Building Security Around Data – Vishal Gupta, Seclore

This is texturing TV. Hey everyone, welcome back to techstroke TV. I've got a new company to introduce you to here on Tech strong TV as well as their CEO and founder.

I'd like to introduce you to Vishal Gupta vachal is the CEO and founder of seclor. Welcome. Welcome.

Thank you. Thanks a lot. And thanks a lot for having me.

It's our pleasure. So Vishal, let's start a little bit about your background. Let's let's hear your story before we jump into second floor if it's okay.

Well, I'm the I'm the one of the founders and CEO of the company. I'm an Engineers by by training and I'm an engineer by profession also one of the air combinations Um, yeah, I think I've been running companies being a part of young companies in the zero to hundred million range right that range for the for all through my my life and secloras has been as a company. It's been around for about 10 years now and it's really in businesses.

Yes, and as a company business we've been around for about seven years or so. So yeah, that's what I've been that's what I've been doing for the last 10 years on. So another one of these overnight wonders, huh?

It takes a long time to make an overnight window. You don't have to tell me I know. Yeah, I've spent the last Well since 1997 so however long that's been doing Venture back startups.

Well through this is the text drugs Adventure back. I did this because I was done chasing that and Just wanted to do what makes me happy and you have sign up a bunch of back startup CEO. So yeah, well we do right we've been there they but anyway.

Let's talk a little bit about secular 10 years what you know seven years in business. What what is what's that color about? I think a seclude is one of the rare companies where it started out not because we had a technology and we were trying to figure out what do we do with this technology, but we were very committed to the problem statement.

Right, and we created technology behind the problem rather than the other way around. So the problem that we identified is that most of the Enterprise infrastructure was moving outside of the Enterprise right devices were becoming personal. It's fast forward seven years.

They have networks that becoming public most most communication today happens not on private Enterprise control networks, but over public networks like airports and you know hotels and so on and applications for are also going outside of the control because most applications have not all are moving to the cloud. Right, and these are the very assets that an Enterprise started out protecting 20 years ago, right every security initiative was I either trying to protect the device or the application or the network? And now all of these assets themselves have gone out of the control of the Enterprise and so there's a little bit of an identity crisis which is the stuff that I started out protecting doesn't even belong to me anymore.

So now what right so it's almost like a renter buying homeowners insurance, right? You're trying to produce stuff that doesn't belong to you and so on and that's the that's the crisis that we saw in the security of cyber security Enterprise cyber security infrastructure and so on and that was the problem we started out with and and the Insight over there was that the Enterprise don't really care about these assets anymore. The device doesn't belong to the Enterprise if it gets stolen big deal, right?

No sweat. The network doesn't belong to the Enterprise if my home and my home network, which I use for the for work gets compromised doesn't really make too much of a different to the to the company that I work for. similarly for applications The one asset that every Enterprise does care about is data.

That's never going away. And therefore the started with an Insight which which is all about moving security from being infrastructure-centric, which is trying to protect devices networks and applications to becoming data Centric, which is the only real asset that you want to protect at the end of it. That's that's fundamental Insight behind the car.

Yeah, no doubt about it. You know, look as we were talking offline. I've been insecurity a long time.

We saw this happening right there. There were there were people I remember back in 2009 2010. Who was standing up and saying we can't allow, you know non-corporate devices on the network?

And and I remember saying look that's Ludacris. You're not gonna stop people from bringing using their phones or their tablets or their own computers. And the idea that it's your network is also ludicrous, right?

We live in the age of an Internet a Global Network of networks, right and and you know kind of information more that information wants to be free, but everybody wants to just beyond from anywhere and and certainly, you know during covid. That probably accelerated a hundred times right you have to be able to do anything from anywhere. That's that's the way it is today.

So same thing for applications. I mean the what you said for networks and devices is right then. Yeah if you if somebody tells you, hey, my Enterprise doesn't need or use any cloud service.

Right. That's that's a pretty far out exception, which I don't know maybe maybe their defense and investigative agencies which are there but no Enterprise that I know of can make that claim anymore. I I think quite the contrary.

You know people ask us all the time. Well, you know, would you? What applications like that?

We actually have applications here. We don't we don't we don't I mean all of our infrastructure is SAS. or in the cloud I mean, I have a server closet I use it to stock the Paper towels toilet paper and cleaning supplies, you know that it used to be a server closeted telephone closet, right?

We don't we don't use it. But anyway, so what is this mean? What is this mean for our audience?

So what this means is to keep the underlying technology that we build is something which allows security and compliance to be built into information itself. Now that's that's pretty that's a tall claim that every piece of information that exists out there can now carry with it. It's own security and privacy was The simplest example is let's say you send me information right and you could send me information through, you know, 200 different methods.

You can send me an email. You can send me a message. You can upload something into Dropbox and send me a link right and I'm sure there are slack, you know, all kinds of channels of communication.

Right respect of the channel of communication that you're using. Then you send information to me that information itself now knows that hey Vishal from secular is allowed to access me. I'm the piece of information and incidentally and then is the owner is my owner.

Right? So information is aware of who created that information who are the rightful users of this information and these could be people within the Enterprise but most about these could be people outside of the Enterprise right like when does or contractors or customers and board members and the likes Right. So the first is security awareness at the information or the asset level itself, right?

That's that's key because the document or the email or you know, whatever it is. However, you sent me this information now is aware. is security aware the second thing is it's privacy here.

So if there is information that is not supposed to leave us soil, for example, because it is export control or this is personally identifiable information. That should not leave the Enterprise right? Because there are privacy regulations around it and so on right the information itself is Now privacy aware.

So the document knows that inside me inside the document is a credit card number or or health information which which is private Duality for example, right? So that's security aware. It's privacy there.

The second the third thing here is that it is it make sure that those security and privacy controls are implemented. So before I can access that document, right, let's take a simple example. You sent me a document by email before I can access that document.

It will make sure that I am in fact Vishal from sector. Right and while I am accessing the document it will only allow me to do a set of things which are governed by the security and privacy policy. So if I'm not allowed to make copies of it not view it not edit.

It not print it. I can only respond back to you but not forward it to my colleague and so on right there could be a number of security privacy controls that are building. So it is able to implement that control.

Right and the last bit here is that it is able to relay back to you what is happening to it? So that document is able to tell you in this example back. Hey Vishal from stickler access he edited it and make two copies of it.

He attempted to print it which was not allowed and which I blocked or is the document itself blocked right and so on so you can complete trail of exactly what is happening to all assets that you have created. Now, these could be emails documents engineering drawing designs. images right any kind of information out there so being able to see visually what is happening to all the information assets that you have either as a person or text wrong as a company in one chain of class and exactly where they are and what's happening to them and so on this tremendous value Because that provides the kind of visibility around information not about assets Enterprises have visibility around assets how many Cloud applications which devices what networks and so on?

But they don't really have visibility of information itself. Right, so that's what so that's the underlying technology behind secular. Right which is security and privacy controls built into the information implementation of those controls and visibility to of what's happening to that information.

So all put together a single pane of glass to security of the data itself security and privacy of the data itself. absolutely, you know but to me this encompasses a few different types of traditional security one is identity and access management which to me is the killer app for cloud security, right? Because with Cloud security, I don't have my firewalls, you know, the tuition and and all of those big boxes sitting at the mountain castle be in Access Control and they're not necessarily that you could have identity control and then it separate Access Control, right?

And then something that we soar back in the old days. You want to call DLP data loss prevention data leak prevention, which was kind of sitting at a choke point where It was probably easier back then because there was you really did have a choke point right you had one place of egress where you could see. Hey what was going in what was going out?

What was being accessed? How is it being accessed who was accessing it Etc? In the age of cloud and SAS and multi-homes in all of this stuff, right?

This data is not necessarily in that central location anymore. You don't you know, you don't necessarily have a data. Warehouse in one place anymore that data is is distributed and so it's very hard.

To do this right when the data lives anywhere? It is and consider what we are doing as identity and access management, which has typically focused. Well, not identity.

But access management, which is typically focused on implementing the access control on infrastructure again, right so access controls will allow you to get into a mailbox and not get into the other mailbox or access one folder and not access another folder and so on right now, what we are doing is linking identity to access control of data irrespective of where it is. So so think of it as identity and access management, but for data specifically which again our belief is the only asset that people should care about not look you know what I was actually meeting with the team here. We do a big virtual event every month.

So I think it's in August of this year. We're actually doing one on data Ops because you know all of us for a while, it seemed like we forgot that data was important. Right, and and now but now data is back right people are realizing.

Hey, it's all about the data. You can have the application but that application is a front end for data right people need the data organizations. Enterprises need that data.

This is the lifeblood of of the whole digital transformation thing, right? So day data is is Primal is prime, you know privacy and I don't doubt it now. if People want to engage with seclaw for this kind of solution.

And shall how give us the idea. How is this sold? How is it offered?

You know to our kids to the public. So we have we have both the methods of offering one is this can be used as a cloud-hosted service as fast service. So anybody can go to the secular website contact, you know fill up a form and you can have the whole cloud service, you know ready for in a couple of hours, right?

So that's one option three. Also, most of our customers tend to be large Enterprises and defense and government agencies. And we also offer on premise deployments for larger customers, right who prefer to have on premise or deployment in their existing cloud service, right?

So what the options are available, that's one the easiest method of actually using the service or the you know on premise deployed product. Yeah is to identify First what are what are the most critical pieces of information? that the Enterprise would protect if the Enterprise had a trade running yesterday.

right and that usually is just is the Genesis of the of the problem solving which is for some Enterprises intellectual property might be the most Most important piece of information that they want to protect for somebody else might be pii data some of the cases it could be board communication and executive communication and so on so these use cases keep yeah, he different so the help Enterprises identify what's critical and then of course use the technology to actually protect. Yep. com or what's the website?

com stclore. In fact, the name itself comes from security lower means like knowledge folklore is common knowledge secular is secure knowledge. That's what I love it.

All right. Hey Michelle, I want to thank you for being our guest here on Tech strong TV come back and keep us posted was great conversation and best of luck with set Clark. Thanks a lot Alan.

Thanks a lot for having me that you. Yes, well, it works good with this. But anyway, thank you very much.

Have a great day. We're gonna take a break.