Partnering with NTT Data – Russ Cobb, Cobalt

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The world leader in kind of pen test is a service if you will want to introduce you to Russ Cobb. Russ is the CMO over at Cobalt. And though we've had Caroline Wong and various kobold folks over the years here on texture on TV.

I'm not sure Russ has ever been on Russ. Welcome to Tech strong. Hey, thanks.

Thanks so much Alan. I appreciate you having a First Time guest I appreciate you being on. So I say, you know, look Cobalt the technical company, so I would expect their CMO to be pretty technical.

Why don't you give before we jump into today's news and Cobo? Why don't we talk a little bit about Russ? Oh, okay.

Well, thanks very much. So yes a little bit technical, although I will not hold a candle to Caroline as your audience would probably recognized my background is in data analysis data integration all things related to data governance privacy things of that nature and then most recently in the security space not just with Cobalt but with an ndr provider previously. So yeah, I definitely understand all the concepts that we're talking about.

But you know again don't put me up next to Caroline should show me up. Yeah. No, okay.

There aren't many people you could put up next to Caroline frankly. But you know, I mean the important thing I want the audience to get out of it is look from time to time. We we do interview CMOS or VP product marketing and people shouldn't be lulled off full dental thinking because of someone's title.

They don't have a technical background so many CMOS, I know have hundreds if not thousands of line of code committed in products. They worked on over the years or have very technical, you know, engineering type degrees and I've spent a lot of time on that side of the house. Before moving, you know into the business side of things like that.

Yeah, and just wanted to get that out of the way Russ. Let's talk a little bit about Cobalt right? I I mentioned, you know worldwide leader.

I I think I made that up or I might have heard it somewhere in fantastic is a service. But yeah, I imagine you have a better smoother. Yeah description.

Yeah. No, I think worldwide leaders good. So I appreciate you giving us that designation.

You know, the analyst firms the gardeners Foresters Etc the world haven't yet come out with their you know, wave or magic quadrants where they you know, they go in and they create that space so to speak we do have relationships with them. We talk a lot about pen testing and and the overall context of vulnerability management. They haven't done that yet.

I would say, you know G2 is probably the best place to go that's customers that go and actually, you know, put their own recommendations on and so in that one we Continue to show up as the leader. So I'll link it to your comment just say yes. We're the worldwide leader in pitas.

We were the first and I think we're still the leading. Absolutely, very cool. io is the website and so all things related to cobolt people can get there.

It's one of the things we've seen Cobalt. You know embark on over the last months year maybe more. Yeah is you know this Evolution from taking this, you know, rather novel idea of pen test as a service.

And and you know selling that direct to customers to building out Partners a partnership Channel and you know look that I think is a normal. In the normal course of business. This is what companies do it's a force multiplier and Cobalt's no different.

They they've been working on a channel. Strategy for for a while now and recently you guys made a pretty significant announcement. We did you referencing NTT security, right?

So so yeah, that was a big he said for the last months years hasn't quite been a year. But certainly it's been a major effort of hours during 2022 since since round about the beginning of the second quarter a huge. Shout out to shashila Nair.

She's the VP of cybersecurity for NTT data services and their security group and she's been I would say the sponsor and the driving force within NTT to bring this partnership to the market. So definitely shout out to her. You're right.

We we've been a direct to customer Enterprise all the way down to small companies provider now for five six years and really hadn't spent a whole lot of time thinking about what is a channel look like and what is the channel look like for clients that we can't reach now and obviously what would it mean for our business? And so we started a partner program actually last year I would say it was more small scale partner smaller scale partners and mostly in a referral motion. So they would run across a pen testing need doing a compliance audit as an example also over to us and then we would we would work with a client directly.

NTT is really different for us because it is the first time that we have set up what I'd call an indirect Channel relationship with an MDR provider. And increasingly we are looking at the MSP or mssp or MDR right pick your acronym but the market of providers who are actually providing in-use Security Services to their client base. NTT is the 11th largest global MDR provider.

And so it's one of the reasons that when Sushi love approached me it was yeah. Absolutely. We're going to put a lot of energy into this and we're going to see what we can put together and worked at it continued progressing the ball and then early October we finish the relationship and we're ready to announce it.

So I think that's the press release that you would referenced earlier. Sure. done my shared, you know, I was be busy at Corp strategy officer companies done my share of these kinds of relationships, you know when we talk Channel like this, so there's There's many ways to skin the cat right one is you know strictly a reseller.

So NTT resells. Cobalt services and you know sometimes Cobalt has a sales overlay that matches with the npt sales team and they go to market together other times. It's more of a marketing situation where we're gonna you know, do some joint marketing activities to simulate the market and see among our common customers.

you know what what we go or maybe new customers what we can you know get going dig up. Other times it's it's very much a two-way street, you know more of a strategic kind of relationship. We're both parties are our offering services from each other.

How would you categorize this one rough? So I think they're they're elements of all those things you mentioned in it, but this is much more of an MDR provider using our platform and our Cobalt core and the methodologies that they bring to bear to deliver Direct Services to their in-use clients. So, you know as an example they have in their security practice.

Information security managers isms for short and they are the people who face off against a client see so and security operations team to architect what their security posture is going to look like into architect the products and services that NTT will provide to them. In our relationship the isms will actually be the ones who will be responsible for the operational delivery of pen test to their clients on the Cobalt platform. And so that is very much of a force multiplier for us to use one of your earlier phrases because it allows us to reach a client base that honestly we wouldn't have the access to and we probably wouldn't want to invest the time energy and money to trying to reach it's a very effective way for us to reach the market.

But it's also very effective way for entities and use client base to get Best in Class technology from a pitas perspective. So they will actually be in on the platform ITT Professor. Excuse me.

NTT professionals actually scoping working with the Cobalt core to operationally deliver a pen test on our platform. So for us that was as we worked through the relationship and the agreement that was great validation of the value that is in our platform. We are excited.

We're rapidly approaching a million hours of testing on our platform. So, you know the analogy of detent do something for 10,000 hours. You'll be an expert.

We we have that and done some and so I think that's one thing that sushila and her team recognized when they got into the platform understood the pen testing approaches and methods that are codified in that they saw how quickly it would integrate with their clients some of their devops practices and systems like jira from a ticketing perspective so they grasped that very quickly. And so that's the I would say the core of the relationship. They will Market to their client base will help them in market and pre sales when we need to but then they will take over operational delivery of it and kind of free us up to deal with with our customers in a direct way.

So that's that's interesting. So they're going to take over operational delivery. So there's not like a Cobalt.

So looking deals. I've done like this in the past, right? You got to match up Salesforce the Salesforce territory to territory customer to customer and you know have that.

Meeting of the minds and meeting other flesh. Right as you go to market. It sounds here.

Like you're you're teaching them to fish and sending them out with their rods and polls to fish. Yeah, and that's a great analogy for it. I agree with that.

I think there will be instances where we'll go to market more of a sell with motion because or we have Enterprise customers as well and some upper mid-market customers that might we might have overlapping client bases. And so what we reach those situations, obviously we want to go to the client together, but the intent of it is for them to be able to again work on the platform take our offering into their client base. We will help where we need to again.

We're right now, we're doing a lot of enablement sessions and their service delivery team as well as in there right there overlay sales team who goes and works with their industry leaders and their in-use clients. So we're doing enablement now, but the intent is very much teach them to fish. Provide them behind the curtain Operational Support where they need it, but then let them validate the use of that platform and the new Peach has delivery to their client base.

From a branding perspective don't do the NTT customers know that it's Cobalt they do. Yeah, so we that's a huge benefit to us as well. Obviously being kind of co-branded with one of the largest in MDR providers.

So when we generate the report, you know, if it's a compliance report or even in our new some of the offerings that we launched the beginning of October called agile pen testing. It is not compliance oriented. It is intended more for the devops or SecOps rights targeting more of the developer community.

So it's when you're not dealing you're not trying to go through a compliance checklist, but you do have Innovation and application you want to test that for security vulnerabilities. Early before you get it to Market, maybe even Innovative test and so agile is something that we launched that is really targeting them. So what NTT will do is write work on our platform deliver it to their client base.

And again, we'll Provide support you know with and when we need to Actually, right I don't want to give people the impression. This is a one-trick pony entity. Only partner.

You have been doing this now since I think you take you too. Yeah, and you have other partners can we give people a sense of the breath of Partners? sure, so we have if I looked across our portfolio of what I would consider to be active Partners we have 120 globally those and a couple of different segments compliance platforms tends to be one of the key ones and I you know, certainly from a compliance even a GRC perspective in the market.

There's lots of companies that have generated platforms. They try to streamline the process for their client base. So we have a lot of relationships for companies that would fall into that product Market.

They're working with the client base. They have an overall compliance program. They get to a point where it's time to do a compliance spend test and they don't do pentesting themselves.

And so they would refer that over to us. And then similarly what we're trying to do with our own sales organization is help them understand how to discover and qualify opportunities for our partner base and make better reciprocal relationships. So that as we are identifying opportunities that might not be fit for purpose for what we do we can very efficiently throw those to a partner and and help their business along the way.

Sounds great. In terms of the hundred plus Partners out there geographically speaking or does it worldwide or is it mostly North America Mia? Definitely North America and Amia we have a couple that would be in the Asia Pacific region.

But as a company we're primarily focused in in North America. So US Canada and then in Western Europe in UK The English always want me to make sure that the English are separate from the rest of Europe. So I try to make sure that they had a vote on that recently, but they had a small hood on that.

Yeah, but we primarily work in Western Europe and Uki and then in US Canada and our partners covered that same Geographic territory, although you know again, we sometimes have inbound interest coming out of Asia Pacific primarily Australia New Zealand area. And so we have some Partners down there as well that we do business with and in some cases they help with delivery services, you know, given the time zone difference. Sure.

Sure. Hey Russ. Let me ask you a question.

If someone's watching this out there and says yeah, you know, I'd like to add this to our lineup our land line card. How what would like how would you recommend them going about to become a Cobalt partner? So, all right.

io. We actually have a partner page on there where you can contact us. You can do it electronically pretty easy form fill and then we will get back to you.

I try to make our service level within 48 hours. That's the same service level with which we will start a pen test for client. So I like to try to tell our potential Partners.

We'll be back to you within 48 hours and then we'll just have a discussion. We'll get on Zoom call. We'll try to understand your business model your business objectives.

If you have a Technology based offering, so we're working with some potential. Recent attack simulations and potential baths Partners now, so we'll try to understand your technology and then put together a comprehensive plan for whatever level of Technology integration. We want to try to drive and then whatever integration of the business model we want to drive as well and that could be kind of that that referral partnership.

It could be a sell with where we go into certain client bases or certain geographies. Jointly or you know increasingly it could be that we want to set up. A resale or a MSP mssp MDR relationship if that happens to be your business model.

So I would say, you know go the website do a quick form fill. We'll be back to you within 48 hours and then we can we can go through a pretty efficient process for determining if and then what kind of partnership makes the most sense between us. Great.

Hey Russ. I want to thank you for coming on here and they're telling us about this exciting new relationship. We're then TT as well as the whole.

partner program don't be a stranger now that you've been here. Come on back and keep us posted. Yeah, well Alan again, I appreciate you having a first-time guest on who does not necessarily sit in the security operations area so very much appreciate that and would love to come back on as we get into 2023 talk a little bit about the new innovations that we're pushing out with and without Partners In some cases and and also maybe we can reflect on what's actually happening in 2023, you know, all the things are everyone's putting out their predictions right now and so be interesting to maybe visit again in six months and and look back at the predictions and see what's actually come true.

You know, we do we do a virtual event every year in January Corp predict where we ask, you know, we have people making their predictions. I can't tell you how many times I'm tempted to run last year's last years. I should yeah and a great depth.

I think that's I think that'd be a great plan. It's about four or five years of it. So that would be interesting.

Anyway. Hey say hello to Carolina and the rest of the team best of luck. You know as we head into the holiday season here and we'll have yarn in 2023.

That sounds great, Alan. Thanks. Again.

I appreciate it. Take care. Alrighty, Russ Cobb Cobalt IO here on techstorm.

Thanks. We're gonna take a break. We'll be right back.