The Future of Cybersecurity, AI & Women in Tech

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Big speeches make headlines, but real stories happen here.

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This is Brilliantly Candid.

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Let's go beyond the keynote and get to the heart of leadership.

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All right, everyone, welcome.

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So we've got Rupal Hollenbeck here, President of Check Point.

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Welcome.

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Thank you.

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Okay, so we were just talking about, know, how, you know, the keynotes this morning were

absolutely amazing and really inspiring.

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I have known Check Point from the jump, like way as a competitor, I was at another

company.

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dear.

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But we were always, but let's be honest, Check Point was playing a different sphere.

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I mean, the fact that you guys even mentioned the old company that used to be with as a

competitor, I'm like, yeah, we were like the end point of the end point.

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We'll just leave it at that.

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But that being said is.

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One thing I love and I would love to talk to you about is the humanity in where the

direction we're going.

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Because you hear it, the future is now.

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But I loved what Nadav had said about the perspective of the future and the fact that you

don't want to make assumptions of the future.

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And it just really struck with me this morning because I was like, oh, every conversation

now is this different lens and what it potentially is.

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Now, in that light, what I really want to dig down into, because you mentioned it, the

humanity of who we are, but the additional angle as women, when you add that additional

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perspective of a female, and I'm just saying as someone that maybe has a lot of

responsibilities, especially for those that have children and procreate and all that good

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stuff, yes, have children and procreate, I differentiate between the two.

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But I would love to hear about your thoughts on this because you're such an advocate for

women.

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I mean, it's just awe-inspiring.

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And thank you very much for all the ladies coming up in the careers for STEM.

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So let's talk about this.

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Do you see a shift of women being more interested into cybersecurity because AI is a

little bit more welcoming, I think, in some ways, for women?

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Yeah.

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Listen, I think the jury's out.

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I think we don't know yet.

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But here's the thing.

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You were at the keynotes this morning.

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I'm so glad you were.

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You heard an adob say, don't make assumptions.

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The other thing, and I think it was said in one of the videos that he captured, was we

don't know what's around the corner.

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We don't know.

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And what we do know that we don't know, it means we need to be agile.

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It's about having an agile workforce.

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It's about always being in learning mode, not in knowing mode.

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Cybersecurity is one of those industries, and you know this very well.

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You can't be a know-it-all.

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No.

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You have to be a learn-it-all.

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And so not knowing what's around the corner means you have to be agile, you have to have

speed, and you have to be willing to let down your barriers and not know it all.

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Now, conversation about women.

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I'm a big advocate for women.

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I'm a woman.

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I'm happy for everything you all are doing to promote women in cyber and women in tech.

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I think that AI is only going to help us in that realm.

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I believe that some companies are made and other companies fade when it comes to major

technology transitions in history.

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Go back to the internet.

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Client server architecture.

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to the dawn of the internet.

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Companies were made with the dawn of the internet.

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Then came the mobile revolution.

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In the mobile revolution, companies were made and companies faded.

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Now, maybe we're not infants, but we're toddlers when it comes to AI.

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So it's another major technology transition.

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We don't know yet who's going to be made and who's going to fade.

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We all look at companies like Nvidia and we go,

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We look at hyperscalers and we go, wow.

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So there are companies that are sort of jockeying for position, but the reality is just

too early.

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The one thing we know for sure is that AI is going to change everything.

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And through every one of these revolutions, the role that women play in the technology has

fundamentally changed too.

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Now in the United States, there are just as many women, if not more, graduating with

degrees in STEM.

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that's a new stat.

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I haven't heard.

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That's awesome.

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Everyone applaud that.

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My goodness.

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Yeah.

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then that gets even more exciting when you look at women of color.

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It gets me very excited.

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And so here's the thing.

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The total available market is there.

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We are building products for everyone.

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an increasing number of CISOs out there, the CISOs are the hero of our story at Check

Point.

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And an increasing number of CISOs are women.

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And I've had the pleasure of meeting them in the last three years that I've been at Check

Point.

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So here's the thing.

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We're building products, technologies, and experiences to keep citizens safe via their

workplaces.

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That's men and women.

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And if I'm serving a broad population, doesn't it take a broad, inclusive population to

serve an equally broad population?

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That gets me really excited.

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And I think we've made tremendous progress, but we can't be satisfied.

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Celebrating progress doesn't mean you have to be satisfied.

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No.

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And let me just tell you, you just struck a lot of chords with me right now because the

idea with AI is it does the analogy of the internet, right?

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The advent of the internet and there was just a wave.

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It was argued back in the day, you know, every company is a technology company.

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The truth of matters today, every company is a technology company, whether they, it

doesn't matter what industry does not matter because underpinning of it all is

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infrastructure of some capacity, whether it's in the cloud or not, it doesn't matter.

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you're not a technology company these days, you're probably not in business.

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or much longer.

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I mean, do you remember that graphic, right?

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Where they did the last 40 years of all the top companies.

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It's all, I mean, it's just the evolution around it.

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can see AI really flipping on its head.

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So, okay, so one thing I remember talking to, it happened to be a female.

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It wasn't unintentional, but I thought it was really interesting.

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AI, at its core, there's a very human element to it.

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So when you prompt AI, for example, the way you...

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feed it questions and the way you actually describe it.

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Women, the person argued, said women intuitively know how to talk to AI, build up what

they need to get out of it better.

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Do you agree with that statement?

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Better?

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I can't say better, but what I can absolutely say is different.

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And that is so important, right?

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AI intrinsically has the bias of the humans that teach it.

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And so if AI is taught through OneNote, what comes out is OneNote.

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It's garbage in, garbage out.

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It's info in, info out, which is why people get frustrated today.

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with some of the more common generative AI tools because they're just not there yet.

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And so if you think about wanting comprehensive, accurate statements from your AI, don't

you have to be comprehensive in what you put in, in how you train?

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And so I think that people talk about bias in AI, it's a real thing.

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Because yeah, and so you need a really diverse

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community that's informing the AI or what you get out is going to be one note.

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What you get out is going to be through one myopic lens, and that's human bias.

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Yes.

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So, okay, so you got me really excited.

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So again, despite popular opinion, I was taking notes.

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I was taking notes on my phone.

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I wasn't playing Ward Candy Crush.

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this morning?

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Yes.

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Was someone watching you?

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Stop it, was not.

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I hit the screen by accident.

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the announcement with Infinity Platform and just seeing how you guys are collaborating

with third parties.

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So I have to ask, and I don't know if anyone will know this, but because I'm old school,

and again, my background in cybersecurity is like a long time ago.

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Like, I don't think Half the Room was born yet.

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Let me just put it that way.

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But it's not opsec, remarketed, right?

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Like, no.

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Okay, I see.

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In fact, and I was right there with you at the beginning of, I'm right there with you

sister at beginning of cybersecurity, but here's the thing.

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It takes a village.

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Through each of these technology transitions, there's been an ecosystem.

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There's been a village that enabled this transformation, whether it was the dawn of the

internet, the mobile revolution, the social media revolution, or now with AI.

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So we have to recognize it takes a village.

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You heard Nadav say this this morning, right?

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Yes.

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As much as I would love to fill a shop with checkpoint technology and say, you don't need

anybody else, that isn't practical.

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Yeah.

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Right?

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That's true.

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And so having a community or a village of providers that come into an ecosystem is

actually for the best benefit of organizations and therefore for our citizens.

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And so we think about real architecture.

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It's not marketechture.

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And so, right?

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so we all know lots of marketing companies.

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We're talking about an architecture.

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And that architecture means that all of the different pieces of the platform need to exist

together and collaborate and cooperate together.

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But that collaboration can't just be inside or it's myopic and the organization's gonna

get breached.

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We've got to integrate with all of the other members of the ecosystem.

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And that means other security vendors

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It also means channel partners and system integrators and the way that we go to market.

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We've got to look at this as a village because otherwise stuff's going to fall through the

cracks.

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Well, look, we know the challenge of the vendor lock-in.

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At least for me when I worked at HP, there was a big, huge pushback in the day for the

infrastructure.

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Everything in the data center, let's have one big solution.

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own it.

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Let's all own it.

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And then everyone found it very quickly.

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Priced yourself out of it.

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There's technology lacking.

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And then you're starting to get this incoherent fixes to fill in the gaps specific.

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Okay, so let me ask, so how were you able, how was Check Point able to go to a competitor

and say, we know there's gonna be a client that's probably gonna pick you instead of us

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for this.

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Work with us and we will let the playbook kind of just kind of help inform each other.

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So how did you guys work that?

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Because if I'm your competitor, maybe I don't like you guys.

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I'm like, no, go away.

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I was pretty excited about that one.

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I I love that because it's a celebration of success for the client, right?

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Yes.

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my gosh.

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Okay.

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And it's so funny what you described.

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I have a different term for it because we're called brilliant beam media.

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like a Care Bear power stair.

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If you remember that.

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we have our own internal light.

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Let me just tell you Care Bear power stair.

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We all have our lights, but when we combine it, are we more one brilliant beam of light?

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Yeah.

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and it's just further reaching, right?

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So, all right, I have one last question.

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And by the way, I could talk to you forever and kudos.

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Please, thank you so much for your continued support of women.

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We just need more voices.

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Okay, one last question because it was prompted.

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Hot dogs, sandwich or not?

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Hmm.

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I'm inclined to agree as a very political, politic answerer.

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Thank you so very much.

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It is such a pleasure to get to know you and man, congratulations.

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CPX 2025 out done itself this year.