Nikesh Arora, CEO of Palo Alto Networks, Says Data Security Is No Longer Just A Concern For CIOs.
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00:00Welcome to Leadership Next, the podcast about the changing rules of business leadership.
00:07I'm Dianne Brady.
00:09You know, one of the things that's fascinating, the perch you sit in, you get into rooms we
00:14don't get to go in terms of talking to CEOs about the vulnerabilities, and I say CEOs
00:20deliberately because it feels like this is an issue that has really left just the CIO
00:25or the CTO.
00:26Give me a sense as to what are they thinking about and how is the threat environment changing?
00:32Because we're right in the middle of this obsession with digital transition.
00:37What are you hearing?
00:39We can't seem to buy, ingest and deploy enough technology today.
00:44I mean, look at what's going on with AI.
00:46People are buying GPUs.
00:47They're trying to put up AI data centers.
00:50Everybody's in a frenzy.
00:52How do I use LLMs in my infrastructure?
00:54So you think you've just sort of just sat down and settled down and say, oh my God,
00:59thank God we've moved to the public cloud.
01:00And you sit there and say, oh my God, look, what's next, AI.
01:03So I think every CEO has some sort of large technology project on their agenda.
01:10And the number one risk now, slowly and steadily continues to be cyber.
01:14And that's because what we talked about, the sort of explosion of attack surfaces, explosion
01:18of our connectivity to our customers, that's causing that to become a large risk.
01:23So it's kind of impossible to get away from a conversation around cybersecurity at your
01:28board or your management team.
01:30It's still a bit of a black box, to be honest.
01:33It's like, I know I have a problem.
01:35I don't know how to solve it, but I know I have a problem.
01:37I need to pay attention.
01:38So I think we're at that phase where CEOs are aware this is a problem.
01:42Some of them are hoping it doesn't happen to them because it happened to somebody else
01:45in their industry.
01:47But they call their CIO and technology guys and say, hey, do we have a solution for this?
01:52And like most in life, we always say, yes, we've got this covered.
01:56But the question is, how well do you have it covered?
01:59You've lived through these boom and bust cycles.
02:02Obviously, we've seen this acceleration of technology innovation.
02:07But we talk about AI as if it's some incredibly profound pivot point where now, you know,
02:14put on your seatbelt.
02:15Here we go.
02:16It's going to be the most transformative thing since whatever.
02:20What do you think?
02:21There's that cliche that we always seem to overestimate the short term and underestimate
02:25the long term.
02:26Right.
02:27If you go back to 1999, you know, if you remember the internet sort of boom, where all you needed
02:32was a domain name and you were in a number of clicks to find your market.
02:36Eyeballs.
02:37The world was in a frenzy.
02:38You know, the Nasdaq was 5,000.
02:39At that point in time, it came crashing down to 3,000.
02:42So there was that sort of exuberance associated with this revolutionary technology called
02:47the internet.
02:48Now, I don't think we were wrong.
02:50If you go back and say, what did we imagine in 1999?
02:53I think any domain you thought you bought actually exists today.
02:56There's a business around it.
02:57So these real businesses, some of the largest businesses in the world, are driven by the
03:02emergence of the internet.
03:03So it was just we were early.
03:06I think we're in the same sort of cycle with AI.
03:10There is tremendous amounts of enthusiasm.
03:13There is sort of like this notion that if you build it, they will come and we're all
03:17busy building it.
03:18I think it's following the same cycle that we saw with the internet.
03:21First, you need the infrastructure.
03:23That's why you're seeing the infrastructure players in AI are going to do well in the
03:29current term.
03:30You look at all the chip manufacturers and people talk about energy, people talk about
03:34the need for data centers.
03:35So you're seeing the infrastructure parts.
03:37The technology is still a little ways from all of us embracing it fully and going and
03:42deploying it.
03:43I think we feel a little left out because cybersecurity was on the top of mind for CEOs
03:50six months ago.
03:51It's possibly AI now, right?
03:52Because like they all want to talk about AI.
03:54They all want to be smarter about it.
03:55They're all worried that if I miss the AI trend, is there a new Amazon and I become
04:00the old e-commerce guy?
04:01I'd love to walk through a little bit the perspective you bring from T-Mobile.
04:06You mentioned your time at Google.
04:09You were in, I believe, almost two years at SoftBank.
04:12How did those experiences, well, let me just ask some of those pivot points maybe in your
04:17career that kind of took you to where you are now.
04:21My first job in the U.S. was at Fidelity.
04:23It was 1992 and it was one of those recessionary moments where it was very hard to get a job.
04:30So I had to literally apply to 400 plus places to see if somebody would hire me.
04:36And as I said, I had the funniest of experiences.
04:38I literally had a recruiter on the phone saying, oh, can you tell me, we don't know what that
04:41course is offered at Northwestern.
04:42I'm like, no, I went to Northeastern.
04:43Oh, excuse me, let me check.
04:44And boom.
04:45So like people, all kinds of stuff happened.
04:46And I was lucky that I applied to Fidelity with seven different people.
04:47Thankfully, they had no common HR system at that point in time.
04:48So six people said no.
04:49The seventh person didn't know.
04:50That sixth said no.
04:51So they had me come interview and I was lucky enough to get hired.
04:52And then I ended up going to work at Deutsche Telekom in four places because I met the CEO
04:53by being a telecom analyst.
04:54And he says, you should go work for me.
04:55So I did.
04:56Serendipitous.
04:57Serendipitous.
04:58Serendipitous.
04:59Serendipitous.
05:00Serendipitous.
05:01Serendipitous.
05:02And then I ended up going to work at Deutsche Telekom in four places because I met the CEO
05:07by being a telecom analyst.
05:08And he says, you should go work for me.
05:09So I did.
05:10Serendipitous.
05:11Serendipitous.
05:12Serendipitous.
05:13Serendipitous.
05:14Serendipitous.
05:15Serendipitous.
05:16Serendipitous.
05:17Serendipitous.
05:18Serendipitous.
05:19Serendipitous.
05:20Serendipitous.
05:21Serendipitous.
05:22Serendipitous.
05:23Serendipitous.
05:24Serendipitous.
05:25Serendipitous.
05:26Serendipitous.
05:27Serendipitous.
05:28Serendipitous.
05:29Serendipitous.
05:30Serendipitous.
05:31Serendipitous.
05:32So I was on my way to commute from London to Germany trying to see if I wanted to be
05:35an operational executive in a mobile telecom company, which I did.
05:38And then I was home and a friend of mine walked up and says, you know what, there's this company
05:43from California, which just went public in a very strange reverse Dutch auction, which
05:49nobody should do.
05:50And they're looking for somebody to work in Europe.
05:53They have a small 5,000 square foot office in Seoul House, which is rented, or Seoul
05:57Square, sorry.
05:58Do you want to go talk to them?
05:59And I was Googled.
06:00Chief business officer.
06:01Chief business officer.
06:02That's not a title you hear very often.
06:04What does that mean?
06:05Well, you know, I started Google in Google Europe.
06:08I was lucky enough that Larry and Sergey were traveling through Europe coincidentally.
06:13They interviewed me there.
06:15I had a great boss, Omid, who interviewed me.
06:18And they decided that they'd have me run Google Europe.
06:21And it was an amazing market.
06:24We had lots of great people who worked there.
06:26Many of them are still at Google, run large parts of Google.
06:30We were able to make Europe grow and stabilize Google's European presence to such a degree
06:35that they asked me to come run the rest of the world, including Europe, from here.
06:41Because one of my peers, Tim Armstrong and Cheryl, went on to have amazing careers in
06:46different places.
06:47And maybe I was the last man standing, so here I was.
06:50I came to California in 2009.
06:53And I spent five years doing anything but product.
06:57Eric was my boss for a while, and Larry was my boss for a while.
07:01And Larry wanted to focus on the technology part.
07:03So he said, go take care of the business stuff.
07:05We had a great CFO, great head of legal.
07:08And I kind of did everything that wasn't product.
07:10So it was sales, marketing, customer support, business development, deals.
07:14I was lucky.
07:15I was blessed.
07:16Because here I was working for an amazing technology company, going to perhaps its biggest
07:19growth phase.
07:20And I had sort of the privilege of observing from that lens how the world was accepting
07:26technology, accepting the emergence of big tech, I guess, at that point in time.
07:30Which is great.