It’s important for modern business to collect data, but doing the right things with that data is critical. Not only must a business draw value from its information, its must also protect it. Whatever data is worth to a company, some evil mastermind across the Internet has an even more profitable idea for it. Security is just as necessary in this digital world as Big Data analytics. Doing the right things with data requires skills and experience most companies don’t have. This creates an opening for managed services experts.

To shed some light on the world of managed services and security, John Furrier (@furrier) and John Walls (@JohnWalls21), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, visited the Splunk.conf 2016 conference in Orlando, FL. There, they sat down with Robert Herjavec, CEO and founder of the Herjavec Group and shark investor on ABC’s Shark Tank, and Atif Ghauri, senior VP at the Herjavec Group.

Evolutions in the enterprise landscape

The discussion started with a look at how the tech world has changed over the years, and how the Herjavec Group has adapted to match. Herjavec related that he’s been in the security business for many years and started the company to do managed services. Back then, though, the market wasn’t there, yet. The company reshaped around log aggregation and security, but it grew from there. Now, it’s an international company.

The topic then moved to the conference itself. Herjavec mentioned they were at the event to give a talk about data transformation. The world today is all about data, seeing an exponential growth in data. He stated that’s where Splunk adds value; more data is not necessarily more information. Splunk’s value isn’t just in analytics, but also going upstream on the data.

Securing the value of data

“I don’t think data in and of itself has any value; it’s the effect of the data that has value,” Herjavec said. There’s no hard value because data is transformative; you have to do something with it, he explained. The value comes from collecting that data and then applying it to something that has meaning for a third party.

The conversation then turned toward security. Herjavec stated that the number one driver for security is compliance. Companies aren’t going to spend the money unless they have to. Ghauri added that machine learning and automation can help solve the cybersecurity problem by reducing the learning curve for employees.

“We see tremendous innovation in security,” Herjavec said.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of Splunk.conf 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE