0:00

Alexander Culafi: The big use case for AI, I think is just

0:04

conceptually minimizing the grunt work that people have to

0:08

do. Antone Gonsalves: Hi, and welcome to Tech News this week.

0:13

I'm your host techtarget, editorial news director and tone

0:18

for Sophos. On today's show, we'll discuss the highlights

0:22

from the HPE Aruba atmosphere conference in the RSA Security

0:26

show. We'll also explain why the Federal Trade Commission has

0:30

taken a hardline position on the use of AI in business versus

0:35

Aruba had its show in Vegas this week, the networking division of

0:39

Hewlett Packard Enterprise launched a redesign of his

0:43

popular network management platform Central, here to tell

0:47

us about the changes and other conference highlights is Bob

0:52

Lella. Bet. And analysts with tech targets Enterprise Strategy

0:56

Group. So what's new in central and how dramatic is the change?

1:02

Unknown: Yeah, it's a fairly significant improvement, great

1:05

user interface, hierarchical approach, kind of a solar system

1:09

approach where you can drill down into different layers. And

1:12

it's much more, I guess, easily organized, all of the end users

1:16

that I've talked to, when I've caught them in the halls or having meals and so forth, have been really impressed with it,

1:21

they're looking forward to using it. But for those who don't want

1:25

to, they've also initiated an easy toggle switch where you can

1:28

go between interfaces. So it's that ability to leverage the new

1:32

technology. But if you're not comfortable with it, you just

1:34

press the button, and you're back to your usual usual

1:37

comfortable interface. But I think like I said, they're,

1:40

they're trying to make these changes to accommodate the more

1:44

highly distributed environments, more complex environments, and

1:47

making it easier to be able to quickly go through and diagnose

1:51

problems to be able to have that full end to end visibility

1:54

across these large environments, as they now are, you know, going

1:57

between the data center all the way to the edge, right with all

2:00

their solutions. Antone Gonsalves: So So what's changed? Well, why introduced

2:05

this, this more graphical visualization interface? I mean,

2:11

why do it now versus I don't know, three years ago, four

2:14

years ago, what's changed in the in the in the market? Yeah,

2:20

well, like Unknown: I said, I think one of the biggest reasons for doing

2:22

this, and especially the hierarchical piece is the fact

2:25

that the environments are getting that much more complex,

2:28

right? Our research has shown that or more and more organizations are moving applications to multiple public

2:32

clouds, more applications are moving to the edge, right,

2:36

you've got all the remote workers, things like that. So

2:38

things are far more distributed and more complex and trying to

2:41

be able to display that complete end to end interface in one

2:44

image on the screen is going to be highly complex. So being able

2:48

to break it down, and then have it be able to alert and bring

2:51

you to the areas of concern more quickly, are all things that are

2:54

going to help drive operational efficiency, which is what is

2:57

sorely needed for these IT organizations to deal with this

3:00

complex environment. Antone Gonsalves: Yeah, I think the majority are a large portion

3:04

of Rubezh. customer base are universities. So I was thinking

3:11

that possibly these changes in Central is a is in recognition

3:16

of the fact that the IT talent University is usually very few

3:20

people. And they're not high level engineers, you know,

3:24

necessarily, Unknown: that's it's, I mean, the hard part, I think overall,

3:28

is just there's just a lack of skilled IT resources in general.

3:32

At the same time, the IT environment is getting more

3:34

complex. And so in addition to the skilled resources, it's also

3:38

even for the skilled resources, is there's a lack of time to be

3:42

able to accomplish all of these things. So So in addition to the

3:45

new user interfaces, you see them also doing a lot of

3:48

enhancements to their AI operations as well, to be able

3:51

to, you know, eliminate having to do those mundane routine

3:55

things or to be able to accelerate troubleshooting. So

3:58

you're not spending hours trying to find the problem, you're just

4:00

able to see it and fix it quickly. So I think it's a

4:03

combination of those things. But I mean, I spoke to customers

4:07

that who were running, you know, big stadiums and things like

4:10

that, they were very eager to adopt it and look at it as well

4:13

as you know, the colleges and universities. So I think across

4:16

the board, what I've seen this week is that organizations, you

4:20

know, they need to be able to certainly that shift left

4:22

mentality and be able to move faster, get closer to DevOps,

4:25

and things like that. And so these new interfaces, the the

4:28

intelligence and automation that's being added to them are

4:30

all steps that are being taken by the by Aruba to enable

4:34

organizations to to accommodate those needs and to shift left

4:38

and to drive greater operational efficiencies.

4:41

Antone Gonsalves: Okay, we know what I didn't know they have an

4:43

SD win, as we know, I mean, they bought silver peak few years

4:47

ago, but I didn't. I didn't see any announcements related to

4:53

cloud networking. Do you expect that that topic to be addressed

4:57

eventually by Yeah,

5:00

Unknown: Mike Thanks. So I mean, they've got they had an SD Wan

5:02

solutions part of the SD branch, they then acquired silver peak,

5:05

as you said, that's brought on substantial Connect, you know,

5:08

substantial SD Wan capabilities and footprint. They've now

5:11

acquired axis as well, right, the security side. So they've

5:14

got an integrated sassy offering. And so that's a lot of

5:18

the right dealing with the remote workers and things like

5:21

that and hybrid work. But they are starting to look at you

5:24

know, and there's been a couple of the their sessions here that

5:27

have talked about multi cloud networking. A lot of them have

5:30

been about the SD Wan connecting to the cloud, but I think that's

5:33

an area of of, I guess, investigation for them. And I

5:37

would expect that over time, we'll probably hear more from

5:40

them about the the multi cloud environment as well.

5:43

Antone Gonsalves: Okay. And lastly, you know, they also

5:46

rolled out something that they call the Agile network as a as a

5:50

service. What is that?

5:53

Unknown: Yeah, absolutely. So it's the just take a step back,

5:56

right? HPE, which they are now becoming more tightly integrated

6:00

with, and that was indicated by the new logo. I don't know if

6:04

you saw any of my tweets, but they have. It used to be bigger

6:08

Aruba, small HPE, you know, Hewlett Packard Enterprise

6:10

company, now it's big HPE, Aruba networking, so there's there's

6:15

some tighter integration, but they still retain a lot of their

6:18

their autonomy. But a big piece of that is integrating with

6:21

Greenlake and being able to deliver things as a service.

6:25

Now, what Aruba has seen over the last several years is that,

6:28

you know, one one size does not fit all, when it comes to

6:32

networking solutions, how people want to do it, right. Is it

6:34

going to be fully managed, co managed? Do organizations want

6:38

to have control? Is it subscription? Is it consumption

6:41

based? Right? I mean, there's there's lots of areas, I think

6:43

they have six key components that they use to define what an

6:47

agile NASS environment is. But for them, it's really all about

6:51

giving their their customers choice. It's about how do you

6:54

want to consume this in which format, how much management

6:58

levels, right, and kind of sliding bars across all six of

7:01

these terms, to let the customers define the best fit

7:04

for their unique environment? Antone Gonsalves: Sure. So it's pretty much however you want to

7:10

consume their their products, they'll sell it to you

7:13

Unknown: directly. And so they're not they don't want to force them into this is our fixed definition. And you have

7:17

to consume it this way or the highway. It's much more of let's

7:21

figure out what what works best for you. You know, and

7:23

especially when it comes to pricing, we always say you know,

7:26

surprises are for birthdays, not your your IT bill. So you know,

7:29

do you want it subscription based? Do you want it as a lease? Do you want it as a true consumption, etc.

7:37

Antone Gonsalves: Okay, next is RSA AI. And its impact on

7:41

security was a major theme at the show in San Francisco here

7:45

to tell us why is tick target editorial security reporter Alex

7:50

coffee. So before we get started on AI, what was the mood like in

7:55

this year's show and what stood out to you?

7:58

Alexander Culafi: So this is my third RSA, the first one I went

8:03

to was early 2020. I had been on the security beat, and actually

8:08

in like, traditional tech journalism for a few months at

8:11

the time, and it was also as COVID was happening, because it

8:14

was I think, late February, I think I met you in person for

8:17

the first time at that RSA. And then 2021, there was no RSA

8:22

because of COVID restrictions, folks still figuring it out. I

8:25

still being in the thick of things. 2022 They brought it

8:29

back, but there was like a convoluted but necessary, like

8:33

process for confirming that people were vaccinated. And you

8:37

could feel the presence of COVID over that show. And in part

8:42

because there weren't that many people 2023 has been a big tone

8:47

shift and that it was packed, maybe as packed as 2020 was, I

8:52

don't know the numbers exactly. But it was very fact. Like also

8:56

not very many masks like I had mine on the whole time. But I

9:00

gotta say you were hearing that conference cough after a couple

9:03

of days. But on the security side, it's cool, because people

9:10

are getting out there again, holding meetings, you see life

9:13

coming back to normal, and you see people, you know, excited to

9:17

pitch stuff again, like it's not low energy, like last year was

9:21

and I think that part was really, really nice.

9:24

Antone Gonsalves: Sure. And what stood out for you on the tech

9:28

side, Alexander Culafi: who is AI? Like I know that after Microsoft

9:32

sort of announced their multi billion multi year investment

9:35

into chat GPT publishing or open AI a few months ago that like aI

9:40

was going to be the big thing across all the enterprise

9:43

departments that we work on a techtarget editorial, but

9:48

Security I was surprised to see the the prominence of the AI

9:56

that was being sold on the show floor some of it a little

9:59

buzzword already may be a little misleading if I looked into it

10:02

further for some of the smaller vendors, but you also had Google

10:08

and IBM announcing new AI powered suite versions of their

10:14

of some other security products along with some other vendors

10:17

announcing some security products, but like aI was fully

10:21

in the air, Antone Gonsalves: right, so So how is how would AI in general,

10:27

you know, change cyber and cyber security? What are the

10:31

components? And Alexander Culafi: so I talked 567 people this week at RSA, and

10:36

I asked them that very same question, like, what is this

10:40

moment of AI and cybersecurity? Is it new technology? Is it a

10:45

big buzzword? Or is it both? And they're like, yes, it's both.

10:49

And so part of it is messaging, like chat GPT is gone into

10:54

public's hands. And now people are way more receptive to AI as

10:59

a as a concept. The public is and as such, what I've heard is

11:05

that enterprises are feeling more empowered to start selling

11:08

AI, or to like put it let's say, front and center, even though

11:11

like vendors have been using AI and machine learning for some

11:15

cases for decades. So it's not exactly new technology. And a

11:19

lot of the technology that's coming out isn't strictly new

11:22

technology, but refined technology. On the other hand,

11:26

there are some cool applications that are starting to emerge more

11:30

like I think Google and IBM, they can prioritize threat

11:33

alerts. So it can sort of, if there's multiple points of

11:39

concern in your network, it can prioritize and act on them in

11:43

order, there's automated threat hunting. So it identifies the

11:47

software identifies the threats, and then sort of appropriately

11:52

goes after it without you needing to do much, which is

11:55

kind of pre existing but refining technology. However,

11:58

the big use case for AI, I think, is just conceptually

12:04

minimizing the grunt work that people have to do. So like I so

12:10

for instance, in our job as journalists, like, I'm, I'm even

12:16

28, I'm old enough to remember like recording things, and then

12:19

transcribing by hand, a 40 minute interview with something

12:22

like otter AI, you plug in the mp3, you can pull quotes, listen

12:26

back, get exactly what you need. And like an eighth of the time,

12:30

and security has its own versions of that where the data

12:33

processing is getting faster. The analytic stuff is getting

12:37

faster, and security professionals can do the

12:41

important stuff and focus on the more important stuff quicker.

12:45

And I think that sort of where the exciting stuff is, is that

12:49

all the annoying work, or the stuff that's like that used to

12:54

be more granular is starting to get automated and like code, for

12:59

example, it can like, I've heard that like chat GPT, or like open

13:04

AI, stuff can can generate like pretty good code, or check it

13:10

pretty well as well. And I think that automation, and that like

13:14

speeding up, what was once completely manual process. I

13:18

think that's the gonna be the exciting stuff right now across

13:21

the board, including security, if that makes sense.

13:25

Antone Gonsalves: Yeah, it does. It seems like the initial use of

13:28

AI is all about efficiency and saving thing and people's time.

13:35

I mean, it'll be interesting to see, as the technology matures,

13:40

how it gets more, you know, more Incorporated, it goes beyond

13:44

just just efficiency, you know, like, helping people like

13:49

actually making decisions in terms of how to how to protect a

13:54

company, you know, launching some type of defensive software,

13:59

you know, in the case of an attack, you know, without human

14:02

intervention, that type of thing. But, but it's it but it's

14:07

nevertheless it's, it's, I agree, it does seem to be it's

14:11

real. And it's just a question to see and how it evolves, you

14:14

know, as the years as the years go by. Finally, the Federal

14:20

Trade Commission is ready to pounce on companies that misuse

14:25

AI. Here to tell us more about the FTC warning is tech target

14:31

editorial government reporter MacKenzie Holland. So what did

14:35

FTC chair Lena Kahn mean when she said there is no AI

14:40

exemption for business? Unknown: consumer protection laws, like the Federal Trade

14:45

Commission Act itself, were signed into law in 1914.

14:50

Obviously, artificial intelligence didn't exist then.

14:53

And there's been a lot of concern that those laws that

14:56

were signed into law so long ago don't cover now New technologies

15:00

like artificial intelligence. This week, the Federal Trade

15:03

Commission, along with the US Department of Justice, or Rights

15:07

Division and other consumer protection agencies, essentially

15:11

came together to take the stance that these laws do apply, no

15:16

matter the technology, these consumer protection laws apply.

15:21

So the laws aimed to stop bias and discrimination. It doesn't

15:24

matter if it comes from a real person behind the desk or an

15:27

algorithm on a computer. Essentially, these laws apply,

15:30

no matter how old they are, there are ways to make these

15:33

laws apply. And that's what FTC Chairman ICANN meant when she

15:36

said that there's no AI exemption. Antone Gonsalves: And what are the potential problems that FTC

15:41

is worried about? You mentioned discrimination. There. Other

15:46

others? Unknown: Yeah, the problems are that biased algorithm, because

15:51

there are studies that reveal that AI algorithms can be biased

15:56

in depending on the data that they're fed, and other factors

16:00

included in there, and that they could negatively affect large

16:03

swaths of people, but especially minorities and those with

16:07

disabilities, that could be denied housing, credit, even

16:11

employment. For example, the company uses a hiring algorithm

16:16

that the employer programs to select candidates similar to the

16:20

existing employment base, the algorithm could reproduce the

16:25

traits of that group. So if it's an employment base of 70%, white

16:30

males, the algorithm could look for similar traits, and preclude

16:34

something like accommodations for disabled persons. So there

16:37

are plenty of examples out there where these algorithms could

16:42

negatively impact people looking for jobs, people looking for

16:47

lending opportunities, looking for housing, depending on the

16:51

traits that these algorithms do take into account. So there are

16:54

plenty of issues on hand with this.

16:57

Antone Gonsalves: I think trends when it comes to AI,

17:02

transparency is still something that I think is a problem is we

17:07

don't really have transparency in these algorithms. How they

17:11

make, how the how they make the decisions that they make, you

17:14

know, I did talk to an attorney with a very large law firm, last

17:21

week, fully laden. And he made the point that when it comes to

17:25

AI, even though you're buying the software from somebody,

17:31

you're still responsible for, for the output, not the vendor,

17:37

the vendor who sells it to you, which I think is very

17:41

interesting. You're pretty much no matter what happens, what

17:46

abuses result from the problems with the software, as the as the

17:52

user as the company, you're still responsible for it. So

17:56

alright, so it sounds like the legal teams and companies are

18:01

going to be are going to be Yeah, yeah. And

18:04

Unknown: you know, because because these enforcement agencies do typically go after companies using these products

18:09

to hold them accountable. But during the press briefing this

18:12

week, where they kind of made this stance on holding AI

18:16

accountable. FTC chair Lena Khan did point that out, she did

18:20

recognize that these tools are often released into the wild

18:25

lawmakers have to do cleanup after the fact. And so that's

18:29

what she did say that the FTC is going to be taking a second look

18:32

at where they enforce the law. She said the FTC has put out a

18:36

notice to the market clarifying that if companies are building

18:39

and producing AI tools that are designed to deceive, then those

18:43

companies could potentially be on the hook and subject to

18:46

liability for those products. So it's not something that the FTC

18:49

goes after now. But it's definitely on their radar, they

18:53

recognize that it's an issue with these products coming from

18:57

the the company that makes them going out into the wild where

19:00

other companies use them, that that could be the source of the

19:03

issue. And so I think they do recognize that that's a problem.

19:07

But they're just they don't have the tools to go after it yet. So

19:10

they're, they're recognizing that working on that, surely, I

19:13

Antone Gonsalves: would expect companies and probably doing it

19:17

now that when they do buy software, that's heavily

19:22

dependent on AI, that they will ask the vendor, they will

19:27

require that the vendor, tell them how the algorithms work, be

19:32

transparent, at least in contract negotiations and

19:37

Unknown: have risk management policies in place because there

19:39

are those risks with AI that they have to mitigate and try to

19:42

work around. Antone Gonsalves: Absolutely, absolutely. And then there's

19:46

also the question of you know, you have risk management and

19:53

they would want some kind of guarantees that the that the

19:58

output or the data as I was thinking about the data that

20:01

goes into the software I think companies will want to possibly

20:05

use not just data from the internet, but cleaner data, you

20:10

know, information that they have that they can control so that

20:14

they can have a better chance of getting the output that they

20:17

want. You know, exactly. Yeah. So there's a lot a lot happening

20:21

here and I'm sure you will be watching closely. So. Alright,

20:25

so that wraps up this week's show. Thanks for watching and

20:29

enjoy the weekend. I'll see you next week.