Cloud security specialist here to enlist partners

Lacework’s Jay Parikh equates cyber protection with home security whereby shutting windows and locking doors is enhanced if you also add cameras.

Cyber protection, like home security, is all about the extra level of defence.

Lacework’s Jay Parikh likens developing cyber protection to your home security. You can shut the windows and lock the doors but cameras help, so as soon as someone breaks in you get the police involved.

Next problem is how many cameras and where to locate them; and remember, the neighbourhood is fast moving so you need to adapt fast in a cost-effective way.

“We help partners understand what they have to care about,” Parikh said.

Parikh, chief executive of US-based Lacework, is in Australia this week to develop partners for the $US8.3bn private business, which already has ties with companies ranging from Amazon’s AWS and Cyber CX to UNSW and fintech Creditorwatch.

Lacework is a cloud specialist with a platform aimed at providing code security by correlating risk and threat analysis to prioritise issues for better cyber security.

The key is, as usual, data collection which identifies patterns to help pinpoint the main threats and the company’s weak points.

“We look at separate events and try to stitch them together,” Parikh said.

The cloud has made everything faster which is good because speed helps innovation, but it has also thrown defence into potential turmoil.

By providing the right security systems, engineers are not wasting their time on defence and instead spending their time on attack, growing the business.

Although an infrequent visitor to Australia, he is not a stranger having been on the Atlassian board since 2013.

Parikh said he “knew Mike Cannon-Brookes before and was reintroduced in 2012”.

“Atlassian is a great company scaling a hard market,” he said.

An engineer by training, Parikh started his career at Accenture before he joined Akamai from 1997 to 2007, social networking platform Ning International from 2007 to 2009 and then to Meta where he was in charge of its engineering department from 2009 to 2021.

Meta is where he learned to collect data on scale. He said the company had “incredible people, evolution and technology, but I left because it was time to get uncomfortable again”.

Parikh was less forthcoming when asked about the Meta global market power debate.

If cyber security seems daunting, Parikh’s advice is “keep going don’t stop, and have a high degree of self awareness to know where you’re blind spots are”.

The trick is to understand technology is fallible because humans are fallible, and cyber security teams need to be able to balance defence while growing the company.

The platform runs vulnerability scans on partners which may uncover 1000 potential problems – but identify the key eight which are the biggest risk and hence the need for focus.

It is also helping partners work with Securities and Exchange Commission rules which require early disclosure of material breaches – the question is what is a material breach.

Parikh joined Lacework in 2021 as joint CEO with David Hatfield and became sole chief in 2022.

Last year the former security chief at Twitter, Lea Kissner, also joined the company which began in 2015.

Its innovation strength is shown by the fact it has 220 patents filed and Parikh said the focus now was on development ahead of any public listing.

Competition reform moving in right direction

Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers is finally heading into the right space with plans to revamp national competition policy in conjunction with the states.

The states are crucial because in most policy areas they have to do the work, but the feds pick up the extra revenue via improved productivity.

When the council was at its best from 1997 to 2003 it was armed with a 10-year compensation fund for the states to the tune of $16bn.

In 2005, then treasurer Peter Costello closed the window reportedly in part because the computer models ran out of space to show the benefits in further years.

Step one is to get Danielle Wood’s team at the Productivity Commission to get the tools together to measure the impact of the reforms and work out what compensation is fair.

That is happening now. And step two is the crucial bit – putting a list of workable reforms to the PC which is being worked on now with state help.

Competition policy is different to competition law and they work best together, rather than being an either/or. But in recent years the focus has been too much on the law, debates over merger law, etc, which arguably on their own don’t have an apparent immediate impact on competition.

Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers. Picture: Martin Ollman

Government works best on the policy by removing barriers to competition to let new players into the market.

Often competition happens without government, through technology – as with Uber and the taxis – and sometimes clever entrepreneurs like Chemist Warehouse against the Pharmacy Guild regulations.

At the same time as looking at merger reform, Chalmers’ time is best devoted to removing barriers to competition, a targeted use of incentive subsidies (that’s is not helping the big get bigger, such as the outrageous handouts to BlueScope Steel to reline a steel mill which was already happening anyway), and by avoiding the political impulse to control every crisis by more regulation and/or another ACCC market study.

Legislation can, when executed by an active enforcement agency like the ACCC, prevent the abuse of competition and maintain lower barriers to entry. But the risk is regulations simply preserve markets in an uncompetitive state.

Arguably changes in competition law give false hope, and Chalmers understands the best question is to ask is where the new source of competition is coming from and what incentives can be provided to help innovation.

Now he must put his words into action.

But as Chemist Warehouse and Uber show, mostly the revolution comes from outside the halls of government.

Recognition a long time coming

As noted recently by The Australian’s John Stensholt, Fiona Geminder this month was appointed as deputy chair of family company Visy which is jointly owned by the two Pratt sisters and chair Anthony Pratt.

The internal announcement said “it’s appropriate to recognise (Fiona’s) long commitment to the company” but made clear it “does not affect the company executive reporting structures”.

In other words Anthony is still the boss.

His profile is such that many outside the organisation would not realise the power of work Fiona does and has done in the company since her father’s death in 2009, and the new title is perhaps belated recognition of this work.

Raphael and Fiona Geminder.

Fiona is happily married to long-time partner and Pact Group chair Raphael Geminder, and in fact ranks as the only one of the top-10 richest women still married to her first partner.

The late Richard Pratt was a legend who walked the factory floors in the early mornings before dealing with customers and other issues involved in running a multinational empire.

The way it works now, Fiona does the factory stuff, the staff and customers while Anthony deals with the big end of town.

Sister Heloise runs the philanthropy.

In her LinkedIn note on the appointment, Fiona said: “I remain completely committed to supporting our chairman, Anthony Pratt, and Visy’s ongoing success and to supporting Heloise Pratt, chair of the Pratt Foundation.”