Well first of all, thank you for inviting me to present today. It's been good. I've
been in St. Vincent a few times, good to be back. I've worked with a few
of you guys down here, so it's really appreciative that I was invited to talk
on behalf of ISOC and just bring some knowledge around what we see around
resiliency within networks and so forth like that and also the security aspect
of it and how it can bring value to organizations within St. Vincent and the
Grandines. So just a little bit about Fortinet, we're a cybersecurity and
networking company, one of the largest in the world, very large customer base. We
believe a lot in R&D, strong billing, so we understand what's happening within
cybersecurity and we understand what's happening in networking and we just
want to give you ideas and solutions around resiliency, especially with what
occurred with Hurricane Beryl. I'm based in Barbados, so it did affect us also as
being one Caribbean, we understand these things happen, so we as society need to
understand how we could be better prepared and how we can work together as
a team because it depends on everybody from the providers to the technology to
the people, the process, everything needs to work hand-in-hand to see how better
we can ensure that systems are up and running, critical systems, communication
and we at Fortinet will play a small part in that but as my speakers
before me said, it's important for us to work hand-in-hand.
NEMO and CNW and other providers, it's not a one-fit-all solution for everybody
and it can never be perfect, so we have to figure out what's critical and
non-critical as we go forward. Just basically, this is who we are, over 14,000
employees, support centres, dev centres globally throughout the US and the rest
of the world. Myself, I'm based in Barbados, in our region we have 13 people
that cover the rest of SEC, engineering plus commercial people, so
Fortinet always believes where we have our solutions, we're invested within
these countries and at Fortinet, how we look at things is a platform approach, so
how we look at technology. We don't bring out technology in a siloed approach, how
can you as a customer have something integrated from networking to
SOC operations to endpoint, how can everything be working together and that
kind of helps when there is an issue or is a disaster within a country, how can
these things come up and running as quickly as possible and where we could
play a part in assisting around that. And as I said earlier, we believe a lot in
R&D and you can see that we invest over to a third of our revenue into R&D and
stuff like that because the continuous battle around cyber and so forth like
that. So we do have one operating system, we have our own processors, we have cloud
infrastructure, we've been in AI and machine learning for over 10 years, I
know that's a big buzz now but we've been using it as part of our technology and I
think as the guy from CMW said that we need to have automation within our
systems and that's a key thing and that's what we believe in. And just to
kind of show you, AI is the buzz now but we've been utilizing AI from contextual
to big data AI to our network operations to our language learning machines. This
is just showing you validation from third-party analysts who we are, leaders
in firewalling, SD-WAN, wired and wireless and so forth. So we are recognized out
there, we do work a lot throughout the entire region from private sector to
government to small business. Continue showing that we are across all major
major industries, we are part of their environment. Just showing our
innovation, our big around innovation as you could say we're leaders in
innovation over some of our competitors. Right and I think this is where I'll kind
of show you the technology a little bit. As we all know during during a storm, a
hurricane, how do we get communication, how do we be able to get out to the
persons out there within either critical business, critical business from
government to maybe emergency workers and so forth like that. So we do have our
leading, our firewall solution which can act as a router, which also can provide
communications either depending how we get that data. So basically if a flow is
up or digital cell is up, they can put that within our router and we do have
certain technologies that be able to ensure that data, critical access to
critical data, ensuring access to certain business critical applications and
communications right. And then we do have the entire platform for switching
to APs, to surveillance, to PBXs. I'll go into some of these in a little more
detail that'll be beneficial around resiliency. So we do have like 40
extenders, SD1 and so forth like that. I won't go into everything because that'll
probably take a long time right, but I'm just showing you the the breadth of the
portfolio and I think the key thing for us is once we have connectivity back to
your environment or your data, how can we ensure that the security of it right. The
telecoms will provide you connectivity but you want to ensure that data is
secured and your communications are secured over that network and we can
provide those technologies for you. We have it from cloud-based to on-premise
to SaaS offerings and so forth like that. So as you can see it's a very wide
portfolio. Today specifically is around resiliency but we do have technologies
that could meet a majority of your business needs. If you if we want to go
if you need that, if you have any questions, we can always jump into any
specific details around that. This kind of just shows us as a company. So we
are partnered from addressing cyber risks. So we are partnered with Interpol
and so forth like that. World Economic Forum are pledged in terms of emissions.
Our pledge of training people. We're at the over 1 million people cyber experts
by 2026. We're actually at halfway point of that. We are over 500,000 people and
all our courses are available at no cost. Our certification courses, we've opened
that up since COVID. So you have access to our certification material. So it's
very important for us in the region and it is a skill set that's in demand out
there. So this is where I kind of begin the story in terms of how can we how
can we protect our critical assets. How can we ensure as a country, as a Caribbean,
we protect assets that are critical to our citizens, for our assets that are
required for hospitals, any financial institutions, anything that's required to
ensure a country gets going again. Electric water and so forth like that.
And in terms of that, it's not just the technology, right? It's kind of developing
a plan. How can we get a plan out there and how can we ensure this plan is tested
and how can we ensure that people following the plan. The technology is
just a small part of it. It's really part of having a plan, the people in the
processes and also a key thing is to have legislation in place that things
actually get moving. And we all live in the region, so we know things can always
be sometimes slowed down or things aren't put on a priority list on thing
until things happen. So as we know, devastation did happen across St.
Vincent and another region, not St. Vincent, Karikou and Union Island and so forth like
that. So when we look at a plan, we need to come up with a BC plan or disaster
recovery plan. And they kind of work hand in hand because if you don't have these
things in place, when something does happen, you don't know what to do or what
to recover or how to plan your business. I think that's very important. So we
follow, we look at the NIST framework. Our technology does follow the NIST framework
but it's something that I think a majority of persons should kind of look
at and it doesn't have to go into all the detail when you're making a plan but
have things in place and testing of the plan is important as Lennox said before.
And the plan kind of outlines, you can either have from cybersecurity breaches to
natural calamities to technical glitches or unforeseen circumstances. And we all
live in a world now that things like that happen. And NIST is something that's
available online as a business. You can actually go and look at the framework
and we actually match certain technology back to NIST so you can actually put
things in place. So I thought this was a good place to start. A BCP plan is a
business continuity plan. So how can you maintain essential functions during a
disruption? That's important. And then a disaster recovery plan, how do you
actually get your business up back and running? And I think these two things
are key because you want to safeguard your existing systems plus you want to
get back to some normalcy. And how do you do that? I won't go through everything
but it kind of gives you a good way in terms of an approach to doing things. How
do you actually go through with your management, your business leaders, how can
you show them the value of having technology work within your company? I
think it's a process that helps you ensure that your system is up and
running in a certain way at all times. I think that's very key. How do you
formulate a NIST and a DR plan? I mean you do a risk analysis, you
look through certain steps, you look at RPOs, recovery points and so forth like
that. I mean I could share this information with you because it's
something that, as I said, doesn't have to go into great detail but you have
something in your head. How can you ensure your critical assets and data are up?
And that has to do also with your network and communication during a
disaster too, right? And just continuous, how do you formulate a NIST informed
disaster recovery plan? And these are some templates that you can utilize like
map out all your hardware and software assets, downtime, what's acceptable for
downtime and so forth like that. So things like that you can go through and
I think you have to have people involved and once you have people involved from
the management level, from different sides of the operation, it becomes a
working plan and not only based on IT but if IT is communications, you involve
the entire business and you show them the value that's required when planning.
I think that young lady at the back said that you need a plan, right? Without a
plan you can't get things done and it's very important and I think having the
technology is great but if you don't have a plan in place it's not going to
work the way it should work. So I think this is the first step in terms of
helping around that resiliency and so forth like that. So I'm gonna kind of go
through some of the portfolio in more detail that brings value to
you as an organization, especially around network resiliency.
Technologies that we do have that can help organizations such as yourself in
terms of a downtime and so forth like that. So one of the key
things for us is around secure SD-WAN and that's kind of driven by our 40 gate
firewall. That's basically a security device. SD-WAN is included at no cost but
what value does it bring to you during downtime? So as Nemo said today, they had
access to Starlink. CDEMA brought in Starlink. CMEA brought in certain
communications. So if you have a firewall or you can actually connect the Starlink
to our firewall and then connect it to your business and you can ensure that
your business has some continuity and in a secure manner, right? Because
during a disaster, there always are actors that may look to see how they
can infiltrate during this time of crisis because people aren't looking at
security being part of it. But we've seen people always are looking to see
how they can get an upper hand on us and bad actors do that. So if you're
seeing you as a business, a government, a financial institution, there are
opportunities if you just allow person to access your data or your assets in a
way that's not secure. So that's something to consider too. So what this
provides, this allows you to connect to example the Starlink or allows you to
connect to LT or 5G but allows you to be able to access your critical assets. So
your business applications, so your business can continue functioning or if
you need to communicate between different parts of St. Vincent and so
forth like that. So it's very important in a secure manner and I think this is
also just understanding around the different types of networks that you can
use, right? From MPS, broadband, depending what's up, right? Starlink, LG, LTE, 5G and
stuff like that. So you can use that to get your business up and running.
You can use that to get your business up and running and it's using,
you're using intelligence around it. So it's not just utilizing this bandwidth
for non-critical applications. You're using it for critical applications that
are needed at this time and that's very important. So this kind of basically shows
if you do have towers up, you can still utilize the WAN router plus an extender
to actually connect say SIM cards or connect straight to the wireless
network and provide you critical access to different applications within your
environment. And I guess at the end of day, you want to ensure that your
applications, your business critical applications are utilized. You have
secure connectivity during this time and not just open up your
applications to persons out there, right? And you want to ensure it's efficient.
So this kind of paints the picture too as if you have created a DR
site off-island or a cloud if you have stuff in the cloud using Azure
or AWS and so forth like that. This same technology allows you now to connect to
those data centers, those edge devices and stuff like that for you to access
your applications and so forth like that. So it's all done in a secure manner.
This just continues along the same path in terms of using SaaS applications like
Office 365 and so forth like that. So the key thing for us is to be able to get
connectivity and how quickly you guys can access back your data either within
different from the cloud to off-site data centers. Even if you have a backup
maybe locally or if you have branches that you want to get up, back and running,
right? So it all depends how quickly you need to get stuff up, back and running to
help the efforts and also as a company you may also need to open up certain
things so citizens can get access to supermarkets, maybe financial
institutions and so forth like that to get things going again. Police, hospitals
and so forth like that. And the key thing, how do we get that communication from
the provider to be able to you to open back up your business in a secure manner?
So this basically also allows persons to be able to access things even if
you're not behind our firewall. We do have an offering called SASE which
allows persons to actually connect back to their environment in a secure manner.
They don't need to be behind it. If they have access to, once they have
connectivity, they can access any application behind data centers and
stuff like that and they're fully secured as an end-user. So for example, if you're
working in the field and you need to, as an emergency worker, you need to access
some sort of critical data asset or a database, you can do that remotely. As CNW
said, they do put up certain cell towers, remote towers, cows they call it, right?
Out there. So how we can get connectivity back and then how can they get
connectivity back to help getting the emergency operations up and running
again? So this kind of goes into the detail of SASE in terms of how can users
connect to something without having to actually be behind a firewall or behind
a location. They can be anywhere, access your assets in a way that's very
easy to do and it's just an agent on a laptop and so forth like that and
they're fully secured. So you're ensuring your data is secure too. I don't know if
anyone has any questions because yeah sure yeah okay no problem. So basically
it's a mindset in terms of you don't trust, you don't trust anyone, right? You
test everyone, you make sure whoever is accessing your data and your
applications are done in a manner that's in a secure way, right? So you're
always testing them to make sure that they're who they're saying they are. I
think the 4T extender is something that we find is important in terms of during
well during either a disaster or during access using say 5G or LTE solutions,
right? So they can actually connect to these technologies. They can either be part
of a remote fleet, they can actually be secured in a building. So basically if
towers are up you can actually have a LTE connection and put it maybe in a
relief center or maybe the government needs to put up a center on the flag to
ensure that citizens report there. Maybe they need to share where they are,
who's there, who they're not finding and so forth like that. So they
need to have that connectivity back to maybe a central database and stuff like
that. So these are solutions that can easily put up, turned on either. We have
options around putting in SIM cards, connecting to the existing LTE network
and stuff like that. But it's really to see how can these solutions be used in
tandem with any relief efforts and stuff like that. So I think we would come
into a play where how can you get this, how can you utilize communications in a
safe manner? How can you access your environment? How can you utilize certain
things that are required during a disaster? So that you can communicate,
people can get services up and running in a safe manner. And these are just some
of our LTE extenders. So we have various types. They can use SIM cards and stuff
like that too, right? We also have ruggedized and outdoor ones. So basically
it could be utilized in emergency vehicles, could be utilized in places
that if emergency workers need to go in the field and need to communicate back
with a central spot, they can. And these are things that are being used within,
globally I guess, police, fire service, ambulances, emergency workers and
stuff. So this helps with that communication back into the network,
which is important. This kind of just goes through the same benefit, right?
Having an LTE connection is a quick way to get things up and running during a
disaster. And it's something that could easily be done, as the fella from NEMO
said. How can you have a kit that you can actually go out with to actually just get a
site up and running, so you can communicate back within St. Vincent
and the Grenadines. And I guess the key thing about us is that it's secure, right?
As I said, you don't want to have your data out there or persons being able to
access your critical environment in a way that's not secure. And as I said,
during a disaster there are always people looking to take advantage of
certain situations. And this basically kind of shows that the SIM, you can hold
multiple SIM cards within the technology, so it allows you to utilize either
provider. So you can have one as a backup too. And this kind of goes through the
diagram for emergency redundancy. So if your main device goes down, you can
actually just have that as a gateway, so you can access your environment or
your data center and so forth like that in a very seamless way, right? Especially
during an emergency and stuff like that. And I guess these are key things that I
said earlier, right? These extenders could be used within vehicles, within
temporary sites that are going up by the government during an emergency and stuff
like that. And they're hard, they could be used in harsh environments, right?
Because they're all outdoor rated, so they're very secure in that manner that
could be used, dust and getting wet and so forth like that. So that's basically,
and they're powered, they're usually powered by, it could be put in a vehicle,
okay, powered very simply and stuff like that. And it has the multiple ports and
stuff like that, dust and splash proof. As I said earlier, multiple connections, a
dual modem, so you can use it both providers. And as you deploy, they're
easy to manage and so forth like that, right? So you can actually get data, get
access, get access and assets, what they're doing out there, right? So this
kind of goes back to the point, you can have something at the head office, up
and running, ball. So as you guys open, if there is a disaster and you open up
temporary sites throughout St. Vincent, how can you ensure they have
connectivity to share back any critical information? And it could be done so in a
secure way. And also, as I said, the SASE POP is a POP that we utilize, we have
with Google, so we have POPs throughout the globe that allows persons to connect
in a secure manner from anywhere they are. So that can also work through the
extender, right? So this basically just shows that you can utilize an extender,
utilizing a firewall or utilizing the SASE POP. So and basically you are
getting the security that's required. And I guess our key thing at Fortinet is
ensuring your data is secure in a critical way and how you can ensure some
sort of resiliency or how can you get up and running by a certain time if there
is a disaster. And also in terms of how can you get the critical assets up and
running that are required by the citizens in a secure manner. And we have
certain parts of the technology that could be utilized along with the other
persons working, right? This kind of just shows our overall vision, right? Overall
vision in terms of how you want to connect out to your different critical
assets. Either via the SASE, the extender, the firewall, so you can have a
full connectivity to all emergency workers, access to your data, access to
sharing things that are required during an event. And this is just one of our
clients, Alaska Airlines. They kind of created a box with the technology that
were required in terms when they had some issues in terms of performance and
stuff like that. So they can actually go out there and go anywhere and just pop
in the box and have connectivity. So I guess similar to what emergency workers
could do here, have a box, plug it into any site and they have connectivity to
share information. Well this application, this basically represents, this
basically represents as a company in terms of planning, you have a DR site
either on-premise or in a cloud or in another country. How do you ensure that
your data continues running? Suppose you had it, well if you had an incident as
Beryl had it, we had an incident in Union Island and we got cut off from them. How
can we ensure those services continue running, that business continues running
and that could be done automatically utilizing our 4TGS LB. So that means
you ensure critical business assets continue running even in event of a
disaster utilizing this technology. So that, these are just some small use cases
that we had from utilizing applications, how we can utilize the technology. The
same technology that to ensure that applications are up and running in case
of a disaster. Once you put certain things in place, your BCPN disaster
recovery plan, you can ensure those critical applications are always up so
you can ensure people can get access, citizens to get access to information
that are required. Same concept right, ensuring access right, how do you get
access, BPN access. So it's really creating, we're part of the solution, part
of the technology, how can we ensure that your assets and your applications
are always up and running. Same concept right, it's just using depending on
your setup, how can we help ensure that resiliency right and using certain
technology we can be part of figuring out how we could help you build that
resiliency into your network. I know today a majority of discussion was
around physical resiliency and ensuring power and so forth like that. As I said
we will come in depending where we can get access to communications, how we can
access certain power and then we can actually help you get business going
again right. So that's where we come in in a secure manner and that's how we
can work. We can work with persons to understand their needs and critical
assets and critical applications and what's required to get to ensure those
are up and running. That's that's basically it for me Linux.
Thank You Prasad, that was quite a bit of technical stuff. I'm gonna I'm gonna
ask you to remain over there so you may be asked to demonstrate or refer to some
of the slides. It's pretty quick. I hope we didn't fly over our heads.