May 1, 2023 • 20 mins
Each week, TechTarget's news team and industry experts provide candid insight and analysis of the biggest IT news headlines of the week. On today's show, tech analyst Bob Laliberte of Enterprise Strategy Group discusses the highlights of HPE Aruba's Atmosphere conference; security reporter Alex Culafi describes how AI dominated the RSA security show; and government reporter Makenzie Holland explains why the Federal Trade Commission has taken a hard-line position on the use of AI in business.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Alexander Culafi (00:00):
The big use case for AI, I think is just
(00:04):
conceptually minimizing thegrunt work that people have to
do.
Antone Gonsalves (00:11):
Hi, and welcome to Tech News this week.
I'm your host techtarget,editorial news director and tone
for Sophos. On today's show,we'll discuss the highlights
from the HPE Aruba atmosphereconference in the RSA Security
show. We'll also explain why theFederal Trade Commission has
taken a hardline position on theuse of AI in business versus
(00:35):
Aruba had its show in Vegas thisweek, the networking division of
Hewlett Packard Enterpriselaunched a redesign of his
popular network managementplatform Central, here to tell
us about the changes and otherconference highlights is Bob
Lella. Bet. And analysts withtech targets Enterprise Strategy
(00:56):
Group. So what's new in centraland how dramatic is the change?
Unknown (01:02):
Yeah, it's a fairly significant improvement, great
user interface, hierarchicalapproach, kind of a solar system
approach where you can drilldown into different layers. And
it's much more, I guess, easilyorganized, all of the end users
that I've talked to, when I'vecaught them in the halls or
having meals and so forth, havebeen really impressed with it,
they're looking forward to usingit. But for those who don't want
(01:25):
to, they've also initiated aneasy toggle switch where you can
go between interfaces. So it'sthat ability to leverage the new
technology. But if you're notcomfortable with it, you just
press the button, and you'reback to your usual usual
comfortable interface. But Ithink like I said, they're,
they're trying to make thesechanges to accommodate the more
highly distributed environments,more complex environments, and
(01:47):
making it easier to be able toquickly go through and diagnose
problems to be able to have thatfull end to end visibility
across these large environments,as they now are, you know, going
between the data center all theway to the edge, right with all
their solutions.
Antone Gonsalves (02:02):
So So what's changed? Well, why introduced
this, this more graphicalvisualization interface? I mean,
why do it now versus I don'tknow, three years ago, four
years ago, what's changed in thein the in the market? Yeah,
well, like
Unknown (02:20):
I said, I think one of the biggest reasons for doing
this, and especially thehierarchical piece is the fact
that the environments aregetting that much more complex,
right? Our research has shownthat or more and more
organizations are movingapplications to multiple public
clouds, more applications aremoving to the edge, right,
you've got all the remoteworkers, things like that. So
things are far more distributedand more complex and trying to
(02:41):
be able to display that completeend to end interface in one
image on the screen is going tobe highly complex. So being able
to break it down, and then haveit be able to alert and bring
you to the areas of concern morequickly, are all things that are
going to help drive operationalefficiency, which is what is
sorely needed for these ITorganizations to deal with this
complex environment.
Antone Gonsalves (03:02):
Yeah, I think the majority are a large portion
of Rubezh. customer base areuniversities. So I was thinking
that possibly these changes inCentral is a is in recognition
of the fact that the IT talentUniversity is usually very few
people. And they're not highlevel engineers, you know,
(03:24):
necessarily,
Unknown (03:25):
that's it's, I mean, the hard part, I think overall,
is just there's just a lack ofskilled IT resources in general.
At the same time, the ITenvironment is getting more
complex. And so in addition tothe skilled resources, it's also
even for the skilled resources,is there's a lack of time to be
able to accomplish all of thesethings. So So in addition to the
(03:45):
new user interfaces, you seethem also doing a lot of
enhancements to their AIoperations as well, to be able
to, you know, eliminate havingto do those mundane routine
things or to be able toaccelerate troubleshooting. So
you're not spending hours tryingto find the problem, you're just
able to see it and fix itquickly. So I think it's a
combination of those things. ButI mean, I spoke to customers
(04:07):
that who were running, you know,big stadiums and things like
that, they were very eager toadopt it and look at it as well
as you know, the colleges anduniversities. So I think across
the board, what I've seen thisweek is that organizations, you
know, they need to be able tocertainly that shift left
mentality and be able to movefaster, get closer to DevOps,
and things like that. And sothese new interfaces, the the
(04:28):
intelligence and automationthat's being added to them are
all steps that are being takenby the by Aruba to enable
organizations to to accommodatethose needs and to shift left
and to drive greater operationalefficiencies.
Antone Gonsalves (04:41):
Okay, we know what I didn't know they have an
SD win, as we know, I mean, theybought silver peak few years
ago, but I didn't. I didn't seeany announcements related to
cloud networking. Do you expectthat that topic to be addressed
eventually by Yeah,
Unknown (05:00):
Mike Thanks. So I mean, they've got they had an SD Wan
solutions part of the SD branch,they then acquired silver peak,
as you said, that's brought onsubstantial Connect, you know,
substantial SD Wan capabilitiesand footprint. They've now
acquired axis as well, right,the security side. So they've
got an integrated sassyoffering. And so that's a lot of
the right dealing with theremote workers and things like
(05:21):
that and hybrid work. But theyare starting to look at you
know, and there's been a coupleof the their sessions here that
have talked about multi cloudnetworking. A lot of them have
been about the SD Wan connectingto the cloud, but I think that's
an area of of, I guess,investigation for them. And I
would expect that over time,we'll probably hear more from
them about the the multi cloudenvironment as well.
Antone Gonsalves (05:43):
Okay. And lastly, you know, they also
rolled out something that theycall the Agile network as a as a
service. What is that?
Unknown (05:53):
Yeah, absolutely. So it's the just take a step back,
right? HPE, which they are nowbecoming more tightly integrated
with, and that was indicated bythe new logo. I don't know if
you saw any of my tweets, butthey have. It used to be bigger
Aruba, small HPE, you know,Hewlett Packard Enterprise
company, now it's big HPE, Arubanetworking, so there's there's
(06:15):
some tighter integration, butthey still retain a lot of their
their autonomy. But a big pieceof that is integrating with
Greenlake and being able todeliver things as a service.
Now, what Aruba has seen overthe last several years is that,
you know, one one size does notfit all, when it comes to
networking solutions, how peoplewant to do it, right. Is it
going to be fully managed, comanaged? Do organizations want
(06:38):
to have control? Is itsubscription? Is it consumption
based? Right? I mean, there'sthere's lots of areas, I think
they have six key componentsthat they use to define what an
agile NASS environment is. Butfor them, it's really all about
giving their their customerschoice. It's about how do you
want to consume this in whichformat, how much management
levels, right, and kind ofsliding bars across all six of
(07:01):
these terms, to let thecustomers define the best fit
for their unique environment?
Antone Gonsalves (07:06):
Sure. So it's pretty much however you want to
consume their their products,they'll sell it to you
Unknown (07:13):
directly. And so they're not they don't want to
force them into this is ourfixed definition. And you have
to consume it this way or thehighway. It's much more of let's
figure out what what works bestfor you. You know, and
especially when it comes topricing, we always say you know,
surprises are for birthdays, notyour your IT bill. So you know,
do you want it subscriptionbased? Do you want it as a
lease? Do you want it as a trueconsumption, etc.
Antone Gonsalves (07:37):
Okay, next is RSA AI. And its impact on
security was a major theme atthe show in San Francisco here
to tell us why is tick targeteditorial security reporter Alex
coffee. So before we get startedon AI, what was the mood like in
this year's show and what stoodout to you?
Alexander Culafi (07:58):
So this is my third RSA, the first one I went
to was early 2020. I had been onthe security beat, and actually
in like, traditional techjournalism for a few months at
the time, and it was also asCOVID was happening, because it
was I think, late February, Ithink I met you in person for
the first time at that RSA. Andthen 2021, there was no RSA
(08:22):
because of COVID restrictions,folks still figuring it out. I
still being in the thick ofthings. 2022 They brought it
back, but there was like aconvoluted but necessary, like
process for confirming thatpeople were vaccinated. And you
could feel the presence of COVIDover that show. And in part
(08:42):
because there weren't that manypeople 2023 has been a big tone
shift and that it was packed,maybe as packed as 2020 was, I
don't know the numbers exactly.But it was very fact. Like also
not very many masks like I hadmine on the whole time. But I
gotta say you were hearing thatconference cough after a couple
(09:03):
of days. But on the securityside, it's cool, because people
are getting out there again,holding meetings, you see life
coming back to normal, and yousee people, you know, excited to
pitch stuff again, like it's notlow energy, like last year was
and I think that part wasreally, really nice.
Antone Gonsalves (09:24):
Sure. And what stood out for you on the tech
side,
Alexander Culafi (09:28):
who is AI? Like I know that after Microsoft
sort of announced their multibillion multi year investment
into chat GPT publishing or openAI a few months ago that like aI
was going to be the big thingacross all the enterprise
departments that we work on atechtarget editorial, but
(09:48):
Security I was surprised to seethe the prominence of the AI
that was being sold on the showfloor some of it a little
buzzword already may be a littlemisleading if I looked into it
further for some of the smallervendors, but you also had Google
and IBM announcing new AIpowered suite versions of their
(10:14):
of some other security productsalong with some other vendors
announcing some securityproducts, but like aI was fully
in the air,
Antone Gonsalves (10:22):
right, so So how is how would AI in general,
you know, change cyber and cybersecurity? What are the
components? And
Alexander Culafi (10:32):
so I talked 567 people this week at RSA, and
I asked them that very samequestion, like, what is this
moment of AI and cybersecurity?Is it new technology? Is it a
big buzzword? Or is it both? Andthey're like, yes, it's both.
And so part of it is messaging,like chat GPT is gone into
(10:54):
public's hands. And now peopleare way more receptive to AI as
a as a concept. The public isand as such, what I've heard is
that enterprises are feelingmore empowered to start selling
AI, or to like put it let's say,front and center, even though
like vendors have been using AIand machine learning for some
(11:15):
cases for decades. So it's notexactly new technology. And a
lot of the technology that'scoming out isn't strictly new
technology, but refinedtechnology. On the other hand,
there are some cool applicationsthat are starting to emerge more
like I think Google and IBM,they can prioritize threat
alerts. So it can sort of, ifthere's multiple points of
(11:39):
concern in your network, it canprioritize and act on them in
order, there's automated threathunting. So it identifies the
software identifies the threats,and then sort of appropriately
goes after it without youneeding to do much, which is
kind of pre existing butrefining technology. However,
the big use case for AI, Ithink, is just conceptually
(12:04):
minimizing the grunt work thatpeople have to do. So like I so
for instance, in our job asjournalists, like, I'm, I'm even
28, I'm old enough to rememberlike recording things, and then
transcribing by hand, a 40minute interview with something
like otter AI, you plug in themp3, you can pull quotes, listen
(12:26):
back, get exactly what you need.And like an eighth of the time,
and security has its ownversions of that where the data
processing is getting faster.The analytic stuff is getting
faster, and securityprofessionals can do the
important stuff and focus on themore important stuff quicker.
And I think that sort of wherethe exciting stuff is, is that
(12:49):
all the annoying work, or thestuff that's like that used to
be more granular is starting toget automated and like code, for
example, it can like, I've heardthat like chat GPT, or like open
AI, stuff can can generate likepretty good code, or check it
(13:10):
pretty well as well. And I thinkthat automation, and that like
speeding up, what was oncecompletely manual process. I
think that's the gonna be theexciting stuff right now across
the board, including security,if that makes sense.
Antone Gonsalves (13:25):
Yeah, it does. It seems like the initial use of
AI is all about efficiency andsaving thing and people's time.
I mean, it'll be interesting tosee, as the technology matures,
how it gets more, you know, moreIncorporated, it goes beyond
just just efficiency, you know,like, helping people like
(13:49):
actually making decisions interms of how to how to protect a
company, you know, launchingsome type of defensive software,
you know, in the case of anattack, you know, without human
intervention, that type ofthing. But, but it's it but it's
nevertheless it's, it's, Iagree, it does seem to be it's
(14:11):
real. And it's just a questionto see and how it evolves, you
know, as the years as the yearsgo by. Finally, the Federal
Trade Commission is ready topounce on companies that misuse
AI. Here to tell us more aboutthe FTC warning is tech target
editorial government reporterMacKenzie Holland. So what did
(14:35):
FTC chair Lena Kahn mean whenshe said there is no AI
exemption for business?
Unknown (14:42):
consumer protection laws, like the Federal Trade
Commission Act itself, weresigned into law in 1914.
Obviously, artificialintelligence didn't exist then.
And there's been a lot ofconcern that those laws that
were signed into law so long agodon't cover now New technologies
like artificial intelligence.This week, the Federal Trade
(15:03):
Commission, along with the USDepartment of Justice, or Rights
Division and other consumerprotection agencies, essentially
came together to take the stancethat these laws do apply, no
matter the technology, theseconsumer protection laws apply.
So the laws aimed to stop biasand discrimination. It doesn't
(15:24):
matter if it comes from a realperson behind the desk or an
algorithm on a computer.Essentially, these laws apply,
no matter how old they are,there are ways to make these
laws apply. And that's what FTCChairman ICANN meant when she
said that there's no AIexemption.
Antone Gonsalves (15:38):
And what are the potential problems that FTC
is worried about? You mentioneddiscrimination. There. Other
others?
Unknown (15:47):
Yeah, the problems are that biased algorithm, because
there are studies that revealthat AI algorithms can be biased
in depending on the data thatthey're fed, and other factors
included in there, and that theycould negatively affect large
swaths of people, but especiallyminorities and those with
disabilities, that could bedenied housing, credit, even
(16:11):
employment. For example, thecompany uses a hiring algorithm
that the employer programs toselect candidates similar to the
existing employment base, thealgorithm could reproduce the
traits of that group. So if it'san employment base of 70%, white
males, the algorithm could lookfor similar traits, and preclude
(16:34):
something like accommodationsfor disabled persons. So there
are plenty of examples out therewhere these algorithms could
negatively impact people lookingfor jobs, people looking for
lending opportunities, lookingfor housing, depending on the
traits that these algorithms dotake into account. So there are
(16:54):
plenty of issues on hand withthis.
Antone Gonsalves (16:57):
I think trends when it comes to AI,
transparency is still somethingthat I think is a problem is we
don't really have transparencyin these algorithms. How they
make, how the how they make thedecisions that they make, you
know, I did talk to an attorneywith a very large law firm, last
(17:21):
week, fully laden. And he madethe point that when it comes to
AI, even though you're buyingthe software from somebody,
you're still responsible for,for the output, not the vendor,
the vendor who sells it to you,which I think is very
(17:41):
interesting. You're pretty muchno matter what happens, what
abuses result from the problemswith the software, as the as the
user as the company, you'restill responsible for it. So
alright, so it sounds like thelegal teams and companies are
going to be are going to beYeah, yeah. And
Unknown (18:04):
you know, because because these enforcement
agencies do typically go aftercompanies using these products
to hold them accountable. Butduring the press briefing this
week, where they kind of madethis stance on holding AI
accountable. FTC chair Lena Khandid point that out, she did
recognize that these tools areoften released into the wild
(18:25):
lawmakers have to do cleanupafter the fact. And so that's
what she did say that the FTC isgoing to be taking a second look
at where they enforce the law.She said the FTC has put out a
notice to the market clarifyingthat if companies are building
and producing AI tools that aredesigned to deceive, then those
companies could potentially beon the hook and subject to
(18:46):
liability for those products. Soit's not something that the FTC
goes after now. But it'sdefinitely on their radar, they
recognize that it's an issuewith these products coming from
the the company that makes themgoing out into the wild where
other companies use them, thatthat could be the source of the
issue. And so I think they dorecognize that that's a problem.
(19:07):
But they're just they don't havethe tools to go after it yet. So
they're, they're recognizingthat working on that, surely, I
Antone Gonsalves (19:13):
would expect companies and probably doing it
now that when they do buysoftware, that's heavily
dependent on AI, that they willask the vendor, they will
require that the vendor, tellthem how the algorithms work, be
transparent, at least incontract negotiations and
Unknown (19:37):
have risk management policies in place because there
are those risks with AI thatthey have to mitigate and try to
work around.
Antone Gonsalves (19:44):
Absolutely, absolutely. And then there's
also the question of you know,you have risk management and
they would want some kind ofguarantees that the that the
output or the data as I wasthinking about the data that
goes into the software I thinkcompanies will want to possibly
(20:05):
use not just data from theinternet, but cleaner data, you
know, information that they havethat they can control so that
they can have a better chance ofgetting the output that they
want. You know, exactly. Yeah.So there's a lot a lot happening
here and I'm sure you will bewatching closely. So. Alright,
(20:25):
so that wraps up this week'sshow. Thanks for watching and
enjoy the weekend. I'll see younext week.
The big use case for AI, I think is just
(00:04):
conceptually minimizing thegrunt work that people have to
do.
Antone Gonsalves (00:11):
Hi, and welcome to Tech News this week.
I'm your host techtarget,editorial news director and tone
for Sophos. On today's show,we'll discuss the highlights
from the HPE Aruba atmosphereconference in the RSA Security
show. We'll also explain why theFederal Trade Commission has
taken a hardline position on theuse of AI in business versus
(00:35):
Aruba had its show in Vegas thisweek, the networking division of
Hewlett Packard Enterpriselaunched a redesign of his
popular network managementplatform Central, here to tell
us about the changes and otherconference highlights is Bob
Lella. Bet. And analysts withtech targets Enterprise Strategy
(00:56):
Group. So what's new in centraland how dramatic is the change?
Unknown (01:02):
Yeah, it's a fairly significant improvement, great
user interface, hierarchicalapproach, kind of a solar system
approach where you can drilldown into different layers. And
it's much more, I guess, easilyorganized, all of the end users
that I've talked to, when I'vecaught them in the halls or
having meals and so forth, havebeen really impressed with it,
they're looking forward to usingit. But for those who don't want
(01:25):
to, they've also initiated aneasy toggle switch where you can
go between interfaces. So it'sthat ability to leverage the new
technology. But if you're notcomfortable with it, you just
press the button, and you'reback to your usual usual
comfortable interface. But Ithink like I said, they're,
they're trying to make thesechanges to accommodate the more
highly distributed environments,more complex environments, and
(01:47):
making it easier to be able toquickly go through and diagnose
problems to be able to have thatfull end to end visibility
across these large environments,as they now are, you know, going
between the data center all theway to the edge, right with all
their solutions.
Antone Gonsalves (02:02):
So So what's changed? Well, why introduced
this, this more graphicalvisualization interface? I mean,
why do it now versus I don'tknow, three years ago, four
years ago, what's changed in thein the in the market? Yeah,
well, like
Unknown (02:20):
I said, I think one of the biggest reasons for doing
this, and especially thehierarchical piece is the fact
that the environments aregetting that much more complex,
right? Our research has shownthat or more and more
organizations are movingapplications to multiple public
clouds, more applications aremoving to the edge, right,
you've got all the remoteworkers, things like that. So
things are far more distributedand more complex and trying to
(02:41):
be able to display that completeend to end interface in one
image on the screen is going tobe highly complex. So being able
to break it down, and then haveit be able to alert and bring
you to the areas of concern morequickly, are all things that are
going to help drive operationalefficiency, which is what is
sorely needed for these ITorganizations to deal with this
complex environment.
Antone Gonsalves (03:02):
Yeah, I think the majority are a large portion
of Rubezh. customer base areuniversities. So I was thinking
that possibly these changes inCentral is a is in recognition
of the fact that the IT talentUniversity is usually very few
people. And they're not highlevel engineers, you know,
(03:24):
necessarily,
Unknown (03:25):
that's it's, I mean, the hard part, I think overall,
is just there's just a lack ofskilled IT resources in general.
At the same time, the ITenvironment is getting more
complex. And so in addition tothe skilled resources, it's also
even for the skilled resources,is there's a lack of time to be
able to accomplish all of thesethings. So So in addition to the
(03:45):
new user interfaces, you seethem also doing a lot of
enhancements to their AIoperations as well, to be able
to, you know, eliminate havingto do those mundane routine
things or to be able toaccelerate troubleshooting. So
you're not spending hours tryingto find the problem, you're just
able to see it and fix itquickly. So I think it's a
combination of those things. ButI mean, I spoke to customers
(04:07):
that who were running, you know,big stadiums and things like
that, they were very eager toadopt it and look at it as well
as you know, the colleges anduniversities. So I think across
the board, what I've seen thisweek is that organizations, you
know, they need to be able tocertainly that shift left
mentality and be able to movefaster, get closer to DevOps,
and things like that. And sothese new interfaces, the the
(04:28):
intelligence and automationthat's being added to them are
all steps that are being takenby the by Aruba to enable
organizations to to accommodatethose needs and to shift left
and to drive greater operationalefficiencies.
Antone Gonsalves (04:41):
Okay, we know what I didn't know they have an
SD win, as we know, I mean, theybought silver peak few years
ago, but I didn't. I didn't seeany announcements related to
cloud networking. Do you expectthat that topic to be addressed
eventually by Yeah,
Unknown (05:00):
Mike Thanks. So I mean, they've got they had an SD Wan
solutions part of the SD branch,they then acquired silver peak,
as you said, that's brought onsubstantial Connect, you know,
substantial SD Wan capabilitiesand footprint. They've now
acquired axis as well, right,the security side. So they've
got an integrated sassyoffering. And so that's a lot of
the right dealing with theremote workers and things like
(05:21):
that and hybrid work. But theyare starting to look at you
know, and there's been a coupleof the their sessions here that
have talked about multi cloudnetworking. A lot of them have
been about the SD Wan connectingto the cloud, but I think that's
an area of of, I guess,investigation for them. And I
would expect that over time,we'll probably hear more from
them about the the multi cloudenvironment as well.
Antone Gonsalves (05:43):
Okay. And lastly, you know, they also
rolled out something that theycall the Agile network as a as a
service. What is that?
Unknown (05:53):
Yeah, absolutely. So it's the just take a step back,
right? HPE, which they are nowbecoming more tightly integrated
with, and that was indicated bythe new logo. I don't know if
you saw any of my tweets, butthey have. It used to be bigger
Aruba, small HPE, you know,Hewlett Packard Enterprise
company, now it's big HPE, Arubanetworking, so there's there's
(06:15):
some tighter integration, butthey still retain a lot of their
their autonomy. But a big pieceof that is integrating with
Greenlake and being able todeliver things as a service.
Now, what Aruba has seen overthe last several years is that,
you know, one one size does notfit all, when it comes to
networking solutions, how peoplewant to do it, right. Is it
going to be fully managed, comanaged? Do organizations want
(06:38):
to have control? Is itsubscription? Is it consumption
based? Right? I mean, there'sthere's lots of areas, I think
they have six key componentsthat they use to define what an
agile NASS environment is. Butfor them, it's really all about
giving their their customerschoice. It's about how do you
want to consume this in whichformat, how much management
levels, right, and kind ofsliding bars across all six of
(07:01):
these terms, to let thecustomers define the best fit
for their unique environment?
Antone Gonsalves (07:06):
Sure. So it's pretty much however you want to
consume their their products,they'll sell it to you
Unknown (07:13):
directly. And so they're not they don't want to
force them into this is ourfixed definition. And you have
to consume it this way or thehighway. It's much more of let's
figure out what what works bestfor you. You know, and
especially when it comes topricing, we always say you know,
surprises are for birthdays, notyour your IT bill. So you know,
do you want it subscriptionbased? Do you want it as a
lease? Do you want it as a trueconsumption, etc.
Antone Gonsalves (07:37):
Okay, next is RSA AI. And its impact on
security was a major theme atthe show in San Francisco here
to tell us why is tick targeteditorial security reporter Alex
coffee. So before we get startedon AI, what was the mood like in
this year's show and what stoodout to you?
Alexander Culafi (07:58):
So this is my third RSA, the first one I went
to was early 2020. I had been onthe security beat, and actually
in like, traditional techjournalism for a few months at
the time, and it was also asCOVID was happening, because it
was I think, late February, Ithink I met you in person for
the first time at that RSA. Andthen 2021, there was no RSA
(08:22):
because of COVID restrictions,folks still figuring it out. I
still being in the thick ofthings. 2022 They brought it
back, but there was like aconvoluted but necessary, like
process for confirming thatpeople were vaccinated. And you
could feel the presence of COVIDover that show. And in part
(08:42):
because there weren't that manypeople 2023 has been a big tone
shift and that it was packed,maybe as packed as 2020 was, I
don't know the numbers exactly.But it was very fact. Like also
not very many masks like I hadmine on the whole time. But I
gotta say you were hearing thatconference cough after a couple
(09:03):
of days. But on the securityside, it's cool, because people
are getting out there again,holding meetings, you see life
coming back to normal, and yousee people, you know, excited to
pitch stuff again, like it's notlow energy, like last year was
and I think that part wasreally, really nice.
Antone Gonsalves (09:24):
Sure. And what stood out for you on the tech
side,
Alexander Culafi (09:28):
who is AI? Like I know that after Microsoft
sort of announced their multibillion multi year investment
into chat GPT publishing or openAI a few months ago that like aI
was going to be the big thingacross all the enterprise
departments that we work on atechtarget editorial, but
(09:48):
Security I was surprised to seethe the prominence of the AI
that was being sold on the showfloor some of it a little
buzzword already may be a littlemisleading if I looked into it
further for some of the smallervendors, but you also had Google
and IBM announcing new AIpowered suite versions of their
(10:14):
of some other security productsalong with some other vendors
announcing some securityproducts, but like aI was fully
in the air,
Antone Gonsalves (10:22):
right, so So how is how would AI in general,
you know, change cyber and cybersecurity? What are the
components? And
Alexander Culafi (10:32):
so I talked 567 people this week at RSA, and
I asked them that very samequestion, like, what is this
moment of AI and cybersecurity?Is it new technology? Is it a
big buzzword? Or is it both? Andthey're like, yes, it's both.
And so part of it is messaging,like chat GPT is gone into
(10:54):
public's hands. And now peopleare way more receptive to AI as
a as a concept. The public isand as such, what I've heard is
that enterprises are feelingmore empowered to start selling
AI, or to like put it let's say,front and center, even though
like vendors have been using AIand machine learning for some
(11:15):
cases for decades. So it's notexactly new technology. And a
lot of the technology that'scoming out isn't strictly new
technology, but refinedtechnology. On the other hand,
there are some cool applicationsthat are starting to emerge more
like I think Google and IBM,they can prioritize threat
alerts. So it can sort of, ifthere's multiple points of
(11:39):
concern in your network, it canprioritize and act on them in
order, there's automated threathunting. So it identifies the
software identifies the threats,and then sort of appropriately
goes after it without youneeding to do much, which is
kind of pre existing butrefining technology. However,
the big use case for AI, Ithink, is just conceptually
(12:04):
minimizing the grunt work thatpeople have to do. So like I so
for instance, in our job asjournalists, like, I'm, I'm even
28, I'm old enough to rememberlike recording things, and then
transcribing by hand, a 40minute interview with something
like otter AI, you plug in themp3, you can pull quotes, listen
(12:26):
back, get exactly what you need.And like an eighth of the time,
and security has its ownversions of that where the data
processing is getting faster.The analytic stuff is getting
faster, and securityprofessionals can do the
important stuff and focus on themore important stuff quicker.
And I think that sort of wherethe exciting stuff is, is that
(12:49):
all the annoying work, or thestuff that's like that used to
be more granular is starting toget automated and like code, for
example, it can like, I've heardthat like chat GPT, or like open
AI, stuff can can generate likepretty good code, or check it
(13:10):
pretty well as well. And I thinkthat automation, and that like
speeding up, what was oncecompletely manual process. I
think that's the gonna be theexciting stuff right now across
the board, including security,if that makes sense.
Antone Gonsalves (13:25):
Yeah, it does. It seems like the initial use of
AI is all about efficiency andsaving thing and people's time.
I mean, it'll be interesting tosee, as the technology matures,
how it gets more, you know, moreIncorporated, it goes beyond
just just efficiency, you know,like, helping people like
(13:49):
actually making decisions interms of how to how to protect a
company, you know, launchingsome type of defensive software,
you know, in the case of anattack, you know, without human
intervention, that type ofthing. But, but it's it but it's
nevertheless it's, it's, Iagree, it does seem to be it's
(14:11):
real. And it's just a questionto see and how it evolves, you
know, as the years as the yearsgo by. Finally, the Federal
Trade Commission is ready topounce on companies that misuse
AI. Here to tell us more aboutthe FTC warning is tech target
editorial government reporterMacKenzie Holland. So what did
(14:35):
FTC chair Lena Kahn mean whenshe said there is no AI
exemption for business?
Unknown (14:42):
consumer protection laws, like the Federal Trade
Commission Act itself, weresigned into law in 1914.
Obviously, artificialintelligence didn't exist then.
And there's been a lot ofconcern that those laws that
were signed into law so long agodon't cover now New technologies
like artificial intelligence.This week, the Federal Trade
(15:03):
Commission, along with the USDepartment of Justice, or Rights
Division and other consumerprotection agencies, essentially
came together to take the stancethat these laws do apply, no
matter the technology, theseconsumer protection laws apply.
So the laws aimed to stop biasand discrimination. It doesn't
(15:24):
matter if it comes from a realperson behind the desk or an
algorithm on a computer.Essentially, these laws apply,
no matter how old they are,there are ways to make these
laws apply. And that's what FTCChairman ICANN meant when she
said that there's no AIexemption.
Antone Gonsalves (15:38):
And what are the potential problems that FTC
is worried about? You mentioneddiscrimination. There. Other
others?
Unknown (15:47):
Yeah, the problems are that biased algorithm, because
there are studies that revealthat AI algorithms can be biased
in depending on the data thatthey're fed, and other factors
included in there, and that theycould negatively affect large
swaths of people, but especiallyminorities and those with
disabilities, that could bedenied housing, credit, even
(16:11):
employment. For example, thecompany uses a hiring algorithm
that the employer programs toselect candidates similar to the
existing employment base, thealgorithm could reproduce the
traits of that group. So if it'san employment base of 70%, white
males, the algorithm could lookfor similar traits, and preclude
(16:34):
something like accommodationsfor disabled persons. So there
are plenty of examples out therewhere these algorithms could
negatively impact people lookingfor jobs, people looking for
lending opportunities, lookingfor housing, depending on the
traits that these algorithms dotake into account. So there are
(16:54):
plenty of issues on hand withthis.
Antone Gonsalves (16:57):
I think trends when it comes to AI,
transparency is still somethingthat I think is a problem is we
don't really have transparencyin these algorithms. How they
make, how the how they make thedecisions that they make, you
know, I did talk to an attorneywith a very large law firm, last
(17:21):
week, fully laden. And he madethe point that when it comes to
AI, even though you're buyingthe software from somebody,
you're still responsible for,for the output, not the vendor,
the vendor who sells it to you,which I think is very
(17:41):
interesting. You're pretty muchno matter what happens, what
abuses result from the problemswith the software, as the as the
user as the company, you'restill responsible for it. So
alright, so it sounds like thelegal teams and companies are
going to be are going to beYeah, yeah. And
Unknown (18:04):
you know, because because these enforcement
agencies do typically go aftercompanies using these products
to hold them accountable. Butduring the press briefing this
week, where they kind of madethis stance on holding AI
accountable. FTC chair Lena Khandid point that out, she did
recognize that these tools areoften released into the wild
(18:25):
lawmakers have to do cleanupafter the fact. And so that's
what she did say that the FTC isgoing to be taking a second look
at where they enforce the law.She said the FTC has put out a
notice to the market clarifyingthat if companies are building
and producing AI tools that aredesigned to deceive, then those
companies could potentially beon the hook and subject to
(18:46):
liability for those products. Soit's not something that the FTC
goes after now. But it'sdefinitely on their radar, they
recognize that it's an issuewith these products coming from
the the company that makes themgoing out into the wild where
other companies use them, thatthat could be the source of the
issue. And so I think they dorecognize that that's a problem.
(19:07):
But they're just they don't havethe tools to go after it yet. So
they're, they're recognizingthat working on that, surely, I
Antone Gonsalves (19:13):
would expect companies and probably doing it
now that when they do buysoftware, that's heavily
dependent on AI, that they willask the vendor, they will
require that the vendor, tellthem how the algorithms work, be
transparent, at least incontract negotiations and
Unknown (19:37):
have risk management policies in place because there
are those risks with AI thatthey have to mitigate and try to
work around.
Antone Gonsalves (19:44):
Absolutely, absolutely. And then there's
also the question of you know,you have risk management and
they would want some kind ofguarantees that the that the
output or the data as I wasthinking about the data that
goes into the software I thinkcompanies will want to possibly
(20:05):
use not just data from theinternet, but cleaner data, you
know, information that they havethat they can control so that
they can have a better chance ofgetting the output that they
want. You know, exactly. Yeah.So there's a lot a lot happening
here and I'm sure you will bewatching closely. So. Alright,
(20:25):
so that wraps up this week'sshow. Thanks for watching and
enjoy the weekend. I'll see younext week.
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