Redefining IT Infrastructure: Exploring Automation, Cloud-Based PKI and the Future of AI in Cybersecurity

Are you ready to redefine how you look at your IT infrastructure? Our special guest today is Muguresh Sanderana, the director of product management for HID's cloud-based PKI as a service offering. Together, we will navigate the critical world of automation in managing IT infrastructure, shedding light on how it can revolutionize worker productivity and fortify IT resilience. We delve into the importance of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and the common challenges companies face while managing their PKI infrastructure. Muguresh brings to light the unique advantages of moving PKI to the cloud and introduces us to the concept of being "automation native". 

Imagine a world where automation rules and makes data analysis and certificate lifecycle management a breeze. We discuss how this shift can drastically reduce cyber risk and boost efficiency. If you're not automating, you're not just lagging behind but also giving hackers the upper hand. Looking to the future, we explore the potential of Artificial Intelligence in refining these processes further. Muguresh shares fascinating insights on how AI can push companies towards more automation and quicker decision-making. Tune in to this enlightening conversation on how automation and AI can redefine cybersecurity.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Powering trusted identities of the world's people, places and things. Every day, millions of people in more than 100 countries use our products and services to securely access physical and digital places. Over 2 billion things that need to be identified, verified and tracked are connected through HID Global's technology.

Speaker 2: 0:24

We've looked at how worker productivity can be improved with automation, but we need to look at how IT itself, it infrastructure, will benefit from automation. Because you know, unfortunately in IT sometimes they're not the quickest to adopt their own technologies. But in the case of automation, it seems to me that this confluence of worker shortage, complexity, increased number of endpoints, the opportunity to use the cloud and have all of these devices on a network, absolutely demands that you automate first and not go to manual and then repave that cow path with automation. So is an automation really the first priority and not going to manual processes first?

Speaker 3: 1:10

Absolutely, absolutely, and PKI has been around for many, many decades. However, it's very niche, so hard to find a resource as an expert who is actually who knows PKI and manage the PKI, and that's why the evolution of cloud. I mean, a lot of companies come to us with the exact same problem that they had established their own PKI infrastructure within their enterprises. Now the team has left and if they have abandoned implementation of PKI, they want to move it to the cloud so they don't need to worry about it. Right? I mean, that's a real problem out there.

Speaker 2: 1:51

Yeah, so maybe we can coin our own term. Today We've got, of course, cloud native, but it seems to me what we're talking about now is automation native when it comes to security use cases and also, I think, probably more broadly, in IT infrastructure maintenance and resilience.

Speaker 3: 2:07

Absolutely, absolutely. I think automation is not nice to have anymore, it's a must have and it's a first. I think you need to look at how you can automate as much as you can. I mean, we on our platform, we provide all the data and analytics to the customers. However, our goal is that IP admin shouldn't be even logging into those platforms. Everything should be coming to them and it should be workforce multiplied. Everything should be automated in a way that they don't need to worry about those things in a day-to-day life and they can just move on from that.

Speaker 2: 2:46

Another thing you get when you automate is you get the data trail of what you've been doing, which you can then analyze and then improve on the process. So you also get a data trail, which is another side benefit. But while we're talking about benefits Muguresh in this use case do you have some metrics of improvement or value when it comes to people who have more fully automated their PKI infrastructure?

Speaker 3: 3:12

Yeah, I mean from the efficiency wise. The way we see it is almost about 90 to 100% workforce multiplier in terms of managing the certificate lifecycle automation. So you basically get rid of the Excel spreadsheet, the manual way of doing things, which improves your efficiency and reduces the risk of having the expired certs and your server down. So it's like both way. It helps you and your team to really do things more properly and, importantly, reduces your cyber risk.

Speaker 2: 3:53

Right, and of course the bad guys are out there looking for any way in and they're going to start looking towards the edge more and more. But if you can be proactive in getting your certificates and certificate life cycles managed well, then you don't have to be reactive after a breach, and so proactive and automation kind of go hand in hand.

Speaker 3: 4:13

Yeah, I mean, if you look at how hackers are using automated technology, I think you would be surprised and surprised to learn that they are using it more than the corporations, right? I mean, it's the same technology also can be used in another way as well, right? So we need to be mindful about that. If you're not going to leverage it, you're going to fall behind. If you're not automating, you're going to be falling behind and losing that war against hackers, right, and we don't want to be in that situation.

Speaker 2: 4:46

Alright. Well, we're almost out of time. As we look to the future, as we get that data trail, as we automate more fully, as we have PKI as a service and management of certificates in their life cycle as a service, can we start looking to machine learning and even, ultimately a topic of the day artificial intelligence, to further improve on these processes and on their security and efficiency?

Speaker 3: 5:13

Absolutely, I think. The evolution of the AI and how, what we have seen in the last one year that option of chat, GPT and all that it is evident that AI will be core part of the cybersecurity and the technology is more going to be embedded within the products and offerings, which is going to help companies become more automated, and the decision making would be even faster with the AI. Right, it's going to be kind of your other hand doing things without you knowing it and helping you overall, Right, I mean AI is going to be tremendously important in cybersecurity and how the things are going to evolve in the future. So I'm really looking forward to that, but things are shaping up very, very quickly on that front. Well, very good.

Speaker 2: 6:12

I'm afraid we'll have to leave it there. We've run out of time for this fireside chat. Thank you, Muguresh Sanderana, director of product management for HID's cloud based PKI as a service offering. Thank you so much for your valuable insights.