Google Cloud's Security Moves Are Bigger Than You Think
In this episode of The State of Enterprise IT Security, Brad Bussie and Mark Aksel break down the biggest enterprise security takeaways from Google Cloud Next 2025. From AI-powered threat hunting to insurance discounts for posture maturity, it’s clear: Google is making a major security play that CISOs should not ignore.
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Key Topics Covered:
- Google’s Unified Security (GUS): Combining Mandiant, Chronicle, Siemplify, and VirusTotal into an integrated security ecosystem.
- Agentic AI for SecOps: Why augmenting analysts—not replacing them—is key to scaling enterprise threat detection.
- Cyber Insurance & Posture Scoring: How Google’s partnership with Chubb and Beazley may reshape how enterprises buy insurance.
Key Takeaways:
- GUS is Google’s Security Hub: A new AI-enhanced suite combining its biggest security acquisitions under one threat detection and response platform.
- Agentic AI is Practical AI: Google is investing in AI agents that act more like intelligent assistants than autonomous actors, helping analysts reverse engineer code and uncover hidden threats.
- Mandiant Threat Defense Integration: Mandiant’s elite threat hunting and response capability now operates directly within Google SecOps—giving customers real-time support at the point of detection.
- Data Governance for AI Models: Google announced Data Security Posture Management (DPSM) to help secure not just enterprise data, but also the training sets used for internal AI models.
- Cyber Insurance Evolution: Through the Expanded Risk Protection Program, cyber insurance premiums could soon be influenced by real-time security posture and even AI readiness.
Mentions & References:
- Google Cloud Next 2025
- Google Unified Security (GUS)
- Gemini AI
- Mandiant Threat Defense
- Chronicle, Siemplify, VirusTotal
- Beazley & Chubb Cyber Insurance
- Data Security Posture Management (DPSM)
Read the Transcript
Introduction and Opening Thoughts
[00:00:00] Brad Bussie: We in cyber have taken the approach of like replacing those roles, but we're starting to see a comeback to not replacing those roles necessarily, but making a human better with an agentic AI that is either going to take some of the load off of what they're doing or making something that they're doing that much better.
Show Introduction and Guest Welcome
[00:00:34] Brad Bussie: Hey everybody. I'm Brad Bussie, Chief Technology and Security Officer at e360. Thank you for joining us for the State of Enterprise IT security edition. This is the show that makes it security approachable and actionable for technology leaders.
[00:00:51] We have a special guest joining us today. His name is Mark* Aksel*. He's our Field CISO here at e360, and Mark and I have known each other and worked with each other, I think it's coming on, about a decade now. And it's actually a funny story how we met. I interviewed him for a role at a previous company that we worked at, and I think Mark I probably asked you maybe like two questions about actual work and then somehow I think we started talking about War Hammer, which led to like a full two hour conversation about gaming and I'm pretty sure by the end of the conversation I had offered you the job, but I always think back to that as just one of the best interviews and you get to know a lot about somebody talking through games and stuff like that. So I just found that super interesting.
Personal Connection Through Gaming
[00:01:51] Mark Aksel: It was, War Hammer and Dungeons and Dragons, so yeah, not even electronic gaming, but board gaming and physical books and everything of that nature. But I've actually taken that to heart, that conversation we had, and it's almost some of the questions I always when I interview, Hey, what games are you playing?
[00:02:08] Doesn't need to be electronic, doesn't mean computer. Just whatever it is. And some of my clients, that's an easy way to connect. And I even internally, I say, Hey, if you have a security guy who doesn't have some sort of gaming background previously or currently, it leaves, you know, little red flags once in a while.
[00:02:25] But not for real, but yeah, that is a fun conversation. It's a good way to connect with a lot of folks is it's becoming more and more,..
[00:02:31] Yeah, there's a lot of geeks of us out there in technology. So, I wanted to come back. we had taken, a bit of a break for the podcast.
Podcast Season Introduction
[00:02:43] Brad Bussie: We try to do seasons to keep the content fresh and we've just had a lot going on at e360 in a really good way, growing, expanding, and getting to connect with a lot of our clients. So this is, a new season [00:03:00] and I thought we would open up the season and talk about something that Mark and I, just went to.
Google Cloud Next 2025 Overview
[00:03:09] So we went to the Google Cloud Next 2025 and I know that this is our state of enterprise IT but being the security edition, I would like to talk a little bit about what we saw and some of the value that our listeners could have based on what we learned. So we're gonna have another podcast that is going to talk a little bit more about some of the cloud and AI components.
[00:03:44] While we will weave AI into this conversation, it's gonna be primarily security focused. And you know when Mark and I show up to a conference, we are really interested in the security side of things. And this one was interesting because I wanna say there was a 244 different announcements at Google Cloud Next, and when we distilled it down, I wanna say there was only like 10 to 15 of those that were pretty much security focused, but the ones that we did get to sit in on and get to see and talk through with Google and some of the Google execs were pretty interesting.
Conference Experience - Partner Summit
[00:04:30] So to set the stage, you know Mark and I got there, we went to the partner summit. And I will say that was a pretty interesting experience because I don't know if Google was really prepared for the audience that they had. And I want to say what Mark at one point we were standing in a line and you had ran ahead just to see how long the line was and what was it like, about 200 people waiting to get into one of the sessions.
[00:05:00] Mark Aksel: Yeah, and the room was almost already full, so more than half those people weren't gonna be able to get in, which goes to show some of those talks. And there was a couple at the same time, but the one you and I are interested in, specific to security, obviously, that was a huge line.
[00:05:13] And it's like, oh, we're not getting into that one now. Luckily we get the reviews and we can go see it anyway. But I think the turnout was bigger than they expected and you know, it's always hard to get some of that stuff right. But in the future I definitely would say get there early, pre-register.
[00:05:30] Brad Bussie: Yeah
[00:05:30] Mark Aksel: which will shame on us for not doing that.
[00:05:32] Brad Bussie: Oh yeah.
[00:05:32] Mark Aksel: But yeah, absolutely.
Google Unified Security (GUS) Introduction
[00:05:34] Brad Bussie: Yeah, and I think it was interesting because one of the talks, I think was probably one of the most important ones and what's gonna be most applicable to our listeners is the new Google Unified Security. So for those of you that don't know, I mean this is like a big deal for Google because they're bringing a [00:06:00] lot of the acquisitions that they've made over the years.
[00:06:02] You know, Chronicle, Siemplify, Mandiant, *VirusTotal *and they're pulling all of this together into what they're calling GUS, which I found was an interesting term, but it's like the Google Threat Intelligence, Security Operations, Cloud Security, and then their approach to secure enterprise browser.
[00:06:27] So on previous podcasts we've talked about the enterprise version of their, not just browsing capabilities, but the the zero trust approach that Google has taken with Beyond Corp. So they've taken all of these acquisitions and some of the homegrown stuff and they have wrapped it in an AI powered suite.
[00:06:54] And I think this really highlights how they're trying to break down a lot of the silos in organizations and the way that they're leveraging Gemini, which is their AI approach is pretty exciting. And I wanna say that big piece of it was the threat detection and response. So, you know, we got a good look at this.
[00:07:20] Mark, what did you think, I mean, I thought it was a good like, you know, first pass at this, but was there anything that stood out or.
AI-Powered Security Solutions
[00:07:31] Mark Aksel: So the first pass, yes! I mean, AI's here to stay. It's not just a buzzword with security. We have adoptions across the industry. People are injecting it here.
[00:07:42] Where I think it's interesting for Google specifically, is they're doing it and they're actually merging the things as you just talked about. They're actually doing that, they're not saying they're gonna do it, they're actively doing it and we're seeing in the updates and even the demos that they showed on the screen with threat detection being AI powered, and honestly with the proactive hunting that's gonna take down those threats well before a human even sees the alert is sitting in the queue, goes through the typical triage process is gonna be extremely helpful.
[00:08:14] As you start to look at those automations and things, which is kind of the next iteration of that you know, getting that AI threat detection in there is gonna hopefully give back time to the analyst so they can work on maturing and not necessarily having to respond, but it's more gonna assist the response.
[00:08:33] Because I don't think you're gonna take the human element out of it by any means, but if I can make them better, faster, stronger, so they can actually leverage their knowledge and a lot of internal knowledge for the environment that they're a part of and help grow that maturity. That's where you're gonna see the dividends paid out multiple times and not just like, hey, we installed the AI tool, cool, no worry, installed it, and it's helping us get more done, it's helping us be more proactive with our threat intel as opposed [00:09:00] to oftentimes reactive or quickly, completely missing it in some cases.
Agentic AI in Security
[00:09:05] Brad Bussie: Right, yeah, I think that leads into something pretty interesting that we started to hear more about last year.
[00:09:12] I would say, you know, like 2023 and 2024, everybody was talking about AI and towards the later part of 2024. Then everyone was talking about agentic AI and that was something that really Google doubled down on, at this conference talking about AI powered agentic, everything. But one of the things that we took away from it in the security tooling discussion and being able to enhance threat detection, all the things that Mark was talking about was leveraging the agentic approach with their own security platform.
[00:09:54] So being able to take the Google SecOps, Google threat intelligent pieces, and then you take all of that and you build these agents that can perform a task. So we've talked about it where you know, you're trying to take a lot of your first tier analysts and even in some cases your second tier analyst and we in cyber have taken the approach of like replacing those roles, but we're starting to see a comeback to not replacing those roles necessarily, but making a human better with an agentic AI that is either going to take some of the load off of what they're doing or making something that they're doing that much better.
AI-Powered Code Analysis
[00:10:45] And I found it it pretty interesting when we were looking at Google's approach. And one of the things that I've seen some of our own developers do is take some code that they're writing and have one of the LLMs take a look at it and make some suggestions. Or, Hey, I'm trying to code the following thing, I'm running into a problem, could you look at this?
[00:11:11] But, the Google threat intel piece with that agentic AI can now go through and do code analysis, and it was even, this was one of the demos that we got to see. It was even taking scripts that had been, what is it? They were like taking a piece of it and hiding what the actual code was and the meaning and everything, and this agentic AI was going through and filling in gaps and saying, okay, you hit that piece of it.
[00:11:44] But I'm gonna go ahead and unhide it. I did that in air quotes for those that were listening, and I thought that was pretty interesting because we get scripts all the time where it's for a customer, it's for somebody else, and we're taking out key pieces of it. [00:12:00] But that's a challenge if you're trying to analyzes this thing, malicious or not.
[00:12:05] And what this agentic AI was doing is it was filling back in those gaps. And showing if that script was an actual concern. So, I thought that was pretty interesting.
[00:12:17] Mark Aksel: Yeah, there was, it's almost like what I was able to do is like, I know what you're trying to do, but to get where you are, you're missing these pieces.
[00:12:24] And it intelligently filled in those gaps, but then it was able to say, Hey, this call out that was hidden can take these other actions potentially, especially if it was referring to something else and that was an interesting, and they did it like live, they kinda showed us and they even said, Hey, which lines would you, it was interesting to see that feedback.
Actionable Intelligence with AI
[00:12:43] But, ultimately it is AI doing what AI does, right? It was thinking it through and saying, Hey, it must have had this sort of call out or function within it which was interesting to see, but seeing it tie all together, right? It became to take actionable intelligence, which I think is part of this, it's not just enough to see the data.
[00:13:03] It's like, well, what can I do with it? And it starts to then breadcrumb that out and you like watch it. You literally watch it, but see it, think it through and say, all right, well, if that's the plan, what is my response or what strategic response can I have or what can I plan around if this were to happen?
[00:13:19] So when you started to piece in the security intelligence together with agentic AI and the pieces together that Google's putting in their own wheelhouse, but also not requiring you to stay in their sandbox, which I like that's where you start to piece the other things. And then I can only imagine what clients are gonna need to do of, well, what if I add this? What if I add that?
[00:13:38] What if I need to curtail it down to this specific use case that I have for my environment? And it'll be able to help potentially help pretty significantly. And then with that, to keep echoing on kind of what you're going through is the challenge that I've seen with our clients retaining that role and you touch on upon getting rid of the role.
Staff Retention and Career Growth
[00:14:00] I've seen challenges where it's keeping that role, just keeping that person in the seat long enough for them to get trained up and plan and do the things. Well, that's great, but that person's not gonna stay in a tier one role forever, right? They need to grow. That's their career path. And hopefully the, you know, their you know, people are able to help within the company, but sometimes they do need to look externally to take that next level up.
[00:14:23] So to bring in yet another fresh person in that scenario, they get to leverage that same learning and they aren't starting from scratch. So that's a lot of the feedback. In talking to CISOs, they're like, yes, we love it. Now there's challenges and there's concerns, and there's risk and cost and those things with it.
[00:14:38] But those are helping alleviate a lot of those concerns that they've been experiencing for the last two decades that I've been, you know, participating in this field is,
[00:14:46] Brad Bussie: yeah,
[00:14:47] Mark Aksel: staff retention and planning and training, and this is able to help them keep ahead of the curve,
Mandiant Threat Defense Service
[00:14:51] Brad Bussie: Right. Well, and speaking of that, when we got a look at some of the new Google SecOps features, [00:15:00] one of the interesting ones, and talking about keeping our level one and level two analysts, sometimes they need someone to parachute in and help with something. And this was one of the things that I was looking at with the Mandiant service. So some of our clients were doing managed detection and response leveraging, the Mandiant platform. And that was great, but we kept having clients asking for someone from Mandiant that could come in and work alongside a customer in their environment leveraging Google SecOps.
[00:15:38] And that was one of those things that there were some APIs and things that were able to be leveraged, but they were missing that key component. So they announced what they're calling the Mandiant Threat Defense Service. Which now plugs straight into Google SecOps. So imagine having someone that is a very skilled level three, level four type person from Mandiant, able to come in and do active threat detection, able to do hunting, able to come in and do response, and all of that from the SecOps platform.
[00:16:19] That was probably one of the biggest announcements and it didn't get as much fanfare as I thought it should because this tied with the AI assisted techniques, I thought was like probably the biggest thing that we heard just from the defender, type of approach and I thought that it should have gotten a lot more love than it did. What did you think of that?
Integration Benefits and Challenges
[00:16:52] Mark Aksel: A couple interesting thoughts is people are always worried about letting other other people in and they have to get NDA signed. So you have that and that's, that was my initial like, okay, well that means they need to go get it signed, which is fine, right?
[00:17:05] Maybe it's such a well known responder in the space. The benefit I've seen from that is you're getting, hey it's not just a person that you pulled in from wherever, incident response to help you with something. It's someone that can look and immediately see real time across the Google Enterprise, which is probably one of the biggest, if not the biggest in the world when it comes to some of these things. And they can leverage that, so you're gonna get the, not just the response of, cool, I can help you figure that out. Well, no, I can actually see this has already happened. Here's how customers have already solved it, and I can help you plan that through.
[00:17:41] So that's interesting too. It's more, I think the time to response, time to remediate is kind of how we measure these things, but you can get someone close to instantly or minutes as opposed to like, hold on, let me get a call with a two RSLA, and hopefully I get the right person that knows my environment [00:18:00] and they can come in and immediately see.
[00:18:02] What you've done, how you've done it, and help you respond.
[00:18:04] Brad Bussie: Yeah,
Future Implementation Considerations
[00:18:05] Mark Aksel: I think that's gonna be one of the benefits. Now, how it gets implemented, it's probably gonna be slower because people are gonna like, oh, let me try it. Or they already have an MDR through their insurance that they're using or something of that nature.
[00:18:17] So having those all paired together will be an interesting strategy to think through. But having it almost as that second line of defense to where. I don't necessarily need to maintain a 24/7 SOC with a level one, two, and three. I can have my level twos help me return on my investment and help leverage, take that into account.
[00:18:40] It'll be a strategy that as we start to adopt it, I want to see it in action. I haven't gotten to see it in action yet, but I got to see the Market and got to see what it was gonna do in the intent behind it, which all makes sense, kind of as you laid out.
[00:18:52] But I want to see it, I want to see how it works. And I'm always that guy like, show me, show it to me, prove it. And that's always my mentality is being more security conscious. I am a, not even a trust, but verify. I'm like, verify then I may be trust and I'll keep verifying every single time thatI involve you, involve that kind of service.
Google-Wiz Acquisition and Data Security
[00:19:12] Brad Bussie: Yeah, I like that. So one of the things that we saw too, that I wanted to talk about today was, there's been a lot of talk about Google and Wiz and what that acquisition could potentially look like, so we sat through something that neither of us were a hundred percent sure if google was saying they were gonna have this capability once the acquisition has gone all the way through.
[00:19:44] As we just saw in the news, there's some monopoly stuff happening with Google right now, but it seems that's more on the ads side, so it may not impact the acquisition of the companies. But there was something, and data's big, right? I mean, data's always big, but there was a data security posture management capability that they announced and they started talking about, and while this is pretty big in our space and we're talking with clients about it all the time, I almost felt like it was, that's interesting. Until one thing that they said, which was this data security posture management solution will allow the. it's discovery, it's security, it's governance and it's monitoring sensitive data, but it was including, so it was inclusive of AI training data. And I think that is a very big statement because, you know, they're obviously leveraging the Google Cloud data analytics.
[00:20:51] They're using some of the AI products, but this is a growing need for clients and just being able to understand and [00:21:00] protect the data. And some of the most important data is actually the data that's being used to train our models. Now we all have this concern about the big GenAIs in the sky. Essentially taking the prompts and info and uploading files and saying, Hey, take this spreadsheet and do the things for me.
[00:21:22] We're training the model and we could potentially unleash something that a competitor could use against us. I was actually more concerned about what we're training our own models that are internal to an organization that perhaps is using Vertex or some of the Google platform. And this really kind of helped me feel a little better about it, the fact that we can govern the training data.
[00:21:52] So that to me was I think, a pretty big announcement.
Data Governance and Stakeholder Integration
[00:21:58] Mark Aksel: It's that paired with, so in this space, I typically have three or four different champions within our clients that express interest in this security obviously, right? They wanna know it's secure, they wanna put it there but then discovery, like the data owners, they don't know where their data is. So that could be a number of different, you know, programs or organizations within inside the client.
[00:22:22] On top of that, you have compliance, they look at it with a different lens, but it's still very similar to security. And then you have some sort of data owner, not the program or the owner, but the actual data, you know retention, the data, infrastructure folks, all four of them have buy-in and.
[00:22:41] Need to look at these sorts of things. So typically where I've seen, and you're kind of hitting on it though, is the compliance where it goes to like, well, if we're training our models on our own stuff, the governance around that and the classification, the monitoring the enforcement, and you start to tie in DLP policies into that because you should be enforcing your own policies on yourself or your own data as you train it.
[00:23:04] If you start to like go that weird rabbit hole of thinking through how you get your data, how you wanna maintain your data, and all those policies beneath it. Now I have some clients who are well before this sort of scenario, and we have some clients who are well after it. So Google being able to come in and help tie both those clients express interest into it. I have a feeling they're gonna be much more leaning into the, hey, now we can kind of do it and we could do it a little more securely. I think it'll be harder for clients who've already run down very far into that space to potentially come back and you know, retrospectively take a look at it.
[00:23:40] But we have clients that, you know, I don't even gonna just say us, I would say a lot of clients are looking at like, Hey, we wanna do it, but, and I think this is gonna help with that, but sort of scenario, make it instead of a no, it's, Hey, you can, but here's the way we want you to do it.
[00:23:53] To be in the best practices, alignment with policies and governance and security and all the right things.
[00:23:58] Brad Bussie: Yeah.
[00:23:58] Mark Aksel: So, yeah, I do think the AI portion's [00:24:00] going to be very much akin to supporting those and it sounds like frankly, in some cases it'll be a lifesaver for some folks.
Risk Protection Program and Cyber Insurance
[00:24:08] Brad Bussie: Yeah, I agree. You know, we've talked a lot about, you know, some of the technology things that we saw.
[00:24:16] One thing before the podcast, Mark and I were talking about, this was a partnership that I found pretty interesting. it's what they're calling the Expanded Risk Protection Program. So for those that aren't familiar, and this is just interesting for our listeners overall. I mean, as interesting as cyber insurance can be, but Google and really Google Cloud, they're partnering with a couple of major cyber insurers.
[00:24:47] I think what they were talking about Beasley and Chubb being two of the big ones and they're offering discounted cyber insurance, and what they're doing is they're basing that on the customer's cloud security posture. So Google is using their own tools and I believe in most cases they have to be a Google customer, but they're able to get in and take a look at what that true posture looks like. And that's how they do it. And we were joking, Mark and I were joking about, you know, this sounds like discount double check where you see all of those commercials where you plug in that little dongle to your vehicle and then you drive real nice because the nicer you drive, the cheaper your insurance is.
[00:25:35] And we felt very similarly like, okay, so this is interesting. You know, you're driving down the price of your cyber insurance based on your security and your posture. And that really makes a ton of sense. and they're looking at it from an interesting way because they're also offering what they're calling affirmative AI insurance coverage.
[00:26:02] And that's something new because in a lot of cases AI has kind of been the gray area but they're really looking at this, I feel the right way. And Chubb now has a line item or a rider where they're talking about, some quantum computing. So they're being very forward thinking in their approach, especially to emerging threats.
[00:26:28] Because we, on a previous podcast, talked a little bit about some of the risks of quantum computing being used for evil. And turning around and how would we defend against something like that? So Chubb is thinking about it and they're thinking about it from a risk and protection standpoint. So, I don't know.
[00:26:51] It was just something thought I'd bring up to our listeners because we found it interesting for a variety of our [00:27:00] verticals and our customers because what we're seeing is cyber insurance is getting more and more expensive, and it seems like they're covering less and less. And I would say if you're out there listening and you have to have a certain level of cyber insurance and you're unable to obtain it because it's too expensive or whatever's going on, consider some of the options that you have proving that your program is where you say it is from a posture perspective, because ultimately that could help drive down your premiums.
[00:27:35] And allow you to obtain the insurance that you need. So it's just cool to see Google, partnering with others and making some of that stuff happen.
ROI on Security Investments
[00:27:46] Mark Aksel: Yeah. We've seen, in a similar thread, we've seen these tools actually return money back to the company because of the savings like, let's just, I'm just gonna make up a number.
[00:27:59] It was 200K to put the investment out, put it all in there, put the tool in place, get the outcomes of it, and the insurance dropped by a little more. Right? So it's like, okay, well great. We got mature, the tool has paid for itself and we have, you know, a more secure posture on top of all those things.
[00:28:17] Now that's a awesome scenario, that's not gonna happen to most organizations, I wouldn't think. But the other aspect of that, and tying in not just insurance but of the investments needed, especially for SaaS-based platforms where you're doing a lot of storage in a SaaS environment or on-prem in some cases, if you look at your data and you find the duplicates, right?
[00:28:38] This is going beyond just the security, but the actual infrastructure side. I don't need seven duplicates of this data. Why do I have, and you can remove it that, especially with some of the challenges we're gonna be experiencing with, you know, bare metal and all those areas that we're gonna have, that's gonna be, finding its way through other areas of even though SaaS is someone else's computer ultimately they have to incur those cause which are gonna get passed onto us.
[00:29:03] I think that's another area that those cost savings and the total cost of ownership, not just security but all the other areas. These tools end up being hopefully a no-brainer in some scenarios when it comes to the investment needed but there's still time training all those other things that you have to incorporate.
[00:29:21] But yeah, data security posture management, cloud security, all the security posture managements I think are a great conversation and you and I have been talking about the insurance thing for quite a while. Which I think is more and more security is oftentimes just kind of tagged in and it's handled by legal, or it's handled by compliance and security is gonna be, can hopefully help drive some of that conversation and not just respond to it.
Favorite Aspects of Google Next
[00:29:47] Brad Bussie: Agreed, so, let me ask I kind of know what my favorite part of Google Next was. What, what was your favorite part? It could be show floor, it could be venue, it could be like, [00:30:00] whatever, but what was kind of the favorite thing that you saw or did at Google Next?
[00:30:07] Mark Aksel: I got to meet, I always love the show floor because I get to learn some technologies that frankly, in some cases I've never heard of.
[00:30:14] But overall I think my favorite overall theme was that folks are leaning in to not just Google, but AI I've leaned into AI heavily personally I use it every day. But as you start to lean in with AI future of security is gonna be leveraging and guarding against AI I've seen it coming as where if you looked at the Google floor, obviously there's a huge investment happening from many, many companies big, huge companies, smaller firms, startups, and that was one of the things I was gonna touch on earlier, but it's like, if you want to know where the future of security or things are going, follow the money, right? The VCs, insurance,
[00:30:57] Brad Bussie: yeah.
[00:30:58] Mark Aksel: They're investing heavily into these things, both to adapt new or protect against, or help alleviate whatever those are it seems the industry is jumping in headfirst in some of these scenarios. So I would say cautiously optimistic that this is going forward I think the conversations and the overall aspect is this is a good thing, but how do we do it securely?
[00:31:23] How do we do it smart? And finding skilled people to leverage it or implement or rely upon like a partner like us to do that, or a vendor that needs to do it or in-house people and finding those people I think is interesting but I would say my realization is it's not AI it's not AI magic, I should say, it is AI it is doing things and it's significant, in how we're adopting it.
Startup Hub and Future Technologies
[00:31:49] Brad Bussie: Yeah, yeah I like the show floor. I have to like hide my badge when I go through the show floor because I mean, our listeners, I'm sure you're thinking yeah, it's kind of crazy but when you are a CISO or a CTO, if you have the C in front of your title.
[00:32:11] It is like they're honed in on that and they come in and they try to talk to you whether you want to talk or not, which is, you know, sometimes it's pretty interesting but what I like about the show floor at Google Next is they have this thing called the startup hub and you have to scan your badge one time to get into the startup hub, and no one else in there is scanning badges.
[00:32:35] So you get to go in and you get to see some of the up and coming vendors, manufacturers, technologists, and they're leveraging the Google Cloud platform. And they're doing different things like one year I went in and they took a picture of me and then they ran it through an algorithm [00:33:00] and then it printed out a little card with a new picture of me and I looked like an anime character.
[00:33:07] And it was picking what job I should have and it was funny because at the bottom it said, you know, most likely to be a firefighter, which I found flattering.
[00:33:19] Mark Aksel: Flattering, right? Yeah,
[00:33:20] Brad Bussie: Yeah, but I remember, you know, in my yearbook, we had to do that senior year and it was most likely to be a published author. And it was just kind of cool to be in that little hub area. Because I got to see some things that may become, acquisitions of Google or they may make it out on the show floor next year based on some of the response. So I picked a couple, I'm not gonna name any names because some of them you're not even really allowed to talk about.
[00:33:54] But I saw some AI powered threat intel and analysis tools. There was another cloud security posture management and data security posture management solution in there, which seems like competition. But if you look at the fact that, you know, the Wiz acquisition hasn't gone through yet. they're still going to be third parties that are able to leverage the platform, which is good. There was some identity and access management goodness, some DevSecOps, we got to see some automated security orchestration and response. So not necessarily leveraging just what the Chronicle Siemplify, which is now Google SecOps.
Multi-Cloud Security Solutions
[00:34:44] Can do, but some additional, if you have a multi-cloud. So a lot of this was multi-cloud, but it was still interesting because I think Google takes a pretty good approach of multi-cloud. I mean, if you look at their SecOps platform, it's not just for Google. You could use it for AWS, you could use it for Azure and I thought that the vulnerability management and how one of the ones in there they were prioritizing.
[00:35:13] Using AI and ML and getting to peel back the covers and look at what the model looked like. That was just super interesting. I mean I can read a little bit of code, but this, they like opened it completely up and they were, they were going through, so there were really smart people there getting a lot more out of it than I was, but.
[00:35:34] It was, it was pretty interesting to see how all of that came together. So if, if you ever make it for our listeners, if you ever make it to Google Cloud next, I would strongly suggest you go take a look at the startup hub. And a lot of times they will ask just what, like, what vertical you're in. So are you in healthcare, are you in whatever?
[00:35:59] And then they [00:36:00] talk about how there are different solutions. Could potentially help in in your vertical. So. Mark. Did we, did we miss anything? I know, I know. We were, we were talking a lot about this episode and wanted to just highlight a couple of things. I mean, I think we summarized most of the big security announcements.
Vulnerability Management Challenges
[00:36:21] There was some other ones about like gks and like, protected assets and things like that, but that, that's all pretty like hardcore. And unless you're like really in the Google ecosystem, I think that you probably already know about this stuff. Anyway, you actually just touched on the last one, which I thought was interesting.
[00:36:42] vulnerability management. I don't know of a single client or person in the space who doesn't struggle with it regardless if they have all the tools or none of the tools, it's a strong space for Google to be assisting in. There was a couple of the startups, as you said, as well, helping that plan out.
[00:37:01] It's typically more in the cloud space that you know this is gonna operate in, but vulnerability management, just if they can help prioritize and not just reactive patch, all the things that's gonna help. And I know there's some other vendors out there that do that kind of, that's their wheelhouse and what they do.
[00:37:16] But if you can, as they're doing is pulling it in and having that. Ability within the single kind of, I don't wanna call it single pane of glass because that's the fun buzzword, but in that system and help to look at it and help, help to go patch, especially if you're running third party applications within it.
[00:37:31] that to me can help a lot like I said, every one of my clients that I've talked to has that problem. How, when, how often, who owns it, who's a responsibility, when's it get done. It's such a challenge for vulnerability management. I think AI helping with that is gonna be a tremendous time saver.
[00:37:49] And hope and security patch vulnerability patcher at the same time.
Closing Remarks
[00:37:53] Yeah. Yeah. I couldn't agree more. Well, Mark, thanks again for, for joining me and for our listeners out there. I look forward to the next time on the State of Enterprise IT security edition. Thanks for listening.
