“We have prime real estate” in the GenAI market

In an interview with CRN, Bipul Sinha, CEO of Rubrik, discusses data security in the GenAI era and why “no one else from our space even dares” to make it public.

The known data security challenges posed by the advent of generative AI have accelerated the already strong growth opportunities at Rubrik, which is at the center of enabling secure use of GenAI tools, said co-founder and CEO by Rubrik, Bipul Sinha.

Rubrik, the first cybersecurity vendor to go public with its IPO in over two years in April– has continued to experience significant growth, with annual recurring revenue (ARR) reaching $919 million at the end of July, up 40 percent from the year before.

In a recent interview with CRN, Sinha said there is no doubt that the growing interest in GenAI adoption is helping fuel the momentum at Rubrik. But the company has been particularly geared to take advantage of the opportunities with its long tenure zero-trust security approach and steps such as entering the data security posture management (DSPM) space, he said.

When it comes to enabling GenAI adoption, “Rubrik is uniquely positioned with data (management) and with the security of data combined in our platform,” Sinha said. “This is an emerging market and we have the prime real estate in this market. Because without data (management) and data security, GenAI is meaningless.”

Sinha also discussed the global CrowdStrike-induced IT failure in July, as well as the IPO market, where no other cybersecurity vendor has pursued an offering this year.

Especially in data security, “no one else from our space even dares to enter the IPO market,” he said. “And if you look at our competition, they are merging with each other to survive.”

Here’s more from CRN’s interview with Sinha.

What do you think are the most important things organizations need to know about data security in the GenAI era?

Since the early 2000s, the technology industry has been all about workflow automation and building applications for productivity gains. The power moved from data to the workflow. Now, the advent of GenAI has essentially ushered in a new era where workflows don’t matter because the workflow is generated and executed by AI behind the scenes. All you need is an agent. You ask them to do something and they report back to you. So in this new world, the power has shifted from the workflows and applications back to the data. The data feeds the workflow and that feeds the generative AI engine.

So now if the data is king, the sanctity of the data, the availability of the data, and the security of the data is the main issue because if you lose that data, you can’t have GenAI. If you provide the data to the wrong people via GenAI, you will have huge compliance and governance issues. So the business has now turned to data management and data security; this is where the game takes place.

Where exactly does Rubrik fit into this picture?

In the cybersecurity industry, Rubrik is uniquely positioned with data (backup) and data security combined in our platform. This is an emerging market and we have prime real estate in this market. Because without data (backup) and data security, GenAI is meaningless.

Every organization is now thinking about how to ensure the right data is delivered to the right user at the right time, on the right platform, and for the right duration. That’s where security becomes huge, as your trust in an AI system will decrease significantly (without security).

How do you define the biggest differentiator for Rubrik at this stage?

We have created a unique platform. You cannot simply layer this on top of your existing architecture. We built a brand new platform, a brand new architecture, built specifically for this purpose. We have combined Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) and cyber recovery in one platform. So we have complete visibility into data risk, data threats and cyber recovery on one platform. No one else has that right now. That’s why we’re the first cybersecurity company to go public in (several) years, and no one else from our space even dares to enter. And if you look at our competition, they merge with each other to survive.

What do you think are the biggest areas of concern for Rubrik since its IPO in April?

In our earnings announcement we said we are winning this market. Just look at the growth and the scale at which we are growing. We have surpassed $900 million in subscription ARR just nine years of sales (the product), and we are guiding the market to exceed $1 billion ARR this year. So we are now on a large scale as a software company. Very few companies reach $1 billion ARR.

Our goal is to actually create this new vision for the cybersecurity industry. Because for far too long the industry has focused on preventing attacks from various infrastructure platforms. But the ultimate goal of all this is data protection. And our vision was that we are going to focus on cyber resilience. Because attacks are impossible to stop. You can’t stop all attacks. How do we ensure that your business continues?

What are your insights in terms of resilience from the CrowdStrike incident this summer?

First of all, CrowdStrike is a great partner of ours. They responded and responded very well and quickly. It was an unfortunate incident, but it really highlighted what it means to have resilience. Everyone wants productivity. Everyone is doing digital transformation. Everyone automates tasks. But the Achilles heel of this digital transformation is resilience. Can you always have these services, on which your business now depends, up and running? With what happened to CrowdStrike, consider this a (movie) trailer for what could happen on an even larger scale if it was a real cyberattack.

This was absolutely a reckoning for the entire world. People wrote their boarding passes by hand. Suddenly you go from the 21st century to the 20th century when these services are no longer available. So it was a huge settlement. And now the focus on productivity is still there, but people are also thinking about how to secure those productivity gains. And security does not just mean security against cyber. But securing means making sure these services are available.

Overall, it seems like 2024 has been a pretty tough year for cyber resilience?

Look what happened at (UnitedHealth Group) and Change Healthcare. It affected the entire ecosystem. Doing business with Change Healthcare will impact your business. When an incident like this occurs, everyone realizes how interdependent we are across all businesses. If you look at systemic risk, it increases as interconnectedness increases. And one of the goals of technology is to create more interconnections. That’s why this particular CrowdStrike incident had a global impact. So that’s what we all need to consider: are we creating resilience in our digital lives? So when digital intensity increases and that digital part has no resilience, big problems arise.

Do you think your channel partners are aware of what you currently consider necessary in terms of data security, or not?

I think our channel partners who have fundamentally understood that the market has moved from backup and recovery to cyber resilience in data security – the channel partners who have understood that are seeing tremendous success. The channel partners who are still in this old world of backup and recovery are struggling. That is why we continuously train our partners, because this is where the market is. It’s no different than what happened to the phone market. BlackBerry and Nokia were into calling and texting, but iPhone invented an internet device that, in addition to calling and texting, also brought apps, data and internet to the phone. Likewise, Rubrik has transitioned this market from backup and recovery to a data security platform for cyber resilience. If you are selling the old, outdated products, that is not a winning proposition.