The 60-Second Rule: Why Trust Infrastructure Is the Real AI Advantage with Naresh Samlal

AI is moving faster than most organizations can govern, and that gap is where the real danger lives. From Omaha, I sit down with Naresh Samlal, CEO of Cloud Source, to talk about the side of AI that rarely makes headlines: what happens when employees upload sensitive files into public AI tools, vendors promise the moon, and leadership is left trying to protect data they can no longer see.

We break down why AI supercharges both innovation and cybersecurity risk, especially for regulated industries like healthcare, legal, and financial services. Naresh shares what he’s seeing from customers who love the productivity boost but fear giving away their “data gold,” and we explore a different model: bringing AI to your data in a private cloud so it stays containerized, controlled, and governed. We also talk about why the market is shifting back toward privatizing data, how small language models fit into that trend, and what practical guardrails need to exist before you scale anything.

Then we go one level deeper into agentic AI. Automation can look perfect on Monday and turn into a mess by Friday if you trust it blindly. Naresh lays out a simple governance reality check: if you can’t shut it down in 60 seconds or less, you’ve got a governance problem. If you care about AI security, private cloud strategy, managed services, and protecting intellectual property while still moving fast, this conversation will sharpen how you think and how you lead. Subscribe, share this with a friend who’s rolling out AI at work, and leave a review with your biggest question about AI risk.

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Follow The Brand! We hope you enjoyed learning about the latest trends and strategies in Personal Branding, Business and Career Development, Financial Empowerment, Technology Innovation, and Executive Presence. To keep up with the latest insights and updates, visit 5starbdm.com
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Transcript

Welcome And Five-Year Milestone

SPEAKER_01 0:01

I want to welcome everybody to the Firebrand Podcast. This is your host, Grant McGaugh. I am in Oma, Nebraska, but you know my heart is still down there in South Florida. And there was a gentleman that I met down there in South Florida. He was one of my very, very first guests on the show. And people, if you didn't know, this is my fifth year as of June 1st, which was in while we're recording this. It was yesterday. Five years of podcasting that I've done over 270 shows. I've never missed a week. We've got well over 50,000 downloads. We've got rankings by feed spot, number one in the personal brand space. We've got rankings by Thinkers360, number one by Thinkers360 for my personal brand, doing a lot in the AI realm. And then today we're gonna circle back to one of these guys. I mean, I met him on a golf course, I think. Marissa, I'm telling you, this guy, this guy, he continues to impress me with his knowledge, with his his his his tenacity and a go-getter attitude. Man, when we talked, he was like, No, yeah, I used to be an entrepreneur. Now I'm working for a very large hospice organization, and he was turning that out, and then boom, he pump, pumps back, pumps the brakes, goes back into entrepreneurship. Like, what are you doing up for? Because I like this stuff, Greg. I like doing this stuff. So, Naresh, introduce yourself, man.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

I I gotta, I gotta find a way to take you everywhere I go as my hype, man. I feel like, geez, after that, I'm ready to go, man. Let's go, let's go get some stuff done. So, no, listen, five years. I geez, um congratulations. Impressive. Few people do anything that they've started that long. And so, for somebody like me, who a long time ago, I started to measure myself on by the things I complete, not the things I start. Hats off to you. Five years into doing this, that is impressive. Um, and not only survived, you've you've thrived. You've made you know a name for yourself on a global stage. And so I am I am honored to not only be a friend of yours, but also to have a front row seat to the journey. And so, yes, being on it, you know, as one of the early guests, but also being able to circle back with you, you know, formally in this manner and and get some updates and and and both of us be at a different place forward fast forward five years to talk about you know the evolution of um not only us individually, but kind of how the ecosystem around us has evolved as well. So thank you very much. I really appreciate it. You know, today I'm the CEO of Cloud Source, which is a managed service provider. We focus on IT services. Um, I like to say we're an MSP. It's the least we are, because at the very basic level, we're a managed services provider, but we do own a private cloud. Um, we do own many of the services. We don't sum anything out. We're all US-based employees. We do everything in-house from our 24-7 security operations center to again the our cloud, all layers of security, our virtual desktops. And I'm sure at some point we're gonna talk about AI because everybody else is. Um, it's if you're not talking about AI today, I don't what are you talking about?

SPEAKER_01 3:46

You're probably not the but it's uh you know, and I'm glad you said it about the where AI is, because AI has been around for a long, long time. We just have coin here. I am a marketing guy, right? You know, I'm in the brand market, and I noticed it seemed like overnight everybody was an AI person expert. Like, well, how did that happen? But if you're really kind of unpacking, like, well, were you a a digital transformist? I mean, digital transformation was a big thing uh a few years back. Well, what does that mean? You know, and but there we have seen in my lifetime, I've seen successive changes in in technology and how it has impacted business and also society. I've seen the internet boom, I've seen um, I would say mobile compute, I would say cloud computing, what that's done is a lot of these have happened, what I call at the enterprise level. And when you start looking at AI, and it's my opinion, you start seeing it at the enterprise level. But this is very much, I would say, almost a consumer product level. I mean, an everyday person can unwrap their AI, get into these models, begin utilizing probably the most prolific tech that's ever been invented by humanity. It's definitely been adopted quicker than than than the automobile, quicker than electricity, quicker than television, quicker than radio. I mean, this is a very powerful platform because it's more than just applications, it's more than just infrastructure. There's a lot going on here as you un unpack this. Now, when I met Naresh, I was always impressed by what he did from what I call end-user compute and then virtual desktop interfaces, VDI. I always like VDI. Some of our non-techie people are like, what is that? Well, we'll unpack some of that. But some of our people that know what this is, it's a virtual desktop interface where you're not really touching the data, so to speak, you're inputting into it, but you're not really touching it as you are when you have your personal computer and your your data and your files is living on that particular device. It's different, but I want to segue over there first Narest.

Why Build A Trustworthy MSP

SPEAKER_01 6:03

You started cloud source. Why did you do that?

SPEAKER_00 6:08

Thank you for asking that. Um, I think it's really important uh to really understand what motivates you know some of our actions. And this is one of those things. I think when we first met, I was uh VP of IT for a nationwide healthcare organization. Um very much climbing the corporate ladder, you know, on the on the enterprise side. And and then as you talked about, yeah, I I've always had entrepreneurial blood in me. Um, and then I I went to the dark side, as some would say, right? Um, and became a provider. I started cloud source um for a couple of reasons. I think the one um from an executive perspective, the one reason the top of the the list would be because I've you know, I would work with a lot of different partners, and there's a lot of different motivations from these partners to do X, Y, Z, right? And so listen, I I understand commerce, I understand, you know, what business is. Um, it's to make money, I get all of that stuff. Um but I never really had the opportunity, and I never could find it. I worked with many, many partners. Um there wasn't really the total package, and so I decided to create an organization that had all of the pieces of a true trusted partner that I was looking for as an executive. And so um when it comes to things like integrity, I I listen, everyone will say that they operate from a place of integrity, and I totally appreciate and believe that for the most part, but everyone has different pressures and different motivations for things, and so it doesn't feel like it at the time, right? Um I wanted to provide a better option, I wanted to provide an organization that actually does what we say we're gonna do, is who we say we are, is made up of the people and the qualities and the skills and capabilities and culture of who I say we are and who they all say we are, um, and just be true all the way through. Um and just be authentic because at the end of the day, I'm I'm approaching this as yes, while it is a business, we have to be able to afford what we do, but I come from a uh a philosophy of we're just gonna do the right thing and we're gonna get taken care of. Right. And so yes, I apply all these business principles to how we need to operate as a business and grow and and all these things, um, but at its core, it's just doing right by people. And if right may not make us more money in that point in time, it'll probably get us more clients through referrals or what it's gonna work itself out. And I just trust and submit to the process, and I sleep at night, and I don't worry, and and you know what's really crazy about that? It's working. Yeah, we are growing at a pace that is um unreal to my peers, and so I'm okay with uh it's validating, you know. So we are doing the right thing because that's so important, and I know I'm dwelling on something that may seem it doesn't have a place in business, but it's so important because there's so many examples of the opposite, right? And that's how I chose to be different. And listen, everyone in my organization, you know some of them, you've met some of them, they're cut from the same cloth. Yeah, no, the partners that we have, yourself included, cut from the same cloth. The the everything about any affiliation with with cloud source cut from the same cloth. And so we're doing all right, and our customers are getting a better option, and we're growing effortlessly, and the right clients, partners, employees, all the all pieces are coming together in a very aligned way. And um, you know, the intent is coming to life.

The Vendor Trust Problem For CIOs

SPEAKER_01 11:02

And so let me let me piggyback on that, Naresh, because this is what I see on my side of the ball. And I uh I think I speak to some of the let's just say the CIOs out there, chief information officers, the chief digital officers, the CTOs out there, and they have to deal with this vendor community, right? They have to deal with that, and it's not easy to get to what I call the trust infrastructure. How do I trust anybody can sit there and say I can take you to the moon? How can I get to there? Everybody can come up with some testimony. Well, I flew such and such to the moon, I can flew you to the moon, but how do I trust that? How do I really know that you, first of all, are going to tell me the absolute truth? Because everybody knows if you've been in technology for any length of time, you know that things don't always work out the way that you drew them up. And this is just a fact of the reality. Somebody told me this when I was in uh college years ago. Electronics is not an exact science. You know, some of this is going to be different, it's never going to get you the same result. And we're talking about AI now, there's deterministic realities and there's predictive realities, you know, and those are different modalities, right? But as a senior executive, I need to trust that partner when you're talking about programs and projects and putting something together, that there's a lot at stake. If your tech goes down, what are the implications of that in the business? If you're running a multi-million dollar business, a multi-billion dollar business, your tech goes out, lights out. Who do you trust? And I feel that you know not only the tech, but you understand the business implications. You've worked with the senior executive, you've been a senior executive. I would trust you. It's like the rest, what's the real deal here? And then you can here's why this costs the way it does. You can be explain to me the financial world that I'm walking into, right? And that adding because you know the discussion that that CIO or CDO has got to have with his team, his CEO. He's got to, it's got to make sense, right? Otherwise, you know, it's not gonna be a great conversation when things don't go so right. So I applaud you for being one of those guys to take off the suit, right? You take off the suit, you know, and he puts on the golf tee. You know, I love it, I love it, I love it. So I got a question. Because, you know, we met him. Hems is the Health Informatic System Society. You've been a big part of that. I don't think you're totally vergognic, but I know you have a healthcare background without question. Here's the biggest question that people are gonna ask. If I'm a CI now, I'm gonna put on my my senior executor hat, I'm gonna ask you this like the rest. This is what I'm seeing. I got my my my employees using AI. I used to be scared of shadow IT. This is that's these are this is little compared to what this huge implications of utilizing AI that is just everywhere. I can't control it. I can say, hey, here's licensed for Gemini, but they're using this, this, and this. I don't know where my data is going, when it's coming back, how it's intermixed with these public platforms. I'm a little bit concerned.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

Help me out of here.

AI Turns Shadow IT Infinite

SPEAKER_00 14:23

So AI has been, you said it, revolutionary. Um it is it is bringing to our existence capabilities that were once only a dream. And I can I can say that first hand that a year ago, I literally said I was having a conversation with um with someone on my team, man, if only we could do that. But it's not it's just not possible to do that. And it wasn't. And three months ago, as I sat with my lead AI architect at Cloud Source, um, I'm like just put it out there. Can you do so and so? He goes, I don't know, let's try it. Three minutes later. Three minutes. I'm like, oh my gosh. What was not possible a year ago, within minutes, and we didn't even know, we're like, let's just try. Here it is, and we're and we're using that competitive advantage today. So um, yes, AI has been revolutionary. Um there's two sides to that coin. Just like there's no such thing as light without darkness, there it there's two sides to that, and I think um what's largely being sold to the masses is uh is the pro. Is what's in it for you, the benefits of it, right? How you can grow the upside of it, but there's two sides to it. You can't uh there's enough, no one's talking about that, and so you know, um, if you follow my content or you know, any content on cloud source, we actually do the opposite, we actually focus because we're a security cybersecurity organization, and and we have committed to telling the truth, and there's the other side of the coin where AI is you just referenced it really, really well comparing it to uh shadow IT. Well, just like AI created such velocity with innovation, it also created such velocity and exposure of vulnerabilities and risk. And so, yeah, shadow IT is now infinite with AI because now an employee is empowered through an uh interface that is consumerized and available to them with no controls, no governance. They're handing data over, they're handing secrets over, they're handing their competitive advantage over, and there's no stopping, there's no checks and balances. So someone in an organization could be sitting there using Claude, Chat GPT, whatever. It requires no admin rights to install on their computer, and they'll, you know what? They they don't have to write this memo anymore. It's document, this business justification anymore. They just have to upload all this documents and ask for a prompt to spit out the perfect presentation. Saves them, I remember doing that stuff, it saves them days of work. But they just uploaded uh really critical information to a system that is not regulated in a regulated industry. So hopefully that you know paints the picture of the other side of the coin, and that's just a couple of ways as to the risks that AI brings. In January of this year, we're in 2026, January of this year, from January to February, ransomware attacks in healthcare, only healthcare, yeah, ransomware attacks grew 124%. 100% of the ransomware attacks were powered by AI.

SPEAKER_01 19:00

No way.

SPEAKER_00 19:04

That shouldn't surprise you. What's surprising you is nobody's talking about it. Not in the news. Nobody's gonna admit their failure, nobody's gonna admit their defeat, right? So that's not making headlines. And what's that the reason that nobody's talking about it is because it's not sexy, it doesn't help their business. No fair. Yeah, I I understand the logic, but if you're not talking about it, if we're not putting it out there, then nobody's understanding the risk around it. And if you want to stick your head in the sand and pretend it didn't happen, you're in line for it coming to you again and again and again. Yeah, so you're absolutely right when you talk about shadow IT being nothing compared to this, because this just like a compressed time in innovation, it's compressing time in exposure and the risk.

SPEAKER_01 19:56

Yeah, so hopefully that's article. Oh, you totally nailed it, and we always know this, especially I'm you're putting on your cybersecurity app. But the weakest link in the digital stream is the human being, always the human, uh and not to say that's bad. Oh, take the human out of the loop.

SPEAKER_00 20:16

No, I'm not saying that, but you it's also the strongest point.

SPEAKER_01 20:19

So yes, yeah, you've got to if we so we don't we have to educate our our workforce around the cybersecurity risk, just like we do with email phishing and uh the things that that I think was it, was it uh I think it was just in the news that one of the cruise lines just got a major breach because one of their employees got got compromised, and then now millions of records are exposed. And this is happening, you know, it it it's it's it's difficult because in an AI world you can pretty much duplicate someone's voice, their likeness. There's so many different ways to do this, not just trying to trick you with text information. That's just one way. So now you got all to your point, the dark side of that, you have all these other modalities. And I always speak in these things. What is three things that um maybe there's four, I'm sure there is, that real technology can do very well. I always say speed if you need to speed something up, speed to market, speed, tech. Wow, you have to do that. The other thing is communication. I can communicate so many different ways with tech voice, video, you know, text information, all that can be sped up and done really, really well with communication, right? The third thing is scalability. Now I can do it at scale that I could never do before. Going back to some things you just thought, wow, I can now do this in three minutes, and it couldn't even, it wasn't even possible a year ago. So those three things are very This is a we've taken something because I know another one of my friends, his name is uh Richie, Richie Persani said, You've taken, you've taken probably an apex predator and stuck it on top of the world.

SPEAKER_02 22:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:14

And you don't even realize it, that you've let this thing out into the wild, right? Why it has a very smiley face, man, and it has a Godzilla tail to it, you know, and and you don't realize it. So talk to us more about how you're how you're seeing the AI, uh, 90 revolution transformation. How is that helping or hurting cloud source?

What Customers Want From AI

SPEAKER_00 22:40

So we are, you know, before the rise of AI, and I think um, you know, who knows when that started, right? Because uh today it is it is the news, it is the only thing everyone talks about. So, and that's probably been the case for a little over a year, you know, uh to some people more than others. Um cloud source was was built again as a better option to solve some of the core problems facing, you know, SMB across the country. We have enterprise clients, um, but really we're serving the underserved, you know, that upper SMB mid-market client who really may not have the access and resources to to take advantage of technology and resources that enterprise has, right? We make those things very much available. So public cloud, virtual desktop, all layers of security, you know, business phones, all that stuff. We do all that stuff, right? Um as we are helping more and more clients, um, mostly in regulated industries. So you mentioned healthcare, yeah, that's our biggest vertical. A lot of healthcare, uh, legal, um, financial manufacturing is is getting really big for us as well. Um in the last uh, I say three three to six months, mostly three months, uh it's it's become less of a passive conversation and more of a customer saying, we really need this. And and it's their growing concern with AI. And so we have clients, um, you know, a lot of our clients are very concerned about security, and that's generally why they work with us, right? Because a lot of our capabilities and and services are uh a security first approach. And so, you know, they want to use AI, they understand the the they they use AI in a in a playful personal sense, and they they so desperately want to uh uh uh uh uh bring that into their business, but they are afraid, rightfully so, because they understand what I just talked about. They understand that they don't want to put their company data in the cloud, in the public cloud, because they don't want somebody else training their AI models on their data. Yeah, data is gold. We live in an era where data is gold, and so they understand in many cases their data is their competitive advantage. So they don't want to put that in a public cloud because they don't trust it, and they have good reason to do so. They put it on a private cloud where it's in a secure enclave, it's their data, and there's uh you know a force feel around it that they know it's theirs and it's safe and secure, and they knew which throat to choke, right? Yeah, we're the ones that that take care of it for them. So their data stays their data. What's been happening is that um, again, what what was just them venting about man clawed this chat GPT that I'm afraid to upload documents in there. I want to use it, it's it's valuable, but I'm so deathly afraid to giving away my company's gold, intellectual property, and so you know, listening to the voice of the customer and just having this defensive mode on protecting our customers, we decided to solve

Bringing AI To Your Private Data

SPEAKER_00 26:25

that problem. And so what we've done is we've got a platform that, and I'll just kind of cut to it. We have a platform, an AI platform that we bring into our private cloud, and so instead of taking your data to the public cloud or taking your data to AI, we bring AI in a very controlled, localized, private, secure manner to your data. I love it. So your data will always remain your data. You get the power of the intelligence local with your data. You're able to do all things AI. You can interact with the data, age uh agenc, you have a platform that you can build agents, um governance, right? You can you have controls in there. So there's a couple things. Your data stays your data, but it can become your single company's brain. You date because here's the thing.

SPEAKER_01 27:35

If I use let me ask you this, Naresh, would you call that an SLM, a small language model in your private cloud or not?

SPEAKER_00 27:46

Would you yes and no? Let me let me let me explain that. Yeah, it doesn't have to be a small language model, it doesn't have to be a small version, right? There's ways that we're able to again just bring the intelligence of an open AI, of a claude, which is not an S. That's an that's full blown. Right. Just the intelligence and apply it to your data and ensure that it's always containerized and stayed right there. That's interesting. Right? Yeah. On the flip side of that, yes, we could host a local small language model and keep it local on your data as well. So you can have your cake and eat it too. You get all of the power of AI, and you never have to part with your data. And it always stays in your secure enclave that is that is tied to only you and your company, and it never leaves the safety of our private company.

SPEAKER_01 28:57

I mean, can can the main street America afford something like that?

SPEAKER_00 29:02

So that's a great question. So listen, from a again, going back to how I introduced who we are and what we are, we are still built for doing the right thing by the underserved. And so while this is going to be very attractive to the enterprise, um, it it is very much available to the enterprise, but our customer is still our customer, and that's still upper SMB mid-market, right? So this is still accessible to the SMB, it's still going to be affordable to the SMB, um, because it doesn't have to be this outrageous, you know. Everything we do could be expensive if you go a different route, but it's still affordable because it was designed and the economics of it, without sacrificing quality, still get the value at an affordable price. This is no different. This is just another layer on what we're already doing that everyone's asking for. And if they weren't asking for it, they didn't know it could exist until they understand what we're doing.

SPEAKER_01 30:11

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 30:12

This is one of those things that you're gonna you're going to then realize you didn't know you could live without. You know the problem, yeah, you don't know the solution. Exactly. We're gonna crystallize the solution, and that's gonna be, and we already know because we have a lineup of customers that we we didn't have to do more than say, you know what, we'll do that for you. Yeah, you know, and so we know it's going to be um a very uh demanding, high-end demand. Uh, we're probably gonna um have to figure out our supply on it. Um to have capacity. Yeah, it's a good problem to have, it's still a problem, and it's still we still have solutions to those. So I'm not too worried about it, but it is something we'd be we're being very careful with because you know, this is not AI, this is not some AI off-the-shelf thing. This is something that is is not for everybody. This is for this is for those organizations that really value their data and understand the implications of putting their data in public AI models.

SPEAKER_01 31:24

Oh, you this is where they have the power of those. I'm thinking a lot of a lot of things just went through my head. And then one of the reasons why five-star BDM and cloud source, we're we're partners, right? We are partnering. And Narash really loves what I'm doing in the Omaha area. Yes, and that we're running, we're kicking off our first cohort here, you know, this quarter. And we're gonna be running these accelerators through small business, through the uh Omaha Main Street, uh, for the next couple of years and really giving them exposure of these kinds because what I said earlier is so true. A lot of these things that were enterprise um tools were not available to the small business owner. Exactly. They've been utilizing these things for a long time, but they were very expensive, very, very expensive to maintain. But now you've got AI where this is pennies on the dollar, but you don't know how to use it. You know, you just haven't been upskilled. You have the tool, but you're missing the skill set, you're missing the mindset. Well, how does this play into it? So that's where we're bringing this all together. So then we begin when the light bulb thing goes off, like, oh, I see what you mean. However, as Nares pointed out, because there's always an opposite. We live in a world of opposites, there's gonna it's gonna be a positive, it's gonna be a negative. If you don't understand these negatives, it's not gonna work. Just like if you took the negative off of your battery terminal in your car, it's not gonna work. You gotta you gotta do both, you gotta secure both ends uh of the the entire um electrical system, let's put it like that. Um, so we're gonna be doing that in the Omaha world. Cloud source is gonna be helping me to really uh articulate what what's necessary, where this plays into, and as we get into these modalities, as you talked about earlier, these verticals that really need to protect their data. This is not an option. My my proprietary data, your intellectual property, copyright, trademarks, things like that. These are things that people should be definitely concerned about. How is that going to translate as we go forward? And you've got to have certain modalities and controls that are here. So talk to us more about how you see this playing out, especially in the 2026, 2027, even up to 2030 time frame.

The Shift Back To Private Models

SPEAKER_00 33:41

Yeah. So, you know, we're we're early innings right now on the solution. We're probably gonna have a public release in the next couple of weeks, which you'll be, you know, uh front and center with us on. Um, but we really believe over the next 12 to 24 months, this is going to be uh this this is a necessity that, like I said before, folks, some many people, many organizations know they need this, they don't have an answer to it. Um and the folks that are they don't they don't know what they don't know about it. Um, this is going to start really um you know lighting the market on fire in that sense because it's desperately needed and it makes sense and we're gonna make it affordable and accessible, right? So a lot of things going forward. I think over the next 20, 12 to 24 months, uh we're gonna see a shift, much like what's been happening over the last year to two years, with you know, or or starting 10 years ago, everybody went to the ran to the cloud. Yeah, right. And then then there was the black hole of the cloud, and now there is a shift out of the cloud because of cost, security, all the things that the cloud promised. Um, and and and it delivered, and you know, immediately it delivered, but then living with it is telling a different story. There is a shift back to privatizing your data, and I think AI is just compressed, like in true AI fashion, compressing that time again. It's not gonna take 10 years for AI to figure that out. I think in 12 to 24 months, there's going to be a realization that, and that's where SLM is coming from. SLM came from the concept of having to privatize, right? So we're already talking about somebody just learned what an LLM is, and now they're learning what an SLM is. So we're already seeing the compression in that timeline to figure out how you privatize that experience and keep your data safe and control costs and things like that. I think that's what's gonna happen in, you know, it's it's gonna start happening between now and the next 12 months, and we're gonna start seeing, you know, the market kind of adapt and and more solutions come available. And, you know, we are we're plugged in right now, so we want to react immediately to give our clients and those who desperately need a better option an option immediately, because we actually have half of the answer, which is a private cloud. We have the place for it to live. And so, you know, um just having the platform in there completes a solution. And we realize wait, we're we're there. Let's just do this now, make make this available and and give customers what they're desperately asking for, and um try to be at the at the tip of the spare on that that that you know that kind of vision towards that shift.

SPEAKER_01 36:47

You gotta have that future futuristic view, but it's a now because like you said, they get time is going to. I have one last question to ask you, and it's an important one from my perspective, because this is

Agentic AI Needs Governance Controls

SPEAKER_01 36:59

what I'm seeing. Because as we move up stack in the AI world from LLMs, SLOs, but we're going into this agentic world, AI agents and agentic. I'm a little bit concerned because what you're doing is you're automating processes, and I don't know if your people, businesses are really factoring in the change, flexibility of things. You're you're trying to make things very, very rigid, and and it's coming out with pepperoni every single time, and somebody's gonna want a cheese pizza, and it may not always know that. So when I and I just made that very simple. What I'm saying is if you automate these processes and then and then there's a change, it doesn't automatically update, it doesn't automatically know that there's no sentience in a gentic AI. It's programming, you know, and stitching together different uh applications to give you a really cool automation on Monday and a really big mess on Friday if you don't really know how this works. How do you see that playing out?

SPEAKER_00 38:07

So, you know, you take the concept of hallucination and you add gas on that, right? It's okay, it could make up its. I was in a conversation this morning about an example. This is an internal um uh uh AI being used internally in a a pretty large organization, and the example was um AI hallucinated what what you know uh uh infrastructure management uh uh agent hallucinated and instead of spinning up an environment in a in a cleanup effort, it deleted production.

unknown 38:46

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 38:50

So that happened, right? That's not a cloud source. That wasn't that somebody was sharing that with me. Um it's a really good example of um the unknowns, right? And so you don't know what you don't know, and there is such there's too much trust and dependency being put on AI. I think people are missing the point of AI, and herein lies abuse and just this blind faith, and AI is powerful, but it's a tool. It should always be a tool. And as we develop our strategy for the platform that we're implementing, you know, one of the re the keys is that this platform is governed by human uh oversight, right? It never leaves the human driver, it is a tool, it should always be a tool, it's never the driver. And so the problem with that is some people are gonna have to get burned to realize that, unfortunately. The ones that may have gotten burned or understands that already, um, understands the value of governance. And so one of the there's two things about our platform that answers that that question. We we believe that there's a framework you need to follow. And rule number one with AI is in an event or a situation, much like the ones we just articulated, or runaway processes, all these types of things, can you shut it down in 60 seconds or less? 60 seconds. If you can't, you got a governance problem, right? Because you don't probably know what's going on. So if you can't hit that kill switch in 60 seconds or less and it shut down, um, we're probably not on the right track. There's some there's desperately needing governance to become in there. Governance is built in, so there's actually an an AI agent on our platform that is responsible for governance, but it's all with human oversight on top of that, right? And the other thing is control, security, and no surprises. If you don't have the control mechanisms in place, that's one of them I just gave you. If there's more, if you don't have, if you're not starting with sustainability in mind, and this that's what that is is how do you sustain this ecosystem that is AI? You're ahead of yourself, and here in lines risk.

SPEAKER_01 41:41

Big risk. You know, you don't want to learn the hard way, uh, what you said, because it I see this already happening. Everybody's just you're coding, all of a sudden you're a software engineer, you just learned this a month ago, and you like you don't understand. It's a little bit more than just coding, it's a lot more than just coding, but yeah, you're gonna find that out. There's this great way to beta. Don't get me wrong, I love that you can beta some of these applications. Yeah, production is a whole powerful thing.

SPEAKER_00 42:10

Yeah, we use we use AI largely in in cybersecurity defense, it's powerful, but it never leaves a human's oversight. An expert, not just a human, an expert, that's when the tool is you know unleashing a beast. It's not you know, you don't want to give the keys to a helicopter to a brand new driver, right? You just don't right, so something's gonna it's gonna be cool for a second and then crash and burn. I hate to use that example, but you understand what I'm saying, yeah. Yeah, AI may seem, you know, um safe in that sense because of the cool factor, how quickly you can do things. But it's the driver, it's always gonna come down to the driver. It's gotta remember.

SPEAKER_01 43:02

And I want to close on that because it's so important to understand. And I know a lot of people don't realize when you're dealing with the AI world, this is an AA, an IT information technology, where I would say intelligent technology, application, and and tool set. And there are experts that have been working in these worlds for a long time. Just because you opened up Claude and Claude Code and Claude Cohort, that's just one of those things, and they're kind of cool to play with, poor certainly, to get into the curiosity of it all. But when it starts leaving your hands and goes out into the world, as I said earlier, you're unleashing this out into the world, it's a whole nother animal. And we don't even understand what the implications are right now of what that's gonna look like. Some of these guys, these cyber criminals, they're fighting out, they're just spinning up stuff and throwing it out there to see what sticks. This is not cool. So you don't want to be one of those apps that it gets a hold of and gobbles it up and really misuses. Because at the end of the day, you're accountable.

SPEAKER_02 44:03

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 44:04

You are accountable and you're going to have to take responsibility for these creations that you're making. So, with all that said, Nares, how do we get a hold of you?

How To Reach Naresh Samlal

SPEAKER_01 44:12

So we if we get gobbled up, we can call you.

SPEAKER_00 44:15

Well, I actually would prefer to talk to you before you get gobbled up so we can prevent it, right? That's that's the business we're in, is it's preventing any of this stuff. So you drive. Um but we are on you know all of our social media, cloud source, uh cloudsource.us is our website. Um I'm on LinkedIn and all again, all social media, that's a great way to kind of stay community communicating as well. Naresh Samlal N-A-R-E-S-H, S A M-L-A-L. LinkedIn is a great way, our website, cloudsource.us, but really all um social media platforms, um, we put out content intended to educate, inform, um, and keep people abreast of the things that people are not talking. We're not in the business of selling in content, we're in the business of educating and teaching. And so if any of this is of interest to you or you just want to learn, yeah, that's that's where we come from. That's what we want to do. We we we can obviously solve and we provide a lot of solutions around that, but we believe the answer is truly in the education because you know it's okay to say you didn't know, yeah, but when you now know it's on you, not me anymore. And so we just want to, you know, educate as much as we can and and inform people and and let them know that there is a better option, and you only know why it's a better option when you know the details of it, and that's kind of where we're at.

Cricket, Community, And Closing

SPEAKER_01 45:38

And there's another thing that a lot of people don't know that I know because I learned it five years ago, that Naresh is a legend in his home world in the cricket world to bagel. Legend guy was a legend, you know, he left the game early, left them all wanting, came to the US, you know, and now he's being rediscovered.

SPEAKER_00 46:03

That's too funny. So I, you know, I'm looking at uh as we're doing this, I'm seeing the video, I'm like, man, I've been in the sun a lot. You can probably tell I'm definitely uh several like 20 shades, several shades, you've been out there kicking the ball. My tan is layered on, and uh yeah, it's thanks to a uh rediscovery of you know a childhood passion. So I love cricket. Um, and in I'm you know, I'm in South Florida, so cricket is a big part of the community here for those that play, and there's uh very competitive leagues, and you know, I play with with teams and and talent that play at the international level. And so yeah, I'm having fun. It's it's uh it's definitely hitting my skin being in the sun in Florida, Florida sun. But no, I love it. Supporting the community out here, um, developing the sport and bringing more awareness to the game has been uh has been a treat stepping back into you know another passion of mine.

SPEAKER_01 47:04

So yeah, yeah, love it, man. Well, thank you for being a guest on the show again. You didn't know five years, man. Five years uh we've been running strong to your point. This is the kind of thing that really, and that's what I love to do is to share knowledge, to share with people, then their passion and what it's all about, educating our community. We're really catching fire on Follow the Brand. I got a following that's worldwide, and I really, really thank my guests for tuning in. And people from all over say, I want to be a guest in the show, I want to be in a guest. You love the demand uh uh of that and how that happens. And so I encourage everybody to see all our episodes from the very beginning to all the way to now on Fire Star BDM. That is the number five, that is Star S T R B DM B for brand, D for development, and for masters.com. I want to thank you again for being on the show.

SPEAKER_00 47:56

Thank you. I appreciate it. I'm honored to be here again and uh look forward to our continued relationship.

SPEAKER_01 48:02

In Omaha, we're gonna bring Omaha to brand absolutely go husky.