00:00Thank you for joining us. I mean you're like the beacon of who we turn to to understand exactly some of the cybersecurity threats.
00:06What's the landscape looking like today. Terrifying. Oh Francine I'm not as terrified. Actually this week has been very encouraging.
00:12We've had great leaders not only from the cybersecurity space but also from AI companies. And we're all talking about how to ensure that we have a
00:20secure future. How do we ensure that even as we are starting to proliferate these AI agents and there's so many unknowns that we can also get
00:27visibility and control and put some guardrails around this so that people are safe and innovating. So what is how is dark trace
00:33adapting to stay ahead of some of these really personalized attacks deep fakes and also automated hacks. Well Francine the great thing about dark
00:40trace is that we started in 2013 with an incredible concept around this technology which is if we understand what's normal within a
00:47business we can protect it from what's not normal. And that's what Jack and the team in Cambridge are working on today. We continue to grow
00:53this R&D team and they not only now protect networks they protect email cloud OT that we're also securing AI so that people truly can get
01:02visibility into their agency. Can you give us an idea of how the threat is changing. I mean it is more complicated right. It is. It is. The
01:08threats are becoming more sophisticated. They're becoming more complex. And whereas before we might have thought about being attacker centric
01:15and trying to predict what the attacker is going to do next. That's not what dark trace has ever done. And it's definitely not what we can do
01:21moving forward because we can't predict this high velocity high threat landscape. We know that countries like Japan for example
01:28they used to have a natural barrier because their language was more complex and people couldn't quite get there. You know the
01:32cyber attackers couldn't get their heads around creating an attack in Japanese. But now I can create those complex highly
01:39sophisticated threats in any language around the world. And so right. We're looking at a much higher velocity threat landscape. So is AI
01:46and cybersecurity much more sophisticated than even 12 months ago. Oh of course it's becoming more and more sophisticated. We have
01:53the most amazing minds in Cambridge. People who are linguistics majors people who have majored in the classics. But now looking at how is
02:00this AI challenge for us. How do we protect the world against it. So after dark traces acquisition by Thomas Bravo and the shift to
02:07operating privately. How has that changed your focus and investment strategy. You know dark trace was already changing. And so the
02:14transition into private equity ownership really wasn't that big a deal for us. We were continuing on our path of innovating and
02:20creating the latest and greatest products. We were also working on scaling our business. So we had become really a 700 million
02:27dollar startup. And then we needed to ensure that our systems and our processes and our talent acquisition and all the different
02:33things that big companies do that we were doing those really well. Also I wanted to make sure though that as we applied process
02:40and as we created these foundational systems we didn't take away the spirit of dark trace because that innovation is what keeps us
02:45ahead. That's difficult. Right. It's always it goes to the kind of the culture of the company. And it's it's difficult to put your
02:51finger on it. But if it works it works. That's right. And it still works. And you'll talk to me a little bit about the debt load.
02:58So interesting topic. Right. The debt load is something that we see as part of this program that we're that we're running. Right. I mean I'm really
03:08focused day to day on executing on operating the business. And so I'm not thinking about the debt load quite as much. Our
03:14partners at Tomo Bravo are thinking about that all the time and ensuring that we're in a healthy place that we're in a healthy spot
03:19going forward. And as we continue to grow our revenue we feel like we're in a great place. So when you look at again
03:24cyber security kind of like ecosystem when you look at partners do you see others as like rivals or partners or how does this
03:30landscape change as people are spending more and more money on cyber security and cyber threats. Yeah. Two different parts of that.
03:36First of all customers are always working with partners. And so we are going completely partner focused ensuring that we are
03:41working with our partners to educate customers not only on the threats but on which tools can be best to protect them
03:46from those threats. What's really been encouraging this week at Davos is that I've been talking to who you might think of as
03:52dark races competitors the CEOs of other cyber security companies. We meet in forums that allow us to really talk about how to
03:58solve this problem for the world. And I've been so encouraged because we work together. We talk about how our solutions are
04:03complementary how we work together to protect the most important part of what humans are doing. I mean I think some of the most
04:09important and interesting sessions are also with some of the spy chiefs. Again it's a world that not many people know about
04:15except through movies. Are the cyber threats coming from government agents or like you know government entities or what can you tell us
04:22about where the biggest threat is coming from. You know what's interesting is AI has democratized cyber attacks just like it's
04:29democratized so many other things. It's a good line. It doesn't it doesn't really matter where it's coming from from a dark
04:34trace perspective. We're going to protect you from a nation state actor just like we're going to protect you from a western
04:40teenager in his garage you know having a heyday with AI that day. So it's not it's not so much about being attacker centric. What we do
04:46want to think about though is how we get every anomaly and how we ensure that we're protecting from this. How are you using AI to actually see the
04:53anomalies. We're using a multi-layered AI approach on Cambridge. We have again some incredible minds that are working on
04:59how you use multi layers of AI to really understand not just what's normal. What's normal for your business but also which of
05:05those things that are not normal are truly threats. So we can prioritize those and ensure that the sock the security
05:10operation center at a company can look at the most important things first. So I sometimes I get told that actually the most simple
05:17phishing right done cleverly is the most dangerous. It's true in cyber security. It's true. Phishing and with deep
05:23fakes you know today actually this week I've had an interesting conversation with CEOs around deep fakes. Apparently all CEOs have
05:30experienced them. We don't talk about them very much. We're in safe forums honestly here. And so when you talk about a deep
05:35fake I actually experienced one walking out of my first board meeting. And when I walked out in the executives that I'd really just
05:41started to lead had a blank stare on their face. I asked what was wrong. And they said we've just gotten a voicemail from you. And it was
05:46asking for financial data and customer data. Was that you. I said no I was I was in the board meeting. They said of course. And so
05:52these were you know astute executives. As I told that story more and more CEOs said that happened to me early in my tenure as
05:59well. Clearly it's a tactic that attackers are using to hit CEOs early in their tenure when they haven't established
06:06communication channels and haven't established the security proceedings that they normally would have. And I've heard also I mean deep
06:12fake you know people wanting to put out even countries or governments wanting to put out an endorsement or not. And their team actually back home
06:19saying. Hold on. This is a deep fake. How sophisticated. I mean is there a point where we won't be able to tell deep fake
06:25from the truth. Oh I think we're already at that point. I think we're already at the point where deep fakes can be so good that
06:29it's very difficult to tell especially if you know you're a new employee at a company and you haven't heard often. And so it's a
06:35multi-layered cybersecurity approach. And humans are truly the most important line of defense.
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