Sumedh Thakar, CEO of Qualys, discusses the company's evolution from vulnerability management to comprehensive risk operations. He explains why organizations need a Risk Operations Center (ROC) separate from their SOC, focusing on proactive risk management rather than reactive breach detection.

Thakar talks about how Qualys is standardizing risk scores across vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and identities to give organizations a single view of their security posture. He also addresses the balance between prevention and detection, the role of AI in accelerating security operations, and why profitability matters as much as growth in cybersecurity.

Key Takeaways:
• ROC focuses on proactive risk management while SOC handles reactive breach detection
• Standardized risk scoring helps organizations prioritize what actually matters to their business
• AI and agentic automation can help defenders match attacker speed
• Consolidation is possible without abandoning best-of-breed tools
• Risk management ultimately comes down to money: potential loss vs. mitigation cost

Chapters:
0:05 - ROCon Conference Introduction
0:27 - What is ROC (Risk Operations Center)
1:52 - Why ROC is different from SOC
3:43 - Rethinking prevention and detection
4:59 - Standardizing risk scores
8:54 - True Risk Score and prioritization
14:15 - Qualys Business strategy
16:05 - AI and agentic automation in security

Interview recorded at Qualys ROCon 2024

This episode of the Techzine TV Podcast comes to you from Atlassian Team Europe, Atlassian's annual event in Barcelona. Sander and Atlassian CTO Rajeev Rajan discuss the company's pragmatic approach to AI. A key part of that is that Atlassian maintains strict data privacy principles. That is, it doesn't train its AI on customer data. Still, it aims to deliver powerful AI capabilities through Rovo.

Rajan explains how the Teamwork Graph technology connects work data across 80+ applications, enabling permission-aware search and intelligent agents. He addresses the reality that only 4% of companies see company-wide AI benefits today, emphasizing the need for both C-level commitment and grassroots experimentation. The conversation covers AI model selection, data sovereignty, automation strategies, and why Atlassian focuses on end-user scenarios rather than building LLMs.

Key takeaways:
• Atlassian doesn't train AI on customer data - they're custodians, not owners
• The Teamwork Graph connects data across 80+ apps with permission-aware access
• Rovo offers three capabilities: search, chat, and autonomous agents
• AI adoption requires both top-down goals and bottom-up experimentation
• Only 4% of companies currently see broad AI benefits
• Atlassian uses multiple models (OpenAI, Claude, open source) for different use cases
• Data residency available in 11 regions for sovereignty requirements

Chapters:
0:09 - Introduction to Atlassian's AI Strategy
1:06 - Rovo AI Platform Overview
2:16 - Data Privacy and Responsible AI
3:09 - The Teamwork Graph Technology
9:04 - AI Adoption Challenges in Enterprises
11:16 - Top-Down vs Bottom-Up AI Strategy
15:17 - The Future Impact of AI
17:00 - Background and Building World-Class Teams

In this conversation, Rob Rae from Pax8 and Sander from Techzine TV discuss the evolving landscape of managed service providers (MSPs) in relation to cybersecurity and artificial intelligence (AI).

The conversation highlights the critical role of cybersecurity in the MSP market and the increasing importance of AI as a tool for efficiency and productivity.

The discussion also touches on the challenges of data privacy in Europe and the transition from traditional MSPs to Managed Intelligence Providers (MIPs). Rae emphasizes the need for MSPs to adapt to these changes and leverage new technologies to stay competitive.

AI is changing the MSP game, are you ready for it? Watch this episode of Techzine TV.

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction to Pax8 and Market Trends
03:06 The Impact of Cybersecurity on MSPs
06:07 AI's Role in Managed Services
09:00 Pax8's Marketplace and AI Integration
11:47 Navigating Data Privacy in Europe
14:48 The Evolution from MSP to MIP