Latest / Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth / 140: Ismet Geri, CEO at Veridium, talks in-depth about passwordless security

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140: Ismet Geri, CEO at Veridium, talks in-depth about passwordless security · Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth

• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Alright, raise your hand in the air if you love passwords.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I thought so.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: No one likes them, right?
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Users don't like passwords.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Operations, people, it just causes them headaches as well.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: And the promise of password less is sexy.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: But why are organizations not all doing this already?
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: There's real reasons.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Learn all about this market and the complexities from Ismet Jerry, the CEO of Viridium.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Sales Blue Bird podcast, which exists because at B2B startups, it is hard to get consistent traction and scale the sales team.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Sales Bluebird provides you tips, tricks, experiences, examples, ideas, and inspiration from people who know a thing or 10 about building cybersecurity startups.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: I am your host, Andrew Monahan.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Our guest today is Ismet Jerry, CEO at Viridium.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Ismet, welcome to Sales Bluebird.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Good afternoon, Andrew.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's going to be an interesting conversation.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Passwordless security is a term that I've heard a little bit recently, and I'm kind of really intrigued to know how Viridium is tackling that.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: And that's going to be the source of our conversation today.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: But before we get into that, I want to get to know the real Ismet.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: And to do that, what I've got is a little spin-the-wheel thing here.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to pick out three questions for us that I'm going to ask you.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we're going to get to know the real you is I do this.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to hit the button and we'll see what it spins up for you.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: So dive bar or cocktail bar?
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: Cocktail bar.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Cocktail bar?
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Cool.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Next one is do you prefer a suite of the four seasons or a cabin in the woods?
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's a good one.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: Cabin at the woods.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah?
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Last one.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: What's one great airport that you've been to that you really like?
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: Look, I went to many, many airports, and uh I can't say that there is one that I like most than any other one, you know.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: I have been too much on airports.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: So, but I can tell you the one I dislike the most.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: Heathrow is probably one of the worst.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: I am with you on that.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Even though I live in the US now, I'm originally a Brit.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: From a very, very young age.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: I first went through Heathrow many years ago, and uh it's an interesting experience.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's also expensive to go through.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what the right data is, but it does seem to have a high percentage of lost bags when you're transiting through Heathrow.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: So when I go back to Scotland, for example, I try and avoid Heathrow, because I know that some of the times my bags are not going to show up at the same time I do when I land in Edinburgh.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: So it's interesting.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, my two worst experiences were Chicago Airport and Heathrow.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, let's go.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: So let's talk about Viridium, right?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: So you guys are early stage.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: Where are you on your journey right now?
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: So, Andrew, we are, I think that we passed the early stage.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: We are growing almost a high growth uh scale up in this cybersecurity industry.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: We uh did our uh last fundraise was a B round in 2018.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: We are working on a new one in uh hopefully before the end of this year.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: But yes, uh it's growing quite high.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: And uh the good thing about our market is that there is a clear adoption on our technology and uh on the password less.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: So a high growth scale up, I would say.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: And if I looked at LinkedIn, it said you had about 50 employees.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: Does that sound about right?
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that we are close to like 60 now, right?
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we are close to 60 employees all in all.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so you've been around for a little bit and now you're in the in the mode of scaling up, and you might take an hour around before the end of the year to do that.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: So, Esmond, I'm a sales guy through and through.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm also from Scotland.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: We're simple people from Scotland.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: I know you live in the London area, so you you might know some Scots.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Explain to me what Viridium does in words that I would understand.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Andrew, I will make it very simple, like in one phrase.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: We eliminate passwords.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so our mission is really to kill passwords to eliminate passwords.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: So if I have to summarize the Iridium mission, it is eliminating passwords.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I can tell you why, why, what are the benefits of eliminated passwords?
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: But yes, this is kind of like uh the bold statement we want to eliminate passwords in the customer journey.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's talk about the big why then.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, why do people latch onto this idea?
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, look, I mean, I know, Andrew, you are in this cybersecurity space since a while, since like many, many years.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: I am uh in this uh industry since more than 25 years, okay.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: And it has been notable that uh this past year, cyber crimes are just growing massively, right?
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of data breaches every day.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: We have security breaches every day, we have threats every day on the digital world.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: One key element and one common criteria of all the security breaches are related to uh digital identity, to credentials, to passwords.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so this is one key problem that we have in our industry.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: So by eliminating passwords, we are solving one very, very critical issue.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: The second one is around user experience, uh, seamless user experience, frictionless user experience.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so this is another area where we are helping our customers, the users, right, to enhance their user experience.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: And the third element is around compliance regulations, right?
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: In different jurisdictions, you have financial regulations, you have governmental regulations, and companies, enterprises have to comply uh specifically around the way they authentic, they authenticate the users, right?
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: Elimited passwords also help in this area.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: So we are solving security issues, we are solving productivity issues, we are enhancing the experience, the user experience, and also helping to be compliant.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: I love the idea of removing passwords, right?
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't think you'd find anyone and say, oh no, no, I really love trying to remember my passwords.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, single sign-on helped a lot with trying to make users' lives a little bit easier.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to think though, I mean, the concept of passwordless has been around for a little bit.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Why are not every single company doing this?
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: What's holding people back from doing it right now?
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: So the concept, and in theory, it was here since uh a while, right?
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: In terms of aspiration.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: However, it is not so easy to uh set up a solution, right?
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: Such as Verdium solution to enable a true passwordless experience across application in an enterprise.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, this is one thing, and I can develop that aspect.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: The second thing is around biometric adoption, right?
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: So, biometric is one of the key enablers of passwordless strong authentication.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, and this is related to NIST, this is related to NSI, this is related to a lot of uh organization, to FIDO to start uh work to standardize.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: And this past years, we all noticed the acceleration growth of biometric uh usage adoption.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, like five years ago, users were not so happy, so inclined to use their biometrics for authentication, for instance.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: Now, with all the smartphones, with um this embedded biometric solutions.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: So the adoption around biometrics has also been improved quite significantly.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: You know, by combining these two, we are now in a position, a situation to enable a true password experience, will it be in an enterprise world or in a consumer world?
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: And in the enterprise world, uh you said at the start, it's really difficult, it's hard to do it.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: Can we go a little bit deeper on why is it so hard?
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Is it just the biometric side or just something else?
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so just to make it clear, it is hard to get the solution, to get the platform up and running, and you know, it took us quite a while to develop it.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: Because in an enterprise, you have a very complex organization, you have hundreds of applications, you have web applications, you have cloud applications, you have legacy mainframe applications, you know.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: So you have desktop logon, you have virtual desktop logon.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: So you need to have a comprehensive solution, a platform, authentication platform, passwordless authentication platform, to be able to seamlessly plug in into all these applications across the board to enable that experience, right?
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: Because the goal, the ultimate goal is to have a consistent password experience across the board for all users and all applications.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like logging into a desktop, Windows Desktop, right?
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's quite easy.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you have many solutions in the market.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: Now you even have like Windows Hello who can enable this, you know.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: So getting passwordless, it's easy.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: But if you want to have the same experience, for instance, in a Citrix virtual desktop, right?
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: It starts to be a bit more complex.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: Then when you have some edge use cases where users don't want to use a smartphone, their own smartphone, or they are not allowed to use a smartphone, you know, how do you enable the same user experience, passwordless experience?
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: So it has taken a while for Verdium to build that platform, to have a very comprehensive approach, and again, to enable a consistent user experience across the board with all these applications.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I get that.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm a user, I just want it all to go away.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want some of it to go away.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to have to try and figure out do I go passwordless or password or get confused, right?
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: Users will get confused by that.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: So, what's the big innovation, the big difference that Viridium is bringing to market or has brought to market, is Matt?
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so we have about 80, 80 issued patents on our authentication platform, on our biometric solutions, on our behavior biometric solutions.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: So Viridium has invested and keep on investing substantially on innovation.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: So, right, 80 patents.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: And believe me, if we compare this to any uh scale-up vendor at the size of Viridium, it's quite impressive.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: So we are really investing.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: So we innovated quite substantially on our own biometric solution around facial recognition and fingerprint capture.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: So, for instance, we were the first vendor who brought into the market a contactless fingerprint capture, a contactless fingerprint capture.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: And these days, because of COVID, by the way, which just amplified this, right?
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: Contactless fingerprint capture or contactless biometric capture, generally speaking, is just taking off.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: So we innovated quite substantially.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: As I told you, we also innovated a lot around the comprehensive approach of our platform.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: As I said, enterprises have complex organizations.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: So the solution has to work with all these applications.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: Being agnostic to identity providers, this was also a very key element on which we work.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: Being agnostic to authenticators, not only supporting smartphones as a token, but we support many other varieties of authenticators.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: And the last piece, which is where we quite invest quite substantially as the next step, is around behavior biometrics.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: So we will bring, we are bringing and will bring more and more behavior biometrics into the equation of contextual, intelligent, passwordless authentication.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: So let me understand more about the behavioral analytics.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: Is that like user behavior and someone's doing something different?
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: Or is there some more depth to that?
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so currently what we use is based on AI and sophisticated neural networks.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: We are capturing a pattern in respect of the motion of a device.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: So the way you handle the device will provide a pattern for Andrew, right?
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: And from this pattern, we are capable of detecting if someone else is potentially handling Andrew's device or not, you know, because you have some fraud situation where you may have a legitimate authentication, right?
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: You may have a legitimate authentication based on facial recognition.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: But how can you be sure 100% that it is you, Andrew, who has been authenticated?
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, maybe someone forced you to authenticate, you know.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: So by enabling, activating the behavior biometrics, you have kind of like third layer of security, of fraud prevention to assess genuinely if it is Andrew or not.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so this is something that we are working on, and this is very, very interesting for again fraud prevention scenarios or plugging this into security and operating centers to get some alerts around suspicious activities.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so this is based on the motion, and this is where we innovate a lot.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: And we also collect a lot of contextual information, right?
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: And all of this give us a unique pattern per user that we keep learning, that we keep enhancing, okay, as a third layer of uh security.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds incredibly complex to do, isn't it?
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: But it must be a real benefit, right, in terms of the keeping the authentication valid.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: So currently we don't use it as an authentication or as an authenticator, as an authentication factor.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: We use it as a third layer for fraud prevention.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: But at some point it could be, right?
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: And it could be that we get close to a recognition instead of doing an authentication.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: So this is kind of aspect that we are working on.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: But currently, yes, we have a platform that enables this true passwordless authentication or multi-factor passwordless authentication because it is a journey across applications in this large enterprises, or not only large enterprises, you know.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: Because, Andrew, what I can tell you is that passwordless gets you addicted.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: Whenever you start having a passwordless experience into applications, then you want to get that experience across the board, right?
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: And this is why it will not be only large enterprises, but all enterprises will go to passwordless at some point.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: But right now, is it the larger enterprises who are more sophisticated to really A, understand it and B, be able to put in the solution?
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, we we started first with a very large, sophisticated enterprise.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, we have one of a 1420 as a customer, very sophisticated, global, over 100,000 employees.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, they wanted to move from their legacy, token-based kind of hardware token-based kind of authentication, for example, in some geographies, through software-based password authentication.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, and their initial request was to set up a multi-factor authentication.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: When we came with our value proposition and being able to enable a true password experience across those applications, they adopted it.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: And currently they have about 100,000 employees that use Verdium platform every day, multiple times a day, to authenticate into their desktop, into their virtual desktop, into their legacy applications, into the code applications, right?
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: But we get more and more demand now from medium and small size organizations because they have the same challenges, right?
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: Around security, around productivity, around compliance.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I can see that.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm a much smaller organization, then I don't want to have to deal with the hassle of passwords and dealing with users forgetting them and things like that.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: This would be very attractive.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, if it is complicated to do, it might hold them back a little bit, right?
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: So for us, it took some time to develop that platform.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: But when it comes to a setup, when it comes to an implementation, when it comes to getting live into customers, right?
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: I will just give you an example.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: We signed a customer a few months ago with close to 3,000 employees.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: They had about 10 applications that they wanted to get passwordless.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: It took us two weeks to make the setup and implementation, right?
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: So it's quite straightforward for this reasonable, small-size organizations.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: With large organizations, very complex organizations, it took us two months to uh set up a true, genuine passwordless experience across the board.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: And this is why I said in my introduction, quite uh some time to develop this platform, right?
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: But now to get into live production, it's quite easy and straightforward.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: As soon as the project has been properly scoped, the application that has been properly scoped, right, is quite straightforward.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a couple of months in a bigger organization seems pretty fast given the you know the usual project timelines that you hear about, right?
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: So that's impressive.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: Moving over to the go-to-market side, isn't uh what's your current status with a sales team and building out your sales motions?
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, so we have a direct go-to-market and indirect.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: So we have a very small sales team, but highly productive.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: You know, at the end of the day, is uh to be as much as productive as possible, to be uh as much as focused as possible on this targeted regions, on the targeted verticals, on the targeted customers.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: So this is what we are doing with our uh sales team.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: So I have a very small sales team in the US and a small sales team in Europe, and indirect, so we are working with some partners, will it be global SIs or local partners that promote our solution regionally in some territories, again, will it be in Europe or in the US?
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: So to summarize, we have a direct and indirect uh go-to-market.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: How easy was it to build the indirect channel given the complexity or the whole different way of thinking that you have to get the prospect to think about?
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we were let's say fortunate enough that we got approached by these partners because their customers were asking to get such kind of solutions.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so we got approached by these partners, like we are working with one of a global SI, more specifically in Europe, right?
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: One of their large customers asked them to come with such kind of solutions.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: So they approached us.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: My main challenge at this stage is to be able to onboard these partners as quick as possible as they expect.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know, partner enablement is a key, uh, partner training is a key, you know, and this requires uh quite a substantial organization.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: So this is where I see uh the challenge, and this is an area where we are investing.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: So you'll invest in the channel side first, the SI side first, and then the REC side second.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: Is that what I'm hearing?
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: We invest in in parallel, but what I want to enforce in the coming months is indeed our indirect go-to-market through this channel, resellers, and global SIs.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, got it.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: So if you look at let's say the end of 23, and let's say you get your round if you need it by the end of the year, how big do you think your sales team will grow?
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: So, in our let's say budget planning, the goal is at least to double the go-to-market uh team.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: So it encompasses the sales team, the channel sales team, the system engineers, right?
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: The pre-sales uh who have to support the technical aspect.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: So we plan to at least double our go-to-market team.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: Got it.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then finally, looking at five years, what's the big vision for Viridium, Esmond?
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, looking at five years in our industry is quite a challenge, to be totally honest.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's moving so fast, right?
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: So again, we spent a lot of time to develop the platform to educate the market.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: We see since the beginning of this year a clear acceleration of the adoption.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: Even the big guys like Microsoft, Apple, Google did some big press releases around passwordless enablement, around password adoption.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: So the market is growing quite significantly, and we have a lot to do to capture, I hope, the biggest market share in this industry.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: This is one thing.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: And the second thing, yes, we keep investing on innovation, right?
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I talked about the behavior biometrics.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: This is an area where I really want to be also one of a leader where we invest substantially.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's so important.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: And as you know, I'm sure there's millions of people out there wishing that uh password list was something they could uh get into right now because it's such a pain to deal with, both in a user standpoint, but also from an admin standpoint.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: So wishing you every success for 22 and 23.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: If someone wants to continue the conversation with you, Ismet, what's the best way to get hold of you?
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: I think that the best way is just to ping me on a message on LinkedIn.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: LinkedIn's the best way?
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely, yes.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if you want to get hold of Ismet, he's on LinkedIn.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: Look for the CEO of Iridium.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: Ismet Jerry is a full name.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: And with that, uh Ismet, many thanks indeed for joining me today and uh wish you every success for 2022.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: Andrew, thanks for having me.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks a lot and uh have a great day.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, many thanks to Ismet for that conversation.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: I thought it was really useful for understanding more about that world, the complexities of the world, and what's going on there.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: I had three main takeaways.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, it was the importance in that world of indirect channels.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: And he talked about the SIs, and that makes a whole ton of sense.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: These are the people doing big projects, big innovations inside large companies, and we'll be all over this type of thing.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: This is not maybe right now the usual security channel play at the moment.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's where I got from that.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: The second one was the complexity of doing passwordless.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's so many ways that people interact with systems and types of systems and different apps and things like that, that it is incredibly complex.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: And as has been said, you know, you can't have it passwordless for some and not for other things.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: You'll kind of expect it for everything.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: So it was interesting to hear him talk about that.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the final thing was thinking about the depth of biometrics and authentication needed if you're not doing password lists, right?
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: Attacks coming in, stolen identity or proofed identities is one of the biggest vectors.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore, you know, doing this at greater depth seems to be a big area.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I like what Ismant was talking about there with biometric authentication, biometrics.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: So many thanks again to Verdi and to Ismet for the conversation.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope to find these uh