00:00 provider of cybersecurity solutions for governments and enterprises globally.
00:05 This is of course important in light of the fact that cyber attacks are steadily increasing
00:09 frequency and sophistication, I might add, over the last few months, quarters and years.
00:15 The IBM Security X-Forces annual report says that the Cybersecurity Threat Index 2003,
00:22 the average organization saw 27% more cyber attacks compared to 2021.
00:27 So in light of this, it becomes very important to talk to Dr. Dorit Dor, the CTO of Checkpoint
00:33 on the cybersecurity landscape globally and its evolution, if I can use that term, in
00:38 2024.
00:39 Dr. Dor, thank you so much for being with us.
00:40 Thank you very much for inviting me.
00:44 The mood around WEF this year, of course, rebuilding trust, and trust can't be rebuilt
00:50 if security systems are not in place.
00:52 And since everything is tech pervasive, or tech is pervasive everywhere, how important
00:58 do you reckon cybersecurity has become now, relative to what it would have been a few
01:02 years ago?
01:03 Yeah, I think that the one thing to understand is that cybersecurity is more important, as
01:10 more as your reliance on digital assets is more important.
01:15 So if your wallets are in line, if your websites are online, if you conduct your business,
01:21 if your AI is online, if all your business supply chain is online, that increases the
01:26 criticality.
01:27 So if you look 20 years back, much less was online.
01:30 So yeah, maybe something could have gone wrong and you'd still continue to operate.
01:35 Now the risk is that all your assets are online and more are even becoming online.
01:40 So cybersecurity becomes always more important.
01:43 You would be a very busy woman the next four days out here, I would guess.
01:47 I have some panels, workshops, some stuff.
01:51 Yes.
01:52 But more importantly, just in terms of customers and companies globally wanting to get a slice
01:57 of what can they do better.
01:58 So I would love to understand from you, from what's been happening thus far in the world
02:02 on cybersecurity, how do you see 2024 to be, or 2024 or the rest of the decade to be like?
02:09 Yes, definitely.
02:10 So there are a few trends that are building up.
02:13 By the way, trends in cybersecurity build over a large period of time.
02:17 They start small and whatever is successful is growing up.
02:21 So one of the trends is activism and in some cases, state nation related activity.
02:28 We are living in a world where there are a few wars around us and it's either as part
02:35 of the war itself or supporters of one side gets hit by activism of the other side.
02:42 This is true of multiple situations like this worldwide.
02:46 So it's not just in one of the regions and people are worried about it because the tools
02:54 used there sometimes are leveraging some state nation tools and sometimes are more destroying.
03:04 So for example, we used to ransomware.
03:08 Ransomware is where I encrypt your data and I get, ask you to pay to get the data back.
03:15 But in an activism play, there may be a wiper.
03:19 A wiper is like a ransomware, but nobody intends to give you the data back.
03:24 It's like the intention to destroy.
03:27 So these are the things that would happen in a more activism related to this.
03:33 So this is one trend that is happening more due to political situation.
03:39 Some trends are related to technology.
03:42 So this goes to deep fakes and to generative AI kind of problems.
03:51 So with all the AI growing around us, the attackers could leverage much more AI to be
03:59 more targeted.
04:00 So all of a sudden I could build an attack that would be specific to any one of the targets
04:06 and be very focused on what they expect to see, what are the pictures that they like
04:10 to see, what are their personal behaviors.
04:13 And so the attackers get it's a tool.
04:15 It's still true that the defenders also have AI so they could protect better, but this
04:21 changes a bit the landscape and will continue to change the landscape going forward.
04:26 We could talk more about AI after, but this is definitely kind of one of the leading trends.
04:33 And I think that money being kind of on the internet also increases the value of trying
04:43 to steal fraud activities related again to deep fake or to other forms of fraud will
04:50 continue to raise from this.
04:53 Got it.
04:54 So talking of changing landscape, the sun is now shining brightly behind us.
04:57 I don't know how cool this frame is looking right now with the sun right behind us, but
05:01 nevertheless...
05:02 For us it's very comfortable.
05:03 I must say so.
05:05 But it's interesting you use this term about AI as well.
05:08 And I would love to understand from you because that seems to be the buzzword.
05:10 I was talking to the global head of technology practice at McKinsey and he was talking about
05:16 how AI might actually be one of the most prolific technological tools, if I can use that term,
05:25 for the rest of the decade.
05:26 Even if it's not disruptive, there's a lot that can happen.
05:29 Now with cybersecurity as well, both on enabling cybersecurity to defend oneself, whether businesses
05:36 or governments, and to the use of AI for ransomware or other stuff.
05:42 Now how will this evolve?
05:44 And do you reckon that as a percentage of the P&L, the quantum of costs that a company
05:52 or a CI of a company has to bear for the next few years, the cost of cybersecurity will
05:57 only inch up because of the sophistication of the attacks that we've seen recently?
06:02 So these are a collection of questions.
06:05 I'll do my best to answer all of them.
06:07 So first about the impact of AI.
06:10 The first immediate impact is more targeting and more automation.
06:16 So look at everything you did before, you could now do it in a higher scale and more
06:21 automated scale.
06:22 You can, in a higher scale and more automated way, attack somebody, and you could, at a
06:27 higher scale and more automated way, defend somebody.
06:31 So this will increase the sophistication and when there is an increase in sophistication
06:36 of an attack, there is an increase cost associated with it.
06:42 So there is an increase of this.
06:44 But there is also another layer of everybody's using AI now, and if you are using AI, you
06:51 need to defend new stuff that you may have not defended before.
06:55 So now as an organization, you collect more data.
06:58 And now you have to worry about who has access to your data internally.
07:03 Before only seldom people had access and only to seldom parts.
07:07 Now you want all the data to coherently live in your data lake, and you want to give it
07:13 access to all the AIs around you that activate it.
07:16 So now you have to guard your jewelry much more and secure how you do your own AI.
07:25 So there is the attacker AI, there is the defender AI, and there is how you defend your
07:30 AI usage, what comes out of it, how you defend the models, how you defend what AI you are
07:36 using and how you defend your data.
07:39 These are all three things.
07:40 The other thing I would say is usually there are two elements in technology transformation.
07:47 A, we always think it would run faster than it actually is, so things do take time, so
07:53 it's not all changing in a day.
07:56 But B, looking at different changes that happened in the past, we could see that it starts from
08:02 these obvious things.
08:03 So yes, everything will be automated, everything will be conversational, you'll get your answers
08:08 much more clear to a bigger audience.
08:11 CX level could get the answers as much as a technician.
08:14 But at the same time, there would be an evolution of idea of things that would be done differently.
08:21 We don't know to believe now how they would be done differently, but some of the things
08:27 would not be just automated the way it's done today, but a different way to do them given
08:33 the tools.
08:34 And that will change things.
08:35 If you look at the mobile world, we do today quite a few things very differently than we
08:40 did at the beginning of the mobile.
08:43 We anticipated talks and maybe some other in text and maybe picture moving, but we are
08:50 doing today much more applications and much more personalized with the mobile.
08:54 So the same change will happen with AI.
08:57 The AI will start from the obvious automation and conversation and ease of use, etc., but
09:04 would move to create new use cases and new ways to conduct our business.
09:09 Maybe some things would be direct to consumer because the consumer would use the AI as guidance
09:15 to a company.
09:16 Maybe some things will be passing the humans or will be in the loop in some sense.
09:25 I don't know to tell you because one of the things is it's hard to predict.
09:30 But suffice to say that if increased users of cloud, so availability of data everywhere,
09:35 AI plus sophisticated ransomware would mean that the cost of an average organization or
09:42 a government for defending itself against all of these would mean increased spends on
09:49 cybersecurity.
09:50 Yes, but I also want to say that they have increased spends on the underlying technology.
09:55 So now they spend also on the AI and more on software.
09:59 In general, we see an increase of spending in software in the recent years.
10:04 Look at production line, industrial line.
10:06 They have much more software components.
10:08 You look at things that were in hardware.
10:10 A lot of it is software, firmware changes.
10:14 So you have to look at the expenses of security also in light of how much you are spending
10:19 on these elements.
10:20 So the spending changes and with it there is more spending on cybersecurity, but there
10:25 is also more spending on the cyber usage.
10:29 In some sense, we at India like to believe that we've got a fairly good head on our shoulders
10:36 when it comes to technology.
10:37 A lot of software talent in the country as well.
10:39 I would love to understand from your viewpoint, because you are large in this space, what
10:43 role does India play for the world of cybersecurity as in terms of supply of talent?
10:49 What is your presence in India?
10:52 Has it increased over the years?
10:53 And how do you see that shaping up over the course of the decade?
10:56 So definitely we have presence in India.
10:58 It's a very valuable collaboration with India.
11:03 I think India in general is a powerhouse for technology because it has a very large population.
11:10 The population is technology savvy and driving this.
11:16 I would say that no matter how many people you'd have, you'd have shortage in skills
11:20 and you'd have shortage in AI skills and shortage in cyber skills and shortage in data skills.
11:26 So even no matter how many people you have, we would say that you have a shortage in skills,
11:31 but you definitely have a powerhouse that cannot be ignored.
11:34 Checkpoint in India has sales and local business activities, but we also have large support
11:40 center and we have also R&D capabilities.
11:44 And I think it's true to say that it's kind of obvious today that India is part of the
11:50 ecosystem of technology for many companies, and you can't ignore this kind of talent pool.
11:57 Still India has to make sure that they maintain this talent pool and keep it up to date with
12:02 the latest technologies and needs, but this is true to any place.
12:07 So we all need to grow and reskill.
12:11 One of the problems is that when there is a change in technology, you need to reskill
12:14 the people to deal with the new technologies.
12:17 The fastest you reskill them to the new technologies, the more play you could play in the new technologies
12:23 behavior.
12:24 So if you talk AI, you need to make sure you have enough data scientists and AI experts,
12:29 etc.
12:30 And I know that India is busy at that.
12:32 I know that there are many companies that give these services globally.
12:36 So I'm not saying anything new or revealing, but this is something to keep in mind and
12:41 to continue and explore.
12:43 Okay.
12:44 Final question.
12:45 Whether at the government level, because India has this digital stack, which I believe is
12:48 an enemy of a lot of countries.
12:50 I mean, country ambassadors have told this to me, but because India has this digital
12:54 stack, because companies are so pervasive on technology and out there on cloud, etc.
13:00 What is it that you think India is doing right on the cybersecurity space?
13:04 And are there some areas where Indian companies or the government needs to take a step more
13:10 or improve a little bit from what they are doing right now?
13:13 So I think there is a first time humble to kind of give advices to governments.
13:18 So I don't know for sure, but I would say India is taking care of growing the talent
13:24 scale and pool, but it's also developing its sovereignty of data.
13:30 So I know we have a data center in India, for example, that holds some of our data for
13:36 local activities.
13:37 So they are doing like hygiene practices that are needed across the globe.
13:42 I think one of the challenges always is the commercial government collaboration.
13:47 And India is a very large country.
13:50 So in such a large scale, how do you learn from something that is like, let's call it
13:56 state nation or activism from one place to another?
14:00 Commercially, you could say everybody takes care of themselves.
14:03 But if there are some things that are hitting like industry in a more global way, then a
14:09 country has to kind of learn from one side and employ guardrails on the other or help
14:15 the commercial employ guardrails on the others.
14:18 And I don't know how much India is able to do this.
14:21 This is one challenge.
14:22 And the other challenge, some people like it, some not, is whether there needs to be
14:27 more governance on what cybersecurity and how much companies invest in cybersecurity
14:32 or how much governance of AI there is.
14:35 Some people would say that governance is good as an important to drive the industry to be
14:39 more secure.
14:40 Some would say that less.
14:42 I would say that based on our data, we see more attacks per week in India than in other
14:49 countries of the world.
14:50 This could be related that there maybe there are some more small, smaller businesses or
14:55 mid businesses sizes or for other reasons.
14:59 But there is a need to increase hygiene and to increase the importance.
15:04 And some businesses run fast to like do their own business and move on.
15:08 And with cyber, somebody has to tell them, hey, hey, you know, we're here.
15:12 So the SEC, for example, is taking many severe steps around security.
15:16 I don't know if that extreme is where you want to go.
15:20 And there is a middle work.
15:22 So global companies that have a long leg in India and definitely this is, as I said, this
15:29 is India is the powerhouse in technology and you have you have to find yourself there if
15:35 you want to strive.
15:37 Great.
15:38 Well, thank you so much for lovely talking to you, understanding a small piece of a very
15:40 difficult topic.
15:41 But thank you so much for taking the time out and speaking to us today.
15:44 Thank you very much.
15:45 Thank you for hosting me.
15:46 And even the sun came out.
15:47 Yeah, well, hopefully it keeps on shining.
15:49 But thank you so much.
15:50 Thank you very much.
15:51 And viewers, thanks for tuning in.
15:52 And I'll see you next time.
15:53 Bye bye.
15:53 Bye bye.
15:53 Bye bye.
15:55 Bye bye.
15:55 (dramatic music)
15:58 (dramatic music)
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