Tech Talks Daily
00:04:42 · Neil C. Hughes
[00:04:42] S0: Wow. An incredibly cool journey that you've been on there. And as a matter of a similar age, it's... I still find it amazing and fascinating and exciting just how we've seen technology grow, and in particular, the last three years, of course, it is just incredible. But do you ever look back at how far you've come? It's a bit like the Steve Jobs quote that you can't join up the dots looking forward. It's only when you look back and see see that. And then now, obviously, at Pathlock and how the the stars have almost aligned there, and you've got everything that you need at the right time. Do you ever sit down and and reflect and think about that?
00:05:17 · Chris Radkowski
[00:05:17] S1: I do. I do often. You know, it's it's important to kind of reflect on where you were to kind of judge where you might go as well. Yeah. You know, an AI is upon us. I mean, I... I'm sure you've had a lot of AI podcasts, but, you know, it's it's a profound effect on or will be a profound effect on everyone. And I remember way back in the day, I think it was my parents maybe suggested, hey. You know, you better learn about computers. I think computers are gonna be important in the future. And I think we're at that kind of moment now where, you know, you better learn about AI because it's gonna be important going forward. My journey is... I don't know. It made it a little different. I had a I had almost, like, two lives. Yeah. So I spent a long time in the aerospace industry. I was a... I was an engineer, electrical engineer, and responsible for a a component that went on the guidance system for commercial satellites. So, you know, everything you're seeing about space and SpaceX and, you know, satellite TV, you know, the important thing is that, you know, those satellites point at the Earth and, not off in space somewhere. And so I was responsible for a component that went on the satellite, which was a completely different sort of industry. Right? And I had a... I had a... An opportunity to change, and I somehow convinced someone that I knew about mobile devices and wireless communication, and they they brought me on as a product manager for a company in, you know, in what became single sign on. Right? Yeah. So that evolved into identity management, which involved into lots of other domains, which, you know, at... You know, if you look... Go up the stack from network to network to, you know, operating systems to applications, we're really talking about identity management for for for business applications. You know? At least that's what my my focus has been for quite some time now.
00:07:21 · Neil C. Hughes
[00:07:21] S0: Incredibly cool. And bringing you straight back down to earth and the present day, ERP transformation programs, they're something that tend to celebrate automation, yes, but also speed and efficiency. But another topic close to your heart here is why risk is so often missing from the boardroom conversation when we're talking about this stuff. So tell me a little bit more about that and and why you see that risk.
00:07:46 · Chris Radkowski
[00:07:46] S1: Jeez. That's a great question. You know, one of the things that has been driving me, in conversations a lot is the the sheer size and scale that our customers are operating in. And you know that when something isn't working right in your system, if SAP goes down, for example... I was talking to a a a large consumer goods company, and they were telling me that if SAP isn't working properly... I mean, literally, trucks back up outside the factory, and they can't make shampoo. Yeah. And it kind of puts it all into context where, you know, if something isn't working right within the ERP system, they can't receive goods. You can't you can't process the the goods you need to support any kind of manufacturing line. And that happens within shampoo, and you can imagine if you're if you're a large supplier, the the the raw ingredients come on trucks. I mean, that's shocking in itself. But if you're an auto manufacturer and you have to stop manufacturing even for a brief moment, it... It's massive. And so the risk involved in ERP cuts a couple different ways. You know? These systems are running running businesses almost in their entirety. And so the risk the risk of the risk of a security event, the risk of the system having to be brought down, the risk of compliance, issue, the risk of material weakness are all critical when you're looking at an ERP transformation. And so the technology under the covers... I mean, there are significant differences. And so in these transformation programs, often, you know, it's it's a mad dash to go live. And so a lot of the times, you know, risk, risk for per per particular... Certain types of risks aren't often thought of in advance. And that's one of the things at PathLock that we that we really focus on, particularly when it comes to, you know, risk that that are in... That's related to compliance activities, risk related to users who can, you know, manipulate or change, you you know, financial information, the risk in, you know, reporting incorrect numbers to Wall Street, you know, and those kinds of things have legal implications that go far beyond just the, you know, just just the amount of fraud or something that could be committed.
00:10:12 · Chris Radkowski, Neil C. Hughes
So, when you are going through a transformation, one of the critical things you have to consider is the the role design, you know, that's behind the scenes that grant users the entitlements they need to do their jobs. And at PathLock, one of the key one of the key things we focus on is ensuring that those roles don't have a a toxic combination of entitlements that grant users the ability ability to steal things from the organization, transfer money to their friends or family, all these sorts... Types of scenarios. [00:10:48] S0: And, of course, a few months ago, you mentioned early days of single sign on and identity management. And, again, fast forward to present day, identity management means a whole lot more, especially as AI agents and automated workflows all gain access to SAP, Oracle, and Workday. So how are you seeing the definition of a privileged account changing?
00:11:12 · Chris Radkowski
[00:11:12] S1: Well, there's a couple things. You know, we have... We've been trying to differentiate a privileged account in a business system versus, you you know, administrator accounts in sort of IT systems. And privileged accounts in SAP can be granted a, you know, SAP all access, which is everything. And and so those those accounts can have incredibly sensitive and, you know, critical access. You can imagine what is the most sensitive thing your company... Most sensitive information that your company wants to protect. You know, like, for example, you know, Coca Cola wants to protect the formula. You know? NVIDIA wants to protect the designs for their, you know, their their advanced chips. And so who has access to that information is extremely critical. And within a company like Coca Cola, if you could reverse engineer the materials they're buying, then you could conceivably figure out the formula. And so the access to those particular sets of authorizations on who's allowed to interact with the vendors in order that that that material to make the product is often highly protected and will will will be isolated down to just a few people. Right? And so privilege access is is extremely critical and has to be managed very carefully. And as AI is coming along, it's just blurring the lines completely because you have users who are accessing systems that can perform functions, operations at a certain rate, and you have AI agents that are instead interacting with APIs for the application that can process transactions at a rate that's faster than any human conceivably could. So the ability to manage both API access, other interfaces, for AI agents as well as as user access is is a is a critical function of, you know, the app to consider for for privileged users.