hello viewers and welcome to the latest gi huddle interview i'm here with justin koznet from continent 8 justin thanks very much for joining me no problem looking forward to speaking with you about uh mainly the gaming exchange but um other kind of industry concepts such as use of data and things like that um to start off with could you tell us all about um your company's gaming exchange and what sets that apart from the competition yeah so um it kind of uh it builds on ch's unique kind of global global mpls network for gaming that we've had um uh based on our kind of 20 plus years legacy um it's a it's a private internet for gaming um so there's no public internet surface connecting kind of you know um all the regulated environments together so um because of that kind of 20 years legacy majority of kind of gaming b2b uh operators on our network most of igaming as we call it is on or interact with the c8 network in some way so we've created this separate private internet for that um i mean you you've kind of touched on it there already but let's say you're talking to someone who um doesn't know too much about the product and you've got to explain to them why would a company use a product like this today what i mean what would you what exactly would you say so um i suppose the as well as kind of you know enabling that connectivity uh in a in a resilient fashion because of that network it basically means that we can ensure the the lowest latency the quickest connectivity between two customers or two endpoints effectively so for those b2b uh entities or even b2cs where they they interoperate with other customers either with slots or casino games being delivered um either the rng the back end or some kind of wallet interaction um we can we can guarantee that that connection uh between those two endpoints whether in the you know if they're in a c8 location or even one of many c8 locations we also give it with a we also bring with it a kind of premium portal like an analytics tool that allows customers to see what data they currently do across the exchange once they're joined or currently goes across the public internet that they could move on to an exchange and you know they can see what partners they actually interact with um you might think it obvious but a lot of customers are actually surprised by seeing who they're actually connecting to in in the world and where in the world and what that data is doing um but i suppose one of the key benefits is that because it's a private internet it's not external externally ddos delosable it can't be attacked from a denial of service perspective externally to that network yeah that leads us to an important topic which you know cyber security overall um but i wanted to pick up you so obviously you mentioned latency um a huge benefit then uh of reducing latency imagine it's it's related heavily to kind of player experience user experience kind of at the for the end user is that is that accurate yeah even if if not for the uh yeah i mean a lot of the interactions aren't necessarily seen by the end user but sure i mean you know if a b2c is actually using a b2b partner in the background whether that's for odds feeds or or any of the other back-end processes the ability for those different kind of eye gaming connections to be on that and reduce latencies is a real benefit and and and just helps ensure that you know they're not going to not going to go via the unpredictable internet should we say yeah absolutely um the kind of creation of a private network reminds me a little bit of i don't know if you've seen silicon valley uh you know where they tried to make their own internet but obviously that's uh that's not quite real life this this is this is very much you know relevant for uh for b2b gambling um and you mentioned uh cyber security and ddos um i feel like that's a bit of a bit of for such a small word it's a tongue twister right but um uh my question to you looking at the industry sort of quite generally gaming and b2b um to paint a picture how much are kind of gambling companies at risk of losing let's say when it comes to cyber security attacks and ddos and how big of a kind of threat an issue is it um well it's it's difficult to put a price on the direct and indirect but it's actually relatively easy for a you know predominantly online business to calculate you know what their direct cost would be you know a ddos attack from the moment it starts the moment it ends is going to prevent you from you know collecting that revenue so if you're a one and a half billion dollar a year uh you know kind of revenue online business that's 170 000 an hour it's costing you whilst you're offline um during the big events like the world cup super bowl it can be double triple you know even bigger um we actually had a customer in back end of last year uh that were under attack for 22 hours quite a sustained attack um but based upon their annual revenue that would have been 3.7 to 3.8 million dollars that that would have cost them being offline if they weren't um but there are indirect costs as well so um it can be a traditional so you know i know a lot of customers will have multiple gaming accounts you know when unavailable customers may move and it can do some reputational damage to you know once you've been seen as unreliable that they they might not come back to you um but it's also quite a distraction of key resources so you know your infrastructure teams or your network teams or the people that try to keep your games running will be distracted when there's a ddos attack or or any cyber related incident um away from the business of of what they should be doing absolutely i think you've put quite a sort of tangible they say he's able to put a price on it and they're direct but that's that's quite a tangible picture there i mean even even just the the the figures you mentioned when it comes to the gaming exchange um obviously the aim is to uh we talked about reducing latency but when it comes to improving security um you know and and this this product is um would you say essential when it comes to kind of these ddos attacks and cyber security issues i think it's part it's part of a a larger push to try and reduce risk and reduce surface area of attack right so a private internet in effect or a gaming exchange it it gives you a lower surface area to be attacked it means that even if you are under attack at the public end some systems can stay up and interact with other customers it might not be you know so even if you're under attack on your internet you know connection um you can still maintain some of those other interfaces with your other partners which might keep some parts of your business up for those customers that are connected to them because you know lots of lots of our gaming businesses run lots of different uh types of you know environments for their customers you know whether it's a casino slots sportsbook um you know so it just limits that amount of damage and and and capability to attack so to just put you on the spot a little bit um if you were talking to a company that had absolutely no cyber security predictions in place to be honest the accommodations may not exist in today's day and age but let's say they do and you had sort of a 30 second to a minute pitch to them to say look you have to sort this out what what exactly would you say to them what would be the things you said first biggest priorities to kind of highlight no worries but i'm not the best salesman in our company by any imagination but um i mean for for the online guys it's it's a lot easier um uh you know their online revenues are all via their website all via their apps or their interfaces so whether you're a b2b or a b2c you need to be connected and and up uh to generate revenue um you know being protected from ddos attacks kind of prevents you from you know immediate and ongoing losses due to that you know lack of connectivity lack of your open door you know your front door being available um but beyond that you know uh ddos is is often a distraction used whilst an exploit is being attempted or a data extraction is being attempted it's it's it's good to hide a huge uh transfer of data under adidas attack so you know there's a lot of cyber crime and extortion capabilities so you you do need other security services you know i'm not not by any stretch saying that uh the gaming exchange and ddos are the only ones but um yeah every customer should be looking to add security uh to to their uh their offering to protect themselves um and those you know security services without using too many acronyms would be things like uh a whap so you know uh application layer protection as well as network layer protection um lots of managed services managed security service products um sock and seam for example the uh endpoint uh protection so it's things that either a team that are looking at your environment you're looking at your application seeing if they're under attack logging systems that can automatically identify um changes malware and so on as well as you know endpoint protection people's laptops so not just the enterprise environment but all the connected parts of that and then there's you know that some of the risks can actually kind of be multiples of just the downtime right so if you if you are subject to an exploit or uh some cyber crime you've got the cost of cyber restoration so whether that's getting a company in to help you restore from backup or try and remove malware or anything else there's also the cost of pr and the distraction of the business again whilst that attack has happened there's also significant potential regulatory kind of fines you know you have to report data loss those can come with fines sometimes you'll have to do remedial programs for your customers if their data's been compromised you know you might have to offer your customers some kind of you know security or data protection service and there's potentially obviously reputation and customer loss itself so that's the 32nd probably took me two minutes but it's just why you need them it is very much unfortunately it is a it is a risk business it is it is saying look these are all the risks this is why you need it yeah no absolutely it makes a lot of sense and a lot of broad issues you you touched on there um the start of the answer you made a distinction between kind of online and perhaps people who uh i'm gonna say directly land-based but yeah there's online and land-based there is this this distinction in terms of cyber security solutions you know how they different for an online company purely online and a company that has uh maybe some retail offerings and perhaps i don't know if if you want to look at it from this angle but how would what will continent eight offer kind of the two different uh you know sides of the industry yeah so i mean clearly c8 kind of comes from an online background so you know we we run uh data centers that's where we came from running those secure locations to run online businesses so you know land-based is infrastructure that can actually be directly touched or accessed physically or with a local network so you know on a retail premises or a casino you know there's the risk of the actual you know the the thing the customer is able to touch being exploited you know usb keys local wi-fi those kind of things and internet of thing devices and whereas online hopefully the physical is is secured because they're in a data center like c8 where you know you're less prone to that kind of that kind of exploit so that's that's the distinction but both folks need protection effectively i mean um there was an example in i think the washington post of an exploit of a north american casino that had been um attacked through a fish tank that had a connected fish tank amazing they found a way into to move around the local network and then exploit data to you know an endpoint in finland of all places so you know that the same security that we look at in the online world is definitely necessary to secure the land-based or the retail base um and make sure it's locked down there aren't you know internet of thing devices and that's where some of those other services i mentioned like um you know sock and seam services endpoint protection can be there and then you know as as a as a gaming person uh uh once once said there is a more kind of moral hazard almost the gaming industry it doesn't start from a moral high ground should we say and actually is seen as a softer target than companies with a different social standing so you know more prone to hacktivism or at least you know less less moral concern of those that would attack you for cyber crime perspective um so yeah just as important for land-based and and actually a lot of the rng and the games share the back-end code or even data structures you know same products you might you'll see the same slots for example online as you do in a casino so it's it's just just as similar an environment to try and exploit from your experience is there perhaps a perception from land-based companies that because um because they're land-based and less reliant online they may need less cyber security protection but as you've just explained obviously that's not that's not actually the case i think so yes i think um there is a tendency you know in the in the retail space there will be a lot of uh other priorities going on you know a lot of casinos will have you know uh entertainment they'll have wi-fi so that you can access their mobile online games as well so there's more as i said there's more physical actual uh capability to to to get onto and try to exploit a network there's more touch points there's a bigger surface area in effect to attack so yeah i think i think perhaps i think stories like that one i mentioned um uh probably circle through it and casinos obviously have been very heavily regulated and in the past but i think you're seeing especially in the us a lot more focus on uh security as a part of the regulatory environment and framework for for all businesses absolutely um a final topic i wanted to i want to go back to the gaming exchange specifically and i just wanted to maybe look ahead a little bit because obviously we're into september now 2022 and i just wanted to kind of ask what what goals and targets have you got for the product uh specifically you know heading into 2023 which which of course is going to be on high on the agenda for a lot of companies as we kind of close out 2022 yeah i suppose i suppose my goals is to get more of our customers onto it and then and then adding some of the requested functionality we've already had so i mentioned that that portal that customers uh have access to we've you know we've had a lot of feedback from customers about other things they want to see that they've seen value in that that analytical data that data that tells them you know that um things they didn't even know you know some some customers have seen some of their enterprise environments are actually you know have got a connection out to twitch for example or to facebook or to linkedin and they're kind of wondering you know can you help me understand other areas so there's more functionality you want to drive into that uh for our customers um but it's it's it's you know it it's i say get more customers onto it you know customers are busy with the revenue generation there's a massive expansion in the us um new flights and licenses so it's you know we could say arguably a wrong as a second pro secondary priority but you know so often it's get in start making money then look at benefits and cyber security and backup and dr and so on and technological benefits unfortunately will will will sometimes take a bit of a back seat so pushing it to more because it's a as a concept and as a product as a service it builds value the more customers that we've got connected to it and i think beyond that i'd like to we'd like to expand it so you know we've brought all of our existing customers we have a lot of gaming on our network already um but also maybe into some of the more adjacent uh industry suppliers and partners so um i'm thinking there are stats uh providers for example you know these guys are providing uh you know game in-game statistics to the sports books um those back ends are hosted with us um you know i think there's there's potential there for us to look at expanding that private network out to um some of those guys to give them the lowest possible latency the quickest connection you know less chance of being attacked or prevented from a ddos perspective and then you could look wider at esports payments and fintech channels so you know we kind of want to add uh not just to the you know to what's inside our kind of customer environment but also maybe stretch out into those those kind of adjacent um adjacent companies to to to try and bring those advantages to to to those interactions as well um plenty to aim out there best of luck for the rest of the year and for next year and i suppose uh as you mentioned your story earlier i guess a concluding message for our readers perhaps just just watch out for your fish tanks make make sure no one's hacking your system by those yeah i'm not sure why a fish tank has to be online but if it is definitely make sure it's secure absolutely but justin thanks very much for your time um viewers can also watch uh an interview we did earlier this year with with content hco michael um but yeah justin thanks for your time and uh really appreciate your answers no problem thank you very much you