Transcript: Securing Cyberspace – The Washington Post

But, first, we’re going to hear from Phil Venables, who is the chief information security officer at Google Cloud.

Phil, thanks for joining us.

MR. VENABLES: Yeah. Pleasure to be here.

MR. STARKS: Yeah. So let’s start by talking about the fact that‑‑it’s going to come as no surprise to any of our viewers online‑‑that most or more and more of our transactions are happening online. Can you talk about the degree to which our financial‑‑our economy has become digitized?

MR. VENABLES: Yeah. I mean, I think it’s worth taking a step back and thinking more broadly, and certainly, most people in all of our lives we‑‑our entire lives have become more digitized every single day. And then behind the scenes, whether it’s government, retail, energy, telecommunications, and also finance, more and more of our interactions with our financial institutions, whether it’s our banks, our savings accounts, our brokerages, our payments are all fully digitized. I think many of us probably don’t recall the last time we went into a branch and were probably writing checks, if very infrequently, if ever.

So everything‑‑part of our financial lives have become digitized, and I think it’s been great for convenience, and in many respects, it’s also been great for security, because some of the online mechanisms, despite some of the challenges of online security, are actually probably more secure than some of the old previous, more kind of manual experiences.

MR. STARKS: Let’s dip down into that a little further, if we could. I was hoping you could talk us through some of the advantages and also some of the drawbacks and vulnerabilities of an increasingly digitized world, specifically as it relates to money.

MR. VENABLES: Yeah. So I think, again, when you think about the perspective from a customer and how you interact with your bank or make…