Person
3 episodes · 57 quoted claims
Nikesh Arora says that as more devices become connected, the cybersecurity 'attack surface' grows, letting bad actors attack in more places.
“So that means bad actors can attack you anywhere, impact your connectivity, impact your technology and create unwanted outcomes.”
Nikesh Arora says attackers need to succeed only once while defenders must succeed every time, so defenders must work much harder.
“they only have to be right once. We have to be right every time, so we have to try a hundred times harder.”
Palo Alto Networks packages machine learning, neural networks and reinforcement learning into what it calls 'precision AI'.
“we have packaged a whole bunch of AI slash machine learning and neural networks and reinforcement learning into what we we we politely call precision AI”
Nikesh Arora says Palo Alto Networks connects to a company's security systems and analyzes the data in real time with machine learning and precision AI.
“We are connected to every security system that exists in a company. We analyze that data real time using machine learning and precision AI.”
Palo Alto Networks acquired about nineteen companies in roughly six years, according to CEO Nikesh Arora.
“So we've bought about nineteen companies in the last six years with the premise that somebody else has figured out a way”
Nikesh Arora says Palo Alto Networks puts the leaders of acquired companies in charge of the related product areas, with Palo Alto teams working for them.
“we make our teams work for them. That's rule number one, you know, take the smarter people, take the people who are really passionate about this, get them to lead these things.”
Nikesh Arora says Palo Alto Networks gives acquired startups more resources so they need not worry about fundraising or hiring.
“we actually double down and give them more resources because we say, listen, the whole point of getting you to come be part of our fold”
Nikesh Arora says early in his career he worked at a company whose customer relationship management system was made up of twenty-five separate systems.
“I started my technology career thirty plus years ago, and I used to work for a company where twenty five systems made up our customer relationship management system.”
Nikesh Arora defines zero trust as treating everyone who accesses an organization's infrastructure the same way, regardless of where or how they connect.
“fundamentally what zero trust means is that you know, you have to be able to treat everybody who's accessing your infrastructure the same way, wherever and however they come from.”
Nikesh Arora advises budget-constrained companies to prioritize detecting security events and remediation and recovery over preventive security controls.
“my view is focus on remediation, fake focus on detecting security events, don't focus as much on, you know, security controls”
Nikesh Arora says a tool called Worm GPT, found on the dark web, helps attackers study known vulnerabilities and build ways to attack companies.
“there's something called Worm GPT, there's something, you know, on the dark web that goes and helps you take a look at CVs and build capabilities that can attack companies.”
Nikesh Arora says an AI kill switch could have unintended consequences if it interrupted a critical process such as a nuclear power plant.
“if you put a kill switch in AI and it's running a nuclear power plant and you kill it, then there's a risk that you inter intercept a process which can have unintended consequences.”
Nikesh Arora predicts AI regulation will focus on transparency, understanding how models work and how guardrails are applied.
“most of the regulation is going to be around transparency, around understanding how these models work, around how guardrails are put around them”
Nikesh Arora says most recent hacks are not technically complicated and happen because companies have not secured basic entry points.
“a lot of the hacks, if you look in the last six months or last twelve months, are not complicated. They're just hacks that happen because companies haven't bolted their doors and windows carefully”
Nikesh Arora says that when he started about six years earlier, attackers' dwell time inside a victim's infrastructure was measured in days, with a lag of forty-seven days cited.
“six years ago when I started, I used to hear about things and took eight days or ten days, and the lag was forty seven days of dwell time for somebody to come in and be in your infrastructure”
Nikesh Arora says attacks now play out in hours rather than days and predicts they will soon take under an hour.
“Now I hear about hours. I think that's going to go down under an hour.”
Nikesh Arora said Palo Alto Networks had a market capitalization of about $18 billion when he joined seven years earlier and around $120 billion at the time of the interview.
“Seven years ago, when I started, were approximately $18 billion in market cap, and today we're around 120, give or take.”
Nikesh Arora said the last count put ransomware and online scams at close to $18 billion.
“by last count, there was close to $18 billion, uh, between ransomware and scams, online scams, which are another form of cyber sort of behavior.”
Nikesh Arora said that when he joined, Palo Alto Networks saw cybersecurity as a roughly $200 billion annual industry in which it held about 1.5% share.
“our thesis was it's about 200 billion dollar revenue industry annually. And we were at one and a half percent market share, and we were one of the top three players in the market.”
Nikesh Arora said Palo Alto Networks had grown to about 4-5% of the cybersecurity market and possibly 8% of its product market.
“We're blessed that we're now about four to 5% of the market and possibly 8% of the product market, which is better than one and a half percent.”
Nikesh Arora described supply-chain attacks as targeting hardware used by thousands of companies so that one break-in opens up all the others.
“Or why don't I attack a piece of hardware that is deployed by 10,000 companies? Once I know how to break into one, I can break into the other 9,999 at will.”
Nikesh Arora said some distributed denial-of-service attacks are so large that only nation states have the computing power to carry them out.
“Sometimes you see D D o s attacks, which only nation states have the compute capability to go, uh, exercise.”
Nikesh Arora said utilities are easier targets because they run relatively old infrastructure, which is often connected to the internet through add-on systems.
“they have relatively older infrastructure for the most part, because their job is to provide electricity and provide water and power”
Nikesh Arora said Palo Alto Networks acquired about twenty companies because it was late in its innovation cycle and could not wait four years to build products.
“We had to buy twenty companies because we were we were sort of on the back foot or late in our innovation cycle, and we couldn't wait four years.”
Nikesh Arora recalled Larry Page telling him that technology companies die when they stop focusing on product.
“if you look at technology companies over time, technology companies die when they stop focusing on product and start focusing on other things.”
Nikesh Arora said founder Nir Zuk served in Israel's Unit 8200, worked in the security sector, and then started Palo Alto Networks.
“he worked in in Unit 8,200 in Israel. Uh, he saw opportunities, he came, he worked in the security sector, he decided to spin out and start Palo Alto Networks.”
Nikesh Arora said the Palo Alto Networks board hired him despite no cybersecurity experience because the company already had 5,000 people who understood cybersecurity.
“They said to me, we have 5,000 people who understand cybersecurity really well, so we don't need one more person who understands cybersecurity.”
Nikesh Arora said he met 300 cybersecurity companies in his first eighteen months and that about 2,000 cybersecurity companies are formed each year.
“I also used that time to meet 300 individual cybersecurity companies, because our industry is very, very prolific. There's 2,000 cybersecurity companies formed every year.”
Nikesh Arora said Palo Alto Networks pivoted to run everything in the public cloud and closed its own data centers.
“And so we pivoted our company, we burned down our data centers, we don't have data centers, we run everything in the public cloud.”
Nikesh Arora said that, drawing on his time at Google, he concluded that cloud and AI would be the two most important technology trends.
“I said, look, the two most important things from a technology perspective would be cloud and A I.”
Nikesh Arora cited plans to spend $500 billion on large AI data centers as evidence of the scale of AI investment.
“You can see Nvidia, you can see infrastructure, people wanna spend $500 billion building large data clusters, data centers.”
Nikesh Arora said Palo Alto Networks is the only vendor with twenty-four products in the top-right of the Gartner-style magic quadrant.
“Well, we're the only people who have twenty four products in the magic quadrant in the top right.”
Nikesh Arora said security buyers tend to choose products ranked first or second in their category.
“Hey, if you're number one or two, I won't get fired for buying you. If you're number four or five, why would I buy you?”
Nikesh Arora said Palo Alto Networks sold over a thousand platformization deals in the previous twelve months.
“We sold over a thousand of these deals in the last twelve months, which is great.”
Nikesh Arora said cybersecurity companies typically decline after ten to twelve years into a flattish growth path.
“If you look at cybersecurity companies, they decline after ten to twelve years, and they sort of take a sort of glide path, which is sort of flattish over time.”
Nikesh Arora said that since the pandemic began he has spoken with 8,000 Palo Alto Networks employees in small groups.
“since then, I've talked to 8,000 employees in the company on the one sort of small group setting basis.”
Nikesh Arora said Northeastern University offered him a place for business school and paid his tuition in exchange for teaching computer science.
“I was privileged to be offered a place at Northeastern, where they chose to, uh, pay my tuition if I taught computer science”
Nikesh Arora said about 100,000 people took the exam for roughly 2,000 places at the five engineering schools he wanted to attend in India.
“I think 100,000 people took the exam, to choose 2,000 people to go to those five schools that we wanted to go to.”
Arora says Larry Page talked about Google answering a user's intent rather than the literal words typed, and that he also talked about AI.
“He used to talk about getting to a point where you answer my question, answer my intent, as opposed to answer what I type.”
Arora recalls that for years it was unclear how YouTube would make money while Netflix was seen as the profitable streaming business.
“I remember how for the longest of years, nobody quite knew how YouTube was gonna make money, and everybody was looking at Netflix as the one who are making money in streaming.”