Barry Mainz Transcript
Clint Betts
Barry, thank you so much for coming on the show. You're the CEO of Forescout. What you're working on is something that I believe is critical and maybe one of the most important things in the world right now. Tell us about Forescout and how you became CEO.
Barry Mainz
So, a little bit about Forescout. ForeScout has been around for about 23 years and really got its growth started when it created a category called Network Access Control. And that was basically what if someone tries to connect to a network, ForeScout would look like: Do you have the right credentials? Should you be here? And if you shouldn't, maybe you block it and say no. Or if it's like a case of, say, Starbucks and you're in Starbucks, who's a customer of ours, Starbucks in the coffee shop, logging in. Maybe you put them down a network segment that's just for people who are logging in at the coffee shop versus the corporate network. So that was really what started the company.
As we started propelling and growing, I got excited about Forescout because of the capabilities to not only look at and protect traditional devices like a PC or a phone or something like that, but for unmanageable devices like IOT devices or OT devices, you can think of it as a camera or a TV that's in your conference room. Also, unmanageable devices like OT and IOT devices can think, whether it's hospital devices that need to be connected or devices that can't maybe have software to manage them. And so, we have technology that can use a network approach to help manage and secure those kinds of devices in not only public and private networks. So it's pretty exciting. I got the job by working at Crosspoint Capital, a private equity firm that was a major investor in Forescout. I worked for about six months and had a good vision match in terms of skill sets, and then I took over as CEO.
Clint Betts
That's incredible. I want to talk to you a little bit about private equity and how that whole world works, which I think is really interesting. But what were you doing prior to Forescout and prior to joining the private equity firm?
Barry Mainz
Yeah. So, I have spent about 18 years in security. So, I worked at Malwarebytes, which was Endpoint Security. I worked at MobileIron, ran MobileIron, CEO there and that's mobile security. I worked at Wind River Systems for 10 years, which is functional security. So, we would secure IoT or OT devices. So, we built an operating system and a bunch of middleware to do functional security for the avionics of an aircraft or for industrial robots that build things. Where we would provide a level of security so that you wouldn't harm men or machines if they were working. So it really gave me a good understanding of what cybersecurity really was and all the aspects, and it was just better luck than good OT and IoT. And we can talk more about why. However, OT and IoT have become more important for cybersecurity. My background at Wind River was just a good vision match for where Forescout was going and then what I knew. So, it was good. It was a nice match in terms of both skill sets and vision.
Clint Betts
Tell us about the threats that are out there now. It feels like it's more unsafe than ever. Is that accurate, or is that not accurate? And does AI change any of that? Kind of a loaded question, but...
Barry Mainz
Yeah, it's a loaded question. So we track, we have a lab called the Videri Labs. It's in the Netherlands, and we track exploits; what kind of attacks, to your exact question? And we've seen a huge rise in unmanaged devices over the last year and a half. So we can talk about whether it's escalators, it could be private communication systems, like things that would be on a train, while you have a communication system with that and the tracks and all of the infrastructure for a train. It could be, like I mentioned before, robotics, automobiles, or this kind of stuff. And we're seeing a big increase a year and a half ago of those cyber attacks and those actually being successful. And we do know, and I don't think this is any new news, that the new battleground is critical infrastructure. It's been mentioned by our government, and we've spent so much money securing traditional devices that the bad actors are saying, "Let's go after maybe some of this stuff that's been sitting out there for 20 years."
And we made it smart and didn't really think about what would happen in the future. And there's also this interesting thing that has happened: the bad actors are crowdsourcing how they exploit something. For example, recent hacks, such as the Salt Typhoon and the Volt Typhoon, have been in the news. Not only were they based in China, but the data also shows that they were crowdsourced. This means, hey, how would they? And could you get a bunch of people using OpenSource thought to hack these kinds of things?
It's scary. And so you can get thousands of people working on it, how would I exploit this thing, or do I have this problem? What do you think? And so, that's pretty scary. And then you talk about AI, which just adds to it because that's like if you have a language model at... A bad actor language model, you could theoretically create, that could actually say, "Well, all this stuff doesn't work, don't start there. Here's the things to go try." And it could help you learn how to be an expert hacker fast. And that's scary. And so, that's what we're dealing with today. And again, go after the critical infrastructure. It makes it even more scary and more vulnerable, to be fair.
Clint Betts
Can you give us a sense of the scale of the threat and just how many billions of dollars are lost to this type of stuff and spent on this type of stuff every year?
Barry Mainz
Yeah, so I think if you rewind the video back a few years, it will really be about ransomware. Hey, I'm going to go, and I'm going to breach your network, put something in there, and say, "Hey, if you want me to unlock all your files, you got to go give me money." And we see that transition. Whilst we still see that there, we're starting to see things like a Volt Typhoon or Salt Typhoon where they're hacking into critical infrastructure like our phone network and our mobile phone network, placing software that goes in and allows whoever it is to have access to information.
And it's transitioned. Yes, while we still have our ransomware, we're starting to see from, call it, a certain set of countries coming into the U.S. whether it's hacktivism, maybe like we've seen some of this stuff, which is different, where when October 7th happened in Israel, the situation there with Palestine and then the reaction that happened after that, many of the folks that were not on the side of the Israelis would go and say, "Well, maybe what we'll do is we will attack some of the technology that Israel has developed and supplied around the world as a way to say that's more by hacktivism."
And we're seeing these bad actors. They're not just in one country; they're in many countries with the same ideology trying to do something. So, it almost mirrors a little bit of the politics about this stuff. But they're going after critical infrastructure. And I'm not at liberty to give some of the examples, but I think you can see some of the things that we've had with, whether it's been drawing judges or some of the critical power infrastructure, that kind of thing.
Clint Betts
Well, the bad actors are not just rogue actors; they're also states, right? They're governments.
Barry Mainz
Mm-hmm. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And there are five of them that tend to be showing up all the time.
Clint Betts
Yeah. I want to go double click on AI because I think it's really interesting, obviously, how it's changing everything, but in particular your industry, how are you thinking about it? How are you using it and how are you preparing for this wave?
Barry Mainz
Yeah. So, now we move on a positive note here. I didn't mean to bum everybody out with the conversation here. But one of the things that we're announcing here, which I'm super excited about, is to leverage AI for the analysts who are using our software. One of the things that people always complain about is, if you look at the industry and for our customers, the people that are working either in the SOC or security operations center, it's tough to get people, high burnout job. It's go, go, go, go. And we sell to mostly regulated industries in the government. So banking, brokerage insurance, manufacturing, energy, these kinds of things. And so, typically, if something happens, it's not great, and so, they're stressed. One of the things we thought about, and my philosophy, is that if you sit where money changes hands, you find amazing opportunities.
And we found from our customers, they said, "Hey, if you could provide something you, a language model and some smarts that could come back and say, 'Here's all the alerts you're looking at. Based on what you've done in the past or based on what we think or based on what other people have leveraged, here's where you should start.'" Give you a prioritization. And that's really helped our customers and our beta; they're jazzed about it. And that's a great way for a language model to help you be more efficient and help you look. Versus spending half an hour and 40 minutes trying to... Because you're firefighting and these folks, now I got to look at the console, what should I do? It's coming back constantly. Here are the priorities.
I've used this, and it's been great. We don't do control right now. We could, so we don't say, given that, go do this because we wouldn't want a manufacturing plant shut down because of some of the infrastructures or some of the implementations. I'll let the user shut down the manufacturing plant if they want to, but let them have the final decision on that for control. So that's been a really, really good way of leveraging it. We're also spending some time with a lot of the critical CVEs that we find and saying, "Hey, can we apply some smarts in an application that will tell customers which ones to focus on based on their infrastructure and maybe potentially their risks based on what we see in other like infrastructures or other like hardware?" And that's been really useful because that's just more of a, hey, go take a look at this. Do you know about this? Or have you checked this?
And again, we don't do control. Maybe that's at some point, we could, but that's been great. So we are in beta about to announce that coming up and super excited about that because when you look in the eyes of your customers or users and they're really excited, this is one thing that's been really helpful. So, I think this is going to be a big thing for our customers and our partners.
Clint Betts
What does a typical day look like for you as CEO of this company?
Barry Mainz
Oh, God, that's a good question. I think one of the things that is a challenge for anyone is that we have 1100 employees and north of $350 million in revenue. So, it's busy, and I try to make sure that I manage my day. I always start off with, hey, let's take a look at the day fairly early. What do I need to accomplish? What can I delegate? I also do a few little tricks, like I don't do full-hour meetings. I'll do 50-minute meetings. That way, I have 10 minutes to either prep, make sure I'm ready for the next meeting, or make sure I'm not late because I think that's disrespectful to people's times and things. So I try and be on time. And make sure if it's a half-hour meeting, it ends at 25. If it's an hour meeting, it's really 50 minutes. So, I try to manage my time.
I also vary around the metrics and objectives. So I try to say, "Hey, what objectives do I... What do I have to do today to match those?" Then, I really try to focus my time on thinking a little bit during the day. Because there's always something I have got to go and sort out and make a good decision on and then be able to delegate to people. Last but not least, make up a bunch of time. Today, I talked to two customers. And again, like I said before, you have to be grounded in reality where the money changes hands. It's too easy to lose sight of things if you don't. So that's a typical day. I do these interviews, too, so I'm doing this today as well. I don't do it every day, but I try and do something, probably in a couple of weeks. A couple of times. Every couple of weeks, I'll do something like this.
Clint Betts
Yeah, yeah, that's great. That's incredible. It sounds like you're super busy here. How did you land on hybrid, in-person, all remote, that whole debate that we've all gone through and so many companies have gone through? Where did you land, and why did you land on where you landed?
Barry Mainz
Yeah. So, we're hybrid, for the most part. We do let some of the locations because we have our R&D centers around the world determine a little bit. In India, for example, not everybody is super close. I don't know if you've been to India, but it can be difficult to travel even a short distance, and public transportation isn't the best. So, it's actually been okay because we can get talent that may not be there.
But we're really trying hard on the other sites where we can, and people are relatively close to having two to three days in the office, and that's worked out really well. I think people also realize that sometimes, having the QA and developers right there, if there's an issue, right side by side, makes things happen more quickly. You don't have communication issues as much because you're looking somebody in the eye, and you can work things out and build a better relationship in the 3D environment than in the 2D environment. So, we're hybrid. I let the locations do it, but like I said, two or three days seems to work out pretty well for the teams.
Clint Betts
That's interesting. What do you read, and what reading recommendations would you have for the CEO.com community?
Barry Mainz
Oh, God. So I just finished a book called The Alchemist by Pablo Coelho. I don't know if you know that book?
Clint Betts
Great book. Great book.
Barry Mainz
It was a great book. And so I tried to read a combination of fiction and nonfiction, and I thought that it was just a good book to think differently. I think if you can change the way you think, it will help you solve problems better.
And then my current book is Never Split the Difference. I don't know if you know that one, but I think it's Chris Voss, who was an FBI negotiator. So it's really about negotiation and how to do it. The stories in there are phenomenal. And I'm maybe 50 pages through that, and that's a good book. I would recommend it to anyone, and it has some good principles in it, at least 50 pages in. But it's good. I try to read, and I spend time reading something each day. But those are the two that I've recently finished and the new one that I'm reading.
Clint Betts
What are you thinking about it? We're speaking at the very beginning of 2025, early January 2025. 2024 was a pretty volatile year for all sorts of reasons. There's an election, there's economic recessions or close to in certain industries, certain industries are doing really well. Just an uncertain time period. It does seem like we're a little bit more certain about what our world is going to look like this year. How are you thinking about 2025 versus 2024?
Barry Mainz
From what perspective are you talking about? Just the political perspective, tech perspective, what framework?
Clint Betts
And your company. And just like how you're managing your company differently, if you are at all?
Barry Mainz
Yeah. So if I just zoom out, it feels like, and again, this is just one person's point of view. I do get to spend time with governments. I was at the NATO summit, so I got a perspective. And this thing I keep hearing a lot is practical idealism and that hey, we want to make sure that we're spending time with people of all sides of the fence and diverse nature, but let's be practical about things and let's make sure we're thinking about what makes sense and what we can afford and doing the right thing. So there's that, which I think will help when people think about critical infrastructure. Should we think about whether it's spending the money on that? It's super important.
I feel like companies are looking for a better future just because of seeing the economy moving in that direction. This is what I hear, at least. Is it like monumental better? No, but I do feel like '25 will be better. I think there'll be more acquisitions, which in the tech space, the mergers and acquisitions actually help. Sometimes, one and one equals something way better than two. And so, we feel like that... You can just go look at whether it's IPOs or acquisitions, they were down last year. I think those will go up. There's definitely a heightened interest in cybersecurity that's not going away. And I think that it's not an if, it's when.
And then last but not least, I think some of the things like the Disclosure Act that happened last January, which was to say, "Hey, you're going to have personal liability if you don't..." And there's several things you needed to go do as a CEO, COO, or CFO that you could have personal liability if you didn't do certain things. And we see that happening around the world with NIST 2 and some of the other things.
So, I feel like there's a lineup between both public and private for the first time. And I just spoke with a couple of people at the NATO summit, and it was just now follow up yesterday, follow up meeting from those meetings, which was about, hey, how do we work better together between private and public and what do we do? So that's good.
Then the other piece is just I do feel like AI is maturing a bit, and it's become more advantageous, and we can use it to be more efficient. I don't want to say do more with less because it's not like we have fewer people, but the more I can put my hands on keyboards building stuff that will delight customers versus hey, that's just something that you should just go do anyway, like QA or something like that, the better it is. So I think we're going to see some advances this year with that.
Clint Betts
Yeah, it's interesting you went to the NATO summit. That's going to be a big topic this year, right? NATO is going to be a very big topic.
Barry Mainz
Yeah, that's true.
Clint Betts
Which will be interesting and I'm sure it'll all work out, who knows? But yeah, that's going to be a very interesting topic. What are some products, some things, some apps, things that you use every single day that you could never live without?
Barry Mainz
Oh God, my phone. Yeah. And the myriad of apps. I got an iPhone, the myriad of apps on the phone, although I forced myself to use an Android for a while, to go and just to learn both sides of the fence. But my phone. And I also think it's important to have this little side thing. Part of the thing I do for just my mental health is working out. So, some of the interesting applications that are in and around, being able to track your vitals, whether it's your heart rate or your recovery rates and things like that, that blood pressure and everything to say, "Hey, are you stressed out? Are you recovering? Do you need more sleep?" So, I like biohacking myself a little bit. And so there's a bunch of apps that I use for that.
Look, email, and text. You can have on Apple, it's like how much time you're spending on different kinds of apps or how much time you spend connected. Microsoft, same thing. I turned all that off because it was scaring the hell out of me when I'd see oh, you spend X number of hours doing this. I'm like, aah. So I did turn that off because I think that's just a angst thing.
I stopped looking at a lot of social media on reels and stuff.
Clint Betts
That's healthy. LinkedIn is probably the only one that I look at a lot all the time. I just don't. Just because of the other ones, I think you waste time. It's not that people use them and don't waste time, but it was just for me. I could do other things like spend time with my family, or hey, I could go and spend time reading a book because you're looking at reels, and all of a sudden, you turn around, and you're like, "That's an hour." So I went away from that. And so, I think it went from... Although it's still digital, I use a Kindle, but it's still digital. But I call that the analog book. Try and force myself. And this year, one of my resolutions was to be more analog. So, books, have conversations with people, reach out, and maybe use less text and more phones.
I love it. Yeah, that is incredible. And I wonder as you were saying that, and you have a team of 1100, is that what you said?
Barry Mainz
Yeah.
Clint Betts
1100 folks. And during COVID, so many leaders were dealing with a mental health crisis within their employee base and themselves. It seems like it's still a little bit ongoing. How have you managed that? How have you thought about that? How are you approaching that issue that it seems like every leader is being confronted with?
Barry Mainz
Yeah, it's a really good... It was tougher during the pandemic because, and then post pandemic, right post pandemic, right? We could see it in our healthcare charge. They won't tell you who, but we'd see it was up by 125%. People are going and having mental health-related engagements with our medical and our medical care. So I think there are a few things. First, I think it's important for people to spend time with other people. And there's a lot of research that shows that some of the angst at work is about confrontation. And I think that if you can have a confrontation that is constructive and face-to-face, you will feel way better after. And there's so much research on...
God, I feel so much better. I even tell my kids, "Hey, I have an issue at work." I said, "Have a conversation with them, go meet them." And then they'll say, sky is falling, then after, "Wow, he was really nice or she was nice. Hey, we got through this." So have that constructive confrontation. Because typically, that was a big push for some of the anxiety and stuff.
The other piece is about reaching out to people. Hey, how are you doing? I only say this because I don't want to say halfway joking, but I say it because it's honest. I say, "Hey, this is a health and welfare check. What's going on?" Reach out to your employees. I did it earlier today. And you could just tell because this person was stressed out. I said, "Hey, it's a health and wellness check or a health and welfare check. What's going on?"
Clint Betts
Yeah.
Barry Mainz
[inaudible 00:24:22] hard for our leaders to say, have a [inaudible 00:24:25]. Have a lunch with your team. Make sure you invite them in once a month so that you're having conversations. Do the kinds of stuff that we, as humans, like a lot. Sometimes, it's easier to stay home, but once we go to a party, even introverts go to a party and come back, "Hey, that wasn't so bad." And I think that the human element helped us through some of the anxiety, and we're seeing it.
And then we have varying things that we try and do from an HR perspective, whether it's like September, hey, get out there and do some walk. And you can post things and journal fun things that go on. But I do feel like that human element, I think as a species, we need to have that interaction. And the less you have, the harder it is. And you can see it with even kids who didn't go to school during the pandemic. How difficult it was. So I think it's pushing for some of the things we maybe knew a lot before and just going back to some of the things we did before. Have a conversation if you're having an issue with somebody.
It's hard. We'll give you some tools. Here's how you start that conversation. That's the one thing. The one thing when we talk to our employees is, give you this, how do you start that conversation? And if I had a problem with you, [inaudible 00:25:43]. And so, we had this little tool; it's like I'm just seeking to understand; here's the email I got. What does that mean? And just that little thing, right? Look for some of those things. So anyway, always think that sometimes, start with the simple things that kind of help out and engage people and some tools that people could use that were really helpful.
Clint Betts
Finally, at CEO.com, we believe the chances one gives are just as important as the chances one takes. When you hear that, who gave you a chance to get you to where you are today?
Barry Mainz
Oh, God. I would say, Ken Klein. So he was my boss at two companies, and he hired me to work at Wind River. And I told him, I said, "Hey, I want to be a CEO." And he said, "Okay, great. Well, here are some things you need to go do, and you have talent. Here's what I need. Hey, you need..." I come from a liberal arts background. So, I think I'm the only... I don't even want to admit that, but I think I'm the only person who knew that I had a liberal arts background and was running a cyber security company. But he said, "Hey, I need you to go take a week-long class, which is finance for non-financial executives." And I did that. I did that at Columbia University, and he invested in me. He said, "Hey, you don't know what's stamped on your own forehead. Here's what you should do, and I think you should be a CEO." So I would say Ken gave me that chance, and I'll never forget it.
Clint Betts
Barry, thank you so much for coming on. Best of luck in everything you're doing in the new year. It's super exciting and it's very important what you're doing. So thank you very much.
Barry Mainz
You're welcome. Thanks for having me.
Edited for readability.