Strengthening Cybersecurity for Middle-Market Organizations – Robert Johnston, Adlumin

This is Textron tv. Hey everyone, welcome back here to another Techron TV episode or segment. Um, I'm happy to have a first time person here on our show today.

His name is Robert Johnston. Robert is the CEO and Co-founder of Ad Lumen. But he also has, you know, a, a pretty interesting resume CV on, on where he is been and what he's done before, co-founding Ad Lumen.

And we're gonna hear from him and, and, uh, a little bit about the Ad Lumen story. Hey, Robert, welcome to Text Drunk tv. Hey, Alan, thanks for having me on the show.

I appreciate it. Pleasure, pleasure to have you on here. So, Robert, as I promised the audience, let's start with a little bit about Robert.

Right? Give us your, kind of, give us your journey a bit, or a sense of it. Yeah.

My, my journey in security started in, in the military, right? So I went to the Naval Academy, this is around 2008. Security back then isn't what it is today, right?

I, I'm not even sure you called it cybersecurity. All the security classes I took in in college were called Information Assurance. That's what they called it back ia.

Now that term is, now that's The military term. Yep, Yep, yep. Information assurance.

And so, uh, you know, I I I, I left the Naval Academy, I joined the Marines. I was in the, the US Marine Corps for about eight years. Um, got an opportunity to work a lot in security in the Marine Corps.

I was at, uh, the network security center, which is kind of like their soc, the Marine Corps soc. I ran red team, I did some blue team stuff there. Then I went to the National Security Agency.

I was at the NSA for, for several years. Uh, doing mostly instant response and, uh, you know, threat analytics and things like that. Uh, I left military service and I went to CrowdStrike.

I was at CrowdStrike for a little while. Got to do some interesting work at CrowdStrike, like the DNC breach and some other, uh, some other exciting breaches. And then, and then, uh, started my journey, uh, with Ad Lumen in like very late 2016, early 2017.

Uh, started my journey and I've been, you know, building it ever since. That's a great story. You weren't with, uh, you weren't working on the NMCI network back then, were you?

It was called NMCI, the Marine Corps. You know, nm, Navy Marine Corps. Predominantly Navy.

Right. Predominantly Navy. But it Was like, spoke like a real marine.

'cause when you spoke to the Navy, they would say, oh, that's the Marines network. Yeah, yeah. NMCI.

And so we had NMCI, but it was like managed by us and secured by us. It was a strange relationship, but, um, yeah, it's back. They don't call it NMCI anymore, I think.

No, I know, I know. They called the mix. I, uh, yeah, I, I worked on, actually you were still in the academy.

I, 'cause I left still secure in 2008, but we, uh, we did a lot of work with the NMCI folks in the earlier two thousands, and I got what an education I got. Um, but anyway, I mean, what a terrific resume, right? For someone who, you know, has the kind of their finger on the pulse of what, what's happening today.

Not only with, let's call it garden variety cybersecurity stuff, but, you know, nation state kind of espionage and nation state, uh, cyber warfare, you call it what it is, right? We could sugarcoat it all we want, but it's just another form of of warfare. Warfare and, and, you know, some great experiences with CrowdStrike.

So you started at Lumen in 20 16, 20 17 though, and that kind of is your entrepreneurial right journey. What I, I've interviewed hundreds of founders over the years, right? And, and interacted with them.

I'm a serial founder myself. Um, every founder feels in some way, they're changing the world for the better, even if it's in a small way. But it, what they're doing is meaningful.

What, what drove you to, to Founder Lumen? Yeah. My, my founding story is oftentimes a little less glamorous.

Uh, so, um, there, there is still this incubator, uh, around the local area here in the, in the DC Maryland, Virginia area Mock Mach 37. Yep, sure. Know him well, You do well, right?

So I end up getting this, uh, you know, while, while I'm at CrowdStrike, I get this, uh, email saying, Hey, it's the application deadline is coming up. The application deadline is coming up for Mach 37 for the, the new, uh, fall cohort, right? So I figure, you know, what the heck, I'll just, uh, I'll just make something up and I'll apply to Mach 37.

Right? And, and see, so, so I did exactly that. The application deadline was just like a few days away.

I, I fill out the online application. I just, I just made something up on the fly back then. User and entity behavior analytics is like a thing.

So I just kind of made something up about that. And I put in the application and, uh, and I got in and I, and I got in really to Mach 37. Yeah, I, I guess I, I wrote a good application, but, uh, uh, I got in and uh, you know, I kind of figured, uh, what the heck, you know, I, I don't have anything to lose.

So, uh, so I quit my job and I went to Mach 37 and then that, and then the rest is history. We kind of, everything. So is that where you, you, you met your co-founder and, and kind of, I'm not gonna say pivoted 'cause you really didn't have a huge idea, but you, you formulated the whole kind of thing around Ad Lumen while in the accelerator.

Yeah, that's, that's exactly right. We formulated the idea around Ad Lumen while we were in the accelerator, you know, that, and, and, and built it. That's where I met my co-founder and kind of put, began to put it all together, you know, uh, was in, that was in that accelerator.

And, uh, we just kept building and building and, and, you know, iterating and, and, and changing and eventually landed with a software platform that was, you know, incredibly valuable. And we just kept expanding and, and building on that, uh, on, on that success. So, uh, the idea of formulation wasn't done at kind of like that event horizon where we, you know, quit our jobs and we're going all in.

It was, it was kind of done after it was done at Mach 37. And they certainly helped us with that and, and, uh, you know, helped us kind of build the foundations of the company that set us up for success later. Uh, but that, you know, that's ad lu's founding story and we just put it together and kept driving.

Got it. Um, so tell us about this platform then. Yeah.

Yeah. So Ad Lumen is a command center for security operations built, uh, you know, for the channel. As we look at the problem today, uh, you know, the channel's problem is they need to decrease complexity, decreased multi-vendor spend and, and choose convenience first, right?

They need a software platform that kind of combines a myriad of security operations tasks, whether they're managed security problems or software only problems. Not everything is a managed security problem, right? Uh, and Ad Lumen offers both.

We have, uh, you know, in the security operations realm, we've got ACE or security analytics tool, log management tool, uh, managed detection and response service, vulnerability management service, right? Uh, managed security service. So all of these are consolidated onto a single SaaS application that a channel partner can bring to his customers and, and solve a whole fleet of problems that are difficult in security operations, not just for the channel partner, but for their small to medium enterprise customer that, that sits beyond them, whether they're software problems or managed security problems.

We have one SaaS application to rule them all, so to speak. That's interesting. You know, we were talking off camera, I told you a little bit of my own journey where I transitioned from the company.

I had helped co-found from being sort of a software you could, it wasn't sas, we were selling appliances back then, but, um, but being, you know, a, a a a solution provider versus let's say an MSSP. And as part of that, I did a lot of research on the MSSP in the channel market on, you know, who's delivering security solutions, whether they're VARs or MSPs or both, and what have you. And what I found was a lot of it was, especially at the SOC level, a lot of it was so homegrown.

You know, it was a, it was a homegrown kind of gooey using a lot of open source and then some commercial apps would, you know, have a place within the gooey, if you will, for monitoring and whatnot. But there wasn't really a, and I don't wanna use the word sock in the box 'cause that's been overused and over hammered, but, you know, there wasn't really a, a platform that these channel people could adopt to give them a world, not, I don't wanna use the term world class, but a, a good great platform that they could build their sock around. Yeah.

Right? And that would take in all the different tools and tasks that they need. Yeah.

Then Ad Lumen is essentially, that's what we've built, right? So we've got this XDR cloud, native XDR platform that we've built based on serverless technology in the cloud, right? And so we've got this piece of software and we can sell this piece of software to customers to run their own MDR product or their own managed SIEM operation, right?

Where things have changed over the years and, you know, there's a lot of cloud integration now, cloud API things going on, a lot of GRC components built into our platform. And so an Ms p or SSP can essentially adopt that software only package and deliver their own kind of service around it. And the key to success there is installation times, right?

And multi-tenancy because, uh, most of the enterprise security seams call them were built essentially for single tenant environments. They've tried to kind of Jerry rig and hack, you know, a multi-tenancy feel to it, but you just can't get the end customer, the partner together on the same software application. Whereas Ad Lumen, you can, like every partner can give access to his SME, you know, access to their own, you know, their own views so they can view their things, but not a whole constituency.

Whereas a partner may need to manage and look at a thousand customers, you know, in independent customers. And so we built that XDR platform to kind of fill that void and have that transparency. And then on top of that, not every partner is capable of doing something like managed detection response 24 hours a day, right?

That's usually like the tall hurdle is the 24 by seven operational component of it. It's very expensive, it's hard to run. You really gotta know what you're doing.

And so Ad Lumen provides these managed security services like MDR on top of our own XDR platform in case they wanna resell those services as well. 'cause maybe they're better at selling firewalls. They're not a managed detection response capable var.

Okay. In those particular cases, you know, essentially that, that, uh, that task can be, uh, can be purchased from us. And so we're able to kind of tightly integrate in one SaaS application in a software delivered way, like these software only solutions like that XDR platform and manage security solutions like MDR.

Got it. Got it. Um, Robert, we, we are probably 10, 12 minutes in.

I didn't even get to the news we were supposed to disclose today. Why don't you share with the audience, you know, get some news coming out of Ad Lumen? Yeah.

So Ad Lumen just, uh, you know, raised our, uh, a $70 million financing round. And, uh, you know, it's, look, I've done a lot of financing rounds at this point, you know, and it's just, it's, it's further testament that Ad Lumen has a lot of continued growth, right? There's more growth.

Um, there's a ton of customers that really love Ad Lumen platform and, and there's many more out there that that will. And so it's always exciting to, to come on the heels of a financing round, you know, using this round we'll be making big investments, uh, you know, in our channel, partners in our channel go to market specifically in Strategic Betts, which we, we call 'em Strategic Betts, which are almost direct investments in our partners, like from our balance sheet to their balance sheet, uh, type investments to, to grow their business because we know if we grow their business in return, they'll grow our business as well, right? So, uh, there'll be big investments in our channel partners, uh, in, in our Go-to-market to continue bringing Ad Lumen all across the globe.

Love it. Um, if you wouldn't mind, and I don't know how much the audience is interested, but I am, who, who are some of the investors in this? It's a series B, the $70 million, correct?

Correct. Yes. Syn Ventures led the round, uh, first in, uh, ventures led the Round Bank Tech Ventures, uh, participated.

There's a whole laundry list, but those are, uh, Washington Harbor Partners, uh, as well. Oh, really? There's somewhat of a laundry list, but there's a, there's a, you know, variety of investors, but it was predominantly led by Sin Ventures and First in Ventures, uh, sins out of New York, and then First ins actually, yeah, he outta the DC area, You know, I'm familiar with Sin.

Were they, were they, uh, part of this series A, the original, uh, rounds or the They're new. No, they're new. So Leewood Venture Capital led our Series A.

They're still, they're still a great friend of Ad Lumen. Uh, they're on our board still. Uh, and they, they led the a, they're outta Kansas City, uh, uh, uh, and, uh, series C series, a VC firm at OUTTA Kansas City.

And so, uh, you know, they're, this is new, they're new on top of that, but Leewood Venture Capital led, led the A. Love it. What a great story.

What a great story. So, um, can you give us an idea of the profile of your channel? 'cause you, at Lumins a 100% channel model, give us an idea of the profile of your channel partners out there.

Maybe there's someone watching it who says maybe there's a fit for me. Yeah. So at lumins, ideal kind of customer profile, one layer beyond the channel partner is, you know, any, uh, middle market or SMB enterprise customer between, call it 10 employees and 10,000 employees right there at the tail of Enterprise Light.

And, you know, any channel partner rather, whether it's a value added reseller, reseller, distributor, M-S-P-M-S-S-P, uh, that, that has a strong desire for a consolidated security operations experience where their customers are kind of between 10 and 10,000 in every industry vertical. That, that is a perfect, uh, opportunity for Ad Lumen because, you know, look, you can consolidate, that channel partner can consolidate a, a tremendous amount of difficult security operations tasks onto a single SaaS application, which makes it convenient, it makes it streamlined, it makes it less complex, easy to deploy. The product deploys in about 90 minutes.

So, um, you know that there's a lot of partners that fit that bill, right? There's a lot of partners in that kind of profile. And the bread and butter of the channel, right, is the middle market.

The channel does go into the enterprise. Sure. You know, bank of America buys, you know, some things from a channel partner, but predominantly the bread and butter of the channel is, you know, the middle market right.

To enterprise light, right. And now a new SMB component kind of opening up as well. Fantastic.

Hey, Robert, we're almost outta time for people who want to get more information about Ad lumin. What, what's the website? Yep.

com, A-D-U-M-I-N dot ComCom, and you can read all about it. You can book a demo, you can see our product, you can go through our services and everything. Love it.

Robert, first of all, congratulations on the series B, especially in these interesting times. We find ourselves in $70 million is, is quite a raise. So congrats to you and the whole team there and continue to, uh, continued success to you and Ed Lumen, right?

This is an important mission. I think I, I said it for a long time. Security is too hard for most mid-market and below companies, and they need the help of VARs and MSPs and MSPs to, to deliver, I mean, a decent level of security, let alone a top level of security, right?

And, um, someone's gotta be helping them. So congrats to you and keep up the great work. Yeah, I appreciate it, Alan.

Thank you so much. All right. Robert Johnston, uh, CEO co-founder at Lumen here on Text Drunk tv.

We're gonna take a break. We'll be back in a moment.