Previewing CyberMarketingCon 2024 with Gianna Whitver

This is Textron tv. Hey everyone. Welcome back here to Textron tv.

You know, um, I wanna introduce our next guest. She's a friend of mine, has been a friend for a couple years now. She knows an amazing woman who's done some really cool things, helping the cybersecurity marketing world, and, and the cybersecurity marketing world is, well, everybody thinks their own thing is unique, right?

Every, we're all special, but there's a lot of special people in the cybersecurity marketing world. There's who you think there is. There's the cybersecurity marketing folks who work for cybersecurity vendors, and there's product marketing of Markcom and MarTech and all different flavors and shades there.

But then you have this incredible sort of orb belt, if you will, orbiting this star of er agencies and marketing agencies, right? Like our friends at Merit, er for instance, Michelle Schaefer and team. Uh, and then you have outside, like at the outer reaches of the solar system.

People like us, like me, media companies that cover the cybersecurity space. And so all of these bodies, burial bodies, if you will, orbit around that whole cybersecurity market, right? Mm-Hmm.

And, and in many ways, without that marketing, you wouldn't have a cybersecurity market. Yep. So this, my next guest, mine is my friend Gianna Whitford.

Gianna is the co-founder and CEO of the Cybersecurity Marketing Society. And, um, next week in Philadelphia, they're having their fifth annual, uh, cyber Marketing Con 2024. Well, it's the first annual 20 24 1, but they've been doing Cyber Marketing Con for five years now.

Gianna, welcome to Tech Drunk tv. It's great to have you on here. Alan, thank you so much for having me on.

I'm so honored and delighted to be on your show. It's exciting. It's our pleasure.

So, I hope I didn't embarrass you or I misspoke about how the cybersecurity marketing world works, but there is this whole solar system, if you will Yeah. Of, of people that revolve around and it all orbits around. Exactly.

So, before we jump into the history of the Cybersecurity Marketing Society, and before we talk about cyber marketing con, let's talk about you. Sure. Tell us a little bit about your journey and how you came to be the co-founder and CEO over at the Cybersecurity Marketing Society.

Absolutely. So I think, I think I'll take a step back first and talk about how I got into cybersecurity marketing in general. Great.

Because I haven't spent my whole career in this space. And like you said, Alan, there's a lot of orbiting planets everywhere. Mm-Hmm.

And solar and sun and, and factors. So, when I first joined the security industry in about 2015, I had been from a different industry. I was actually in commercial real estate investment and development at the time.

Very different. Mm-Hmm. Super different.

Kind of, can be similar, but mostly different. And before that, I had worked in big tech. I had worked at IBMI had worked selling like middleware and servers and marketing, these sort of technical products.

So entering cyber, I was like, Hey, I got this. This is, uh, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm willing to learn. It's a new industry, but I'm gonna do it.

And I joined in, wow, what an interesting industry. Cybersecurity is coming in from the outside. It is highly technical, fast-paced, constantly changing.

There's so many acronyms, buzzwords, phrases that were just swimming in my head. I was like, whoa, what is, you know, I had just joined a threat intelligence company. So there was all this new language to learn.

And at the same time, the security buyer is rightfully very skeptical of marketing and fluff and phrases and, and everything that I was trying to do as a marketer. So I had met my friend and my now co-founder Maria Velasquez. She worked at a data diode company.

I worked at a threat intelligence company. We sold to similar markets, but we did not compete. And she started teaching me about the industry.

She was like, this is what RSA conferences, this is, this is the publications that are in here. Here's what the CSO cares about. And it helped me so much.

And we did that for years. And then in about, uh, March of 2020, we got together and we said it was so nice that we had these two, um, you know, we were peer mentors in a way. We were sharing information intelligence across companies, and we weren't competing and we were helping each other.

Um, 'cause I also shared the things I was seeing. And we said, wouldn't it be nice to bring more people into this? And so we started a Slack community with 10 friends in the industry, all fellow marketers.

And since then, it has grown from those 10 original marketers to 3,500 marketers at about a thousand security products and services companies, uh, today. And, uh, what we do is we now exist as a resource for marketers in the industry. We do industry research.

Uh, we provide help and support, uh, for those who are new in the industry or just looking to connect with others and learn more about the market. And we do education, webinars, content, and we do tons and tons and tons of networking and connections and making curated connections between our members, uh, so that they can better their careers and make connections that'll help them during the lifetime of their career. And kind of what sprung outta that was cyber marketing con.

Um, and we're on our fifth year there. What a great story. What a great story.

Thank you. You know, I wanna dive in a little bit, dive first of all, not just cyber marketers, but cyber people in general are kind of a breed apart. Yeah.

Say that. I'd say that I didn't realize, and I, I've been in this community since the late nineties. I didn't realize it till I, the first time I brought my wife to RSA and on the way home I was so excited that she had met many of my friends.

A very young Jennifer Legio among, oh my gosh. Jennifer was probably 20 something years old. And, uh, a whole bunch of friends.

Bill Brenner, she's my wife's still Facebook friends with a lot of my cyber threads. And, uh, she said, you know, you realize they're all a little off, right? I said, no, what are you talking about?

They're great people. She said, no, they're great people. But, you know, 'cause Bonnie's a social worker.

She's psych psychology, they're all, you know, a little spectrum. A little little. And I, I started thinking about it and I said, well, I guess that means I am too.

Oh. You know, because we're all, I think you gotta be a little crazy to work in. Cyber is what it comes down to a bit.

Right? Yeah. 'cause we are all a little special and extra.

Well, um, It's like a really difficult industry to be in. So I think you have to have some extra in you, some extra Oh. For drive or mission, you know, I think along with the fact that it's hard and people like a challenge, like people like me, we like a challenge, right?

We're in here. Mm-Hmm. Because it's, it's not necessarily like a gravy train.

It's not necessarily just easy. It's fun to do hard things and be successful. And then I think from the cyber pers perspective, a lot of people really are, are, um, are take that, you know, we're, we're saving the world to heart.

And I think that's a unique type of person who does that. Yeah. I mean, if you look at like, a lot of my friends who are, you know, people who present a black hat and stuff like that over the years, the thing that they have in common is they like to break things.

Yeah. Right? They like to break things and then put 'em back together better than they were before.

They wanna see how, what makes things break. Um, you know, I'm, I'm reminded like Andy Ellis is a perfect example, right. Andy's the, whatever he is, a Hall of Fame CISO or whatever.

Oh, definitely. You know, he's gonna Be at the conference, by the way, by working. Time isn't good for him.

Yeah. Mm-Hmm. Yeah.

I, I speak to Andy pretty often, but, um, yeah, he's the perfect example of that in many ways too. Brilliant, brilliant person. And, and that's the other thing is there's so many smart people Mm-Hmm.

All over the place in cyber. There's another issue though that I want to hit on, and I don't wanna make you uncomfortable, but, you know, we've had, uh, uh, a diversity issue in cyber for as long as I've been in cyber Mm-Hmm. And unfortunately, how it manifested itself over the years was, well, you know, we got some, we got some girls in the cyber, in the marketing department.

Right. That, that was kind of the uhhuh, you know, don't, don't blame me. We got some girls in the marketing department kind of thing.

And Yeah. And that used to kind of bum me out, to tell you the truth. Uh, you know, now we've made a lot of progress.

People like my friend Carolyn Wong Right. Who's brilliant. And she certainly can hold her own against anyone in, in this business.

Um, Chen Wang is another one. Yes, yes. You know, a lot of really, really smart women.

But I, I still feel that we fight a stereotype in cyber marketing and women. Mm-Hmm. Like, that's the place women go to work in cyber.

And I'd really love to see us bust through that. Yeah, I agree with you. And I love to see the, the organizations that are working to help make, uh, cybersecurity a safer and more attractive career for women in general.

Right. So if you wanna go into that technical side of the house, um, there's, you know, it's, it's, uh, it's, there's a path for you. So we see is a great org.

I, you know, all these org. So me listing this is gonna be like, yeah, I know this, but for the audience, like, we See No, no, it's not for me. It's for these People.

Yeah. W uh, Wix or Wei, I don't know how to pronounce it. It's W-I-C-Y-S, Women in Women in Cybersecurity.

I just interviewed their ED last week. Oh, Fabulous. So they're great org.

There's also, um, si uh, cyber Jitsu, which helps underrepresented, including women, uh, join the industry through trainings, et cetera. And I think the rise of all these communities, there's another one called Hackers and Heels, which is just geared towards, um, women who are very technical. Uh, there's women in Trust now, which is for those on the, uh, uh, I think it's, uh, identity, women in identity as well.

There's all these communities and groups that are helping women in the industry connect and grow their careers, um, alongside the men in the industry. So I do see things changing slowly. Yeah.

No, We we're making progress slowly but surely if we don't take into effect sort of the Palo Alto party of Blackout last year with the lampshades, but not mentioning names. Um, I don't know if you're aware of that one. It was pretty, it was a step back anyway, but you mentioned something, men, I'd like to see more men going in a marketing in cyber.

Oh, that would be great. We have lots of, so I will say that the society has a, I don't know the breakdown. There's plenty of women, but there's also lots of men in, in marketing in cyber as well.

And, um, yeah, I think that would be like, cyber marketing has a great career. It is, yes. It's lucrative if you can swing it.

Right. And it's, I, I don't know if it's very stable, but I think the industry itself has, is going to be around for a while. Um, yes.

As it continues to grow more important. So, I mean, Look, certainly we, we've gone through a bit of a, not a recession, but the, you know, the tech layoffs have hit marketing harder than other disciplines within the industry itself. Yeah.

It's, it's been interesting to see the, um, the rock, you know, the rockiness, I'm glad we have a community, you know, we've built a community where when there is a rift or a layoff, that there's, you know, a group of people willing to support those who have lost their jobs and to help them and help, yeah. Help find, make introductions, find, uh, find, uh, new opportunities, et cetera. Absolutely.

Mm-Hmm. Tiana, we're gonna switch gears and talk about the con in a second. But before I do, people out here who want to get more information on Cyber Marketing Society, join it, sign up for a newsletter, whatever.

What's the website? The website is very long, but clear. Okay.

com. So if you have the Strength Cyber Yep. Right?

Mm-Hmm. com. Yes.

And we have a brand new website that we launched, I think a week and a half ago. So please visit, check it out. And, uh, if you go to community on the website, there's actually a form called Suggestion Box.

So if any of the viewers here have suggestions for things we can do to help them as marketers in cybersecurity, pop it into that suggestion box. We'd love to hear your thoughts. Love it.

Great. Alright, let's switch gears now. Cyber marketing Cons starts Sunday, December 8th.

It's up in the city of brotherly love. Mm-Hmm. So funny.

We were just talking about women in cyber, and we're going to the city of Brother Lela, uh, Philadelphia. What's in store for this year? Oh my gosh.

This year is gonna be incredible. So you were at last year's conference, you knew Yes. It was amazing.

Mm-Hmm. And this year we have grown 40%. So we are going to have 500 people in marketing in cyber descend upon Philadelphia December 8th through 11th.

We have new tracks this year, along with our storied, you know, our regular sort of, um, we're doing tracks on field marketing, product marketing channel partner, um, demand gen content. We have all of that geared towards the marketer in security products and services. We have some new tracks that we created based on feedback from last year's conference.

So this year on Monday, we're gonna have a GovCon and public sector go to Market Track. Very exciting. I don't know anything about GovCon really.

So we, we brought in some experts. We brought in Hillary Cooper, who's a national security tech expert in the DC area to come and build this track. And we're gonna be talking about go to market in government and federal, uh, cybersecurity, sales and marketing.

It's so exciting. We have brilliant Speakers. I wish you would've told me.

I I could talk on it. So you don't know this, but it's still secure. The company I started before Media Ops Uhhuh, about 65, 70% of our business was that the Fed space was fed.

Oh my gosh. G the three letter. Yeah.

Yeah. A lot. I used to spend a week, a week and a half a month in Chantilly, Virginia was my base.

I used to stay, I had a long stay hotel room there. And I would, you know, Mitchell actually who works with me still at, at here at Media Ops, tech Trunk, uh, Mitchell and I were in, you know, because that was a full-time. I mean, the, the government, especially the Fed space is a world unto itself.

Right. It's huge in it's labyrinths of how you do things. And Oh my gosh, did they have another language?

Yeah. Yes, it is. It's all acronym acronyms.

Just a whole nother one. Yeah. It's all acronyms.

But there's also a lot of rules, like from a marketing perspective, if you invite people to a lunch or a dinner, it better be under $35 a person. They're not allowed to, to take a more expensive lunch than that or give aways. You're gonna give away swag.

Swag. You, you can't be giving away expensive stuff to people in the government. It's a no-no.

Yep. Um, and then there's the whole, and people who work in the government know this. You go to a typical government installation, only a small percentage of the people there are actually government employees.

Most of them work for the, you know, the, the ba the Beltway Bandits I used to call 'em, but that's a bad name. Most of them worked for the S aics and the, and the Northrop and the, you know, the contractors. Yeah.

And the contractors are serve like his body shops who put bodies in at these facilities, Uhhuh, but they're not truly federal employees. They, they have to get security clearance, they gotta get background checked, all that. But they, they work actually for the contractors.

Yeah. For instance, the whole Department of Energy, which controls a lot of our nuclear labs and, and stuff like that. All of those people are employees of the University of California system.

Oh, cool. I didn't know that. But little things like this, you learn.

Yeah. You know, when, when you're, when you're living it. Um, yeah.

I've been just about every army and navy base in the US and some in Germany and all over the place. Uh, it's, that's a fascinating world. I'd, I'd be interested.

Should be a good, good session. Yeah. It's, it's gonna be good.

We have a couple our, we're gonna have Lawrence Nunn, CEO of cyber spatial. He's gonna give the opening sort of sp uh, talk. He's gonna talk about opportunities for commercial, uh, companies to partner with, uh, national security, so with the government.

And then we have talks on, um, public relations and events in the, in, in this specific, you know, area like government fed. And then we have a demand gen, uh, demand gen and go to market through partnerships panel. And then we're gonna end with a, uh, a workshop actually on how to do successful strategic RFPs to the government since this track is geared towards the it Selling whole, the world whole.

Right? Yeah. They have these huge websites where you go look up RFPs and it's the government, right?

I mean, some people say, ah, they just put it up 'cause they have to go through the motions, but the insiders get it not true. You That's true. Still that RFPs to the cows come home and, and, and win your share of 'em if you, if you've got it right.

Um, exactly. So we have Hillary, so Hillary Cooper, my, the expert who, who orchestrated this track and, and advised and brought us these brilliant speakers, is going to be doing that workshop. And she has this very cool like, perspective on, uh, finding the good data sources for these RFPs.

Like you don't have to pay for some sort of expensive tool. You can actually use Python and use code and use your own. And she's a marketer.

She's technical, but she's still marketer. Mm-Hmm. Product person.

And you can build your own sort of database that feeds these RFPs to you. So she's going to talk all about, uh, how to get the data sources going, and then how to make the, uh, strategic RFP submission. So that'll be a workshop.

So anyone who's attending, bring your laptop, bring your, bring your, uh, your work. And people will hopefully leave with, uh, some stuff they can do, uh, other tracks. I love it.

Yeah. Other new tracks include, um, we still have our CMO track, which is a closed door CMO only event. We did that last year.

Mm-Hmm. We're gonna do that again this year. And we're, but we added a new track for cmo, for CEOs.

So we have, on Wednesday we have cyber CEO summit, which is all about go to market for CEO and executive leadership. So founders, investors and CEOs because, um, CEOs who, CEOs need to be a little bit dangerous in every single part of the business, but they don't have to be experts. So what can A CEO do?

And what does a CEO need to know about modern demand gen and go-to market in the cybersecurity industry? That's a great idea. Idea.

I you 20 years ago. Yes. Thank You.

No, well, but, but here's the fact. Mm-Hmm. Most of your startup CEOs Mm-Hmm.

Are not, they come from the engineering technical side. Yes. Right.

They Mm-Hmm. And, and what happens is, as the company grows, you'll see a certain percentage of those CEOs transition as CTOs or chief strategy, or, you know, something more on the technical side of things. And, and as a result, it's been my experience that a lot of these startup CEOs are not marketing savvy.

Mm-Hmm. They know they want leads. They know they want customers, they know they want business.

Yeah. Getting there is a stretch. Right.

And that's why they rely on hiring experienced CMOs. Exactly. And that's why we created this track.

It's like we, we expect you to be technical, to know all about the tech of the business, to know all about how things work with your product. Like that's what the startup CEO does. They founded it.

They're usually the, they founded it, like you said. But what, how can they work well with marketing? How can they know that who they hired is a good fit?

Um, and what can they do to contribute without taking up all their time? And what's like, what do they need to know? Because again, also, uh, founders get a lot of like third party like content.

Like they get people tell them what to do and it, and if they're not, uh, aware of marketing or know how things work, they might be pushing not ideal marketing to the team, if that makes sense. Like they might have a, they might be misinformed. So we're here to inform support and help CEOs and founders understand marketing in cyber today.

So our, our tracks, I love it, um, for that are, we're gonna have a social media panel actually with founders who are, and CEOs who are very successful in social media. We have Erin prt, we have Jules Fer, we have Olivia Rose of Rose CISO's Group. She's a big influencer.

So it's all about how these folks are using the, the CEOs are using their media presence to create opportunities for their company. Then we're gonna have a panel by, um, uh, a group of venture capitalists on basically venture and what they're seeing in the market for 2025. We have 10 11 ventures, yil Ventures, DreamIt Secure Tech, and, uh, insight partner speaking at this.

And then, Oh, who, who's coming from Insight, Uh, Gary Service. Oh, I know Gary Well, he's awesome. Good for you.

Yeah. Gary's great. Gary's great.

This is where Andy's speaking. Andy Ellis is speaking on this. Well, Andy's y Yeah.

Yep. And yl. And then we have Megan Debosky from 10 11 mm-Hmm.

And we have Mel, uh, Shaki from DreamIt Secure Tech. Sure. Very cool.

And Then the last, That should be interesting. Yeah. And then the last two things for that track are, um, we're gonna have modern, uh, you know, what does CEOs need to know about Modern Go to market by Chaz Larios, who's VP of Marketing over at Anvil Logic.

And then we're gonna have a dinner. So if anyone here is a CEO founder or investor at a cybersecurity product or services companies, we're having a dinner, uh, at, on, um, Wednesday night just for founder CEOs and investors. And that's free and open.

You don't need to have a ticket to Cyber CEO Summit to come to that. That's great. I love it.

Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I'm doing an advertisement Though.

You know, I didn't, I didn't hear you. Well, wind cost you some good restaurants in Philly too, but I didn't hear you mention ai. Oh, we do have AI content.

So AI is such a hot topic, and AI is really, really interesting for marketers in the industry. AI will be woven into a lot of the talks in general, because majority of our speakers are, are folks in the industry doing the work. They're heads of marketing, demand Gen VPs, you know, they, they're, they run the content at the companies.

Um, so they will talk individually about, hey, how AI impacts what they do, and weave that into their talks. And then we have several AI talks as well. So we're gonna have a hands-on AI workshop on Sunday, two hours, bring your laptop again, you're gonna learn how to use, uh, midjourney.

You're gonna learn how to use Claude. We're gonna come together and create content for your business. And you're gonna leave with blogs and, and articles and stuff that you can use.

And then we have a Build Your Own AI tool set, uh, workshop as well. I don't remember what day it is, but it's by Bruno Baldo. Uh, basically the, the concept is, is uh, you could spend, uh, $20 every month at like 10,000 different AI tools now.

It's like, I Think, think I do. Yeah. There's An explosion of tools and products.

Um, but what if you built your own? So that's another workshop we're doing. And then a third thing I wanna highlight is our keynote on day, um, is on the last day of the conference, it is by, uh, nav Singh, he VP of marketing for the networks, uh, division over at Palo Alto Networks.

Mm-Hmm. And he's gonna gonna talk about how to use AI for the long term and how to use AI to influence your brand and to build things in marketing that are not short term but view for the long term. And he's been at Palo Alto for, uh, many years and is a long term thinker, and we're excited to bring him to the conference so he can share with our marketing, um, marketing attendee.

I love it about that. I love it. I love it.

Yeah. Gianna, we are so far over time. This was supposed to, oh no, I'm sorry.

This was the longest 15 minute. No, no. I'm so sorry.

I'm Sorry. I knew it, it was my fault. I kept going.

com? Oh, yes, there is. com.

Although if you go to our main website by accident, you can still get to it from there. And of course you could Google either one of them and it'll pop up as well. Yeah, hopefully.

Yeah, hopefully with all the AI in there. Um, Gianna, this is great. It's been great.

It's great catching up. I am sorry that I personally won't be there. We're gonna try to get some Tech strong folks there though, and cover it.

Um, you, you're doing God's work, so keep doing it. It's good stuff. Thank You.

Alan. Need it? I can't wait to see you.

Yeah. At RSAI hope to see you soon. Yeah, well, if words comes to worse, we'll wait till RSA, but as it gets colder where you are, it gets warmer here.

So the invitation stands come down anytime. Awesome. We can do these in person here in the studio.

That's awesome. I love you. Have a studio, Tiana Whitford, co-founder and CEO of Cybersecurity Marketing Society on Techstrong tv.

We're gonna be back in just a moment with some more great coverage today.