Threat-Informed Cyber Defense with Jennifer Leggio at RSA Conference 2024

This is Textron tv. Hey, everyone. We're back here live at RSA, really enjoying our day cup coverage here.

Right now, though, we're gonna return to a continuing saga that we've been following here on Techron tv. And that is the adventures of my best friend here. Jennifer Legio.

Last time we checked in on Jennifer, she was being tied to the railroad tracks. No, that was a different, that was a different serial. But, um, the last time we checked in with Jennifer, she had just, well, she had, you had transitioned away from Graphy.

Yes. And you were exploring the world of consulting and, and doing your thing. And kind of finding yourself.

Yes. And as part of that journey, they found you. Yes.

Tell us. I, that, that's all I'm saying. You, That's all you're saying.

Um, it's been quite, it's been quite a three months and quite a three month journey left Graphy. Um, and I had been, so I'm now Chief operating officer, now gonna bury the lead at Title Cyber Absolutely. DC based company.

Love it. Threat informed defense. Oof.

Mm-Hmm. Um, but I had been on the advisory board for them since the fall, and when I had learned what they were doing, I went to the co-founder and, and CEO Rick Gordon. And I was like, I wanna advise, this is really cool stuff.

Mm-Hmm. And so, uh, when I started consulting, they were my first client and we knew that eventually that I would join. And he knew that I wanted to be a COO and move away from CM Oing.

Um, I thought it would be later this year, I thought, or maybe next year, depending on where the company was. But we've grown so much. And the board was like, let's bring her on now.

And as of last Wednesday, you know, it was, here I am. So it was, it was, it's been a zany three months. Um, I had another client, my two clients and a site.

They just came outta stealth. Um, so working with them up until the day before I started full-time at, at title. Yeah.

Um, but I, I, it's so crazy. It just goes to show that like, you know, the day the day I left Autography, um, I had no idea what I was gonna do. I was nervous.

And then I ended up on this crazy path. I got my dream job working with Ama equally amazing people as a people at cinematography, But Yeah. But also in a role that you've really, and I want to talk about that without embarrassing you.

We're gonna come back. Hold that thought one second. But yeah, no, I, I, I just remember all that.

But it's also, look, I'm, I'm not necessarily a religious person, but there's that saying, when God closes a window, he opens the door. Mm-Hmm. And that's kinda what this is.

Right. You know, you've gotta be out there to get that next opportunity. And, and so this created that opportunity for you to get this role.

Now, COO Yes. For those who don't know Jennifer, as long as I like, I know Jennifer, right? I first met Jennifer, she was kind of a public relations kind of person Yep.

Working in marketing departments at several security vendors. And I, look, I don't wanna be, and I told you so, but I recognized it in her real early on and I said, she's going somewhere. She's a special person.

And you've had an amazing career rising up to CMO at several companies now. Mm-Hmm. But that wasn't enough.

Right? It wasn't enough for Jennifer. So tell us, take it from there.

What drove you and why, why was A CMO enough, and why is COO now the right, the right move? There's two answers to that go. One is the personal answer and one is more the professional answer.

The personal answer is, I'm always learning and growing. And I feel like when you get to, uh, it's good enough, you stop trying. Yeah.

And you stop thriving and you, you've stopped helping other people. So that was my personal drive. Mm-Hmm.

And I always like a challenge in learning more. And, and being a CMO for about 10 years, there wasn't really anything new for me to learn. Yeah.

Other than the changing dynamics and such on a professional level, it was really important for me to try to set an example for other marketers to show them that CMO, like we are business leaders. We get segmented into these boxes of doing fluffy stuff and people don't understand how critical the business growth, the roles are. And it really lends itself to the COO role because you got customer centric pieces, you got the business piece, you got the investor piece, you got the demand gen, the lead conversion.

The way you work with sales now is so different than you used to. Yeah. It's a natural step.

And not many people see it that way. So I set out to say like, you know what, I've worked really hard my career to use my success to try to pave the way for other people where I can. And I want this to be another piece.

And also, I just, the Next break The wall, I really wanna be part of the core team of building where the CMO sometimes is left outside the door, depending on the company that you're in. I Love it. So I want to talk.

So, you know, in today's world, it's a little crazy mixed up world except for Lola. But, um, Good one. Well, five people out there will get that one too.

But anyway, CMO, so a lot of organizations that made the move to CRO. Right. And, and to me anyway, and I think to a lot of people out here, CRO, well the, does the CMO report into the CRO?

Is the CMO really the CRO is or is that, you know, does 'cause I think of still as the CRO, as the salesperson? Well, yeah. The CRO is more the sales person revenue, sales ops, sales Engineering.

But some marketing, it rolls up to it. Sometimes in some organizations It's not a good idea. But yes, that happens.

Why isn't it a good idea? Because the CMO should have a straight line into the CEO because marketing is such a critical part of the long-term business strategy. And if you stifle that through the sales lens, now you do have salespeople.

They get marketing, but they're rare, fewer and far between. Just like, there aren't a lot of marketing people that get sales. We're few and far between.

'cause you take that extra stuff to learn it. CMO really has to have a straight line into the CEO to be really successful. So, you know that the CRO really, but they have to be like peas and carrots for the business to operate.

I love it. In, in the way. I agree.

I agree with you. So, so we've, we've solved that thorny issue now. Now let's get to the, I feel like we're with Hamas and Israel's next, but, um, no.

So now we go from CMO to CRO, now we introduce the COO. How is now we're going like, uh, you know, three, three people here, three ways. How does that all interact and play?

Nice. So in my, I think it depends on the company, but in my current role, I have sales, I have marketing, I have revenue operations, I have business operations, I have investments. So I'm basically, um, you know, kind of the right hand or our CEO.

Like, he came to me and he is like, how do we get to X million? How do we get to X million? I'm like, oh, I own all that now.

Okay. I better figure that out. And so I have all of that in my org.

I modeled this role. So Tom McDonough very well known our space. Sure.

He was the CO at Sourcefire. Yep. He was on the board in Autography.

When I left Nat Topography, he called me and he said to me, he's like, you are extremely talented. Do not take another CMO job. Go for It.

You go for the COO job. Hold out for that. And that's what he had at Sourcefire.

That was the model. He got it. And it worked so well.

And he knew sales and he understood marketing and he had that. And so I wanted that. And he actually texted me yesterday, said, you did it kid.

Like Graduat. Yeah. You know, excellent.

So that's, you know, so it really depends. Sometimes it's more of the COO. They oversee finance, they oversee hr, they oversee those pieces.

But I have all go to market plus the business operations. Now I could have those things at some point. We're a small company and I'm open to that and I kind of want it, but it's too soon.

So we'll see. But that's what we're, that's how we're planning it right now, is I have sales, basically everything related to revenue growth. And what about Product?

Product? Um, so in our company we have a chief, chief technology officers, a co-founder and chief innovation officer, who's a co-founder. Product, sits with our CTO.

Um, but I do have a strong tie into product as well in terms of pricing strategy, Product RD and all Of that, marketing, all of that. So we just hired a gentleman named James Duran as our head of product, that name, um, he's, uh, he's wonderful, great partner, understands go to market. So it's all very connected.

The, the CEO is kind of, it's an indisputable hub, whereas in other roles and sales and marketing, if you can get kind of pushed Corners, well, you can just, what we're describing here, you can see it pushes and pulls depending on the organization. Right. And the personalities involved.

Exactly. Mm-Hmm. Yeah.

And so that's, that's, I'm hoping to kind of codify this is like, this is what maybe your COO structure should look like. I mean, for a company of our size, you could say that's a little soon to bring someone like me on. But in a way that we looked at it as like you could hire three, three AEs and two marketing people and all of that.

Or you can bring me on. Right. I I And I can don't agree with you at all.

And obviously I have resources. I have just hired a marketer that worked with me in auto photography. I have some consultants, anyone I know.

Um, I don't know if you ever met Michael and Whistle. I call him silent, mid violent. He's very behind the scenes.

I've Heard the name. I don't think I know. No, he's wonderful.

Growth marketing. He's, he's gonna grow in that role and run marketing. So Actually he was your growth market.

Yeah, I can know Him exactly. Um, It's Fun, actually. Fun.

We'll see. We'll see if I can Do I have it now? Now it's, it's mine to lose Or win.

That glass is half full. Yeah. And my imposter syndrome.

It's I know, I saw that right there. It showed itself right There. It's always there.

Yeah. It's always there. Yeah.

Um, we're gonna talk about tribal si cyber in a second. Sure. You had the last time we spoke, as I said, you had just left Graphy doing the consulting.

You just moved out of New York City back to Connecticut. Yes. Title Cyber is based In DC Oh, it's in DC Yeah.

Trips back to Maryland. Coming in your future. Um, I don't know.

We don't, yeah, I don't even more virtual of the folks that are local. Don't go into the office that much. I'm sure I'll go down more often because I'll need to do some strategy sessions with Rick.

But yeah. So I'll be spending more time in in Nova in DC Yeah. TBD as to when I wanna spend more time out in the field with customers, which is a whole new exciting world for me.

That's a fun thing. I know. Yeah.

Mitch Ashley is off camera here. So that was kinda Mitchell's role. CTO.

And we did still secure all those years ago. His, he would just go talk to customers and three out of our four products came as a result of Mitchell talking to customers. Nice.

Adhering, like where their pain was. Um, alright, let's talk t si title Cyber. That had a little tongue twister there.

I apologize. All right. So I don't know if a lot of people out here are familiar.

You are the COO lady. Tell us what, what's the, uh, how, how would you describe ti title Cyber to them? I, if I had to like, you know, trapped in an elevator, had one second to say what it is.

It's like that I'm gonna give you a tent. No, but I'm really kidding. Go ahead.

Um, basically we, we do uh, what we call it threat informed defense. And basically we can, we have an enterprise SaaS platform. We also have a community edition.

But in the enterprise SaaS platform, we can tell you if the defenses that you have are good enough in order to protect against Attacker TTPs. Okay. And what we do with that is, so all three founders came from Mitre.

Okay. Very Cool. And they were working with, you know, over at Mitre.

So Rich Stru, he's kind of a, a legend. He, um, uh, he uh, ran the Center for Threat Informed Defense. He also invented Stick Taxi back in the day, Rick order ran Mitre ingenuity, Frank d Mitre evals.

So a lot of good MIT Mitre pedigree there. And we have others in the company. So they were working with clients there.

And these, these clients are saying like, it's great that we have, like what Mitre does is amazing. We love Mitre. They're great partner to us.

We're in their benefactor program, but how do we operationalize this? So I don't have like my detection engineers or my SOC folks, like manually going through to see if we have coverage Mm-Hmm. Against all these new TTPs and Mitre updates twice a year.

So we, our SAS platform takes the Mitre mappings basically, um, within a day. There was just an update this month or last month, April. And also with threat intelligence, also with the work that our adversary internal research team does, puts it into the platform.

You basically plug in, you go in, we inter, we either integrate with or we have mappings to about a hundred other security vendors. You put in who you have, say you have Sentinel One, say you have Fortinet. Say you have Palo Alto.

I'm just throwing names out there. No favorites. You Worked for most of those works for Most of them.

Right. Um, so you have flashpoint clarity. Um, you put that in there and then you can look at like threat profiles that we either we build or you can build.

Okay. Um, say top threats to financial services. That's one that we built for your bank.

Plug that in there. Um, it'll give you like what type of, uh, third house for that. It maps to your defensive stack.

It's gonna give you a grid. It's gonna show you almost a heat map of where your risk is. And then there's more wait's, more an info's, more, um, the Probably Billy here though, go Ahead.

Five people get that. Aye y Um, and so, but God, so you can, we'll give you weight scores on how much, how big we think some of these threats are to your org. But only you're gonna really know that.

So you can slide those levers. Mm-Hmm. But what's really cool is the recommendation engine.

So you can go into the recommendation engine and say like, Sentinel one has what, 1200 like defensive and protective tools like within Sentinel One, we can tell you which one of those things you can turn on really to turn from like a yellow to a green within seconds. And that is hours of work that enterprises are doing now that we can operationalize within minutes. I think it's more than hours.

I think most people, it takes 10 months to figure out. Yes. That though, you know the old story, right?

There's a joke about the plumber lady calls the plumber and he, he's not working. And the plumber goes down there, he looks, takes out a hammer, and he gives a good bang on a pipe and boom, the heat starts working. The lease says, oh, thank you so much.

And the man says, no problem. The plumber says, uh, $250. He says, $250.

You, you were here 10 minutes. The plumber says, well I didn't charge you for the 10 minutes, I just charged you. 'cause I knew where to hit the hammer.

And, and the lady pays the money. And it's the same thing here, right? Yeah.

It's, it, yeah. It may only take you a few hours to configure knowing why, how and what to configure is a lifetime. Right, Exactly.

Yeah. Exactly. Different.

Yeah. And understanding, understanding your risk for a file. There's so much more.

I mean that is the basic, that is the bare bones Isn't right. That's The, there's so much other intelligence that's in there. But that is the basic pitch.

So I didn't hear you use that AI word that everyone uses. Yeah. ai.

But it sounds a little aiy to me. We do ai, we got AI as part of it, as part of a recommendation engine. It's fueled by ai.

But I am a firm believer that AI is a feature, Not a product. Not a product. I love it.

Someone's taught you well. Uh, I have some good mentors over the Yeah, you have. So people who wanna know more about Title Cyber, where do they Go?

com. So title, like a title Wave. P-I-D-A-L-T-I-D-A-L.

Threat form. Defense Title. Title.

Cyber. Okay. Now that makes sense.

Yep. com. Yep.

C-Y-B-E-R. Yes. Jennifer, we are so happy for you.

I am looking for you to blaze this new path. Thank you. And knowing you, you will document it so others can follow probably and see more than probably you will.

I will. And we wish you nothing but success. You're gonna, well I, you're only here I know in RSA for a couple days, but we'll continue this conversation on Text Drunk tv.

Absolutely. Thank you. All right.

For having me. Thank you. It was Always Frank.

Thank you. Follow her. Woo.

I got her there Ya me. It's all good. Title Cyber.

Jennifer Legio, COO, newly minted. We're gonna take a break on, uh, text Drunk tv, which is what we're on here at RSA. We'll be back in a minute.