A Call to Action from CEO Rami Rahim
Rami Rahim: “We must be agents of change.”
Juniper CEO Rami Rahim’s keynote address from the 2018 RSA Conference is worth watching even today. He lays out the most compelling use cases for automation in our industry. “We must acknowledge that humans cannot keep up with the scale and velocity at which data needs to be processed each and every day in order to create an effective threat shield,” he says. “We have to continue to develop the technology that provides us with that threat shield that will keep us safe.” (Video courtesy of RSA Conference.)
You’ll learn
Why it’s imperative to train and recruit the next generation of cybersecurity professionals
The most effective ways to stop threats today – and into the future
Who is this for?
Host
Transcript
0:12 [Music]
0:20 ladies and gentlemen please welcome
0:22 chief executive officer juniper networks
0:26 Rami Rahim 1984 this was an iconic book
0:42 a powerful film and the inspiration of
0:47 an apple ad that until today remains
0:50 relevant and resonant with me what we
0:55 feared as a society in 1984 is in many
0:58 ways what we fear today a future where
1:02 we are not in control a future where we
1:04 are subservient to an authoritarian
1:07 force Vai cyber criminals or Big Brother
1:14 cyber criminals that want to manipulate
1:17 our systems our institutions in our
1:21 media that want to disrupt the stability
1:24 of life as we know it today take away
1:29 all of the code words the buzzwords the
1:32 rhetoric the acronyms and this is why I
1:35 believe 50,000 of the best and brightest
1:38 from Silicon Valley and around the world
1:40 are here today in San Francisco it is
1:44 our job to throw the hammer it is my job
1:48 as CEO of Juniper Networks to make sure
1:50 that we are focused on our mission
1:53 whether that be a scale the Internet to
1:57 transform the economics of networking or
1:59 to just to battle complexity of
2:02 operating worldwide networks we solve
2:06 really important but really hard
2:09 problems a Juniper but if I were a
2:13 novelist and I were to write a book like
2:17 George Orwell a futurist I'd write about
2:20 a future where technology has progressed
2:22 to the point where it has disrupted what
2:24 it means to be civilized what it means
2:27 to be human
2:29 take robotics and artificial
2:31 intelligence where today
2:34 leading scientists from around the world
2:36 have warned us of the unchecked
2:39 development of these technologies you
2:43 remember that robots bought mini that
2:45 robot that loves to open doors or here's
2:48 spot many fending off a human from
2:51 trying to prevent it from doing what it
2:52 does best open doors now I don't know
2:56 about you I am a technologist through
2:58 and through but I find something
2:59 somewhat creepy about this at South by
3:04 Southwest again this year Elon Musk
3:06 warned us that it would be AI and not
3:11 nuclear weapons that would pose a dire
3:14 threat to the survival of the human
3:17 species you can even add the late
3:22 Stephen Hawking's who said that success
3:26 in creating AI would be the biggest
3:29 event in human history
3:31 unfortunately it might be the last
3:34 unless we learn how to contain the risks
3:38 that are involved now I suspect a few in
3:42 this audience today have seen the series
3:44 black mirror I suspect many of you have
3:49 I recently binge dydt myself and there
3:53 were a few episodes that really struck a
3:55 note with me but there was one in
3:56 particular that I have to say hit home
3:59 and that is hated in the nation it
4:01 touched on the very real consequences of
4:05 online social media mob justice it also
4:09 touched on the vulnerability of
4:11 Technology a topic that's very near and
4:13 dear to my heart
4:15 technology that many of us here are
4:18 responsible for building from
4:20 maintaining and for securing technology
4:23 that was developed with the intent to do
4:26 good to solve a real and a meaningful
4:28 problem that affects our society
4:31 technology that unfortunately is
4:33 exploited by those who want to do harm
4:37 who want to steal and in this episode
4:42 and I apologize advance for the spoiler
4:44 a swarm of drone B
4:48 are developed to solve a very real
4:50 problem which is to compensate for a
4:52 dwindling real bee population that today
4:55 is responsible for pollinating some 70
4:58 out of the 100 crop species that see it
5:02 our planet well you guessed it a flaw
5:05 and the technology is exploited by the
5:07 bad guys
5:08 to wreak havoc technology that was
5:12 developed to do good is used to
5:15 terrorize the people of Britain where
5:17 victims are targeted with nothing more
5:19 than a social media hashtag and just
5:24 what you think things can't get any
5:25 worse
5:26 the writers devised an ingenious way to
5:28 show that sometimes social media mod
5:31 justice can turn on the mob itself so
5:37 whether it's AI or a militarized social
5:39 media or Big Brother you don't have to
5:41 look all that far into the future to
5:42 think about and to understand the
5:45 threats that we will face this is 2018
5:49 with George Orwell be proud this vision
5:54 of the future and what's happening all
5:56 around us today is a stark reminder of
5:58 our responsibilities like many engineers
6:03 that graduate from schools in Canada I
6:05 choose to wear this iron ring on my
6:08 finger as a constant reminder of the
6:13 moral the ethical and the professional
6:16 responsibilities that I have and the
6:18 products and the technologies and the
6:20 solutions that I help to develop each
6:22 and every day and introduce into the
6:24 market each and every year but why is
6:28 this important well many of us in this
6:32 room help build the internet on behalf
6:37 of Juniper Networks I can say very
6:39 proudly that we helped build the
6:42 Internet we helped create much of the
6:44 routing the switching the security
6:46 infrastructure that powers the wide area
6:49 networks the local area networks the
6:51 data centers the core the forum the
6:54 internet the internet that has
6:57 transformed how we shop how we
6:59 manufacture transform how we
7:01 do research how we check if an ailment
7:05 is serious how we buy tickets to Black
7:07 Panther we've in a sense redefined the
7:14 idea of connectedness but it is that
7:20 very connectedness that has unleashed
7:23 unprecedented threats to our society
7:26 threats that make an episode of Black
7:28 Mirror look less like science fiction
7:30 and more like forecasting the reason is
7:38 that the Internet has unintentionally
7:40 empowered criminals with three unfair
7:44 advantages as eliminated time eliminated
7:48 distance and it eliminated identity
7:51 constraints that are typically
7:53 associated with more traditional
7:54 physical crimes the speed and the
7:57 ubiquity of the Internet means that
7:59 attacks can happen without warning from
8:03 any location and with complete anonymity
8:07 in a sense it's put the bad guy in your
8:11 house in the middle of the night in
8:13 complete disguise you know as I reflect
8:16 on the last two decades of the Internet
8:20 and I look out two more decades the
8:24 factors that really determine the pace
8:26 at which the Internet can scale have
8:28 been things like scaleable routing
8:31 protocols or Moore's Law that determines
8:34 the number of transistors you can put on
8:36 a die size of given size that move the
8:38 packets around as quickly as possible
8:40 and certainly these will remain
8:43 important factors going forward but I
8:46 believe that the biggest factors that
8:49 will determine the pace at which the
8:51 Internet can succeed over the next two
8:53 decades will be that of complexity and
8:56 even more importantly trust yes there is
9:02 a business dimension to the problems we
9:04 saw the Juniper each and every day but
9:06 quite frankly we take this personally we
9:09 need to we must make sure that the
9:12 Internet continues to scale and to
9:14 thrive as it has
9:15 over the last two decades going forward
9:20 so where do we go from here
9:23 unlike Orwell's 1984 I think my story
9:27 can actually have a happy ending
9:29 we at juniper believe that there is no
9:33 societal challenge that is more complex
9:36 than cybersecurity today and against
9:38 that complexity we need purity of focus
9:41 and simplicity of mission so our call to
9:46 action today is straightforward and it's
9:48 simple we need to be agents of change
9:52 every one of us here RSA needs to be an
9:55 agent of change with the goal of
9:57 evolving cyber security tools
9:59 technologies and processes but let's get
10:01 more specific our mission is twofold
10:06 first and foremost we must acknowledge
10:10 that humans cannot keep up with the
10:13 scale and the velocity at which data
10:15 needs to be processed each and every day
10:17 in order to create that effective threat
10:20 shield so we have to continue to develop
10:23 the technology that improves and
10:26 provides us with that threat shield that
10:28 will keep us safe I have good news we're
10:32 already building a fantastic foundation
10:34 you walk through the halls of RSA and
10:36 you will see some incredible technology
10:39 in the domain of AI and machine learning
10:42 and behavioral analytics today one of
10:44 the most effective ways to stop threats
10:47 is to understand the underlying behavior
10:51 of those threats with the goal of
10:53 overcoming what is very typical malware
10:56 techniques of constantly evolving and
10:59 changing their packaging and their looks
11:02 so that they could evade more
11:03 traditional threat detection techniques
11:05 well that behavioral analysis and the
11:10 lessons that is gained from that and
11:12 then that dissemination of intelligence
11:14 worldwide in near real-time is one of
11:18 the most compelling use cases for
11:21 automation in our industry but for some
11:25 automation is a bad word
11:28 because of some misguided view that it
11:30 has a negative effect on jobs and we
11:35 cannot we must not allow ourselves to
11:38 slow down Automation is inevitable and
11:41 it is good especially when it comes to
11:47 cybersecurity the cyber criminals that
11:49 are out there are leveraging automation
11:52 with fervor we must make sure that we do
11:55 not show up to a knife fight wearing
11:58 boxing gloves I believe that as
12:02 automation continues to evolve the
12:05 collaboration between humans and
12:08 machines becomes increasingly important
12:11 the goal is that the whole is greater
12:13 than the sum of the parts it's about the
12:17 intelligence of machines coupled with
12:19 the wisdom and the intuition of humans
12:23 which gives us three really compelling
12:27 advantages or benefits the first is
12:30 retrospective analysis which is nothing
12:33 more than the ability to look back in
12:34 time and understand what happened and
12:36 why
12:37 the second is current analysis which
12:41 gives us an ability to eliminate threats
12:42 early in the cyber kill chain but the
12:45 third and most important of all is
12:49 predictive analysis which is about
12:52 leveraging AI and data to predict and
12:55 prevent an attack before it actually
12:57 happens this one is worth repeating
12:59 because this is the true power of AI
13:03 artificial intelligence coupled with
13:05 rich data gives us the ability to
13:07 predict the future to determine when a
13:12 bad outcome is going to happen before it
13:15 actually happens and before it can
13:17 actually do harm so like I said I
13:21 believe in the future where humans and
13:23 machines will Internet interact in
13:25 unique and compelling ways consider the
13:30 era just as an analogy of implantables
13:34 today we mostly think about human
13:36 implantables as a way of compensating
13:38 for a disability
13:40 but in the future I believe in
13:43 implantables will give us abilities that
13:45 go far beyond our wildest imagination of
13:48 what the human the organic human body
13:50 can do let's just look at a simple
13:53 example of LASIK today somebody who
13:56 undergoes a simple LASIK procedure can
13:59 hope to expect 20/20 maybe 2010 vision
14:03 but that drop-down menu for LASIK will
14:07 include things like telephoto zoom
14:09 lenses infrared vision how would you
14:13 like 21 vision
14:16 compare that to a hawk that has a measly
14:19 24 maybe twenty-five vision and yet as
14:26 we lean into automation and emphasize
14:29 the deeper collaboration that must exist
14:31 between AI and humans we must never lose
14:35 sight of the importance of talent of
14:39 people of you which brings us to the
14:45 second mission for us as agents of
14:48 change we must recognize the singular
14:53 the critical element of human
14:56 intelligence and importantly human
14:57 intuition as agents of change our
15:02 responsibility is to make sure that we
15:04 develop the next generation of human
15:05 that can keep up with the challenge that
15:08 we face why because there is no amount
15:11 of AI gets called that can solve the
15:14 problem holistically so we have to make
15:17 sure that our skill sets are continually
15:20 expanding and adapting consider an auto
15:24 mechanic in 1998 vas had to adapt his or
15:28 her skill sets to become that of a
15:30 computer analyst today they have had to
15:34 be agents of change in their profession
15:36 in their industry we quite frankly have
15:41 a human capital challenge today there
15:45 are not there are not enough of us we
15:48 know this because the cybersecurity
15:50 unemployment rate today is practically
15:52 zero
15:53 and even in the face of this perceived
15:56 threat of automation there will be 2
15:59 million unfilled cybersecurity jobs in
16:03 the next couple of years and I know that
16:06 might feel good to a cyber security
16:07 professional from a job security
16:10 standpoint but standing still it's just
16:14 going backwards so we need out of box
16:19 thinking we need unique unique ideas to
16:21 really solve this problem once and for
16:24 all and let me borrow one just as an
16:27 example from former Undersecretary of
16:29 defense for policy Michele Flournoy she
16:33 envisioned that we need a cyber ROTC a
16:36 reserve officers Training Corp now for
16:39 those of you that are not familiar with
16:41 how an ROTC works in a traditional ROTC
16:44 students on campus commit to training
16:47 courses and in return they owe four
16:51 years of active duty as a result of that
16:54 the government pays for all or part of
16:56 their tuition in a cyber ROTC as
17:00 Michelle envisioned it students in
17:03 computer science compete for government
17:06 scholarships those that are lucky enough
17:08 to get those scholarships over the
17:11 government five years of service in the
17:14 Department of greatest requirement and
17:16 at the end of those five years can
17:18 decide to continue working in those
17:20 agencies or competing for jobs in the
17:24 private sector here's my bet they'd find
17:27 one pretty darn quickly if we want to be
17:31 agents of change and not agents of the
17:33 status quo
17:33 these are the kinds of out of box
17:35 thinking ideas that we need today which
17:39 is why juniper is so excited about the
17:43 investments that we are making and the
17:45 recent announcements we've made in a
17:47 really successful open lab initiative so
17:52 we're expanding the scope the scale of
17:55 our worldwide open labs facilities with
17:58 curriculum hands-on workshops hackathons
18:02 throwdowns all geared toward advanced
18:07 the state of the art and techniques and
18:09 solutions for today's and tomorrow's
18:12 threats we will continue to work with
18:16 universities with startups with
18:19 entrepreneurs with the goal of creating
18:21 that next generation cybersecurity
18:23 professional and leader and importantly
18:27 given the size the scope of this
18:31 challenge that we face we have to make
18:34 sure that we cast as wide a net as
18:37 possible to 100% of the population not
18:40 just half of it which is just one reason
18:43 why diversity is so fundamental to this
18:46 initiative let me take you back all the
18:51 way back to the beginning of my talk
18:52 here it was a machine playing Big
18:56 Brother's message
18:57 it was a machine lecturing us it was a
19:00 machine keeping humans in mind-numbing
19:02 conformity
19:03 it was a human throwing that
19:08 sledgehammer
19:09 it was a human telling us do we have to
19:12 do things differently and showing us
19:15 that conformity is the enemy even a
19:19 technology company especially a
19:22 technology company knows that the human
19:25 element is the most essential element
19:29 humans must knock down the status quo
19:33 must break through we must be agents of
19:36 change that Apple ad showed us that in a
19:41 world where everything else has changed
19:43 those fundamental truths have not thank
19:48 you
19:49 [Applause]
20:02 [Music]
20:07 [Applause]
20:09 you