Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Anne Bonaparte, CEO of Appthority (Part 1)

The perimeter of the enterprise is disappearing. What happens to Security?

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to Appthority and to yourself.

Anne Bonaparte: I’m CEO of Appthority. Appthority is a venture-backed company. It’s a mobile security company and we’re focused on protecting what matters most in the enterprise context, which is enterprise data and employee privacy. As we all know, we can’t live without our phones, both for personal and business use. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Rao Papolu, CEO of Cavirin (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: That’s good segue into another question that I want to end this conversation with. There are lots of reports coming out now that quantum computing is becoming more of a reality. Quantum computing in the hands of the hackers is an incredibly dangerous phenomenon. How do you see the world changing as that threat becomes more real?

Rao Papolu: Technology has been changing. Why have these things like AI become popular? Because we have better computing power. In those days, computing was not there. Storage was expensive. You can mine information. You have to have visibility in your environment and you have to have complete security.

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Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Rao Papolu, CEO of Cavirin (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: I’m asking the question a bit more not specific to your particular solution. I’m trying to get you to forget that you are the CEO of your company and just really give me an objective analysis of how to make this decision.

As I’m speaking with you, I’m thinking that I’m going to bring a few CISOs on and ask the question so I can capture an unbiased perspective on this. This is getting very complicated. AWS is one niche. Azure is one niche. Then there are players like Fortinet. The CISO’s life seems to be very complicated. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Rao Papolu, CEO of Cavirin (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Can you go back and answer my question? Whom do you see in deals even if they’re point products? I understand your positioning. It’s more of an umbrella solution that tackles all of those configurations. What specifically are the competitors that you see?

Rao Papolu: When it comes to data center space, companies such as Rapid7 and Qualys. When it comes to cloud technology, Palo Alto Networks has an offering. We have in-depth knowledge about all these things together as a company. How can we do everything? The wealth of our knowledge comes from a Bell Labs technology called Network Ontology. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Rao Papolu, CEO of Cavirin (Part 1)

The cyber security market is intensely rich in startup activity and equally rich in threats. This conversation explores some of the challenges of CISO’s face today.

We will bring you some CISO interviews soon to extend this conversation.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself and Cavirin.

Rao Papolu: I studied at the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras. I started working through UPSC as a scientist for >>>

Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Tracy Metzger, COO of Vesta (Part 3)

Tracy Metzger: Vesta processes anywhere from 300,000 to 500,000 transactions a day and up towards $18 billion in payments a year. We carry elements like their mobile devices and desktop devices. We know the operating systems, screen dimensions, their page viewing history on certain e-commerce websites, and their social reputation information where it’s applicable. There are so many different elements that we use to make a risk screen decision in a split second. If you think about it, Vesta started off focusing on prepaid cellular business 22 years ago. >>>

Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Tracy Metzger, COO of Vesta (Part 2)

Tracy Metzger: Whether it’s mobile carriers when they’re doing prepaid businesses where credit card acceptance immediately fulfills minutes to a phone, or digital goods companies like e-ticketing, or software downloads,  all these things have an after-market value. Those companies spend anywhere from 14% to 20% of their total SGNA on managing fraud. It’s a huge amount of cost.

One of the other by-products is it hurts the acceptance. This is because these internal operational departments, while doing their best through tools and technologies, tend to be risk-averse. They may sometimes take the caution on the air of not accepting a transaction because it may look risky, which creates a user experience issue. You have acceptance issues that create revenue offset problems. You have operational issues that create expense issues.

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Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Tracy Metzger, COO of Vesta (Part 1)

There is a lot of fraud in online payments. This discussion explores the field, and Tracy also provides a pointer to a great open problem that an entrepreneur can look into.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing you and Vesta to our audience.

Tracy Metzger: I’m the COO of Vesta. I’m a 25-year veteran of the financial technology industry, primarily around payments and technology solutions in payments. Vesta is a 22-year-old financial technology company that focuses on payments and product >>>