James McMurry, ThreatHunter.ai | AWS re:Invent 2022

This is texturong TV. Hey everyone. We're back here at AWS reinvent for our coverage.

We're actually up in the win at our Tech strong TV station, but I'm really happy to introduce you to a friend of mine from the security world. It's only that maybe 25th friend of mine from the security world that we've interviewed this week. Why don't you see the jimik married Jim?

Welcome. Thank you. Great to be here.

Great to be here. I don't know how close our cameras can get in. But if you notice gyms wearing a new Logo on his T-shirt here.

ai and well, we're gonna put the logo on the screen. So you see it, but for those of you who know me or no gym. From you know James from the security world.

That's a new name. Right James is he's he is Milton security. They melt security is a great brand and security.

Yeah, you know for those of us in the in the business we We've come to know Milton pretty well, but why the change then what's happening? Well, you know. we started Milton actually Milton was a secondary name there was actually a prior name and we decided when a few months ago that Our community knows of Milton but but the industry is bigger than our community.

So I came up to find out you right and being able to explain to people in a very simple statement of what you do and your name lends a lot of credence to what value you're offering to the customer, right and Milton security if you're in the community and you work at an organization you think of us when you need threat hunting done? but there are thousands of other businesses that you know have a hard time deciphering. What does Milton actually do?

You know, where does this name Milton come from? And why and and we wanted to focus on what we do and what we do best narrow it down and come up with a simple statement of who we are what we are. We are threat Hunters you're hiring a threat hunting team and you're combining that with all of the AI models that we have created in the last eight years to combine together to be your threat hunting team.

And you're 100% Right, right? Being in the community to me Milton represented quality a quality. You needed threat hunting done.

You needed that kind of security service. You called in a Milton much like you see when people get breached today. They'll you know, they say oh, yeah, we hired Mandy it right and and that's great right there is a but it it goes to the old business thing.

Do you want to descriptive name? What do you want to come up with some other name? That's catchy and people remember or whatever and certainly Milton is not descriptive of correct what you did?

I feel like look our audience is bigger than the Security earnings though. We have Cloud native folks here and devops and srees and platform engineers and everything else. When we talk threat hunting Jim, what are we explain to them?

What we mean? Really what we mean is taking in all the Telemetry from all of your systems in real time and figuring out in real time correlating from everything from your endpoints to your Cloud systems to your your clients who are logging into your systems. What is actually occurring in real time on your systems on your networks on your your website on your database and being able to understand is this legitimate or not?

Is this a threat or not? Is this an attack or not? Is it a low and slow attack are is it just a denial service attack?

Should we worry about it? Who's going to triage? Who's going to remediate it?

Who's gonna figure out that all these systems are out of date? So it's thread hunting combines so much within it and security it goes above and beyond just a simple. Hey, I'm gonna put this blinky light in my network and it's gonna tell me what bad things occur right because you don't have to Maintain it you still have to babysit it.

You still have to update it and someone's got to look at the log those Blinky lights don't work. We've we've learned that we both learned that right. So so then that you know with that in mind well becomes a no-brainer.

That's why Fred Hunters the name. So we're here with 55,000 people it you know reinvent. What are you hearing seeing?

You know in relation, I mean you're gonna meet people who already know you as Milton and say, oh great new name Jim, then you're gonna meet other people say I never heard of Milton, but I get what threat out. Like what what's been the reaction out from people, you know, it's amazing. I would say our friends the community really are scared of losing the Milton name because you know Milton is just more than a security company.

We've sponsored so many things we do so many things with veterans, you know, there's a lot of things that people are concerned about that have come to me just yesterday and said is all that going away. And no it's not good. Right because to me that is that is key.

It's helping our community. Well, the two you are correct. We could call you anything but late for dinner, right but you still gonna do the whiskey stuff right, correct?

Okay, you heard it here the whiskey stage and but all kidding aside with whiskey you do do a tremendous amount for the veterans community. And there's no reason that should go away just because she changed for Milton to threat Hunter right? I think unfortunately what a lot of people when they see these kinds of things assume.

Oh, they must erase money. And now they have some new corporate overlords. You know who we're going to put the clamp down on doing all the fun cool things that made Milton social popular.

member of our community so no, we have not received any outside funding in the past 15 years. Yep. We have no VC.

No PE No Angel and we don't plan on it, either. We're good when you're right a profitable business. You don't generally need that stuff.

Correct, you know are we the size of of our competitors? No, but I think we do much better job at what we do and we all have fun doing right and and coming to work on the threat Hunter team is really akin to enjoyment. It's enjoying helping your customer being a partner with them and and integrating with them as much as possible.

Well, it used to be when we were Milton. I would say when you're when you sign a contract with Milton, you're actually hiring a guy named Milton, right? And that guy named Milton is gonna be working for you 24 hours a day seven days a week.

It's gonna treat him just like an employee you have to onboard him. You have to make them part of your security team. You have to make them part of your Management team, he's got to know everything and we need a two-way dialogue.

That's 24 hours a day without that then we just become another vendor. You know what? I very similar philosophy to how I run Tech strong gear.

We didn't I've been through that Venture back thing and all of that. I'm done. We we have a good time.

We try to we have like we come to a place like this rather than being out on the floor and all that craziness. We have a room here. We we order in our stuff and we try to make it fun.

As of try to treat the company is a family and then Convey that sort of feeling to our customers. Right right. Hey, we do care about your business.

We want you to succeed because your success is our success, correct and and it's an important thing. I want to ask you another question. If you don't mind one of the things that really is kind of done my heart good here at AWS reinvent as well.

As I we were talking of camera. I was a cute card up in Detroit about a month month and a half ago. After all of these years no pun intended after all of these years.

Security is really becoming job one with so many organizations not just their security teams. But at the board level at the developers level and the Ops and the biz levels. Really people are listening.

and wanting to do something and and not just saying they want to do something but putting you know dollars on the table and and resources. What are you saying is security really becoming I think important I think at a board level and especially in larger organizations. They're very aware that they're particularly liable for things that occur within their firm right and they have to sign off.

Documents that state that they are secure right and if if they are breached then the public looks towards the board where the where's the failure? Where's the Fall Guy in all of this? So clearly of course in larger organizations with a structured board.

It's going to become more aware even more so than it is. Now, you know, we've sort of flirted with elevating the siso to the board level, right or make them an advisor to the board level. I think that was a good start and I think more practitioners really should be as we all age should become that role that see so role to be able to be the person in between the actual security teams and the board and explaining to the board.

What is occurring? I do think that if you go back five years ago, you know devops we didn't see anyone concerned about security. How I know it when I first started bringing devops star I'd say they were like, what are you doing here?

Right and and I think it's great a more awareness is much much. I mean more awareness is awesome. And and I do think that we are seeing organizations committing to a spending moneys on security.

However in this current climate, you know crowdstrike just announced yesterday that there may be an earning shortfall and that customers are leaving because of their high cost. Splunk gave notice a few days ago the same thing. Yeah, you know, so you see these very large security organizations are being told by their customers.

They're not going to renew or they're going to renew at a much less lower rate. So how does that impact the actual security teams who work for these customers? Right.

And where does that burden lie, right. Well, the burden doesn't go away or lessen, right? You know, is it an Outsource situation?

Is that something that's good for threat Hunter now or you know, I hate to see I hate to think that we're gonna take a step backwards, right? That's my fear as well. It truly is when I start seeing these things that that organizations are going to look at security as once again as overhead expenditures that can be cut then we're gonna fall back into organization now becoming more vulnerable vulnerable but more incident, right?

Um, because you know, I don't want to end this interview on a sour note the fact of the matter is over the last five years seven years. I think we've made tremendous progress. Oh, yeah.

To where we were here when you were doing veneer networks, what 15 years ago 12 years ago something like that. Right? We've made progress.

We we develop more secure code now we test more for security both prior to you know deployment and after then I think we ever did we use more threat Hunter and intelligence and was detection and response what we do a better job all around not to say that the bad guys having gotten more devious and their tactics in there and our tax services have grown and you know all look. It's it's a constantly spending. I mean, you know, all that age that we all know Defenders have to be right all the time and the attacker always happy, right?

What's right, right and that once is is gonna hit you December 23rd 2022 when everyone's gone away on vacation and they go. Oh, look I'm gonna chain these four different vulnerabilities together and I'm going to be inside your environment. Yep.

Absolutely. You know what we didn't mention so Milton security was the old. Crowd URL.

What's the new URL threat Hunter dot AI threat Hunter dot AI check it out. Jim what's the best way I mean go to the website? Yeah, but like talk to us a little bit about organizations out there saying look I need help.

I know I need help. What's the best way to engage like what's the path to engagement look like other than going to the website filling out a contact form? You know, what what should where should they be?

What should they be looking for? When okay. Hey, you need to call threat under AI.

so I always give all my cell phone, you know because everyone my everything every single customer that I have and every single partner we have everyone has my cell phone, right and if you have a need and you need to pick up the phone and call someone at two clock in the morning because you are breached and this has happened you just call 714-262-5006. Right? No, no prank call it's there.

But if you need it, I mean, that's the break glass in case you're emergency right? And that's what that's what people have come to know from Milton. They're there when you need them, right and threat Hunter will be there when you need them, too.

Excellent Man. Congratulations. Good luck on the with the new name thread Hunter I check it out.

We are here at AWS dream event. We'll be back in just a little bit.