How Gen Digital handles modern identity theft

In the age of AI, the potential for exploitation of this technology for digital theft is a concern. Gen Digital (GEN) aims to help protect against data theft. The company's fourth quarter report revealed better-than-expected earnings, showing a growing demand for its services.

Gen Digital CEO Vincent Pilette joins Catalysts to discuss the company's recent performance and explain how Gen can help with the growing complications in keeping data secure.

Pilette outlines the current landscape of identity theft: "You can have your personal data stolen from somewhere else than you own devices and a year later being posted in the dark web, being bought by bad actors. And suddenly you wake up and you have credit cards and mortgages taken on your name and your identity being stolen, and you don't realize it. So we've evolved our portfolio to be uniquely centric around the user and protecting your data from not only just device security, overall security, but also identity protection and restoration services, giving consumers the ability to also understand their data and their privacy features they want to have in the dark web all the way to the ability to manage your own reputation online."

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Catalysts.

This post was written by Nicholas Jacobino

Video transcript

Well, J shares are up after the company reported results topping earnings and revenue estimates.

This is the top performer in the S and P 500 this morning.

Those shares up over 15% and this comes after challenging year to date performance for the company stock was down about 13% heading into the.

So for more on the quarter, we are joined by J Ceo Vincent.

Vincent.

Thank you so much for joining us here this morning.

Uh Talk to me about what the market was missing heading into this print because that year to date performance was tough and now you're recouping those games here to the upside.

What do you make of that?

Absolutely.

And you know, about 18 months ago, we closed the merger between a vast and northern Lifelock to create gen digital.

As you know, we merged too big leader to become like the leader in consumer cyber safety for the individuals.

As always when you go through merger, you have you set of challenges and opportunities.

Yesterday, we reported our first full fiscal year as gen digital and our, our numbers, our performance was broad based across the board.

We posted record revenue, record profitability, record cash flow and really supported by the demand with growing customer account.

And I think the uh investor, it was nice to see this morning, are recognizing the opportunity that we see the threat landscape is continue continuously evolving and is here to stay.

And Jenny is best positioned to, to protect the individuals.

Yeah, Vincent, judge us a little bit more about what exactly that opportunity looks like because I was also taking a look at the instant analyst reaction to this print and R BC was also calling out just your next chapter and some of the driving factors that they see in terms of those new products.

So what is it and what is it ultimately then going to do for your business?

Yeah, absolutely.

Still in the broad environment, people see like the protection of the individual as protecting your computer or your device, protecting you get Mwa and that time is totally shifted.

If you want the threat landscape is a lot more about anti scam about breaches.

You can have your personal data stolen uh from somewhere else than your own devices.

And a year later being posted in a dark web, being bought by bad actors and suddenly you wake up and you have credit cards and, and and mortgages taken on your name and your identity being stolen and you don't realize it.

So we've evolved our portfolio to be uniquely centric around the user and protecting your data from not only just device security, overall security, but also identity protection and restoration services.

Giving consumers the ability to also understand their data and their privacy features they want to have in the dark web all the way to the ability to manage your own reputation online.

I'll give you two examples of two new products we came up with.

In January, we launched Northern Genie, which is kind of an anti scam assistant.

You can have as an app in your pocket and it detects um it detects sorry, anti scam from text from um uh social posting and, and then it has a U I conversation or U I where you can really get more insight.

Um Another, another product we came up with is total radius uh which really scan the entire web or the dark web about your personal data.

And then it's using our 15 years of data and history um using A I technologies to detect patterns and predict the future of your reputation and giving the consumer the ability to manage um their reputation online.

So um we we constantly evolving the portfolio and then we came up with the overall membership concept uh no 360 or a vast one or two of those for a membership fee, you can have access to our entire portfolio and all the features that give you entire protection against cyber risks.

Well, that plays well into the next question I have for you Vincent because analysts at barclays are pointing out that average revenue per user is the key stat to watch for your company moving forward.

It looked pretty much in line with previous reports to me.

So what is your hope for?

What those products can do to that specific data point to the A RPU to what extent do you think that could push that number up?

A little bit more?

Yeah, absolutely.

And you know, everybody is coming at different stage of their life cycle into the, the, the cyber environment.

If you want an understanding the risk profile that they have personally based on their preferences or their own set of activities online.

So we have a lot of, we have 65 million paid customers.

We have hundreds of millions of users and some are coming with basic security needs and they are the low end of the R pool and some understand the full concept of a protection and they are the high end on the high end of the R. It's like $15 a month on the low end, it's $5.

And so our portfolio is an average.

We believe that over time, even if you come at the first year of that cyber protection, as you understand, more and more of the risk.

As we educate you on the overall environment that sits out there, you're going to move up the, the value change in terms of protection and empowerment.

Listen, Johnson was just as we zoom out a little bit, just what you're seeing in terms of the infiltration of bad actors, how big of a spike we have seen in scams and ultimately just your confidence in the ability to continue to detect scams as they seem to be increasing at an extremely rapid rate.

A a absolutely.

And I think we all agree that the cyber risk are here to state has moved from basic malwares to now a lot of sophisticated scam.

Uh you mentioned uh you know, phishing, scams, spear phishing scams, the ability to use A I data to even target and social engineers uh scam that are tar directly targeted at you.

I can take based on all of your social media connections, a profile of one of your friends and pretend to be that to get special information from you.

So I think that's rapidly evolving.

We see the bad actors using A I technology to construct pictures, deep fakes and really uh fool the consumers even more.

And we combating that environment with our own technology.

The history of data we have as you know A I is basically a game of data and we look at all of those patterns that we constantly update on a very frequent basis to be able to be at the forefront of that, of that protection.