How Cybersecurity Became A Top Priority For Business Leaders

Fortune

Nikesh Arora, CEO of Palo Alto Networks, Says Data Security Is No Longer Just A Concern For CIOs.

Transcript

00:00Welcome to Leadership Next, the podcast about the changing rules of business leadership.

00:07I'm Dianne Brady.

00:09You know, one of the things that's fascinating, the perch you sit in, you get into rooms we

00:14don't get to go in terms of talking to CEOs about the vulnerabilities, and I say CEOs

00:20deliberately because it feels like this is an issue that has really left just the CIO

00:25or the CTO.

00:26Give me a sense as to what are they thinking about and how is the threat environment changing?

00:32Because we're right in the middle of this obsession with digital transition.

00:37What are you hearing?

00:39We can't seem to buy, ingest and deploy enough technology today.

00:44I mean, look at what's going on with AI.

00:46People are buying GPUs.

00:47They're trying to put up AI data centers.

00:50Everybody's in a frenzy.

00:52How do I use LLMs in my infrastructure?

00:54So you think you've just sort of just sat down and settled down and say, oh my God,

00:59thank God we've moved to the public cloud.

01:00And you sit there and say, oh my God, look, what's next, AI.

01:03So I think every CEO has some sort of large technology project on their agenda.

01:10And the number one risk now, slowly and steadily continues to be cyber.

01:14And that's because what we talked about, the sort of explosion of attack surfaces, explosion

01:18of our connectivity to our customers, that's causing that to become a large risk.

01:23So it's kind of impossible to get away from a conversation around cybersecurity at your

01:28board or your management team.

01:30It's still a bit of a black box, to be honest.

01:33It's like, I know I have a problem.

01:35I don't know how to solve it, but I know I have a problem.

01:37I need to pay attention.

01:38So I think we're at that phase where CEOs are aware this is a problem.

01:42Some of them are hoping it doesn't happen to them because it happened to somebody else

01:45in their industry.

01:47But they call their CIO and technology guys and say, hey, do we have a solution for this?

01:52And like most in life, we always say, yes, we've got this covered.

01:56But the question is, how well do you have it covered?

01:59You've lived through these boom and bust cycles.

02:02Obviously, we've seen this acceleration of technology innovation.

02:07But we talk about AI as if it's some incredibly profound pivot point where now, you know,

02:14put on your seatbelt.

02:15Here we go.

02:16It's going to be the most transformative thing since whatever.

02:20What do you think?

02:21There's that cliche that we always seem to overestimate the short term and underestimate

02:25the long term.

02:26Right.

02:27If you go back to 1999, you know, if you remember the internet sort of boom, where all you needed

02:32was a domain name and you were in a number of clicks to find your market.

02:36Eyeballs.

02:37The world was in a frenzy.

02:38You know, the Nasdaq was 5,000.

02:39At that point in time, it came crashing down to 3,000.

02:42So there was that sort of exuberance associated with this revolutionary technology called

02:47the internet.

02:48Now, I don't think we were wrong.

02:50If you go back and say, what did we imagine in 1999?

02:53I think any domain you thought you bought actually exists today.

02:56There's a business around it.

02:57So these real businesses, some of the largest businesses in the world, are driven by the

03:02emergence of the internet.

03:03So it was just we were early.

03:06I think we're in the same sort of cycle with AI.

03:10There is tremendous amounts of enthusiasm.

03:13There is sort of like this notion that if you build it, they will come and we're all

03:17busy building it.

03:18I think it's following the same cycle that we saw with the internet.

03:21First, you need the infrastructure.

03:23That's why you're seeing the infrastructure players in AI are going to do well in the

03:29current term.

03:30You look at all the chip manufacturers and people talk about energy, people talk about

03:34the need for data centers.

03:35So you're seeing the infrastructure parts.

03:37The technology is still a little ways from all of us embracing it fully and going and

03:42deploying it.

03:43I think we feel a little left out because cybersecurity was on the top of mind for CEOs

03:50six months ago.

03:51It's possibly AI now, right?

03:52Because like they all want to talk about AI.

03:54They all want to be smarter about it.

03:55They're all worried that if I miss the AI trend, is there a new Amazon and I become

04:00the old e-commerce guy?

04:01I'd love to walk through a little bit the perspective you bring from T-Mobile.

04:06You mentioned your time at Google.

04:09You were in, I believe, almost two years at SoftBank.

04:12How did those experiences, well, let me just ask some of those pivot points maybe in your

04:17career that kind of took you to where you are now.

04:21My first job in the U.S. was at Fidelity.

04:23It was 1992 and it was one of those recessionary moments where it was very hard to get a job.

04:30So I had to literally apply to 400 plus places to see if somebody would hire me.

04:36And as I said, I had the funniest of experiences.

04:38I literally had a recruiter on the phone saying, oh, can you tell me, we don't know what that

04:41course is offered at Northwestern.

04:42I'm like, no, I went to Northeastern.

04:43Oh, excuse me, let me check.

04:44And boom.

04:45So like people, all kinds of stuff happened.

04:46And I was lucky that I applied to Fidelity with seven different people.

04:47Thankfully, they had no common HR system at that point in time.

04:48So six people said no.

04:49The seventh person didn't know.

04:50That sixth said no.

04:51So they had me come interview and I was lucky enough to get hired.

04:52And then I ended up going to work at Deutsche Telekom in four places because I met the CEO

04:53by being a telecom analyst.

04:54And he says, you should go work for me.

04:55So I did.

04:56Serendipitous.

04:57Serendipitous.

04:58Serendipitous.

04:59Serendipitous.

05:00Serendipitous.

05:01Serendipitous.

05:02And then I ended up going to work at Deutsche Telekom in four places because I met the CEO

05:07by being a telecom analyst.

05:08And he says, you should go work for me.

05:09So I did.

05:10Serendipitous.

05:11Serendipitous.

05:12Serendipitous.

05:13Serendipitous.

05:14Serendipitous.

05:15Serendipitous.

05:16Serendipitous.

05:17Serendipitous.

05:18Serendipitous.

05:19Serendipitous.

05:20Serendipitous.

05:21Serendipitous.

05:22Serendipitous.

05:23Serendipitous.

05:24Serendipitous.

05:25Serendipitous.

05:26Serendipitous.

05:27Serendipitous.

05:28Serendipitous.

05:29Serendipitous.

05:30Serendipitous.

05:31Serendipitous.

05:32So I was on my way to commute from London to Germany trying to see if I wanted to be

05:35an operational executive in a mobile telecom company, which I did.

05:38And then I was home and a friend of mine walked up and says, you know what, there's this company

05:43from California, which just went public in a very strange reverse Dutch auction, which

05:49nobody should do.

05:50And they're looking for somebody to work in Europe.

05:53They have a small 5,000 square foot office in Seoul House, which is rented, or Seoul

05:57Square, sorry.

05:58Do you want to go talk to them?

05:59And I was Googled.

06:00Chief business officer.

06:01Chief business officer.

06:02That's not a title you hear very often.

06:04What does that mean?

06:05Well, you know, I started Google in Google Europe.

06:08I was lucky enough that Larry and Sergey were traveling through Europe coincidentally.

06:13They interviewed me there.

06:15I had a great boss, Omid, who interviewed me.

06:18And they decided that they'd have me run Google Europe.

06:21And it was an amazing market.

06:24We had lots of great people who worked there.

06:26Many of them are still at Google, run large parts of Google.

06:30We were able to make Europe grow and stabilize Google's European presence to such a degree

06:35that they asked me to come run the rest of the world, including Europe, from here.

06:41Because one of my peers, Tim Armstrong and Cheryl, went on to have amazing careers in

06:46different places.

06:47And maybe I was the last man standing, so here I was.

06:50I came to California in 2009.

06:53And I spent five years doing anything but product.

06:57Eric was my boss for a while, and Larry was my boss for a while.

07:01And Larry wanted to focus on the technology part.

07:03So he said, go take care of the business stuff.

07:05We had a great CFO, great head of legal.

07:08And I kind of did everything that wasn't product.

07:10So it was sales, marketing, customer support, business development, deals.

07:14I was lucky.

07:15I was blessed.

07:16Because here I was working for an amazing technology company, going to perhaps its biggest

07:19growth phase.

07:20And I had sort of the privilege of observing from that lens how the world was accepting

07:26technology, accepting the emergence of big tech, I guess, at that point in time.

07:30Which is great.

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