Jason Lopez: So when you step back and you, and you look at IT, has security always been a part of what you do?
Dr. Nandish Mattikalli: Yup. So the answer, your question is, yes. The reason I say that is because the security mindset and the business that we are in the customers that we support and the missions that we engage in are the national security intelligence and defense customers I mentioned to you. But what we are seeing is attacks are evolving, right? There are several incidents including that of Snowden. The insider threats are much more prevalent and more dangerous with the multi-cloud our attack surface has increased. And there's a interest from the nation states to disrupt our operations. So as our adversities that change the game, we are rapidly evolving as well.
Jason Lopez: Well, what would happen if a defense project was compromised, what would occur there?
Dr. Nandish Mattikalli: So a defense project can be at various security level and any defense project that is compromised, it can have grave and significant consequences to our national security. So that's one of the reasons why we process and handle data properly at various security levels. And BA systems has several solutions in place, and we work with other partners as well for cross domain solutions.
Jason Lopez: The day, you know, many people in your field, keep coming back to the social piece of this.
Dr. Nandish Mattikalli: Yup. And then, and that is very true. And, uh, we have seen, you know, these various fishing activities, right through social behavior and social engineering. It will just take clicking on one link that comes in my inbox. And next thing you know, that propagates to the network internally, what is more important for us is what we call APT the advanced persistent threat, that's significant interest to us. And how do we identify monitor, contain and react to those.
Jason Lopez: So in, you know, designing and building apps for your clients, what are you looking at in terms of mounting a defense?
Dr. Nandish Mattikalli: So, as I said earlier, talking about the apps, there is an implied reliance on the structure of the platform that it is secure, but at the same time, it takes a collaborative effort to communicate the needs of the security between various teams so that the security is built into the apps and the data at the applications layer and the data layer security features are built in not trying to add security on top. And then the dev ops concept we include application security, data security, and even security of some of these newer architecture, such as containers and hardening of the containers is a significant emphasis. And within the DOD, there are pre-approved containers and a use of pre-approved containers will help us get to the faster ATOs or even achieve continuous ATO. And BAE systems is investing. And we are working with various partners, including Nutanix and Dell, Microsoft, I believe with red hat as well. We are developing capabilities related to the security, especially in the cloud and the multi-cloud. And those are linked to zero trust automation of security implementation, and even continuous monitoring.
Jason Lopez: Nandish Mattikalli is the chief engineer for the intelligence solutions business at BAE. This is the tech barometer podcast, I'm Jason Lopez. It comes to you from The Forecast and you can find us at theforecastbynutanix.com.