Najaf Gillani - Chief Software Development Officer at OpSec Security

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:00) Hello, my friends. Today we are talking to Najaf, the Chief Software Development Officer at OpSec Security, and we discuss the technology they use to protect the world's biggest brands, why having an innovative mindset will make every day exciting, and the advantages of working at a company with an appetite for disruption. All of this right here, right now, on the Modern CTO Podcast. Here we go. This is the Modern CTO Podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:36) Chief Software Development Officer. I love that title.

(Najaf at 00:00:40) I know. Not very common, though. But yeah, it's very, very cool.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:45) Did you choose it?

(Najaf at 00:00:47) So organizationally, our CEO is very much about disruption, coming up with new ideas. So he's great at that. So he wanted to separate out the infrastructure and the software development aspect, which basically is pretty cool because I think usually those go very much hand in hand. But infrastructure for us is slightly different because what we do as a company, there are physical factories involved. So there's technology that is very much related to what we do from a printing standpoint.

(Najaf at 00:01:22) So that's why that differentiation was required. So that was his idea. We're very creative.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:30) Can you give me an overview of what you guys do?

(Najaf at 00:01:33) Yeah. So we provide end-to-end solutions for brands to protect brands and their integrity. So basically anything from printed labels with unique holograms on them, as well as identifiers. We also do security films on these little government IDs and then passports, films. And then you can obviously look at it from a tilted standpoint, and then you'll see some cool security aspects to it.

(Najaf at 00:02:04) And then we also do the digital side, which is basically detecting counterfeiting online and then across all the different marketplaces, any piracy activities, like people streaming illegal live events and stuff like that. So we enforce that. We also detect phishing activities, which basically is consumer fraud, phishing on dark web and regular internet. I mean, to a consumer, it'll look like a Bank of America site, but we know it's a phishing site. So once you provide your credentials, you pretty much have handed that over to the bad actor.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:46) So you have a number of different products?

(Najaf at 00:02:48) We do. We do. Yeah. Physical as well as digital.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:53) And you're responsible for the software across all of them?

(Najaf at 00:02:56) Indeed. Yes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:57) That's a unique job.

(Najaf at 00:02:59) It's a fun job. It's an exciting job, actually. You know, when I came to know about what OpSec does and the whole unique industry that this was in, I was pretty blown away by how big this industry is. With all the bad actors, you know, with the engagement of the law enforcement agencies. I mean, we work very closely with the FBI and some of the other law enforcement agencies to go after these bad actors who do these, I would say, almost criminal acts of selling.

(Najaf at 00:03:36) And there's a whole industry which is basically feeding off of this, right? So fake products and stuff like that. So very unique. It's a battle which basically is making a difference.

(Najaf at 00:03:49) So I'm pretty excited about this.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:51) I know a little bit about it. So about 10 years ago, I was working on some government projects. And one of the projects I was a consultant on was, I'm choosing my words carefully, was related to the stickers that authenticate if products were made in the United States or not.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:14) And so I got to learn whether you would put these stickers on fruits or goods or how you would track them with IDs and if the stickers had RFIDs. And there was just a number of different security aspects and ways to do it. And when I got into it, it was one government purchasing from another government, right? And so I learned how much money there is. And I was blown away.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:40) I was like, these stickers will be used for fruit and something else, like refrigerators or something. It was like an appliance of some sort. And I was like, you guys are gonna do these two items and you're gonna make this much money on just following this. It was like a supply chain tracking concept and for authentication.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:59) And at the time, I was just blown away by how large of an industry that was. And then, you know, you see when you watch a DVD, right?

(Najaf at 00:05:09) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:09) About anti-piracy and then they direct you to a website and you realize, oh, okay. This is funding the dark, the black market.

(Najaf at 00:05:18) It is. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:19) Yeah. So you're like a superhero then.

(Najaf at 00:05:22) I'm blushing. Yes. No. In fact, recently I did T-shirts for my entire software engineering org. And basically, we are making a difference.

(Najaf at 00:05:32) So this labels that you talked about, we do RFID-enabled tags. We do track and trace. We do stickers on or tax stamps on tobacco products. You know, cigarettes have them. Wine bottles have them.

(Najaf at 00:05:48) So it's a wide variety of all the different ways to track them. And then we know exactly where they're being sold in which markets. And it's very much like, you know, the movie Eagle Eye. I don't know if you remember that or not, but, you know, they have cameras everywhere. So you basically are tracking the product going through this lifecycle.

(Najaf at 00:06:08) And then the law enforcement agencies as well as the local authorities have access to our app, and they can scan those and then figure out, for example, ball games, you know, have bunch of merchandise on it, right? So with the MLB T-shirts and then the NBA T-shirts. And so it's very easy, you know, for us to track which vendors are selling the right products and which ones are not.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:35) And it's becoming very important too, especially with all the shopping online. For example, I had purchased something off of Amazon, and I wanted to return it to the manufacturer. I wanted to use the warranty on it. But because I didn't buy it directly from them, it didn't count. And I thought I never knew that that part existed of the market.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:57) And then I realized, oh, they had a valid point. I asked them to explain why to me. And they said, because people can make counterfeit versions and you can buy the counterfeit version. The way of them knowing it was their version was me having a receipt directly from them. That was their method of tracking. I didn't have the receipt from them. I had it from a third-party seller. So I couldn't use the warranty.

(Najaf at 00:07:19) Yeah. Earlier back in the day, I've got a very extensive retail technology experience. So and, you know, that's the biggest problem is as soon as you start to grow these marketplaces, you have to have the sellers on them. But you can't really go and track each seller, what they're selling on the platform. So you make it easier for the sellers to onboard, but at the same time, you don't have the checks and balances whether they have the right products that they're selling or not. So it's a big market. I mean, people buy expensive watches online and then don't even know sometimes that that watch is not authentic, right? So it's helping both brands as well as the consumers, right? The well-intended consumers who actually want to buy the real stuff.

(Najaf at 00:08:06) So, yeah, OpSec does our part in terms of cracking that down.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:12) Now you as an executive, often executives, they'll participate in sales calls, certain levels, you know, different clients. But when you have four different, well, I think four, I counted earlier. Like, four different product lines. Are you having to know all the value props and how to sell across all the lines or communicate value across all the lines? Or do you focus on one or are you not even in sales calls?

(Najaf at 00:08:38) I am in sales calls. In fact, I like to be connected with the software leadership, you know, just it is very inward facing. So one of the things that I picked on very early in my career is to just have that outward-facing connection. So I am in those calls, but I do listen quite a bit, you know, in terms of what the customers are talking about, what the clients are talking about. As far as the portfolio goes, the fundamental business model is to protect our brands.

(Najaf at 00:09:15) Right? So that basically cuts across all our product lines, right? So whether it be a customer on piracy and, whether it be a customer on fancy high-end fashion retailer or something like that. So the value prop is pretty much that we're gonna protect your brand and integrity online, as well as physically.

(Najaf at 00:09:37) But also, I know the platforms well enough to be able to understand where the changes could be brought about in terms of addressing certain client problems at a large scale. So I try to stretch myself across all these different calls. Obviously, there's only few hours in the day, and that also has shrunk my sleeping hours to four hours a day, which is not healthy.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:07) No.

(Najaf at 00:10:08) So, yeah. But, you know, I do my best, but I have a fantastic team in place with different functional leadership. And we're constantly evolving. I mean, one of the things that I keep doing is to evolve my organization so that we're not stagnant. We're not sitting in the same silos.

(Najaf at 00:10:27) You know? I just keep cross-pollinating, moving them around. So it just keeps the momentum going.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:34) You gotta get more time for stargazing. Come on.

(Najaf at 00:10:38) Yeah. So that little bit of time that I get in between, you know, that's what I do.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:41) Stargazing and daydreaming. That's four hours though is not healthy. You gotta, I get eight, eight to eight and a half hours depending on the... Now, I get a lot of sleep. I mean, I go to bed early.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:55) I go to bed, you know, 8:30, nine and then wake up at five-ish. So...

(Najaf at 00:11:01) That's good.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:02) I did a study. I ran a study on myself. I tried, you know, because you read these books and you hear these people. And there's apparently people out there that can sleep a lot less and function fine. My stepmom, who's a physician, a doctor, she happens to be one of those people.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:19) She gets like five or six hours of sleep and she is 110%. So I decided, oh, I'm gonna stretch myself to do this for a lengthy period of time. I ran different sleeping schedules for 90 days at a time.

(Najaf at 00:11:32) For...

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:32) For me, eight to eight and a half hours is where I have the maximum cognitive function.

(Najaf at 00:11:37) That's wonderful. Yeah. I think it's just body trains itself too. It's, you know, the need for, you know, I always used to sleep and, you know, stay up late and then wake up early. The early software development days, you know, just blasting off music and then just keep working on stuff, and then you have the chain of thoughts going and then you're developing stuff and you don't want to stop.

(Najaf at 00:12:05) But then, you know, switching into an executive role and then, you know, looking up across different global teams have changed, you know, has changed my habits, you know, my routine quite a bit. So I stay connected with all my global leaders, and that's, I started that, you know, with Walmart. Walmart is globally in 27 countries. So it just, it's pretty hard to scale if you don't, you know, stay connected with different teams.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:38) When I saw you at Walmart, I was excited because there's been this trend of people that I meet that used to be executives at Walmart. They are all fantastic. I started noticing it on the show. We started talking about it. I said, look.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:50) Walmart's doing something where they're churning out these really interesting leaders. That's amazing. Know what it is.

(Najaf at 00:12:57) I'm glad you brought that up. In fact, you're right. And Walmart is a great employer. I mean, in fact, they train its leaders quite a bit. The Walton Institute, you know, the whole leadership track is just fantastic.

(Najaf at 00:13:14) So yeah. I don't know who else you've spoken to, but I'm sure my colleagues are fantastic.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:21) Yeah. Yasir. I mess his name up all the time. Yeah. He's CTO of Williams Sonoma.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:27) He's actually out in San Francisco. He's a really great guy. How do I say his name?

(Najaf at 00:13:32) Yasir.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:33) Yasir. Okay. Now we've got it recorded. I can... Got it. I got to go meet him and hang out with him and give a talk to his engineering teams at their office.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:43) And man, such a great guy. But at some point, his assistant pulled me aside and was like, you're saying his name wrong. I was like, oh, no. And now ever since then, I can't remember which one it is. But also, Jeremy King.

(Najaf at 00:13:56) Who is...

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:57) I think he's at Pinterest now, but he was at another company. He's a really cool guy too.

(Najaf at 00:14:02) Oh my God. Jeremy is fantastic. He's one of the leaders that I've learned from quite a bit, and he's a fantastic guy at heart. Used to take us out for happy hour all the time. That's why I like him.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:20) Oh, man. This is good. Yeah. It's a small world, isn't it?

(Najaf at 00:14:23) It is a small world. Yes. Yes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:26) So take me back to the days when you were just a little one, just a toddler. Were you dreaming of being an executive technology leader? What were you, or were you stargazing, wanting to be an astronaut? Tell, take me back to the young you.

(Najaf at 00:14:39) I was thinking about being an astronaut. In fact, that's funny that you said that. You know, I love stars. That's why I have a telescope here. Very interested in the outer space, you know, stuff, life.

(Najaf at 00:14:52) Stephen Hawking is what I read when I, you know, all the time when I had time. So just, yeah, I think that as a toddler, I was all over the place. In fact, I wanted to be an architect also at one point because I, you know, I knew my dad's friend who actually designed amazing buildings and stuff like that. So I'm like, I want to be an architect. So, yeah, I was all over the place.

(Najaf at 00:15:16) I was not structured at all. Never thought I would make it to a leadership role. But, you know, it's just a series of events that took place. So I am here.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:32) So what about high school? What were you like in high school?

(Najaf at 00:15:35) Very outgoing, extremely social. My dad and mom were extremely concerned that I would probably be on the wrong track, would not come back home most of the days in the morning, you know, stay out all night. You know, those, so it was just one of those crazy phase, but I was very studious. I actually, just like any other family, you know, from subcontinent, you know, there is this element of studies in us. Like, you know, my family is all at least bachelor's or master's, you know, that always ran in the family.

(Najaf at 00:16:18) So while I did all those crazy things, I did study and kept my grades up. So, you know, that basically kept my parents off my tail most of the time because, you know, I was a good student. But, yeah, it was fun times and just like any other high schooler, you know, basically had no direction.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:42) Yeah. That discipline though of being able to hit your goals and then gives you the freedom, right, to have that slack in other places. I also have been asking this recently just because I was curious. I always like to relate it back to, you know, my experiences. And I was very, I guess, unparented.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:01) Right? And that and looking back on it now, having kids and trying to just better understand myself, that freedom or that lack of parenting, it could have gone really bad, right? But luckily, it didn't.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:16) And it forced me to sort of direct my own life and learn how to make decisions and develop that compass earlier on than most. I think a lot of people will develop that later in college, but the amount of freedom I had forced me to develop it earlier on.

(Najaf at 00:17:31) Yeah. That's interesting. In fact, you're right. It's an interesting concept that, you know, the more restrictions you have sometimes pushes the rebel in you. And the less restrictions you have, in fact, you have less parenting. I think you've tried to become more disciplined yourself. It's a natural phenomenon. But yeah, it's pretty interesting to know that you brought that structure back in high school days.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:00) Yeah. I'm just trying to figure out how not to screw up my kids. I was reading books. Everybody has so many different, like, oh, let them choose. So I was like, alright. That sounds like a good one. So rather than me choosing for them, I typically will pick two things. I'll be like, choose which one you want. Get better at decision. It's like I'm training a little AI algorithm.

(Najaf at 00:18:21) And then it tends to break all the time too because, you know, I've got teenagers, like 18 year old and a 16 year old. And a 16 year old actually just recently got his license. In fact, last week Thursday, he passed his behind the wheel test, and, you know, he has a license now. So yeah, the more I talk to them—I mean, the 18 year old doesn't talk to me that often. But the 16 year old started to move in that trend. I think me and my wife did a decent job in telling them what to do and what not to do. But at the same time, I'm following that concept of letting them learn on their own and have them discipline themselves on their own. So hopefully, that doesn't backfire on us.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:08) Yeah. You were so close to 16. You almost made it to self driving cars. Right? And then you wouldn't have to worry about them. Just strap them in the Tesla, put on autopilot, lock the key.

(Najaf at 00:19:19) Enter the destination, and then just back to the future, you're there. You know? That's true. That's true. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:27) So how did you end up—I want to know the story of you meeting the executive team at OpSec and deciding to join. How did that process go for you?

(Najaf at 00:19:37) Yeah. So for me, I was very much on the, like I said, the retail technology side. And at that time, after I left eBay, I was pretty much in the executive consulting stage where I was providing help to other ecommerce retailers who were actually retailers who wanted to be successful in ecommerce, building ecommerce platforms, building digital experience for their clients. So I was in that mode, and then I got pinged one day on this opportunity where there's this world problem that we're trying to solve. Right? And in terms of fighting the battle against counterfeiting. Right? So it actually caught my attention quite a bit, and I decided to talk about this in a very casual fashion. Let me learn about it. Because I was not ready to get into a full time gig because I wanted to just take a break and work on my book and stuff like that.

(Najaf at 00:20:50) So it was one of those things where I found this so interesting after the first conversation that it is about finding fake goods that are being sold online and then working with the law enforcement agencies. And the whole aspect of making a difference for the well-intentioned consumers and the brands and all that stuff. So it got my attention quite a bit. And it was back in 2019, it was the tail end of 2018 when I started to talk with previously known MarkMonitor, which was the previous name for OpSec. And OpSec acquired the digital side of that as well.

(Najaf at 00:21:32) So the whole idea of combating this, coming up with creative ideas, beating the hackers who are actually doing all this. Right? So this whole notion of being that superhero that you referred to really got me. And also, there's this huge opportunity in this industry, or in this niche space, I would say, to have that innovative hat on and understand consumer market quite a bit. So I had that experience. So my decision at that time was I'm gonna take this on. I'm gonna try to change the way how we do things in this space. And that has been exciting from day one, and it's still very exciting. In fact, every day, there's something interesting that I learn or find out about the different techniques that people are using to fool well-intentioned consumers. Like the pricing techniques that they would use, images, the stock images that they use, and things like that. So constantly coming up with ideas to battle this is just great. And then behind the scenes, I just love disrupting certain things, in terms of making sure that I make a difference and also add value, but also disrupting that with new technologies, new AI and machine learning stuff. So that's something that drove me into this market, and now I'm loving every bit of it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:11) Have you written a book yet?

(Najaf at 00:23:14) No. I'm—it's one of my long running projects that is, I'm at my third chapter. So, you know, hopefully, I can fly off to Hawaii and just isolate myself and then write a book.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:31) Can I share with you my secret on how I did it? Because I tried and failed many times.

(Najaf at 00:23:36) Really?

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:37) Yep. Oh, yeah. Yep. Ultimately, what worked is I went on Upwork or one of those sites and I found a freelance ghost writer. And I paid them hourly to meet with me once a week at the same time every week. It took, I think, 12 weeks. And each week, we had a conversation, topic I wanted to talk about. And we just discussed it. We recorded it. And then he listened to the recording and turned them into some writings, which I then edited. We met again to do—we did a first version of a chapter of all the chapters. Then we did second versions of all the chapters. I think it took like 12, 16 weeks. It cost me, you know, $2,000 or $3,000, I think. And ended up with a first draft. And it was because I was doing it with someone consistently. It was like Thursdays at nine, like nine to 10 AM for an hour. And then he would take the notes. We'd put everything in Dropbox and then he would spit out a draft. And I told him I wanted it to sound like how I speak. And that was one of the biggest compliments I've gotten from the book. He said, oh, it sounds like how you speak. And I was like, great. So he had to figure out that style. But just that consistency, Thursdays, one hour for several weeks and figured it out. And then we came out with a book.

(Najaf at 00:24:52) That's fantastic. Thanks for sharing that. That's—you know, I've been looking for that discipline, but I didn't know where to find these ghost writers. You know, if you have any references, you can send them.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:04) I do. I can send you the guy I used. I don't know if he's still doing it, but I'll definitely send you the guy. I was actually just thinking about this. I was camping this weekend, and, you know, stargazing camping. It's one of my things I like to do. And I was thinking to myself, you know, it's been almost two or three years since I wrote the first book. And I'd say I was trying to write that book for two years, and then I finally decided to get really serious about it and hire that person to help. Yeah. And that made all the difference. It was that energy of getting to do the project with them that made it successful for me. At least for me.

(Najaf at 00:25:41) No. No. I think this is fantastic, and I appreciate that because I think doing it alone and the chain of thoughts, like you and I are just now talking about stuff. Things just come into my head. And then all of that time that I need to just write it down on a piece of paper, that time is never to be found because, you know, right after this conversation, there will be another meeting or a conversation or some email distraction. And then, you know, there goes the thought. So it's good to capture that in that moment. And then once you talk about it, you listen to it, it makes more sense to you. So I think I'm definitely gonna try this.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:22) Yeah. The other big—if I had to boil it down to one or two things, I'd say getting someone to help you like that and then talking with them, having them translate the recordings into something that's well written. And then the second thing is then I had this misconception and this just might be me. But I felt like because it was a book in these chapters that somehow the story had to run together. But if you go pick up any book, like any business book, there's hardly any connection. Each chapter is a thought. It's a concept. And you can interconnect them and it's easier to do that in editing afterwards. Or you can touch back to them, like how a comedian would touch back to a joke or something like that. But I, for some reason, when I was trying to write the book by myself before I met this writer, I was trying to make the chapters flow into each other and be a continued thought. And that was just some—he said, oh, yep. That's a basic beginner's mistake. And I was like, oh, alright. Good. I'm on track. I'm doing it. I'm not thinking about doing it. I'm making the beginner mistake. Yeah.

(Najaf at 00:27:29) That's pretty cool. I love it. I love it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:32) Okay. So I'm excited. I'm sharing that because I want you to make a book. I want you to make a book of catching interesting stories of catching these bad actors. Talk about marketing. I mean, that would be a great marketing material because it's interesting. Everybody in the industry would want to hear the stories. Maybe you start your own bad actor podcast, like ecommerce bad actor. Right?

(Najaf at 00:27:54) I know. It's a whole new career waiting for me. Right? Thank you for giving me the direction for the next steps. So thank you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:05) Your marketing team would love that too. But do you have good stories of catching bad actors?

(Najaf at 00:28:11) I do. We basically have busted a group of fake handbag sellers in the basement of San Francisco downtown. It's a very cool story. Then shutting down pirated content being generated from servers in Middle East. You know, that was another very cool one. We made it to the news also during that time that it was a big legal battle between whether companies like OpSec can go after these pirated links or not. And if they are associated to some cable companies or they're actually channeling it through that. Would it make sense to shut it down or not? So, yeah, very cool stories.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:02) Tell me one. What's the handbag story? Can you tell me?

(Najaf at 00:29:06) It was a family, interconnected family friends selling mostly big brands.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:13) Name brand. We'll just say name brand. Big brands.

(Najaf at 00:29:16) Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to name names, but you're right. The name brands. And then they were just posting or publishing them on eBay, Amazon with different names. And they all were tied back to the same address once in a while because we basically did test purchases from them. We detected there—we have, again, this is where the cool stuff comes in. We implemented some machine learning and AI to figure out if Joel C is here or Joel B, are they the same people? Like, even if it's an address that they would use, it'll be like, you know, 5 Chinatown, San Francisco. Right? And they would change it to 5 Chinese New Year Street. You know? And just the address—there are some elements that would speak to linking them to the same address somehow. And then the email addresses is another thing. The stock images, the background of the images, where they were taking pictures of. Right? So that's another thing which was basically taken into consideration.

(Najaf at 00:30:32) So after connecting all the dots, we found out that there were about 40 sellers across different marketplaces. They're the same group. They're the same people. So we basically, after we did the test purchases and then started looking at and validating this with our law enforcement partners, it pretty much came out that, yes, that's where the operation was being run from. And it was busted, and it was pretty big. We were very proud of ourselves.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:03) How do you—was it the credit card processor address? Like they or they just made a mistake?

(Najaf at 00:31:10) So, yeah, that's where the secret sauce is with OpSec.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:15) That's the spot we can't talk about.

(Najaf at 00:31:17) Well, this is the stuff that we can't talk about so that the competitors don't pick up on this. But, you know, there's a reason why we're the industry leaders in finding what we find because it's just the—like I said, there are multiple different attributes to someone giving away a trail. It's a very detective related work. Right? So anyone who would set up quickly—and these sellers go up to like multimillion dollars in sales in a month. Right? Yeah. So they are pretty big. And in some cases, I keep mentioning well-intentioned customers, and there was a reason why. Because if you and I want to buy—if you want to buy something for your wife or if I want to buy something for my wife and I want that to be a name brand or some designer brand or something like that, that needs to, first of all, it has to be authentic because we don't want to gift anything which is fake or counterfeit.

(Najaf at 00:32:19) That process, you know, my intention is to buy the real thing, but what if I get sold the counterfeit product? Right? So that's why I keep saying—but there are obviously consumers who would intentionally buy something which is knock offs. Right? So knock off market is there. But when we go after these sellers who actually claim that this is real and genuine and the actual OEM, like auto parts is another big industry. People say, yes, brake pads are real, and they are OEM. And then you put that on the automobile and you run into an accident, and there's no warranty on that. So it's basically almost impacting lives. So we have these different engines and data driven algorithms that basically pick up on these little mistakes that the sellers would do. This, either the stock images or use of the email address with same name with different domain, use of an address which is basically looking similar on the map, but it has a different address to it. Or some addresses that are really close to each other in the location. So we basically use all these different data attributes to pin down where the bad actors are. In some cases, they're the one off lone wolves, someone who's actually just selling by themselves. But in some cases, there are huge networks of these sellers that we bust out.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:03) That's cool. Do you have office parties when you bust them up? Right?

(Najaf at 00:34:09) Yeah. Not quite that, but yeah. You know.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:12) We celebrate the wins hard over here. Okay. Tell me about the pirated content.

(Najaf at 00:34:20) Right. So piracy is pretty big. You know, as you know, there are different URLs or links that you get. You know, friends will share that amongst themselves like, "Hey, you wanna watch that NBA game? Go on this link. You'll actually get a live feed of it." Right? Those are hosted by these bad actors.

(Najaf at 00:34:42) There are servers that are running in different parts of the world and, you know, they just start off and host a bunch of different screens from the servers. And that gets very much handed over in social chats, WhatsApp, Instas, Snapchat. So people are just passing these stories out, and then those are basically live events. There are also on-demand events, you know, like, for example, a new movie coming out in theaters and someone already takes a pirated DVD, you know, from China or some other parts of the world and then they burn it and then they have now a live link or an on-demand link. So you can actually go on to these websites to watch those movies.

(Najaf at 00:35:34) So we go after, again, it's protecting the brands, big names. Right? I mean, these are big brands and producing and spending millions of dollars on these movies, you know, that are for consumers' views. And so we go after these video feeds, these links that are hosting these pirated events, either live events or on-demand events.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:01) What's their incentive? They're giving it out for free and passing it amongst friends. Why are they incentivized to host this and spend their server resources on it?

(Najaf at 00:36:09) That's a great question. So what they do is basically, they are using different people's IPs, first of all, to detect their locations. They will also try to use their IP. So for example, if your phone is on your home network and you're streaming a live game, you basically have exposed your phone device IP to them. So they can actually use that device IP to use that for other activities.

(Najaf at 00:36:40) Like, you know, they can actually just use that IP address to go and purchase something from a website or something like that. So there's a lot of different data elements that are getting stolen based on that. But also, some cases are very straightforward of just being like, "I don't care. I'm just gonna share it with the rest of the world. I'm one of these rebels that, you know, I don't believe in buying movie tickets."

(Najaf at 00:37:11) So here you go. Here's a free link to everyone. So there are different cases where, you know, why they would do it. But yeah, I mean, these illegal streams not only impact brands, but also impact consumers, you know, who are using it because they're exposing their IDs to, you know, all these different servers and different streams.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:32) As an adult, I just have come to the conclusion that I'm voting with my money, essentially. And I really like movies. So I just buy the movies, you know. I mean, I've got the technology experience, right, to do whatever I would wanna do out there. And I'm just like, it's not worth it, man.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:53) It's these people. It's an awesome movie. It's, what, the most expensive movie is gonna cost you $20?

(Najaf at 00:37:59) Mhmm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:59) I mean, it's cheaper than going to the theater, you know. And I want more of them. Honestly, I think there's a shortage of movies. I think there's a shortage of great content. I think we should have more.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:09) I'm always looking for new kids movies and, you know, new movies that are interesting. So if you have any good ones, let me know.

(Najaf at 00:38:17) Will do. Will do. Will do. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:18) But as a kid, I was a kid. So yeah. You know, when you're 13 on the Internet and you just you want stuff, you don't really have money, you just kinda explore. And then you realize that pirated content has tons of viruses on it and it's not even worth it.

(Najaf at 00:38:38) Exactly. I agree.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:39) It really isn't. Yeah.

(Najaf at 00:38:41) And then, you know, look, we've all been there. Right? I mean, that's the thing with the pirated content. We've all been there. We've all, you know, taken advantage of it at some point.

(Najaf at 00:38:51) But this industry has grown, you know, quite significantly big. And, you know, the world is shrinking, quite honestly. And then, you know, these contents, the intentions are not good. Let me put it this way. The market is becoming more and more vulnerable to exposing our devices and exposing our home networks to external feeds, you know, which basically is a door, you know, for bad actors to come in and steal your data.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:28) But I want it now, and I'm gonna press the okay button and see what happens.

(Najaf at 00:39:33) That's true. And it works. Right? I mean, it will start running the movie. Right?

(Najaf at 00:39:38) And you will watch it, and then you'll be done with it. But you don't know what has happened behind the scenes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:47) Right? You just committed, you just hacked, like, NASA satellite, and now you're going to prison.

(Najaf at 00:39:53) Right? That's true. Could be. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:56) Yeah. It's way better just to pay and contribute and enjoy more awesome content. Now when you're doing this, when you're putting together all these little things and you're chasing people in real time, obviously, like, AI can help automate things that we're aware of or they can scan large datasets and then you can train them from their insights, similar how we train the kids for decisions. But I'm curious, do you have a, you must have a process or workflow or a team of somebody that's taking things that can happen once or twice or they're making some sort of insights and observations and then translating them into code to look for at scale across all your brands. Is that part of your business?

(Najaf at 00:40:41) You know, I again, I love my team. They do a fantastic job. They're very passionate about what they do as well. I mean, our people are fantastic. They are double-O-sevens of this world, honestly. Each one of our operations analysts, our customer service managers, they have this creative mindset, you know, where they use and leverage this data to identify this key problem that we have in the industry and solve that for our customers.

(Najaf at 00:41:15) And our CEO is a techie by heart. So he's always supportive and I love him for that because he would always say, "Hey, you know, go disrupt." And I think that's where that's where the interesting dynamics come in. So yeah, we do, you know, use a lot of AI. We use a lot of machine learning, but we also do the use of capabilities across different product lines.

(Najaf at 00:41:42) So being able to leverage something that we've built across the piracy platform. So social media is another big thing. Right? So social media, we've recently cracked the knot on some of these social media feeds and, you know, how do we detect a lot more content, whether it's the brands, whether it's piracy, whether it is anything, you know, related to a discussion that's happening on a particular brand. We've broken the code on that, and then that will then translate into leveraging that across all the different platforms, not just, you know, brand protection, but anti-piracy, you know, fraud, you know, track and trace.

(Najaf at 00:42:22) I mean, it just basically, we're leveraging more and more of these technologies across the board now.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:29) Here's a question for you. Okay. So I was talking with Anthony who's the CTO at SS&C Technologies. They're basically this huge company. They do tons of financial service technology.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:41) Super great guy. I enjoyed them a lot. Mhmm. And their company is, I don't know if you've heard of them, but you see their products and they have, like, thousands and thousands of employees. But the question I had for you about that was, do you do any sort of, you mentioned fraud and things like that, but do you ever work with any financial service companies?

(Najaf at 00:43:02) We do. We do. We have a big portfolio of the financial clients, big names that, in fact, in the market. And, you know, you have no idea how much these financial services can take advantage from the OpSec suite of products because it's just our capability and what we have actually built over the years is unbelievable. I mean, it's still something that I think at this scale, being an industry leader and doing the 360, you know, protection of consumers and brands and, you know, detecting fraud and all that stuff.

(Najaf at 00:43:47) Detection and identifying, you know, what is a phish activity or what is truly a counterfeit product is no joke. It is the years of constantly training these intelligent models and outputs. That's why I'm so enthusiastic and very, you know, hyped up about talking, you know, about these things because I can easily claim that I don't think that there are anyone else in the market, you know, who could do this because there are small players that have popped up in this industry, and they claim that, you know, we have a very high detection rate and very high enforcement rates and stuff like that. But, man, I tell you, I don't think that they've got what we have. It's because it's no joke.

(Najaf at 00:44:40) We're sitting on huge data lakes. We're sitting on collection of data, you know, from years, and we know exactly, you know, certain attributes and what contributes to what. So financial industry, sorry. I derailed a little bit. But financial industry, we do very heavy lifting for them, you know, where their clients, their consumers, you know, will experience fraud.

(Najaf at 00:45:04) You know, one out of 10 transactions, they'll experience fraud. You know, my mom or my dad will know, you know, if they receive an email from Bank of America or an XYZ financial company. "Click on this link. You know, we have an email for you." And then you click on it, and then you're shown an interface, and they'll log in. They have their passwords, you know, handy on their phones, and they're just typing it through one by one.

(Najaf at 00:45:33) And then, yeah, boom. That's gone. So we do provide services to financial company. And it's funny that whatever is stolen from the Internet is available on the dark web within 15 minutes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:49) Oh, I get the notifications. Yeah. So, like, your data was found in this breach. Yeah.

(Najaf at 00:45:55) Yeah. Yeah. And then within 15 minutes, someone, you know, up there, like, you know, from any part of the world will actually have, say, credit card for sale, and then that's it. You know, your information is sold. I mean, I was a victim of a bank fraud, which basically was my debit card was used in LA for, like, you know, $60,000 worth of shopping on Best Buy and, you know, Circuit City and, you know, it was just, so, yeah, these things happen.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:30) Did you stop it before they shipped?

(Najaf at 00:46:33) No. In fact, there was someone who actually bought those items and walked out, walked out with them. So within 15 minutes, when I got the call from Bank of America, it's already too late. The guy had left. So...

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:49) Did you have fraud protection on your card, or did you have to eat it?

(Najaf at 00:46:52) No. No. I didn't. I mean, all these banks, you know, provide fraud protection. So I was covered, but still, that's a lot of money.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:00) Yeah. Well, they probably, you know, have their group that goes and meets with law enforcement and tries to hunt them down and recover it too, probably.

(Najaf at 00:47:09) And, you know, I know exactly where it came from. By the way, I could tell because my son was nine years old, and he asked me for my credit card because he left, I think he was buying some LeBrons or something like that. And he took my credit card, and then a day later, this happened. So this is real, and he got a counterfeit product, and my card got stolen. So this was a double, it was a classic case of an OpSec Security.

(Najaf at 00:47:39) That's why I'm in it so much. I wanna go after these bad actors.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:45) I love it. Well, one thing I wanna make sure as we wrap up, and we're getting close to time here. There were a couple questions. I didn't know if you've gotten to touch on them already or not. But one of them was about your data being a competitive advantage and what you meant by that.

(Najaf at 00:48:01) Yeah. Similar to what I've just mentioned, a couple of minutes ago is that we, you know, we have big data at our, you know, disposal, you know, from years of research, you know, on the subject. And this data basically helps us, you know, get to a very high detection rate and high enforcement rates and very effective. Like, for example, when we get into legal battles, you know, when we get into cases of shutting down an IP or shutting down a brand or a listing and things like that, that data is behind the scenes helping us make those, you know, those right decisions. And then we have a very high success rate of these, you know, these cases.

(Najaf at 00:48:50) That data is not easy to acquire. It basically is hours of investigative services that, you know, goes in. So, you know, it's a combination of our data, our platforms and technology, our the use of AI and machine learning, and then a killer combo with the people. It makes it, you know, this unique combination that we go after these bad actors. But, you know, the dataset that we have, I can easily claim that I don't think anyone else has. And, you know, we use different clustering mechanisms. We use different data lakes, you know, things like that to be able to get to the data that we are looking for. And we can zoom in down to a single transaction, you know, per client.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:43) That's amazing. Is there anything that PR wanted us to get out there that we didn't touch on?

(Najaf at 00:49:51) One more aspect on the physical side to touch upon a little bit because, you know, this is important for me to mention is that the digital side is important, but the physical side where still the consumers are going out there buying stuff, you know, that technology, we've mastered that as well with these, you know, holograms that no one else can design. Basically, you're making it more and more for these counterfeiters to replicate and then, you know, sell products in the market. So tax stamps, you know, any other tags, holograms, anything that basically makes this industry difficult for these bad actors to crack into has been a great journey, and we do a lot of innovation in terms of the factory work that we do as well. So this is, you know, it's a great combination. So if you're looking for a 360 solution, you know, which is looking after these, you know, different clients' physical as well as the digital ones, it's great.

(Najaf at 00:50:59) So that I wanted to mention. And then also, just that the number of innovations and the secret projects, we do have some secret projects that are going on right now, which are very much a Silicon Valley thing that I'm trying to get that out there. Like, Apple would have, you know, these great secret projects that they work on and no one knows about them. We do have some innovative, you know, projects that are in flight, which basically are going to disrupt this market even more. So looking forward to roll those out.

(Najaf at 00:51:31) So if we speak in the next couple of months or so, I'll share with you some cool stuff.

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:37) Let's do it. You've got me interested, my friend. I wanna know what's coming down the pipeline. So, yeah, I'm always interested in what's going on and people will be interested because, honestly, this is a fascinating topic. I was super excited to talk with you because, I mean, everybody's a consumer.

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:52) Right? We all consume. Yeah.

(Najaf at 00:51:55) And it's a big market. It's billions of dollars that is at stake and not an easy job, by the way, but it's fun. It's exciting. It's making a difference.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:09) Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you'd like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email: [email protected]. Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.