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In our annual survey of senior leaders, security continues to be the top priority for IT investment, with cyberattacks, passwords and network security crucial concerns. Phishing, malware and ransomware remain high-level concerns for senior leaders.
For CCS Insight's latest podcast episode, I was joined by Andy Wen, Senior Director of Product Management at Google, and Aspi Havewala, Vice President of Infrastructure at Verizon to delve into Google Workspace's approach to security.
Our discussion unpacked the security threats faced by organizations today, investigating the tools available to empower borderless collaboration in the modern workplace environment.
The episode explores:
- Google Workspace's security credentials.
- How to ensure successful implementation of digital transformation.
- Employee experience as a fundamental aspect of integrating new technologies.
- The impact of generative AI on security threats and solutions.
Creators & Guests
What is The CCS Insight Podcast?
Insightful audio from the global tech advisory firm.
Bola Rotibi, CCS Insight
Welcome to the CCS Insight Podcast. My name is Bola Rotibi and I'm the Chief of Enterprise Research here at CCS Insight and your host for today's discussion on empowering borderless collaboration with security and AI, with a spotlight on Google Workspace's strategy. Joining me today is Andy Wen, Senior Director, Product Management at Google, and we have Aspi Havewala, AVP of Infrastructure at Verizon. Hello to you both and welcome to the podcast.
Andy Wen, Google
Hi Bola! So glad to be here and talk to you about how to keep organizations secure.
Aspi Havewala, Verizon
Very happy to be here as well. Super excited. Thanks for the invite.
Bola Rotibi, CCS Insight
Excellent. So, to begin with, and doing things a little different, I'd like to start with a brief introduction of each of your roles and what you oversee in your respective organizations. So, I'll start off with you, Andy, if that's okay?
Andy Wen, Google
Thank you. As a product leader for workspace privacy, security and compliance, I look over all of what we call horizontal efforts to ensure everyone feels safe, secure and private. And often I'll speak at maybe a cocktail party and people ask me what I do, and I'm like, well, I keep billions of users safe from all manner of threats and millions of organizations. And so this covers every aspect of their issues, whether it's security, whether it's keeping your data private or ensuring that you're meeting all of your government regulations. So, all of these are my problems.
Bola Rotibi, CCS Insight
You must have very broad shoulders Andy! Right, if I go over to Aspi, if you can tell me a little bit about what you do at Verizon, please.
Aspi Havewala, Verizon
Sure thing. So, I work at Verizon and if you weren't aware, we build amazing networks. I manage digital workplace for the entire company globally, so it involves the infrastructure and the software all the way from your laptops, your mobiles, your physical end-points and your virtual end-points, all of the software that runs on it for productivity and collaboration, including, of course, Google Workplace as well. I manage all of that globally. We have a global footprint, so it's a really fun challenge. Our employees are highly motivated and they really want the best digital workplace. And my job is, at least that I'm not drinking tea or watching cricket, my job is making sure that happens.
Bola Rotibi, CCS Insight
That's fantastic. And in fact, I think it's brilliant that I've got both of you on this call, because security is very much a top priority. In fact, from our CCS Insight 2023, Senior Leaders' IT Investment Study and also our 2023 Employee Technology and Workplace Transformation Study, security continues to be the top priority for IT investment, especially with cyberattacks, passwords and network security being prime security concerns and the focus for that investment. Remote working raises, obviously, security concerns as employees operate outside the corporate network perimeter, creating new attack surfaces and presenting challenges at multiple levels, namely connectivity and data integrity. Phishing, malware and ransomware remain a high-level concern for senior leaders, too, while securing the hybrid and mobile workforce is a top concern, and it reflects a distributed environment that now constitutes the business boundaries which are no longer defined by the four walls of the office building.
And when you add the extensive data gathering that is the foundation of AI and generative AI technologies, it's becoming even more understandable why security and privacy tops the list for pretty much right across the industry in workforces and organizations of all types as being, you know, really important in dealing with all these technologies. So, the spread of priorities here underlines the breadth and complexity of security for businesses and the range of technology solutions involved in addressing it.
Which kind of brings me to my first question for you, Andy. Almost every week there is news about a major business being impacted by a cyberattack. So, it'd be really good if you can talk us through some of these structural shifts in the threat landscape, and how Google Workspace can help customers build security into the core of how they work?
Andy Wen, Google
Absolutely. I just came back from the RSA Conference and it was great opportunity to really look at some impacts to the landscape. Let's look at some of the first things that are happening. First, state-sponsored adversaries are targeting organizations more than ever. They're not just targeting governments, although they're doing that increasingly. They're targeting enterprises because of IP theft.
The second is, we now have a way for even small businesses to be impacted by criminal activity via commercially driven ransomware. Even the smallest organizations, maybe just a few dozen individuals or less, are targeted by ransomware looking to extract funds because if you don't, they're going to release all the information or they're going to cripple your operation.
And the third is really like the increased focus from government. What we see is that Google's products are built to be secure by design without the need to purchase additional products to make it more secure. We've been doing that for over 25 years, and during that time we've been attacked regularly by state-sponsored actors. So, unlike traditional email and productivity solutions, we've been built from zero-trust principles from the start, and we augment that with AI-powered defences.
Two key proof points are Gmail blocks more than 99.9% of spam, phishing and malware from ever reaching your inbox, we like to note that our competitors often don't cite their statistics, and that's sort of an indication of potentially their performance. And as we see the rise of generative AI, we're actually using AI products already. We've deployed LLMs in a distilled version to block more than 20% of the spam in Gmail, and can evaluate a thousand times more user-reported spam every day.
Lastly, I think we're seeing our customers really choose Workspace for their security. Snap, as an example, has focused on using just Gmail for their enterprise, and they haven't seen any account takeovers for more than two years. And lastly, we're leveraging many different types of AI to really help organizations really secure their information. Our AI security add on allows its teams to automatically classify their sensitive data so they can put those under tighter control. And so we'd love to talk more about that as well.
Bola Rotibi, CCS Insight
That's fantastic. I mean that is an impressive rap sheet. And actually when you start bringing AI to the mix, what you're actually also achieving there. Its something that, you know, when I was at Google Cloud Next, for me that was very much very prevalent from a lot of what your partners and other customers were saying on stage.
So, it's a perfect opportunity now to switch over to Aspi because, you know, having heard this kind of impressive list of things that Google Workspace is doing to kind of drive in that security, reinforce that security and ensure that, you know, companies are kept safe, I'd love for you to talk to us a little bit about your experience with the roll-out of Workspace within Verizon. And, you know, were there any compliance or digital sovereignty considerations and any other challenges that you'd like to, and lessons learned as well and opportunities that have arisen, that you'd like to talk about?
Aspi Havewala, Verizon
Absolutely. So, we've been Workspace customers for close to nine years now. Our journey basically has always been build the best digital workplace for Verizon. It started about nine years ago, continues to this day. It's a journey. It never stops. And we really wanted to create that modern workplace where our employees could collaborate in real time, freely, that we're not tied to our desks. People would constantly say things like, "hey, let me get back to my desk and I'll reply to your email, or I look up the information". We wanted that to kind of magically go away. And of course, Verizon being who we are pioneers in mobile, we wanted a first-class mobile experience for our employees. That's one of the fundamental tenets that we use to evaluate all our products.
Like, can we give our employees a great digital experience? Can we make all our tools work really well together? And can we make that all into a competitive differentiator for Verizon? So, how do I give my employees something that nobody else on the planet has? A combination of tools that boost their productivity and collaboration beyond anything other corporations can offer. That's the goal.
And so what our experience with rolling out any new technology at Verizon, including Google Workplace, what it's taught us, is that we focus a lot on change management as much as you focus on the technology pieces of it as well. And so, communicate the change, enroll the leaders and enroll the users in the change, and then focus on supporting the employees with training and help. That's where you really want your focus to be.
People have emotional connections with technology so we operate in that nexus of how people feel about their technologies rather than just how they use it, right. So, when you tackle that, you can tackle a pretty broad landscape. And of course, we had a lot of key considerations around compliance, security, all those different things. Verizon does some, pretty amazing stuff with security. We have a very high bar on how we protect our customers' information and internal information. And so, what we did with Google was that we got into a co-creation process, and Google was really willing to work with us on this, which we really appreciated, sitting down and really understanding our requirements, building those into the product and helping us get into a co-creation type of a position was super valuable for us.
We worked on some pretty key features. Data regions was one of them, client-set encryption, assured controls, all of this. And we wanted really these to be designed in a way that did not increase operational burden. So having them, for example, on the same domain and the same tenant was very, very important for us. And what it's allowed us to do is it's allowed us to create a very unified experience for our employees.
So, in the past, when people had very stringent security or compliance concerns, they were handling government data, for example, their experience was full of friction because they couldn't use the tools in the same way or the same tools that other employees could. And so they always had to bridge the gap with a lot of extra work. And what we've been able to create is a way in which those folks can participate in discussions, productivity, collaboration with all the other employees without adding on a whole another layer of friction.
There's always more vigilance and more care that needs to be taken for the data, but we've been able to take a lot of the friction and pain out of that. So that's been a big win for us as well. So overall, our journey in this space has been a super productive one. We think that we are giving our employees tools that work in the best way possible. And like I said, it's a journey that we continue on. It keeps going.
Bola Rotibi, CCS Insight
I really love that because you talk about a number of things that we were definitely seeing in our own survey, especially around employee experience and what really matters to, you know, the employees. And what I like about what you were talking about was experience, because I think sometimes people forget that actually experience has to kind of be, you know, unified. It has to be great, but it has to run all the way through. Because if you don't have good employee experience, you can't then have good customer experience. And it sounds to me as if you're kind of like Workspace implementation and working with Google, experience was very much the foundation of that, you know, sort of ensuring that it was both in terms of the devices that you use, but also in wherever you might be in that whole anytime, anywhere, on any device, which I think it's really I think it's a powerful thing and it's actually fundamental to, you know, the whole transformation and modernization that we often talk about through technology.
But also, I love the fact that you're talking about change management as well. It's that, you know, you almost don't want the technology to be too much of the, you know, focus because you the actual change management is getting people to think about and do things in different ways. And that's often the challenge, isn't it?
So, if you don't have to worry too much about the technology and have it and it's seamless, and that frictionless, as you talk about, is actually really powerful. It's that whole productivity that people look for and look to, which must be music to your ears, Andy!
Andy Wen, Google
Well, absolutely. I mean, I think I might add a layer in here, and what you're really reflecting on there is what we call a zero-trust methodology to security. So, instead of putting a wall around your existing technology, we build that security into the product itself so that the product is secure by design and you don't have to add these additional layers. You don't have to add that VPN layer. You don't have to go to another application because you've built the zero-trust layer into the product.
Bola Rotibi, CCS Insight
That's a really good point. And, you know, I think this is why when we hear from lots of, you know, different, you know, conversations that we have as analysts, you know, I like the word frictionless, that seamless, that simplicity. Because, you know, at the end of the day, building, secure by design, ensuring it's already integrated within the product so that people don't have to think about it. I mean, obviously, they have to think about security and privacy and all those kind of things, because it's important that it starts with the individual as well as it goes all the way through the team and then the organization. But at the same time, you don't want to have to think about the technical aspects of it and have the tools and solutions sort that out.
That's a really powerful, powerful story. So that's great, Aspi. I now want to come on to another question, and I think this is a kind of general question, which is, you know, many organizations are considering adopting cloud-based collaboration tools while ensuring data security remains a top priority. Based on your experience, and Aspi, I definitely want to hear your kind of first-hand real-world experience, what advice would you offer other customers considering this transition? Particularly, what strategies have proven most effective in leveraging these innovative tools while maintaining a secure and trustworthy environment? I know that's a bit of a long question, but we've already talked a little bit about the sort of co-creation and, you know, sort of, sitting down with Google. But anything else you'd like to add to that?
Aspi Havewala, Verizon
Yeah, I'd love to answer the question. I have definitely a few tips to offer. The first thing to understand is that when people make the journey to the cloud, it tends to require a huge leap of faith because the data is not in your control anymore. It's in another person's cloud, another entity's cloud sort of thing. And that requires a lot of trust, and it requires you to really trust your vendor, to have the right contractual clauses in place, that requires you to have the right controls in place. It requires a village to think of all the risks and design in and implement controls for that risk.
So, what I would say is for anybody considering that journey, bring that village along from the very beginning, because what tends to happen is usually the way these products, these transformation projects or products manifest themselves in an organization is that it tends to be one organization's idea, and it's your hero idea, and then you start making the journey to implement it. And a bunch of people that raise concerns from different departments, and you start seeing them all as blockers that are getting in the way. And that just is a terrible way to implement anything.
And so what I would tell people is get everybody in from the very beginning, get your legal teams, find your legal partners or HR partners, your security partners, and get them all enrolled in that project upfront and get all the concerns on the table upfront, because when that happens, everybody gets enrolled in the concerns of everybody.
The one thing that I will point out is that a lot of these projects are about user experience, the best user experience in the most secure way possible and making sure you are meeting your compliance requirements. So, make sure user experience is also on the table. It needs to be a negotiating point so that it is considered along with all the other factors, right? Including legal, compliance, HR needs all of those different things.
So, bring all those people along. Let them air their concerns. Get yourself enrolled in the concerns. Make sure you get enrolled in yours, and then you bring everybody together as a group. That generally tends to happen, and then it feels like everybody is moving along together as an entity toward the same goal, which is implementing these services.
It also, of course, helps to find a partner who's willing to work with you, and in return, what you offer them is the experience that your organization has with these kind of controls so that when they implement it, it's not just for one organization. Other organizations get benefit from it as well. You're building a really solid foundation of security and compliance inside a product, and then you continue to build on that. And of course, what you offer your partner in return is a really, really solid product that is going to be benefiting all their other customers as well.
So those I would say are two key tenets. They are again difficult to implement. It is always difficult to take a whole bunch of people, but different ideas of what security is and compliances, right from the very beginning. Those tend to be intense conversations, but it's well worth the effort in the end because it makes your implementation much more smoother. and much more stronger as well.
Bola Rotibi, CCS Insight
Those are really good points, in fact actually, I think they I mean, they're almost like the common patterns are they if we have to really talk about it, it's bringing everyone together, all the different roles together. And I like the fact that you sort of talk to not just, you know, sort of like, you know, not just the technical teams, but also the legal teams, you know, whoever might be involved in that work, you know, in that workflow and who might be, you know, sort of that pertinent to those experiences. It's really important.
And user experience, I mean, gosh, that is so important. I think we sometimes forget, you know, everyone gets really excited about technology. But actually, we sometimes forget that user experience is fundamentally it's got to be really important.
And then bring in partners to bring it. Having the right partner who can actually work with you. And it kind of goes back to why I think those are like core patterns. You know, get everyone together and I think sometimes people get rushed into kind of like, oh, it's not going fast enough. We talk about speed, but actually in many respects, if you don't get everyone together, but you are going to go slower because you then have to keep going backward and forward. Whereas if you get everyone together and bring them along, you will then go faster because everyone's on the same page. So, I absolutely agree with what you're saying, Aspi, and I really like that. And I think it's very common. Andy, I'm going to go over to you. Anything else you'd like to add, and, do you think those are kind of core patterns as well?
Andy Wen, Google
Oh, I absolutely agree with Aspi that the user experience is critical. We love partnering with our, customers in that way. Maybe the other thing I would add on to that is, as you're making that transition from the on-prem to the cloud, it's really a great opportunity to really rethink how you're doing things. And, you know, you can look at that from either security or productivity perspective.
If you look at it from a security perspective, many times what we do is like we look for, oh, if we did it this way, we're going to continue to do it the same way. But it's a great time to rethink how you do things. Here's an example. On-prem generally has been this, you know, we're going to create this large wall around the organization. Everything in is good. Everything outside is bad. As we well know, it is impossible for any organization to keep attackers fully out of the outside wall. And really, the key to success is what we call a tiered, or sometimes people call this a zero-trust strategy. And when you do a zero-trust strategy, I think of it's very much like a bank. With a bank you have the outside wall, you have a teller window and you have a vault, right? You've created different security tiers. And in this example, you know, you can be thoughtful with your organization. Where our crown jewels? We're going to put the highest level of security there, and we're going to find the most, easy and efficient way to do that, but it will have more friction for sure. And then you have the teller window here, things that are like confidential and sensitive and, you know, how do we implement that.
Now, we're happy to share that Workspace facilitates this kind of thinking, this risk-based thinking, because we allow you to add labels to your Drive documents as well as your Gmail. We just announced our AI classification tools that help you automatically find your crown jewels and then put them in the vault, as it were. But it would be a digital vault, and prevent it from being downloaded. And I think what Aspi referred to was client-set encryption. This is an ability where you don't actually have to trust that Google is secure because you have your own encryption key. And if Google or anyone else leaked the data, well, you have the key and no one else can read it. Well, that is, you know, isn't that the perfect place to store your crown jewels? So certainly, as you're migrating your organization to a cloud-based alternative, you want to make yourself available to all of these new ways of protecting your data and potentially new ways of operating as well that really fit what is now available.
Last example I provide is, you know, many companies are now starting to think about, you know, what about post-quantum crypto. And we actually have announced that we're rolling that out later in Q2 to offer post-quantum cryptography when you use client-side encryption with our partners. So, this is just an example of as you are continuing to adapt and innovate with workplace productivity tools, thinking, and approaching your problems with a new approach often yields dramatically better results.
Bola Rotibi, CCS Insight
That's really great. And I like the fact that you actually talk about, you know, sometimes, you know, there's a new opportunity to think differently as well, because some of the things that, you know, especially some of the solutions that have been made available through Google Workspace allow you to kind of like maybe actually take a more intuitive approach, which is I think what I'm hearing from both of you is that on one hand, Google has provided these tools to really think all about the context, all about environment or about engagement.
And then it's really about, you know, Aspi, in terms of thinking about Verizon and how you want to work, you don't want to actually be, you know, sort of bothered too much about the technical bits behind the scenes, but really about thinking about how you want to engage and how you actually want to ensure that you are secure and that everything is the boundaries, no matter where you are, you know, any place, any time, on any device, which is really the kind of the, the mantra for digital transformation, really, let's face it, and modernization and working in the digital economy.
So I think absolutely, you know, but I like the fact that you both are talking about taking time to kind of think about what you want to achieve and what you want to do, and actually then being empowered by the solutions as well. So that's really great. That's fantastic because I think we've got some really good, good points and very good principles for our audience to take away.
Now this brings me to one of my last questions. So, one of the things I kind of want to get, you know, we talked a little bit about AI at the beginning, but let's face it, in 2024, no conversation is complete without us talking about generative AI. I'd like to kind of ask, how do you envision generative AI helping to enhance user security now and in the future?
And I'd like to kind of pose that to you, Andy, because, you know, especially with the solutions that Google's bringing to the fore, that we heard a lot at Google Cloud next. So over to you. What are you doing with GenAI?
Andy Wen, Google
Well, we certainly can see that generative AI makes the threat landscape a lot more challenging. Now, you have a lot of these attackers that have the ability to create customized messages for customers. So, I think there is a lot of concern, and we've been looking at this issue for over a year and a half.
Now, fortunately, in that year and a half process, we continue to innovate, and we have actually already deployed an LLM that is preventing over 20% of spam from getting to users. Now, this is just another proof point in a long 20-plus-year history of Gmail innovating with the latest technologies. Actually, a recent customer of ours, City of Dearborn, mentioned that they moved to Workspace because it was keeping their citizens data safe, and they chose Gmail primarily because of its security. And when they replaced their legacy email provider with Gmail, they noticed a meaningful decrease in spam, phishing and malware. And that helps to reduce their cybersecurity risk, and it also, ensures that the IT team is no longer chasing phishing and malware attacks, but they can now invest really in looking in the future. And so, as we look at generative AI, I absolutely agree that it's a threat and it's an opportunity. And we're fortunate that we've already implemented and will continue to innovate in this area.
The second one is, I've referenced this, AI classification capability and that's built with generative AI, and that's the ability for organizations to identify where their sensitive data is. Now, historically, DLP technology has kind of been challenging to implement because you have to write your regular expression rules just right. And quite often you're either not catching or catching too much. Now, what's great about the AI classification product is the organization trains its own AI model that's based on generative AI to fit their organization's needs. So, it's your definition of what's confidential, what's sensitive. All you have to do is provide up to 20 to 50 documents, and we can get started. And it trains the classifier and the results are very impressive. Our first 10 beta customers are getting above 80% recall and 85% precision. And what that means is basically, we're able to find most of the data, the vast majority of data that is sensitive, with minimal false positives. And that's definitely not been the track record with many of this kind of technology.
In fact, Google itself is using the technology on itself. And we've found 900,000 additional sensitive documents on top of our existing program. So that just goes to show even a highly mature, sophisticated organization like Google is making significant strides in its ability to identify and control sensitive data. And we believe this is one of our most sought after products after Cloud Next, many customers have come forward and are now doing betas with us, and they're very excited to be taking more control of their sensitive data, typically from data exfiltration requests. So, the future of generative AI in security is bright. And these are just two small examples of what we see ahead of us.
Bola Rotibi, CCS Insight
That's fantastic Andy, and I love the whole idea of Google kind of well, I like to say drinking its own champagne, possibly. It's interesting that you found all those documents and that's really, you know, sensitive data because I think it's important for people to recognize that, as you rightly pointed out, that even the maturity of Google and the amazing heritage that you have and the strength that you have, you still are finding things that you wouldn't have been able to find without the AI classification.
And so that shows that it's actually really quite important for everybody. It doesn't matter how good you are, there's always still room for improvement, always still room for being able to capture things. So, I think that's a really important point. Aspi: everyone's got AI story or generative AI story. I just want to see what your thoughts are?
Aspi Havewala, Verizon
You know, everybody does, and everybody talks about it as well. And everybody's super excited about it, which is great. We love new technology coming in, and we think it's going to be very transformative in a lot of spaces as well as almost everybody seems to believe it will be. Our big challenge, of course, is, well it's twofold. Number one is how do we implement it in the best, safest, most secure way possible? And I think we are discovering the answers and implementing the controls as we need to. I think we're approaching it in the right way. We have a centre of excellence that deals with all these issues, so that every department in the company doesn't have to deal with it and reinvent the wheel. So that's super helpful. They think about the security constraints, how to implement all of those things, and they make the models and the use cases available across the company. So, we've learned lessons from our cloud journey, and we've applied them to the GenAI journey as well.
And then of course, our second challenge is how do we get people to use it in the best way possible? How do we let them or train them to leverage GenAI in the best way possible? And that's a very human challenge. So, I remember early on in our discussions when we were thinking of Gemini for Google Workplace, we thought about giving it to our power users because we thought, well, they would probably figure out how to use it.
And then we said, well, what if we don't give it to power users? What magical things could happen if we did that instead? And so, we have an approach, but it also comes with a commitment on our part, which is that we have to constantly listen to our users and help them understand how this technology works, and most importantly, help them leverage it to the best extent possible.
And that's a journey because nobody knows how to do it on day one. But if you spend enough time on it to listen to our users enough, and you make that journey with them, and at the end of the day, again, as a competitive differentiator, I would like the Verizon employees to be the people who leverage GenAI in the best way possible. So that's our goal.
Bola Rotibi, CCS Insight
That is a great goal, actually. And as we come to the end of this podcast, which I think has been a fantastic discussion, I could talk to you both for a lot longer, but one of the things I love about what this conversation has been about is that it has really weaved in between technology, capability within Google Workspace, but also the other aspect, which is kind of like stuff that is not focused on the technology, but change management, the people aspect and the thing that I particularly, really think is of value is the whole notion and which is central is experience, and experience matters and how people need to think about that whole experience, both from what the experience and the solutions in that have been, you know, sort of, developed and employed and that whole frictionless, you know, engagement.
And I think those are kind of core attributes that really, I think resound with a lot of the organizations that I talk to who are kind of getting through all the, you know, sort of like kind of understanding this, but also want to get their hands on it really quickly and start productively working with it, really accelerating their journey to the next stage and ensuring that they keep their workforce, but also their clients as well, secure and safe. So, this has been an excellent conversation, guys. Just before we close, I just want to ask one point from you all. A leaving sort of like, you know, takeaway that you'd like to leave with the audience as we close the podcast discussion. Aspi, what's your most important takeaway that you think that you'd love for the audience to take away with them?
Aspi Havewala, Verizon
Great question. So, I would say we've been talking a lot about security, the threat landscape, making the journey to the cloud, leveraging the expertise of organizations that deal with this on a day-to-day basis. I think it's a journey well worth making. It comes with its challenges, but the sooner you get started on it, the better off the organization is. It's a really important factor that needs to be considered when people think about their experiences, think about digital workplace as well. I'm glad we started it. And finally, thank you so much for the opportunity to share my thoughts here, I really enjoyed it.
Bola Rotibi, CCS Insight
I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation. Andy, I'll leave you the closing thoughts.
Andy Wen, Google
Yes, I've seen the impact to customers who've been hit by ransomware. And we realize that, and often these are customers that are using other traditional solutions, and it has such a profound impact on their culture and on their business. And we don't want that to happen to anyone. I think it is a matter of time, if you're using a traditional email provider, before you are harmed, and we think it's imperative for customers to be thinking about and planning for alternatives.
In fact, since Cloud Next, we've had a number of customers, their boards have given them deadlines for removing the risk they have from traditional email providers. And so, Google Workspace is certainly here to help you think about your security risks and we urge you to recognize the status quo is no longer enough. There is a reason why the US Congress and the German government is holding hearings around traditional email providers.
Bola Rotibi, CCS Insight
I think that's a perfect end-point, actually, and sort of like a call to action that I think all our listeners can take to heart. So, I'd like to say thank you to Andy and Aspi for what has been a great conversation. And I'd like to say to our audience, make sure to tune in to our next CCS Insight podcast. Until then, goodbye.
Aspi Havewala, Verizon
Bye, everyone. Thanks for hanging out with us and thanks for having me.
Andy Wen, Google
Thank you and thanks for listening.