Enriching the Security Analyst Experience – Chris O’Malley, LogRhythm

This is texturing TV. Hi everyone, welcome back to text drug TV. You know, I've been waiting for this gentleman to come back on since I found out he had moved over to or he became it was appointed CEO of his company.

Logarithm. I'm really happy to have him on you've seen him on Tech strong TV before though. It's my friend Chris O'Malley.

Hey Chris, how are you? Welcome. Good Alan.

How are you? Always good to see you man. Great to see you.

So Chris, you know Saint Chris different company. Why don't for the for those of you for those who are our audience maybe who are familiar though with Chris O'Malley. Why don't you give him a little bit of your story?

And then let's talk about logarithm. Sure. I can't keep a job.

Is that my problem or not? Well, you were at the last place a long time Chris. That's right.

So I mean my my background, you know, I way back I was a computer science major and I was terrible at it. So I went in the sales and grew up through the ranks and tech companies. Of the latest kind of round before I came to logarithm was CEO of copyware that was a significant transformation of an old Mainframe company who you know adopted agile devops value stream methodologies kind of reinvented the Mainframe market in terms of what was possible with that platform, you know, I give a lot of accolades to all the folks at copy where they did a tremendous job of basically remaking the entire Market obviously IBM has done a fantastic job in the hardware side.

But again, that was a significant success. It was actually one of the the best value creation events in private Equity history was Wisconsin. So and that has everything to do with the hard work that those those folks folks put into it and the difference that they made innovating on the platform and then I came to log with them now about a year ago, February 15th the last year, you know logarithm.

Company and it's probably worth talking about them a little bit as a proud proud history. This is a company who arguably started the Sim Marketplace, but it's been in the business for 20 years of helping customers to monitor cybersecurity issues detect problems and get the right alerts so that they can then investigate and respond to keep the companies that they serve safe and secure, you know, the digital age right now, every company is a cyber company. They got a master these capabilities.

They can't be defensive as it relates to creating digital experiences that got to be aggressive and you want to do that though without compromising security. So this is an incredibly important, you know area within the marketplace and every company has issues around it and logarithm has been a really good servant to it. You know, it's history is nine consecutive years in the Gartner magic quadrant.

And again, it's always been kind of the go-to technology is it relates to the mid Market? I came in at a time where the company was going through transition, you know, a lot of these tech companies lose their Founders. They kind of lose their passion.

They lose their excitement. They lose their sense of perseverance or customer focus and logarithm honestly had some issues and you know, I came at a time where they've done some things in terms of scaling The Innovation, but we're you having a difficult time getting it to Market. We didn't do the things in terms of being as customer-centric as we should we do aren't as engaging with Partners as we should and necessarily need to we weren't working with, you know, preferred partners of our customers in the ways that we should so when I came in I came in very aggressive.

We we changed virtually all of the senior leadership team some ever made that have made a huge difference but a lot of them have turned over we brought in a lot of growth mindsets at different kind of attitude kind of the passion that I hold for, you know these spaces We've retooled our product management team. We brought people in from the outside. We brought some of the best Minds that we have internally that really truly understand the customer experience and our partners needs we've done an incredible job of building this backlog.

Now of of a roadmap that makes us better at these jobs of monitoring detecting investigating and responding to issues. We help these companies do more secure and then we've totally redovelopment, you know most You know most software companies having done this long enough and I've been on Boards of companies and you know, obviously been in a lot and followed a lot of software companies. Honestly, most of these organizations are really bad at engineering they're really wasteful in those efforts.

They're not really good at having quality releases. They don't have this kind of mindset of driving continuous Improvement velocity calling efficiency of what's delivered and logarithm. Although it made some significant steps in the right direction certainly needed a revitalization of the way we did engineering.

So we've made dramatic changes and adopting, you know more right fitting agile practices that you know align to a company that's trying to innovate very very quickly. We've adopted more aggressively devs secops techniques, you know, automating everything intrinsically that we can to get things in terms of the flow better the bottlenecks out of the system, you know, again the velocity quiet efficiency, we've been driving substantially, so all of those changes took place and now it shows so on April 3rd. Just like clockwork.

We we made a promise to the market that we were going to come out with all these Innovative new things across the entire portfolio. Again, it's centered on these jobs of monitoring detection being able to respond to issues quickly. But this is our fourth consecutive launch.

So a company that was struggling as it relates to Innovation is now distinguishes distinguishing itself in terms of the pace by which were bringing actually new things to Market. So it's as though we've kind of rekindled our past, you know, we're going back to our roots and and we're more alike. We were 10 years ago than certainly we were a year ago and then the market where you know our average customer, you know, they've got these you know, these companies have high expectations we're gonna do all this stuff in the digital age and be really good at customer experience or digital means and all these high expectations, but behind the scenes, it's a handful.

People that's in terms of the security operations teams that are doing these heroic efforts, but the expectations are Way Way Beyond what they themselves are able to do and they need help. They need significant help, you know these analysts and these evolving threats are constantly changing getting worse. And so they need a partner that is you know on their team.

Where's their jurors, you know gets up every morning passionate about you know, thinking about how do we better monitor? How do we better detect how do we better investigate? How do we better respond?

And we're getting now in this Innovation cycle to stay a step ahead and I'm so it's been a radical ride, but I'm really proud. You know, it's the logarithm folks or good core of people they were proud history as I said before and it's those we regained our past and you know, it's exciting because we have a as a company a moral responsibilities customers and a customer in India. Who's Your network and you know, we had some issues with them and he was challenging me to be better and and you know feedback is a blessing right good better and different.

It's always a blessing. You know, he said he made a important point. He said for SIM for us his life or death, you know, because we use all these medical devices if there's somebody who can affect those medical devices externally make them not work people can die even die and you know, so that sense of responsibility and accountability.

I think the the company has warmly now accepted and embracing and you're seeing just a rate of innovation that's even shocking me. So again, that's kind of getting you up to speed as to where I've been and where I'm at now, but I love it. It gives you the introduction to logarithm.

Yeah, you know, I I should mention look I'm in security 20 years Chris. I was there one log Rhythm started or if they added Colorado. Yeah.

Oh, so I would go so embolder. It's still secure and you know, there was sort of this fraternity of security companies in the Boulder area. So it was a really it was much smaller Bolder than than it is now and and it was funny because they they really logarithm logs were involved, right it started as sort of that logs analysis growing into SIM.

Yeah, and you know now and then for a while Steve it wasn't just logarithm. I think the whole Sim Market went through a general malaise where people were like, it's hard it. What am I getting out of it?

It takes so much to set up and and logarithm suffered I think along with with others that you know, we're in we're in that market, but You know security Technologies never die. They kind of get reborn they get revitalized and and you build upon them with the Next Generation and I think that's very much the story here right where Sims still there. It's better than it ever was right and and the reasons why Sim was looked upon.

As not as a savior, but it's such a viable piece of the security. You know Spectrum are still there as well. Right it there's a real job you hit it.

It's in something. It's in healthcare. It's life and death in manners of government.

You know with all the Espionage and everything we see going on. It's really really important this you know, cyber Security's Mission critical and it being in the Cyber Market. I learned it's Mission critical to every customer you have right?

You may not think their businesses a mission critical business, but to them it is and and that's why it is so important. Yeah, whatever, you know when a customer recently got it was a shock absorber company. It's really yeah, but I mean the the job the jobs of monitoring your environments right knowing across all of the environment that everything you've got a sense of everything that's going on being able to detect things and alert, you know and doing it without a lot of noise that you actually got a sense that when something is a or an alert that it's truly is and being able then to quickly investigate it with a limited resource.

You got it, you know, we've got customers that have two people and and then in the summer they got an intern. Yeah the process of investigating the issue rapidly right to contain whatever it is and then respond and an automated way those four jobs have never been more important. Right and the foundation of that is Sim you would be a ndr or those elements are basically the means by which you do those.

Jobs, well, you nail those jobs and so, you know, we as the company now are getting aggressive at making and overcoming the issues and challenges you're talking about. If you look at the nurse release, you know, making it easier to collect data from you know, various data sources quickly because things are changing you buy a company. You got a bunch of new sources somebody in and the business side buys gets a new application.

There's constantly this array of new things that are enter or introduced into the environment. So we've made it through these efforts over the last four quarters much easier to get data sources into the environment, you know, our work around creating out of the box content to help you from creating alerts so that you're you know decreasing the noise. Being a better sense of being able to detect things so that then you have the means of doing hunting you can actually do the investigation faster and more quickly and then automating the tasks of response.

We're getting better and better at helping customers to nail those jobs. So, you know people talk about salmon and ER ueba or it's really those four things. Those are the things you got to do and everything we're doing is a company is obsessed on getting better and better and supporting the customers and taking very limited resource with high expectations as most in terms of what they're supposed to do and get them to be more efficient and effective that will never change and is more important today than it was five years ago 10 years 20 years ago.

Agreed man, you know, I was with some analysts talking a couple weeks ago. question came up average company what percentage of the workers are Cyber cyber admins cyber analysts, you know what? You know how many people per 100 whatever are in the average company dedicated to this Mission critical.

Function of cybersecurity, you know what Chris it's probably one to two percent. Yeah, there's a dirty little secret I guess in the security space because you get these false sense of things are getting better because you always see the statistics that you know, it spend is gonna go up five percent but security cyber security is gonna go up 20, right? So it's like this belief that it's catching up and it's getting to a level where there's a sense of proper investment.

The resource allocation is what it needs to be that is so far from the truth, you know, you know when you talk to csos it's a bit sad because you ask them explicitly. How do you get funding? And the ones that are honest with you will say I have to fight with my other peers because usually I report to the CIO.

I don't usually report to the CEO. So I've got to go to the CIO and say I need more money to secure what that guy's trying to build. and that's a hard argument to make you if they build what do you got to see you so tug of war in zero-sum game and for most You know customers in the mid-market that we serve.

It will costly here. It's a ciso. You know if it's a large organization, it's going to be 10 people maybe.

You know, if you're talking JP Morgan Chase the city car that's a different deal. That's a different one. But if you're you're kind of a large and you're talking ten people, so it's at the low end of what you just said in terms of percentage, but most often it's two or three people.

And and these people are asked to do heroic things because they're really they're all their staff are a stable state, right? They're not staffed for the emergency. So you you see them.

And when there is issues in working in this heroic way, right and that's why these tooling sets are so critically important right you're trying to be preventive or at least if things do happen that you're acting very quickly because these things can get out of hand very fast and now you've got unplanned work in these Enterprises, you got the disruption of the fact that you know, you've got expose it to the outside world that something bad. So, you know, it's you know, these companies are asking a lot of very few people, you know, I think, you know five years ago when you hear like Equifax and solar winds and you know, those reaches happen and they probably in each instance they blame this other the summer intern right you The CEO Inspire the intern I think yes, it's maybe it's the same summer intern in both times. So I'm just the equation would be okay, but I mean I think companies now know that our expectations for the business are huge and and we're expecting.

Way too much of these folks and that you know now we have to better invest in these areas like monitoring detection investigating and response. So I do feel more of a sense that we've got to close that Gap. There's a realism that's getting into it.

No, there is and it but only woefully underfunded by most and and it's It's I mean if most of the csos God bless them, I feel it's a very difficult tenuous job, but most of them try their best every day, but they they go home at night. They have a statue of a Virgin Mary with candles around it and they pray to God that nothing bad. I mean, it's it's no no, I I it's not always long As long as I've been in security, it's always been a top three priority, but the hands are too close too short to reach the bottom of their pockets.

Yeah, we only have a few minutes left. And and I wanted to just really I wanted to mention this to the audience. Look there's this new logarithm release side.

It has unlimited upgrade services to enrich the security analyst experience. What exactly is that mean Chris? Yes, we're coming out with new releases every quarter and in our customers talk to us about the fact that's a lot to do in terms of upgrades.

So they need help keeping Pace given the limited resources that we got so and helping them to basically take advantage of what we're coming out with and self management environments. We're gonna do it for them. So that service is basically risk freeway to get up to speed.

I also want to you know, we also announced enhancements around acts on so this is a brand new project product for us that just came out in October. It's our Cloud native technology that's evolving it really So it's a consumed service the example of that there's been 20 enhancements. So every two weeks we're increasing, you know, the value of the scalability the reliability of that environment for customers.

This is going to be a huge product for us in the future. So we're very excited. We started from scratch on that product.

We didn't use a line of code from our classic product set. So we've got no technical debt the speed by which we're making that into a security operations platform is gonna blow away the industry and we're going broadly within the states here starting April 1st, in terms of go to market will take that to Europe, you know, next quarter. So exceed we expect great things around that but please stay tuned to axon as well.

com or send me an email. It's Chris Dot O'Malley. com.

Send me a note I'm here to help and I love to engage with customers always so Please let me know I'll be your first salesman. I'll be your friendship. That's Crystal Valley Way, man.

I love it. I gotta love it. Chris I can't tell you how great it is to see you.

Are you gonna be over at RSA in a few I will be I will be we're broadcasting live there all week on broadcast alley come stop by say hello. Maybe we'll do we'll talk all my people talk to your people. Let's get you on at RSA.

Okay. Love you Allen. You're awesome.

Good to see you Matt. Chris O'Malley CEO at logarithm here on Tech strong TV. We're gonna take a break.

We'll be right back.