Logins: The Last 4 of Your SSN

Welcome everyone. Welcome to Logins. Logins is a show on Cloudflare TV where we have guests on to tell us about the start to their career journeys. And this is really fun because these are the types of conversations that were not for Cloudflare TV, I would really want to have. This is really exciting for me as a guest of this show as well to get to hear from people that I really respect and really admire and are really wonderful team members here at Cloudflare. And today, just like last week, we have two really exciting guests from the Cloudflare team. If you remember last week, we had Emily Hancock and Carrie Linder who shared their journeys. Emily from the DMV to being responsible for data and security at Cloudflare and Carrie, her journey combining computer science and psychology and research into design here at Cloudflare. And today, I'm so excited for the two guests we have on. Alissa Starzak, head of public policy at Cloudflare and Juan Rodriguez, our CIO. And this is before the show started airing, we were already enjoying the conversation. So I know the next 30 minutes are going to be really fun as we continue that. We split these segments up into 15 minutes each, but there will be time for questions at the end. If you have them, please feel free to add. And I believe there should be an email thread at the bottom of your screen, where you can post these. So typically, we start alphabetically by first name. Alissa, you all right going first? Of course, of course, happy to go first. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for being on today. I did a little intro, but could you introduce yourself in your own words for our audience? Sure. So I'm Alissa Starzak, head of public policy at Cloudflare. I've been at Cloudflare for about two years. And before that, I was in government for a long time, for about 12 years, and was in private practice as a lawyer before that. So I haven't been around for a long time. As you will find out when you get into the more detailed questions. I'm excited to learn about that journey that brought you here to Cloudflare then. I guess maybe starting at the beginning, what was your first job? What began this career? So I don't know if it began my career, but when I was in high school, I worked in a store, a retail store. And at one point was sort of the main person working in the store with the keys to the store, which was a big deal at the time. So, you know, 16 -year-old and with the keys to a closed store is a little dangerous, but my first job. And you kind of answered the next question where kind of a goofy one here on logins, but asking about what was the first thing you had access to? Maybe kind of extending on that, though, what was the first thing you remember having access to that was intimidating? Like first login system, or maybe it was the keys to the store. That's a big responsibility. At 16, the keys to the store is a big responsibility. I think actually, though, I would say intimidating. I think over the course of your career, things get increasingly, if you think back on them, they look increasingly intimidating. So when I entered government, the notion of getting access to classified information for the first time I was in the national security world was a big deal. So really intimidating trying to think about it. And they sort of drill into you the concerns that you have about getting access to classified information. So definitely intimidating at the time. What over time, what made that less intimidating? So I think there's an ability to step back and think about what you're trying to do and just do your job. And that's what that's what access is about, eventually, right? You know, you're getting access for a reason. It's not just there's sort of the initial thrill of getting access to something that other people may not have access to. But the reality is that you're getting access to it to do a job. And eventually, you realize the focus is really on the job and you're getting access to it. It's not the access that is as important as the job that you do on the back end. And I guess to elaborate a bit on that job that you were doing, what took you to a place where you were trusted with that type of material? How did you arrive there with that level of responsibility? So I started out of law school as a lawyer at a firm. And then I was really looking to do something with a bigger mission. I wanted to do something in government. I was working for a bunch of partners who'd done things in government, and I believed in a government mission. And so I really was trying to think about how I can do things as a lawyer in government. So I ended up and I was interested in foreign policy. So I ended up going into government in the national security world, because that was really where my interests were. And it sort of moved from there. So I had a bunch of different jobs in both the executive branch and in Congress. Ended up as general counsel of the army at the end of my government tenure, but spent a long time before that in all sorts of jobs that required access, which was just interesting. Again, you're doing it, you have access for a reason. So it was a very interesting set of jobs. That is a really interesting set of jobs. And I'd love to learn a little bit more about after kind of such a fascinating journey like that, how did you arrive over at Cloudflare? So I was leaving government in 2017, and I was really looking for something that brought similar, that had similar feeling to it, I guess, would be the best way of putting it. So I wanted something, a place with a mission that was really important to me. I really believed in that you can do something with the job that you're brought. And I was looking for something where the work was not dull, where you were sort of constantly challenged. And those were really, so when I was trying to think about what jobs I wanted to go into, those are the things that really mattered to me. And so I started looking around, and I started talking to some people at Cloudflare. And the public policy issues at Cloudflare are phenomenal. We have just so many sort of interesting, challenging questions. And there's this deep sense of mission in the company about what we're trying to do, and how we get there. And it's this, both of those combined were really why I joined, and I have not been disappointed a single day. It was definitely the right decision. Well, we're thrilled to have you. And I'm sure every day is, like you mentioned, not only not disappointing, but really interesting. Could you, is there an average day for your role at Cloudflare? Or is it just new each day? You know, it's pretty new each day, which actually makes that the average day. So if it's not, you know, we deal with so many data issues. So we deal with things that are externally facing. So that might be things like new legislation, or people's comments about what's happening in the world. And then there's an internal component of it, which is, how does this apply to us? So as we roll out new policies, based on what's happening in the world, how do we think about what's happening in the world, and how we apply them to our policies, our internal policies? And then we, my team also runs the Corporate Social Responsibility Program. So we run Project Galileo, and the Athenian Project, and Cloudflare for Campaigns. So it's then thinking about those projects and ways that we can actually expand the things that we do, the good that we do in broader ways. We can help those communities, help those entities that really can really value our services, and can benefit from our services. And those are such wonderful programs. Are there any recent stories, or organizations that have been using those that really stand out to you? That, and I know all of us probably have a favorite project that we've seen from your team do, where we're all kind of honored to be part of Cloudflare. Is there one like that for you lately? You know, we've been watching a lot of the different organizations that have, you know, so it's been such an interesting time in so many ways. So we have the pandemic, and all the organizations that we can help through the pandemic. So we've had all these amazing organizations pop up during the pandemic to do good. So whether it's distributing masks, whether it's providing information, there's a whole slew of organizations that fit into that space. And then the reality of what's happening in the U.S. right now, we have advocacy organizations. And so we have a lot of advocacy organizations on Project Galileo that are doing amazing things right now in organization space, and really challenging people, and thinking about ways we can make a difference. And so it's an amazing experience to feel like you can help those organizations do something that they're, where they really are making a difference every single day. Yeah, and with kind of within that, from the start of being part of that store all the way to running this public policy division and making that difference, what advice would you give to the earlier self that had those keys to that store? My advice would really be to go back to where I started, which is that you have to think about why you're given access. So the questions of access really are about how do you improve what you're getting, because you're getting it for a reason. So if somebody is entrusting you with responsibility, do something good with that responsibility. Do think about what your obligations are and your responsibilities are, and think about the positive things that you can take from it. And I love the fact that your dog is in the back. Yes, please. He's not a guest today. That's the next session. That's the next session. Yeah, no, but so for me, it really is that the advice I would give is that you have to keep your eye on how you do good, right? You have to keep your eye on how you do your job effectively, and take the access and the responsibility that's been given to you, and run with it in a good way that makes people proud in the back end and makes yourself proud in the back end. And I think that's really been consistent through across my career, and it's something I really believe in. Fantastic. One last question I do have for you, and this is probably a good segue into the next guest, because it's about dogfooding the internal tools we use here at Cloudflare. Dogfooding is really important to us, and the way that we build products, which for many of our customers is products like Access, which helps secure these types of logins that we're talking about. Do you remember the first time dogfooding the Cloudflare Access product? What was that experience like? What could we be doing better with it? I think the funny thing for me about that is because I'm not a technical person necessarily, the glitches that I experience or the things that don't work well, they don't stand out to me as much. So I end up thinking about like, hey, what does this mean? What do we think about? What are the policy implications of Access? How do we think about Access controls? What are the legal responsibilities? So I end up with a whole different set of questions, I think, than an engineer. It's a different world of how you think about a product. And I still remember this sort of idea of Access, going through that laundry list of, okay, what should we worry about? Because there's always something to worry about. Yeah. Well, I'm glad that we have people like you, experts in that field, thinking about cases like that, that we absolutely should keep as priorities. Wonderful. Well, Elisa, thank you so much for kind of walking us through that journey and telling your story. I really appreciate your time being here on this program. And so thank you so much for being a guest today. Well, thank you for having me on. Yeah. And Juan, up next, the CIO of Cloudflare, the person who really owns a lot of the dogfooding of the tools that we're building here. Juan, thank you for being on the program. How are you doing? I'm all right, Sam. Thank you for having me. How are you? I'm wonderful. Just for the rest of our viewers, I have the privilege of getting to kind of work with your team and you and what you do here at Cloudflare. But could you describe what your role is like to our audience? Yeah. So my official title is the Chief Information Officer for Cloudflare. And CIOs can mean different things, depending on the business that you're on. So I have accountability for basically systems and internal corporate infrastructure. I'm also Cloudflare's first customer, as you said, from a dogfooding perspective. So I get to work with a lot of the product teams and things like that as well and see how we can drive internal adoption with tools and then provide feedback that may be helpful for our external customers as well. So it's a little bit in a nutshell my job. And there's a lot of responsibility in that job. But what was the first job that Juan had? Where did you start that journey that led you here to CIO at Cloudflare? So I'm originally from Spain. I've been living in the US for about 21 years. But in Spain, it's not typical when you're in high school or things like that to actually work. Normally, it's one of the things that I like a lot about the US culture, that the kids in high school, they get jobs in the States. Something that wasn't happening in Spain when I was growing up. So my first job, if you want to call it that way, well, I was getting paid. So I guess it's a job. I got an internship in Hewlett-Packard in Spain while I was still in high school. It was one of these programs where you're part -time in university and actually part-time inside of Hewlett-Packard for a couple of years or something like that. And I was studying computer science at the time. And I lucked out getting a job in being the administrator of Hewlett-Packard Spain's demo center. So I was like a kid in a candy store. I mean, you had access to all the latest hardware, when hardware really meant something. It was like millions and millions of dollars of computers. And the job basically, at the time, we worked with software companies. And the model was, we had a beautiful space that had all these machines and things like that, that we order. And software companies will come and they will install their software in our hardware. And they will bring customers into our demo center to basically do demos of their software running and completely instead of the hardware. And the idea was that hopefully they will like that and it will perform so well that they basically they will buy their applications with our hardware. So I was responsible for setting up a lot of those hardware, maintaining the facility, working with the software companies on installing the software and preparing basically for like a successful demo. And also one of the things that we do, we did benchmarking also. So I will learn, I enjoyed a lot of nights with a lot of the people that actually know what they're doing at the time, doing benchmarks. And just like hanging out and watching all these very smart engineers, you hear the Packard tweaking hardware and things like that to run Oracle databases super, super fast on a dedicated system. So that was my first job. That is a very cool first job. I was a storefront cashier. Mine is a lot similar to Alyssa's and that for first job, sounds really fascinating. And I assume then that was the first job where you had to log into a system, but not just a system. Sounds like all of the systems. Is that right? Yeah. So I remember, so my first actual logging into, my first computer was a Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48 at home. That was my first computer. But the actual first computer that I remember logging into something was, it was in a little bit of flash from the past, in Microvaxes 3100s. And we had them in a university, but also my father was in the Navy and very close to our house was the Navy observatory. We're like, we had a big, they had some of these Microvaxes. And I will go over there once in a while to hang out and connect with some of the officers over there. They let me connect and run certain things in the network and stuff like that. So that was really the first time that I remember having a logging to a computer that wasn't my Spectrum at home. And then obviously, in university also we had access to mostly some Solaris boxes and these Vaxes. And then in HP was like all these workstations and servers with HP UX. Yes. And of all of these systems, and that's a lot of options here. What was the first one that you had access to that kind of scared you that you go, someone's trusted me with the keys to this? So the thing that always was nervous to me, a little bit like what Alisa said is like, we will bring, to do basically benchmarking and things like that. Actual production databases and things like that, customer data. And you were like setting up things and you basically, when you were trying to configure things and things like that, you're like, I was in my twenties. And you're like, they're playing with a multimillion dollar computer and trying to set things up. So that was until you get a little bit more comfortable with things. That was always a little bit nerve wracking for me at the beginning. Later on, I got to work with, with actually a little bit later in my career with like customer life production systems, that used to run big manufacturing plants. And that was a whole lot of cattle and fish when you are working with real customer systems and customer sites. Yeah, absolutely. That trust that those customers put in you to kind of treat that with the level of diligence that it needs. What kind of made that less scary over time? Like as you grew in your career, like what, not just the access to the systems, but also the trust that these people were placing in you. What kind of helped you grow there? I think that, you know, what is, one of the things that I learned, I think always over time is that it's very important never to lose respect with what you're dealing with, right? You may have comfort, you know, working with, or you may have knowledge and you may have done many things before, you know, when you're like, you know, working with, with real time, basically systems that are running, whether it's like, you know, as I said, I used to do a lot of ERPs in manufacturing plants, but what made it more comfortable is, as I said, you know, not losing respect and having a little bit of a checklist of things that you always do every time that you're approaching one of these things, right? Whether it's like making sure that you have backups, making sure that you always have like a point in time where like you can recover to things and you may make a mistake at some point in time, right? You know, you try not to, but you know, sometimes as we know, upgrades go wrong or. So having like a checklist, basically I'm being disciplined about, you know, making sure that not letting you, well, I've done these many times before. So therefore I'm going to get a little bit, you know, more loosey goosey or, or relaxed about, you know, my processes and procedures. Instead of doing that, basically sticking to your discipline and being, as I said, respectful about the task at hand. I think that that is what makes things a little bit more comfortable when you're dealing with that type of data. Yeah. And, you know, both of you in very different fields, classified information and one with your experience deploying these production systems for customers where something goes wrong, I'm sure very, the terrible day. I think you've both really spoken to a common theme about the, that trust that someone's put into you and how the response has to be that diligence and that respect. Correct. I mean, it's very, very, it's very important. I said, like, you know, being, being very, I think, you know, at least this is something that is, that's important. Like, remember, you know, why you have access to that and also, you know, making sure that, that you're following, as I said, your, your training and being disciplined about things. You're, you're, you're being entrusted with something that many employees in these cases, when you're working with customers, you know, they're not, right. I mean, not many people have good access to operations that are running like a whole company. Right. So that is, is something not to be taken lightly. And so I said, you know, having respect for, for what you're doing and, and as I said, you know, making sure that you've been disciplined about the things that you need to do to, to make sure that you, you know, deliver successfully at the end of that project. Yeah. Like, like Alyssa said, whenever you're there to do your job, that's why you have the permission for those systems. Speaking of doing that job and the one that you do now, how did you go from that journey all the way to here as CIO of Cloudflare? Can you tell us a bit more about that? So I, I, in my previous company, I was a Cloudflare customer since relatively early. I think we're starting using Cloudflare probably about like 2013, 2014. And I've always worked in software, right. And technology companies is, is my thing. I love that. I love, I'm a, I'm a product person and a technology product person. You know, I don't know. I always say that. I don't know if I could do what I do in some other industry, but that's really my thing. So when this opportunity came around, you know, I, I, and having like an admiration for, for Cloudflare, you know, since, as I said, between I started being a customer in 2013 and 2020 and following the journey, I thought that it was something that, you know, there could be, I would love the, the, the opportunity to, to help. At least this is something also that resonated with me, right. I'm a highly principled person. And some of these interaction of the problems that Cloudflare work with in terms of legal, technology, data in, in the, the, the, the huge impact that has in, you know, at the scale that, that we do things, what's something that, that also resonated with me very much. So, you know, when I started talking with people about it, we'll do something here and looking a little bit deeper than just, is this more just talk or things on blogs, or is this really how things work internally? So I was very happy that it was, you know, how, how it works and then get a, you know, be offered the job. So I'm very, very excited to be here. We're excited to have you here. Like you said, you're, you're Cloudflare's first customer in many ways. And so that, that really is powerful when we're trying to test out the things that we're building in the same way that the things that we're building, Alyssa has, and her team has this expertise around with the privacy and the sensitivity of what we're doing and the trust that people put in us. One thing we rely a lot on your team is the expertise in deploying something like what we're building here at Cloudflare. So I'd love to maybe hear a bit more kind of what your experience is like dogfooding the things that we are building as an IT organization. Yeah. So, I mean, one of the things that is very important to me, and I, I truly believe in, you know, dogfooding and being Cloudflare's first customer. I always think that, you know, if it's not good enough for us, it's probably not going to be good enough for our customers. Right. So I think it's very, very important that, you know, during that phase of development, and I, I work with a lot with, with, with your teams and, and for Cloudflare for teams and access, you know, we're a heavy access customer. The other thing that is also very important to me is colleague experience, right. And employee experience. I, I, I think that one of the things that, that, that, that, that I think is very magical is like when you can deploy technology that not only basically meets the objectives in terms of security functionality, but it provides an amazing employee experience in terms of ease of access, you know, low friction, good performance, and things like that. I always, I always, one of the things that I always say, it doesn't matter how functional something it is, if it's not fast, and if it's not always on, you know, people are just not going to use it or just going to, you know, find ways to basically do things around it. So it's been a lot of fun, you know, to just like tweak and provide, you know, feedback on things like access, being able to ourselves, you know, put a lot of services behind access, you know, and work with your team and other organizations, you know, inside of Cloudflare to make sure that we can speak to pretty much any prospect or any customer out there that maybe using, maybe contemplating, you know, using some of our products and say, yep, this is how we use it, this is how we're deploying it. Here's some of the things that we have behind it. And then, as I said, you know, continue to work with the product teams and people like your product managers, you know, to provide invaluable feedback on something that may be helpful for our customers down the road. Yeah, and we're grateful to have it. One thing we hope you feel is that you aren't going to hurt our feelings. The feedback you give is the feedback that we'd rather hear from you before customers trust us with that experience. So thank you for participating in that. Kind of back to the days in that lab, in that demo lab, what advice would you give to that yourself all the way through this journey now to being CIO at Cloudflare? Yeah, so I, you know, when I look back, I think I've been, you know, fortunate primarily that I am doing something that I absolutely love. You know, it's computers, computer science, technology, something that is, was a hobby for me, you know, since I was very young. And as I said, you know, I thought even like, you know, that job of being, you know, that first job of having access to all that stuff was like a kid in a candy store. It was like, basically, you know, you're doing something that is almost not a job. So I will, you know, the advice that I always give people is like, focus on the thing that makes you happy. And if you can make something that makes you incredibly happy, also like a job that, you know, and a passion that you can continue to develop, you're going to be successful at it, right? I think that, you know, the chances when you're working on something that you have a passion for, that you're doing it well, and it's something that has a meaning to you, and you believe that you're making a difference. So I think that, you know, sometimes it's easy to try to focus too much on like how you, you know, go up the corporate ladder or anything like that. My experience has been like, if you focus on basically knocking out problems on the things that you love, a lot of those things basically follow. So that's my advice, you know, that I will give to my younger selves that continue to focus basically on the things that you love, the things that you like to do, focus on solving problems in that area, and you will continue to grow. Wonderful advice. Well, I'm so grateful to, as like I said at the beginning, just get to be a guest to your stories as well, like our audience. So thank you so much for spending the time telling these stories. I love how many things are in parallel between your answers about the trust that people put into the members who are doing their jobs with these systems that you have access to, and also the journeys that led you here to be part of the Cloudflare team. I'm really fortunate to get to be part of that team with you. So thank you for your time here. I'm going to, I think we're out of time. I know we promised we would check for any questions. I think we're okay there. So I'm going to turn it back over to the Cloudflare for TV, Cloudflare TV Greenroom to put the next show on. But thank you all so much again for your time. Thank you, Sam. Thanks, Sam. Have a great day.