Transcript

JOHN STEWART

Hi. My name's John Stewart. I'm chief security officer here at Cisco. It is amazing to live in a time where there are more IP-addressable devices connected on the face of the earth than there are people. And it's really daunting to think about the fact that in the span of less than 10 years there are potentially going to be 50 billion IP-addressable systems on the internet.

Things like cameras, things like identity-card readers, things like people, things like cars, things like-- yes, believe it or not-- houses that tweet or trees that are tweeting or diapers that have their own iPhone app in order to make sure you can detect if your young kid has actually got to be changed. This innovation is happening all around us right now.

Part of what we're beginning to realise here at Cisco is that, as this transforms our world, companies like Samsung, General Electric, certainly ourselves, we have to build security into it and build it sort of in a different way. All the security capabilities that PCs were able to run can't be run on phones. Even the security features on phones can't always be run on the next-generation tablets. If you can run it on a tablet you might not be able to run it on a small sensor that's detecting air quality. So the entire concept of security is changing around our eyes.

Here's what we're aiming to do. We think there's a huge opportunity for both networks, service providers, and security in a quote-unquote "cloud configuration" to protect the devices that are being brought online. This should, all going smoothly-- and this is the test-- enable a house to be better protected, enable a car to be better protected, enable us to be able to crowdsource and protect one another's systems, because we're actually cooperating electronically. And it should, in the end analysis, enable the 50 billion IP-addressable systems that are coming online.

Here's the thing. They're going to come online anyway. So the designing of security now, which is to basically think about the problem today and enable it inside of the network-- and you give me another place it could be enabled, and I'm willing to listen. I don't know of one, and I've been in this industry for about 25 years. I think it's the only place it's going to get done. It's not only because I'm at Cisco, it's because I've actually defended networks for this long.

And the network of the future is the one that's going to need a network with security built in. That's one of our goals. Proof's in the pudding. You end up telling us how we're doing. Thanks.