying is,
people come in and say, "Oh, I've heard of you guys."
So thanks to digital media, and digital marketing.
>> They weren't baffled.
They want baffled.
>> Exactly. >> They use baffled.
>> Looks like, our outreach has helped,
>> Yeah.
>> and has kept the continuity,
which is a big deal.
>> Yeah, and now you're a CUBE alumni,
welcome to the fold.
>> Thank you. >> Appreciate you coming on.
And we're looking forward
to profiling you some day in our startup showcase,
and certainly, we'll see you in the Palo Alto studios.
Love to have you come in for a deeper dive.
>> Sounds great.
Looking forward to it.
>> Congratulations on all your success,
and thanks for coming on theCUBE, here at re:inforce.
>> Thank you, John.
>> Okay, we're here in, on the ground live coverage,
Boston, Massachusetts for AWS re:inforce 22.
I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE with Dave Vellante,
who's in an analyst session, right?
He'll be right back with us on the next interview,
coming up shortly.
Thanks for watching.
(gentle music)