How AI is Revolutionizing Cybersecurity with Arctic Wolf’s Nick Schneider

This is Textron tv. Hey guys, thanks for the throw. We're here with Nick Schneider, who's the CEO for Arctic Wolf, and they just completed their acquisition of silence, which they picked up from Blackberry.

And silence has been around for a while, but I'm gonna let Nick explain what it is and what it does and where it fits in their portfolio. Nick, welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks for having me.

Uh, Michael, we're super excited about, uh, the acquisition and, uh, we think it's gonna be a, a monumental shift here for Arctic Wolf, but also for the market wholesale. So, exactly. For those that are uninitiated, what does Silence do and why did you guys decide to pick them up?

'cause Well, there's a lot of players in the security space. Yeah. So Silence has been a, uh, pioneer in, uh, AI based endpoint protection, uh, and detection response, uh, for quite some time.

Uh, they had and have a really strong customer base, a really strong, uh, channel ecosystem, uh, and bring with, uh, you know, the, the team a, a long track record of, of strong, uh, you know, technical acumen. So we, we got a great team, a, a great product, uh, with global scale. And when you combine that with what we're doing, uh, at Arctic Wolf, uh, with regards to security operations, it gives us an opportunity to bring, uh, some additional prevention capabilities, uh, to our customers, as well as some detection and response capabilities, both from a product standpoint, but also a managed standpoint.

And when you combine that with our broader security operations platform, we can provide, uh, multiple different outcomes to our customers, uh, in a way that is, uh, unique and allows them kind of choice with regards to what their security stack looks like. We're kind of in a state of transition when it comes to cybersecurity, and I think a lot of people are trying to figure out how to navigate it. We're going from a world where I think we had more tools than we knew what to do with, and now we're trying to get to something that feels like a platform, but the platform itself seems to be maybe augmented with managed services provided by somebody else.

'cause I can't find enough skills and talent to drive it myself. So from your perspective, how does all this come together? Yeah, I, I think you're spot on.

I think we've, uh, been living in a market that was built on, you know, thousands and thousands, quite frankly, of point solutions that solved for individual use cases or outcomes that a customer would look for in their soc. Uh, and then you have some vendors that, uh, worked to kind of put those, you know, tools or capabilities together, if you will, at some level for the customer onto a platform, typically in a closed, you know, manner. Uh, and then you need to operationalize, you know, those tools in those platforms.

Arctic Wolf has, you know, always focused on the operationalization of cybersecurity. So we've built a concierge security team. We've built what we call our security journey to help customers kind of understand and make security work within their organization.

And now we're adding, uh, some pretty significant platform capabilities along with tools or point solution capabilities natively, that will allow our customers to kind of get the experience that I think that they've expecting, been expecting from cybersecurity for quite some time, uh, which is just to make sure that their business is protected. Make sure that they're aware of, you know, current or, or emerging threats and have the ability to respond, uh, to anything that might be taking place within their environment in an expeditious way. You know, time is the enemy, uh, in cybersecurity.

And I think when you combine, uh, really strong tools and capabilities with an open platform and an open architecture, which allows customers choice and allows customers to be able to benefit from some of the investments that they've already made. And then you couple that with a really strong, uh, security operations acumen, uh, and team, you, you can deliver these outcomes in a way that gives, uh, the customer better protection, uh, and better ability to detect and respond to threats than, than they would've had. They tried to put them together themselves.

And One of the things we are seeing is that not only are the threats increasing in volume and sophistication, but it feels like the whole battle is now being fought in real time. 'cause to your point, um, if I'm five seconds makes all the difference in the world between the amount of damage that might be inflicted or not inflicted, how do I kinda align my defenses in that world where basically the attacks are happening faster and the defenses for that matter than any, uh, human can possibly keep track of? Yeah.

That that's where the marriage of the tools, the integration of those tools, both native and third party onto a, a platform that can, you know, give the customer real time visibility along with this operational expertise really comes into play. And I think what you're seeing is a bit of an evolution of tools being combined on a platform, and then those platforms and tools looking to help customers operationalize the technology. And, uh, more and more, I think what we're gonna see here is that in order to do that appropriately, and in order to be able to respond to threats in a timely manner, or at the speed with which the, the threats are taking place, you're gonna have to have some marriage of human and, and technology or, or AI or automation kind of within your platform.

And I think, uh, Arctic Wolf's spending a lot of time and energy on that to deliver, you know, those outcomes to our customers. Um, uh, but I don't think it's gone fully automated or, you know, or remains, you know, fully human. So it's gonna be this marriage of bringing the customer the right outcomes in the manner that allows, uh, them to get the re response and, and detection, um, uh, you know, efficacy that they've been looking for, uh, while still have the ability to pick up the phone and, and talk to somebody if they need to.

I remember when silence first came out and there was a lot of skepticism about ai. Um, and yet it seems like our thinking about AI is evolving quickly. So, you know, when you talk to customers, what is their attitude towards AI and how does it compare to today versus a few short years ago?

Yeah, I think AI has been a part of cybersecurity, as you mentioned, for, for quite some time. Um, I think typically AI had been used, um, you know, more as a, a backend mechanism to automate certain workflows or processes or to perform certain tasks within the platform or, or the operation. I think now you're seeing AI kind of rise to the forefront of the way in which a security operation operates, but also the way in which a security practitioner, uh, can make themselves, you know, more efficient or can give themselves the ability to detect and respond to threats in a more expeditious way.

So I, I think what you're seeing is certain levels of cybersecurity, uh, practitioners kinda leveling up, if you will. They're able to do tasks that maybe used to take a day in a matter of minutes or tasks that used to take, you know, weeks, uh, in a day. So they're able to respond and react much faster requires, uh, that you're leveraging AI both for your ability to detect and respond, but also for your ability to kind of understand the threat and its impact on your en environment and ecosystem.

And I think as, uh, the automation and AI come together with human expertise, uh, you know, thankfully, I think we're gonna start to see, uh, that the defenders here, uh, are gonna have a, a, a better chance of, uh, protecting against, you know, what the attackers are throwing at them. Now, the, the converse of that argument is the attackers are also leveraging ai. So, um, you know, both sides of the, uh, equation here are gonna have to stay on top of, uh, how to leverage ai, uh, from a, from a defensive mechanism, but also make sure that we understand how AI can be used, uh, offensively, uh, as well as, uh, understand how AI actually could potentially become a, a new, uh, attack surface as it, as it is starting to become, As you think about it, uh, clearly there's always been a lot of talk about whether AI was gonna take anybody's job, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

But I cannot help but wonder, have we reached a point now where, as I look at it, I'm like, who would wanna do these jobs without ai? It's a lot of toil and a lot of manual effort, and it's not a lot of joy. Yeah, I, I think that's spot on.

I, I don't view AI as a, uh, tool that is going to, you know, remove the need for cybersecurity professionals or expertise. I think what it's gonna do is remove some of that toil, um, from the day-to-day of security practitioners and take tasks that maybe used to be a little bit more tedious, uh, and make them, uh, able to be completed in a much shorter time, which frees up time, uh, to do, you know, some of the more strategic cybersecurity work, which I think is what most security practitioners are, are after. So, uh, I think the only folks that'll probably struggle a, a, a bit, uh, as a security practitioner are actually those that don't embrace ai.

Uh, those that do embrace ai, I think, uh, will be at the forefront of, of, uh, the kind of new wave of, uh, security operations and the manner in which these platforms and tools kind of combine to provide these outcomes to, uh, to either their organization or the organizations that they're working to protect. So what's next for you guys? It's still early in 2025.

I'm sure you got a roadmap from the coming year, but, um, there's of course no end to competition in this space, but what should people be looking for from Arctic Wolf? Yeah, I, I think, uh, the silence acquisition is a good indicator of the direction we're headed. We've spent, uh, a lot of time, uh, and energy in building out our security operation.

Um, we have one of the largest, um, most sophisticated security operations in the world. Uh, we've built out a robust platform that's now operating at massive scale. You know, we're processing north of 8 trillion security events a week, um, with the magic being that our average customer is really only having to action, you know, one or two, uh, of those events per week, uh, through the magic of the platform and the work that our concierge team is doing.

And now we're starting to add, uh, additional native capabilities, uh, endpoint, uh, we just released a threat intelligence skew. Uh, we have some, uh, identity, uh, skews and, and products that have come to market recently on top of what we do for vulnerability management, you know, awareness training and incident response. Uh, and I think, uh, the market should expect to see continued evolution, uh, of kind of our core competencies, but also the addition of, uh, some additional capabilities to the Arctic Wolf platform.

What, what will be unique, I think about Arctic Wolf, uh, you know, other than obviously specific features or manners in which we engage with the customer will be, uh, our ongoing commitment to being an open platform for the customer base. So even though we'll have native capabilities, uh, on top of our platform, uh, we will still support, integrate with and leverage, uh, third party tools, even if they are aligned to some of the native capabilities we're bringing to the market. We just feel that that's really important, uh, as customers, you know, work to kind of shore up their overall security posture, that they're able to do that, you know, kind of on their timeframe, uh, with the budget and investments that they've already made being used, uh, but still be able to kind of work their way into a platform that that solves the broader, you know, cybersecurity challenge for them.

Organizationally, You've of course been around this block more than once, so what's that one thing you see organizations still doing that makes you shake your head a little bit and go, folks, we need to be a little bit smarter than that. Yeah. You know, um, there's still a surprising amount of organizations that don't, you know, bite off, uh, the low hanging fruit first, right?

So simple things like MFA, uh, patching, uh, are, uh, you know, training of employee base, uh, are still a lot of the common ways that a threat, you know, occurs. Obviously there's more sophisticated manners in which threats occur, uh, but kind of the opening of the door still happens quite frequently with, with things that are very easily, you know, solved for. So, you know, we work hard, uh, as a partner to our customers to help them understand what their security posture looks like, uh, where they potentially have, um, some vulnerabilities, how they should prioritize those vulnerabilities, and then make sure that we work with them to ensure that those vulnerabilities are, are closed up, but also that we're able to detect and respond, uh, to anything that might be happening in their environment, you know, in real time.

Um, and I think as you know, customers look to ensure that they're protected. Uh, I would always start, uh, with the basic blocking and tackling, um, and the low hanging fruit, uh, of the, the common, you know, threat vectors, uh, and then work, uh, towards the more sophisticated use cases, uh, as they kind of build out and shore up, you know, the, the, the foundation Folks, you heard it here. There's no substitute for fundamentals.

And hopefully, well, it'll help from AI and platforms. More and more of that stuff will get automated. Hey, Nick, thanks for being on the show.

Great to be here. Thanks for having me. All Right.

And back to you guys in the studio.