35. Samantha Madrid, Group VP, Security & Business Strategy, Juniper Networks

Join us for a special episode of Elevate the Edge from the Juniper Analyst Summit in Dallas featuring Juniper Networks Group Vice President of Security Business & Strategy Samantha Madrid.

Transcript

Maribel Lopez: 0:40

Hello and welcome back to elevate the edge. We are live at the Westin Dallas Park. It's great to actually get to do a podcast in person with my fabulous co host, Miss Jo Peterson who's wearing another fantastic set of glasses, which in fact, do kind of match her outfit. So once again, tragically sad that you cannot actually see this but say. Hey, Jo.

Jo Peterson: 1:08

Hey, and it was a plan. It was planned.

Maribel Lopez: 1:11

It was planned. There you go. And we're joined here today with Samantha Madrid, who is the group VP of the security business and strategy at Juniper Networks. Hey, Samantha,

Samantha Madrid: 1:22

Good morning to you both are kicking it

Maribel Lopez: 1:24

back to Jo

Jo Peterson: 1:26

So Samantha a little congratulations are in order in late February. And for the fourth year in a row Juniper Networks was named one of the 20 coolest network security companies as part of CRN security 100 and highlighted tune for secure edge, the Security Service edge SFC solution as a major reason why moving forward, it's estimated that 75% of enterprise generated data will be created and processed outside of a traditional centralized data center or cloud, according to Gartner. So the global edge computing market is expected to grow roughly 37%, a year between 2023 and 2030. That's a lot of data to manage and secure.

Maribel Lopez: 2:11

It sure is. And as we know, Ms. Peterson sure does love herself of stats. So we now have our stats for this podcast. I'm gonna jump in and but you know, maybe we could step back for a second Samantha and just tell us a little bit about what it means to be the VP of security at a company like Juniper Networks, what do you do?

Samantha Madrid: 2:32

Well, um, that is a great question, I want to first start off by thanking you for the congratulations, I'm super proud of the team, the business has really been doing great. And it was a nice cherry on top to not only be recognized as one of the cool security vendors out there, but also Product of the Year by CRN for our secure edge solution. So in 2022, so that was great. So as a Group Vice President at Juniper, I'm responsible for the entire security strategy, in terms of both the products development and the in the connection to our networking portfolio, but also all the security capabilities that are integrated into our networking infrastructure. So that includes our MX routers or switches and our access points.

Maribel Lopez: 3:22

Excellent. So I think that there's so many great terms in the security landscape. So I thought we'd talk a little bit about zero trust, network access and sassy. How are these terms connected? And why do they matter at the edge?

Samantha Madrid: 3:37

Well, you know, that's a great question. So sassy is an architecture and it's an architecture that consists of multiple products. The two biggest players in that is the SD Wan, capability, along with us, SSC. So to answer your question about what's the difference between SSC and sassy, sassy is the architecture. SSE is the product that fits within that architecture. And it's actually comprised of a number of different products, which is one of the biggest movements we're seeing in the security space. It SSE has firewall as a service. It has Caz, B, it has Z, DLP and ZTE and a. So it's bringing all those together for customers delivered from the cloud. And it really offers a nice way for customers to connect and secure their remote users.

Jo Peterson: 4:33

That's a great response. Thanks for breaking that down because it gets a little confusing. It does.

Samantha Madrid: 4:38

It really does.

Jo Peterson: 4:40

So let's talk about the rabbit endpoint problem with multiple patients. Because endpoints are like rabbits, they you know, they they lie. And let's read landscape expands accordingly. You've made the decision as a client to adopt edge computing and your operation networks team. They're in discussion with your security team. They're all kibitzing. Why does a least privilege based approach matter? Even more at the edge?

Samantha Madrid: 5:08

That's, you know, another great question. I think you need to take a step back. And we need to look at what are the problems a customer is trying to solve. And they're trying to solve access and keep the data secure. And as the network becomes more distributed, more devices gain access, because that means you have users devices, you have IoT devices, and you have networking infrastructure all connecting. You have databases connecting to each other So it device is a big word. And so as the edge continues to evolve, it's important that the technology used to secure those devices evolves along with it, you have traditional endpoints. And that's the, the endpoint terminology we care most about. It went from classic VPN. You know, if you all recall, MDM was part, you know, popped up at one point, there was EDR, then there was a, some other derivatives of that. And so it really I like to put away the acronyms and really talk to customers, where are they trying to solve? What are they trying to secure, and who needs access. So the concept of least privilege access is about making sure whether it's a user, a device, or an application is accessing what is required to access and nothing more. And so as if I'm coming on the network, and I have my laptop, I should only be able to see applications that I am privileged to see, my laptop should not be able to port scan the entire network. And that's the concept of moving to more of a zero trust model, where we are building around identity and making sure that the data in itself is secure. And those that have access to the data are privileged to do so that's overly simplified. But that's the the crux of it.

Jo Peterson: 7:14

And you just explained microsegmentation to so look at you. So we're seeing more and more apps operating at the edge from a security perspective, the goal is to provide an end to end approach. And I love what you said yesterday about sort of that's the end game, isn't it? Absolutely. So share with us how Juniper connected security strategy can help a client achieve that goal? Well.

Samantha Madrid: 7:39

So let's take a step back, you know, connected security is really about in my view. So when I joined the company, nearly five years ago, I was really, I was very passionate about the network needed to play a more active role in securing itself. Having been in the security industry for 25 years, it was very apparent to me that we were just moving deck chairs, we weren't really solving the problem, and adversary targeting a network knows, if you only have security in traditional choke points, that means you're blind, the rest of the rest of the network. So that's step one of the Connect security strategy was really about bringing security to every point of connection. And that started both with our security products, like our firewalls, but also our non security products, like our networking infrastructure. So we made them threat aware, we integrated threat intelligence into our routing platforms, or switching and our access points. So they could then extend visibility to all parts of the network for a security team and the networking team, then what we've done is we've evolved the fact that the network is different in this and the shape of the network, or the architecture of the network is different for every customer in every segment, different business outcomes they're all driving towards. So for us, it's really about operationalizing, those transitions for customers. And that is the the foundation of connected security. It's about operationalizing Social Security, if my outcome is Sassie, if my outcome is SSC, if my outcome is zero trust, I should be able to build upon what I already have deployed and utilizing and securing my network and making it even better, right, I shouldn't have to rip and replace, I shouldn't have to hire, you know, double the team size in order to have a particular business outcome. If I'm utilizing a, you know, SRX firewalls, I should be able to operationalize and take the same policies for my users, and move them to the cloud for my SSE deployment. And that's the whole concept and we've been innovating around this. We're the only vendor in the market that can take a firewall policy, and with three click wizard, make it an SSE policy. So we're really focused on that is just an example.

Maribel Lopez: 10:08

You know, it's interesting, because you mentioned operationalizing security. And I think that if we look at what's happening right now, you know, managing IT and security has become more complex. We've got hybrid cloud, multi cloud containers, edge, whole bunch of things going on. And, you know, we've actually Joe and I've been talking to companies and we heard about the desire to reduce the operational complexity in and around security and networking. Is this on the wish list of the clients you chat with?

Samantha Madrid: 10:39

Oh my gosh, yes, I mean, let's take zero trust as an example, a zero trust architecture has been something we've been talking about as an industry for well over 10 years, for a very, very long time. And so why hasn't it grown roots is because it was tough to operationalize. Aside from deploying products that were could potentially do zero trust, the onus was entirely on the customer, to implement it, to figure out how to build that bridge, the bridge from where they are, to their where they want to go, which is a complete zero trust network. That's a lot of work. And no one was ever saying, Hey, this is how you can do it, or this is how we can automate it. And that's what we built with St. Cloud, is we're automating all those architectural transformations. So we're really bringing in the concept of operationalizing security, literally, to life for customers.

Maribel Lopez: 11:47

Well, that probably brings up another point, you know, we have heard a lot about sustainability and achieving greener homes and workplaces. Can you talk about how a connected you know junipers connected security strategy might help companies achieve more greenness at work?

Samantha Madrid: 12:07

Absolutely it because, again, the, the idea is building on what you have, if you are wanting to leverage investments in technologies that you have, you can do so by building on top of that, if you want to take advantage of the capabilities and a smaller form factor, we have fixed firewalls, we have chassis firewalls, that can have a higher capacity, you know, higher port density, and you're able to have better power consumption as well. I think, you know, having a greater and more sustainable footprint for any organization starts with the architecture. And so you want to make sure that your architecture can kind of bridge where you are to where you're going and can take advantage of the newer technologies, the newer, you know, products in the market to do that.

Jo Peterson: 13:04

So Samantha, great answer, and it's so nice to hear that people can use what they have and reuse what they have. That's a way to recycle it. That's a way to be more sustainable. So we always end the podcast with a fun fact, not tech related. It can be anything that you want. Please share a fun fact with us.

Samantha Madrid: 13:25

Oh, wow. Fun fact, I just got back from swimming around Grenada. open water swimming. That's my new thing. Now. I'm a former swimmer competitive swimmer. So I'm in college. And now I've kind of embarked on open water swimming. So that's a fun fact.

Jo Peterson: 13:46

That's awesome. I'm sure it was beautiful. It was gorgeous. Yeah. So thank you so much for spending some time with us today. We're excited about you and your journey, and we're excited about what you're going to come up with next.

Samantha Madrid: 13:57

It was a pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Maribel Lopez: 13:59

Thanks for having us at the Juniper Networks industry analyst Summit. We really enjoyed being here and hearing the vision and person you take care