CrowdStrike Fal.Con 2024 | Shawn Henry | Crowdstrike

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Shawn Henry

Executive Advisor to the CEO, Former CSO & President of Services

CrowdStrike

Cyber awareness: The essential shield against today’s digital threats

Cyber awareness is vital in today’s increasingly digital world because it enables business continuity, safe online behavior and protection against threats.As online threats, such as ransomware, phishing, hacking and malware, continue wreaking havoc, an increased security posture is needed through cyber awareness, according to Shawn Henry (pictured), chief security officer of CrowdStrike Inc.CrowdStrike’s Shawn Henry talks to theCUBE about cyber awareness being an incredible part of cybersecurity.“The word I want everybody to just take and scribble it on their head, it’s awareness,” Henry stated

play_circle_outline Shawn Henry's background at CrowdStrike and transition from FBI

play_circle_outline Use of cyber as a tool in physical conflicts by nation states

play_circle_outline Importance of cybersecurity in defending against asymmetric attacks

play_circle_outline Recommendations for business leaders and citizens to stay aware and validate sources

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Shawn Henry | Crowdstrike

Shawn Henry

Executive Advisor to the CEO, Former CSO & President of Services CrowdStrike

TheCUBE's coverage of Fal.Con 2024 at the Aria in Las Vegas features Shawn Henry, chief security officer at CrowdStrike. Shawn, a former FBI agent, now focuses on protecting critical infrastructure from cyber threats. He joined CrowdStrike based on belief in the CEO's vision and the company's potential impact. Shawn discusses how cyber attacks are used in conflicts to disrupt communications and infrastructure. He highlights the importance of cyber defense in preventing harm to critical systems. The conversation also explores the role of cyber in international... Read more

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What is the speaker's background and career journey, including their transition from the FBI to CrowdStrike? add

What role will cyber warfare play in future physical conflicts involving nation states? add

What potential advantages does cyber warfare offer to less powerful entities in an asymmetric world? add

What is the importance of awareness in protecting against threats and being more informed as both business leaders and everyday citizens? add

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Shawn Henry | Crowdstrike

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Rebecca Knight

>> Good afternoon everyone, and welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of Fal.Con 2024 here at the Aria in Las Vegas. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, sitting alongside my co-host and co-analyst, Dave Vellante. We've got a very good friend of theCUBE joining us for this segment. Shawn Henry, chief Security Officer here at CrowdStrike. Thank you so much for coming back on.

Shawn Henry

>> Thank you for having me. This is just absolutely fantastic and I love the opportunity always to talk to the two of you about what's happening in the world of crime, cyber adversaries.

Rebecca Knight

>> Well, we're going to get into all of that criminal nation states and e-crime and the integrity of our elections. We're going to get an all into that. But for our viewers who have not watched all of your highlights, tell us you're one of the longest tenured executive leaders here at CrowdStrike. Tell us a little bit about your career. You're retired from the FBI, joined CrowdStrike?

Shawn Henry

>> I did. So I spent 24 years at the FBI. I retired as executive assistant director, so I was running half of the FBI's operations globally. I left in 2012. I retired. And came to CrowdStrike. When I got here, we had no products, we had no sales, no customers, but our CEO-founder, George Kurtz just had this vision and the idea when he, I'd never met him before, but he pitched me on what he wanted to do and I took a little bit of time to think about it and jumped over and been here ever since. And it's just been a fantastic ride. I feel like we're really having an incredible impact, helping to protect critical infrastructure. We're stopping bad guys on a regular basis, nation states. And it really, for me, when I was in the Bureau, it was about the mission and protecting good people from bad things. And this is just a natural transition into the private sector where we could have a really significant role in keeping people safe.

Dave Vellante

>> That was a long shot bet you took personally, because at the time, the business was mean much more of a mess than it's now, right?

Shawn Henry

>> It didn't exist. It was an idea. It was huge risk. For me, most of my colleagues were becoming chief security officers for major companies. So Disney, Caterpillar, Merck Pharmaceutical, Citibank.

Dave Vellante

>> Good job.

Shawn Henry

>> All former colleagues of mine who are CSOs, chief security officers and go into a startup, there were more than a couple of people who gave me a side eye like, what are you doing? But I knew because I'd been running the cyber program and the Bureau, I knew what the risks were to infrastructure, what the threats were. And I knew that the government, while it was working very hard and continues to and is having successes, didn't have the capability to scale and protect the commercial sector globally. And I just saw that opportunity there. And George is just a visionary and his idea was just the right idea about building this technology, the Fal.Con platform that we now have 12 years later, tens of thousands of customers. But his idea was the right idea. So it was a huge risk, a leap, but I bet on him and his idea, and I had a good background on what the market would be.

Dave Vellante

>> Yeah. Well, congratulations on that. I went back into our AI video from our conversation last year, looked at some of the highlights, and it was interesting. We were talking about the big four Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, and we also talked about at the time there was one hot war in Ukraine, we're now two years in, we've got a hot war in the Middle East. What have you discerned in your research and your observations? What have you learned? How has that changed in the last 12, 15 months?

Shawn Henry

>> So I don't know that there's been much change in our observations other than more validation, I think. I think it's very clear if you look at Russia, Ukraine and Israel and Palestine, what's happened there, that nation states are absolutely going to use cyber as a tool or a weapon in any type of physical conflict. It's absolutely going to be a component. And in many cases, it's going to be a precursor to an actual physical invasion. The ability to impact communications, the ability to create havoc, to knock out electric power, which can be done all of that through cyber means is a huge advantage for somebody who's going to subsequently launch a ground war. And that's going to continue to happen in any conflict going forward. It's a natural component. It used to be thought of, I think, as something that might have been aspirational, but I think it's been very clearly vetted out as a clear advantage and an opportunity that will not be missed.

Dave Vellante

>> As somebody who's been inside the government and knows how it operates. And of course it's big, there's a lot of different governments inside the government. But I remember talking to Robert Gates, and I might have mentioned this to you when I said, "But don't we have in the United States the best cyber? Can't we go in the attack?" And his response was, "Yes, but we have to be careful, because we have a lot to lose." And when you think about the narrative that's going on with respect, for instance, the economic situation in China and tariffs and so forth, and the military component of that, the threat of hot wars, nuclear war, how does cyber fit into that? Because I think a lot of people think, well, Ben Franklin, trading partners seldom wage war. So let's do more trade. And we seem to be going in a different direction. United States likes to be the world leader. We're number one, we're the big power. And so we use our military might, but now cyber comes into that equation. How do you think the United States should be using cyber to maintain its world presence?

Shawn Henry

>> So that's a big question. Cyber's the great equalizer, and it's an opportunity in an asymmetric world for those that might be less powerful from a military perspective to gain a significant advantage because they can impact the military might, the infrastructure of large powers. So I call it the great equalizer, right? It's a magical tool in the belt of some of these smaller, less sophisticated governments, or even those that might be sympathetic to the government, not necessarily working on behalf of the government, these hacktivist groups. So it's provided them a great opportunity. I think that the potential long-term impact from a prolonged cyber war, while certainly not a greater threat as a nuclear event, has the ability to disrupt infrastructure, physically destroy infrastructure, similar to what's been happening, kinetically, the pipes, the routes, the distribution capabilities, and that can have long-term implications and impact. So while again, not really on par with nuclear, it is a major concern for civilized nations who by the way, rely completely on that infrastructure to survive. If our internet was knocked out, our power was knocked out here for five days or more, people would start dying. If it was in the dead of winter or the heat of summer, we lost AC, we lost heat, food supply, the whole supply chain, we've seen with COVID how that can be impacted. And cyber's being used to disrupt those types of things. So excuse me. I think nation-states need to be thinking about what the blowback is, right? Living in glass houses, what the cascading impact is. And I think that there has to be a lot more discussion, nation-state to nation-state about what the red lines are, and if you cross this line, this is what the result is going to be.

Dave Vellante

>> Well, the reason I ask is because it could be a path to nuclear war that asymmetry. That's the last thing we want is a nuclear war, obviously. And so you rightly, I think point out it's not on the same level, but could it be a path to something more destructive? I think it could be. And so that's why a company like CrowdStrike and others in the industry are so important for us to defend against those asymmetric attacks. Do you agree?

Shawn Henry

>> No, I think that that's right. One of the reasons I mentioned at the outset here. I've moved into the private sector, but I'm still in the fight, right? We're protecting critical infrastructure around the globe. And you mentioned the big four who are still the big four Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, those nations are aligned, right? Russia and China are aligned. Iran and Russia are aligned. China and North Korea are aligned. They all have different geopolitical aspirations, they have different objectives, but they all have one common objective, and that is to disrupt the West because disruption of the West and the US being a big target of the West, Europe of course is all part of that. But democracies themselves, the US is under fire, but so are our allies. And if we're not aligned, if we're not sharing information, sharing intelligence to disrupt these types of attacks and building capabilities to counter those types of attacks, then we're missing opportunity because the big four are not constrained by the Constitution, oftentimes, the norms of society and different conventions that have been in place for decades to keep certain things in check.

Rebecca Knight

>> Well, one way they could of course disrupt the West is this year in our elections. So what are you seeing? What are your concerns? We already know that the big four are targeting with misinformation, disinformation, but what are other specific cyber threats that you're seeing that you're concerned about?

Shawn Henry

>> So there's two components when I think about disrupting the election, and it's a great segue because it goes directly to that point, the West itself in is in the crosshairs of the big four, and the US is right out in front. They're standing in front of the West, and our election is going to have significant worldwide and historic consequences one way or the other in this country. So the two components when I think about disrupting the election, one is what people have often been concerned about, which is somebody somehow disrupting voter registration logs or disrupting how votes are counted, somehow changing the actual results of the election electronically, excuse me. And I think that at scale with enough to really impact a wide election is probably much less of a concern because of how disparate our electoral process is, our system is. 50 states, dozens or hundreds of counties within those different states, all with different systems. So not one general system that's targeted, all your eggs in one basket. There might be, and we've seen historically little things that have been impactful, but certainly not to the extent that it would change an election. The bigger issue and the bigger concern and the bigger risk, I think, is the use of things like AI through social media campaigns to sow disruption and chaos and cause people to challenge the election. We saw just this morning, the US government come out specifically and say they have seen Russia trying to undermine the Harris campaign. They had been focused on Biden, when pulled out in July, they trained their sites on Harris and has been that transition period, and now they're seeing actual, and they've identified specific campaigns. We saw the Trump campaign being targeted by Iran. Again, US government, lots of collection capabilities. I understand how the intelligence process works working with allies. There's a lot of visibility into what's happening there. So we've seen this occur. It will absolutely continue up until election day. We will continue to see the use of social media to push information to cause chaos inside the United States of America. And that's incredible. Let me just one more point. 2024, 40 different elections globally. So we saw, for example, in Taiwan, China trying to undermine the Taiwanese president in advance of that election. We've seen it elsewhere around Europe in the Middle East. We are going to continue to see this. This is not something just for our election. This is something that is a playbook going forward indefinitely.

Dave Vellante

>> Do you think, and based on either data or intuition, does the big four, do they care who wins the election or do they just want to collaborate to foment arguments? Because one could argue it from a foreign policy standpoint, it doesn't really matter who's president, it's the NSA and the CIA and the FBI and others that are experienced at government who are actually calling the shots. And so do they care who wins or do you think they're just trying to create dissension?

Shawn Henry

>> So in 2008 when I was still in the FBI was the first time we saw electronic infiltration of campaigns. So we saw the US government, this is public now, it was classified at the time, but the US government saw China targeting the McCain and the Obama campaign. And in that case, this was a review of each of the candidate's policies. What's their foreign policy going to be? What's their economic policy going to be? Who were some of the people they're considering for cabinet level positions? It was pure espionage. Plain and simple. And espionage, by the way, has been going on for a few thousand years, right? It used to be some guy crawling underneath a tent and getting a piece of papyrus that had some scribbling on it, right? But now we've moved to the digital age. This is not espionage anymore, this is about sowing confusion, deceit. So when you talk about the big four, each of them have different objectives. Each of them may have particular candidates that they believe might be supportive of their policies, but I think at the highest level, it's about confusion and deceit and causing Americans to be at war with each other at odds with each other. And I think we've seen the divisiveness, and in my opinion, much of that is through social media. Taking statements that individuals have made exasperating them, extrapolating.

Rebecca Knight

>> And that happens even without our adversaries getting involved too.

Shawn Henry

>> 100%. It does.

Dave Vellante

>> But they amplify.

Rebecca Knight

>> Yes. Yes.

Shawn Henry

>> I mean there are internal adversaries. There are people internally who want to cause division, et cetera. And I mean, it works against the principles of democracy when people are not able to make rational decisions because the information they have is completely manufactured. It's wrong. It's a complete fabrication, that's a problem.

Dave Vellante

>> Is there any evidence that suggests that the collaborating like, "Hey, Russia, you take on Harris and Walz, and Iran, you take on Trump and Vance?"

Shawn Henry

>> I haven't seen that. Anything that I've seen has been individual types of campaigns. Doesn't mean it hasn't happened or it won't happen, but I haven't seen it.

Rebecca Knight

>> So what do you recommend business leaders do as well as normal, just everyday citizens do to protect against these threats, or at least to be more aware of them?

Shawn Henry

>> So Rebecca, the word you hit on is the word I want everybody to just take and scribble it on their head, it's awareness. And it's about having an appreciation for the media. I've been engaged with the media throughout my professional life, and I am a huge believer in the value of the media being able to shine a light. I worked public corruption for the first 10 years of my career, and I can't tell you how many times a good journalist identified something, some official that was using their office for personal gain and victimizing citizens, and it led to somebody getting arrested and saving citizens. It was the media that shined a light. So I think that as citizens, this awareness level is about knowing where you're getting your information from, checking your sources. Don't just look at a tweet that somebody put out and retweet it or a Facebook post and send it out to all your friends without understanding is it valid or not? Is this a legitimate account it came from or is it a fraudulent account? Validate your sources. Be aware that there are these campaigns ongoing. And that as citizens, it's our responsibility to ensure that we are assessing information, ensuring it's valid before we are becoming part of the process to fan the flames. I can tell you there are a lot of people who have unwittingly helped a lot of foreign governments whose sole objective is to disrupt this country, and that is very, very troubling to me.

Dave Vellante

>> You think AI will help? I had a really good argument with Perplexity this morning. I did.

Rebecca Knight

>> All right. Okay.

Dave Vellante

>> I'm sure. We went back and forth. I was debating with Perplexity. I said, "Well, you're missing this." And it would say, "Yeah, you're right." It would give me both sides. You think that AI can help with that awareness or will it hurt?

Shawn Henry

>> AI can help and can hurt. So the answer is yes. Look, AI is a huge advancement and it enables people, cyber security companies, we've been using AI for 10 years. When people think about AI, now they're thinking about generative AI, right? Which is ChatGPT, the ability for the lay person to enter a command into a search bar and get a result. But we've been using AI for 10 years to be able to analyze and evaluate data that might take humans days or weeks, they can do in minutes. So in that case, it's usually valuable to sort through a lot of nonsense and say, this is true. Conversely, AI in this concept of deep fakes has allowed adversaries to get advantage and lay people to become more sophisticated because they now have the technical skills, but they're using the large language model, the AI model, to help advance their capability. So it goes both ways. I think overall, it's more helpful for security people at this time.

Rebecca Knight

>> Okay. Well I'm going to end on that positive note, even though this conversation has scared the bejesus out of me. But thank you very much, Shawn Henry, great to have you on theCUBE.

Shawn Henry

>> Thanks for having me. I really appreciate you.

Dave Vellante

>> You're welcome.

Shawn Henry

>> All right.

Rebecca Knight

>> I'm Rebecca Knight for Dave Vellante. Stay tuned for more of theCUBE's live coverage of Fal.Con 2024. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in enterprise tech news and analysis.