The ROI of the New AI-Driven Privacy Platforms

Hello, and welcome to this next episode
of Privacy Pros Videocast.
Privacy Pro. Videocast is an initiative by privacy
and security innovator circle, where we get individuals,
experts, um,
and leaders from the industry
who have been looking at privacy and data privacy
and data security from different
facets and different angles.
My guest today is Steve Kaplan, phenomenal, uh, leader
who has spent decades, uh, working on the go-to market side
for enterprise, uh, software.
Steve is known as, uh, the ROI dude on Twitter
and has built his career in IT
by helping enterprises use financial
and analysis to optimize it strategies.
Steve co-founded ran
and sold two channel partner businesses.
The first one was named the first Citrix partner
of the year, and the second one, the VMware
Global Rainmaker Award.
He also started the America's Channel partner
program at Nutanix.
My previous company as well, in early 2013,
when it was still a small startup,
CRN magazine named him one
of the top 25 channel sales leaders
before he later started
what would become the global cloud economics team.
Steve, it's my pleasure to welcome you on this privacy,
uh, video cash show.
Thank you pd. Thanks for having me.
Uh, Steve, let's look at right into it.
You have been looking at, uh, ROI, the topic of ROI
and the various facets
and angles of ROI for a very long time.
Now, as you started looking at data privacy
and data security, why do you think the topic
of ROI is germane
and interesting for people to know and understand?
Y you know, I think that in terms of cybersecurity,
that data privacy often gets us short shrift,
but you know, increasingly, extremely increasingly, uh,
global privacy regulations are coming up everywhere.
Us, Canada, Europe has, you know, always been there
and the fines are growing stiffer.
And really today, I don't think that any organization
can afford not to put a strong emphasis on privacy.
And, uh, consumers as well are, you know,
they're gravitating toward doing business
with those companies that have a reputation
for protecting their privacy.
And, uh, you know, as you know, I wrote a book,
an ROI analysis called the ROI story,
A Guide for IT Leaders.
In fact, you can, uh, download it for free from the ebook
and, uh, it helps provide a framework for engaging
in a financial analysis to help optimize
strategic IT decision making, including the, uh, benefit
of of, of privacy.
And, and, and Steve, to add to that, I would say
during these days, there are unfortunately
some downsizing going on in the tech world.
And every now and then, I routinely hear about privacy teams
who are already very, very small, obviously,
and very constrained.
They're getting impacted by the, uh, downsizing as well.
From that light, I would say just understanding,
but not only just understanding,
but also helping your leaders understand the ROI
of investing in the right privacy programs,
privacy tools might be a lifesaver and a job saver.
Actually, Steve, you, thanks
for writing your about this in the, in the book, uh,
privacy, API 2.0.
Uh, as I read through the, the article, you gave a number
of examples, a number of real life examples about
how one could go about building the ROI case
for data privacy and using tools.
And so could you maybe help our listeners, um,
and viewers understand, uh, perhaps maybe
what are the top three, uh, points they can look forward
to reading as they read your article in the book?
Sure. You, you know,
as I learned more about LIGHTBEAM over the last year
or so on, and how it's kind of revolutionizing
the privacy automation space, um, WI was struck by still,
when you look at these traditional cybersecurity companies,
that, that build large firewalls to circle the data
and use pattern recognition,
which then results in a broad of false positives.
Even with all that going on, at least according
to this massive Cisco 2022 data privacy benchmark study,
they still estimated an average annual ROI of 80%.
So I, I think it's worth noting that even with, you know,
the old way, the, the pre AI way of doing data privacy,
it still showed a nice positive return.
And another second point, I would say would be the, the Mass
of T-Mobile breach in 2021.
You know, this exposed around 77 million US residents data.
And, and you know, of course, uh,
it's a horrible thing to have happened.
But from an ROI perspective, uh,
it does provide the opportunity
to help quantify the real cost of a breach,
because that's, that's hard to do.
You know, people look at, sometimes look at, at at privacy
as a subset of cybersecurity, which is kind
of like insurance, but, but actually
that breach helps us quantify what is that worth?
And so for example, uh, in, in the Cisco survey, 90%
of the respondents in the study said
that they would not purchase from an organization
that does not properly protect its data.
And, and, you know, from my analysis, always try
and be very conservative.
And so for the analysis, I just assume, let's just say 5%
of consumers decided to, uh, uh, not purchase from a company
because of privacy concerns.
Just that alone, uh, you know,
helps provide a very huge ROI.
Yeah, and I'd say the third big thing is, you know,
using privacy wear auto discovery
to let organizations know exactly where all
of their consumer data exists, who has access to them,
to it within the organizations
and who that data is getting shared with,
uh, external of the organization.
And this type of laser beam approach to privacy
also enables a one year ROI, uh, of
6875%.
So, you know, just a, a, a massive savings.
And this doesn't even include all the many other attributes
that light beam enables, such as enhanced reputation,
increased trust and innovation.
It also doesn't include the potential for other country
and state regulatory funds on top of the cost
to settle the privacy lawsuit, uh, you know,
as found in the Big T-Mobile breach.
So I'd say those are the three big, uh, takeaways.
I, I, I just heard 6875%,
and I was like, okay, there is,
there's nothing enough state, right?
And that's all that's amazing.
And, and, and, and, uh,
our readers can actually find the analysis, your analysis
of T-Mobile and how you go about, you know, taking that data
and kind of funneling through to come to that number, uh,
in the, in the article that you wrote in the book actually.
So a great asset.
And, uh, you of course, uh, listeners
and viewers, you're welcome to take that article
and just share it with your, uh, with your management, uh,
with your teams, help them understand,
educate them on the budget
that you're asking for, for privacy.
Why is that? And you know, to, you know, strictly speaking,
we are talking about 80 million consumers data.
Even if we put a value of $1 to each of their,
their data just $1 for the whole year,
which is basically now we are talking about fraction
of a cent per day.
I mean, this itself, uh, you know, anything
that you're going to be spending on privacy,
including your own salary and your team salaries
and so on so forth, it will really be peanuts.
And it's such a, such an important aspect, uh, these days
of doing business and gaining consumers trust in some sense.
Now, I'm going to take this conversation
to a slightly different direction,
and this only with you, my viewers know.
I don't generally ask questions about Lightbeam.
Uh, in fact, I rarely ask questions
or bring Lightbeam into the conversation.
But you actually have been involved
with Lightbeam since it's really early days.
The, you heard our story.
Uh, you are also an investor in Lightbeam.
We are very pleased, uh, and happy about that.
Obviously strictly from the point of view
of return on investment.
How would you help someone understand
the return on investment case
or using a privacy platform like lightbeam?
It doesn't have to be lightbeam,
it could be something else as well.
But how would you go about that?
Because, and where I'm coming from is, uh, a lot
of companies have privacy programs in place, which is great,
most of which tend to be completely manual in nature.
People are, you know, sending interview questionnaires,
people are filling in interview questionnaires,
and it's a work that I don't think anyone really
enjoys the forms of reform to be filled and so on so forth.
How have you seen privacy
platforms like lightbeam help individual,
not only from the way of making it automated and simple,
but also from a, from the angle of, you know, greater
and better ROI, um,
You know, at a similar situation
or comparing two different situ situations.
I typically don't use ROI per se.
Uh, I use, uh, a different type of financial, uh,
mechanism called total cost of ownership
as popularized by Gartner in the eighties.
And, and it's great
for comparing two different types of solutions.
For example, a traditional type of privacy approach,
uh, versus an automated platform.
Uh, and then comparing all the different variables of,
of the different solutions, you know,
all the costs involved in terms of the, the licensing, uh,
the management, the maintenance of it, the updating of it,
and just doing that alone.
I, I think, uh, you know,
the automation platform is gonna be
such a dramatically lower cost
of ownership than the traditional way of doing things
with firewalls and pattern recognition.
Uh, but then you layer on top of that now the dramatically
improved ability to eliminate privacy breaches.
Uh, and then it becomes even, you know,
that much more compelling.
And I think this is a really good approach to take
for organizations, uh, and, and
because it gives them the chance to look at everything
that's salient to their existing way of doing things,
looking at over a number of years compared to moving
to an automation platform over the same number of years.
And, and to really give them a good feel for
how much is going out today and,
and how much reduced could an automation platform solution
be over that same period of time.
And, and then also tying in everything else that's important
to the organization hit to the reputation, loss
of customers and so on.
Makes sense. And in fact, your first point
that you've talked about, which is just
how much savings you could do by
with an automation platform, you know,
what struck in my mind there was, you know,
if you're filling a, filling up a questionnaire,
it's not just you as a privacy ma uh,
officer filling up the questionnaire.
You're also sending that questionnaire to probably five
or 10 other people within your organization, you know, and,
and then those people are filling that, uh, questionnaire,
which you probably are taking a few hours
or more, uh, to fill that in.
And, and all of that just adds up in terms
of the actual cost of the manual effort to implementing
and managing privacy, right?
That, that was your first point,
and then you're layering on top of that the cost of a breach
and the reduction of risk, an automated platform that's,
you know, uh, looking at your data 24 so day, you know,
every second and is, you know, is, uh, doing something,
is taking corrective action, is putting controls in place,
uh, every second of the day.
Uh, what, what, what, what does that cost
of the breach reduction in that risk look like?
So adding those two, uh, would, would, would,
I'm sure would make for a very compelling case for anyone
who is looking to present a case, uh, for a privacy,
uh, privacy tool.
As a matter of fact, when I kid you,
not literally this morning, uh, I was working with a, um,
customer prospect who literally we were discussing about
this is how do I help, uh,
create a business case, uh, for this?
It's very clear in my mind as for her that yes,
this is very much needed, but I need
to now convince my management.
And so we are actually working with the,
so we'll actually point, um, to this interview
to see if there are some ideas
that she can take, uh, from there.
Uh, perfect. Steve, I can't thank you enough for your,
for this spirited conversation
and also of course for writing
and sharing your perspective on ROI as
as this pertains to privacy.
And last but not least, of course, thank you
to all our viewers and listeners.
We hope you found this, uh, session
of Privacy Pro interviews helpful, something
that you can apply hopefully
to your jobs today and tomorrow.
If you are new to the SI circle, uh, SI is PSI Privacy
and Security Innovator Circle
or lightbeam, check us [email protected].
That's our website
or at our LinkedIn page where you can also join the, uh,
size circle until the text video podcast.
Thank you so much and have a good one.