re:Infect Retrospective – Techstrong Research Review, EP 9

here Hey everybody. It's Mike Rothman here. Back with another tech strong research review.

We've been a little you know, things have been busy. Well first of all Mitch, how are you, you know, so we should probably introduce ourselves before we kind of dive into our you know, old guy problems. Yeah finish introducing yourself and then I will When she am of text wrong research, you know two strategy officer of text on group and this is the text growing research review with my partner of crime Mitch Ashley Mitch.

Who are you? What do you do? Are you I'm also CTO with Textron group and then principal working with Mike and Tech strong research.

So And we first know if you know me, you know, this is a my normal voice. What kind of what happened? Right?

Obviously, I've got a cold like and I was I was getting to that. Okay. Well, I'll let you I'll let you set it go for it.

So, you know what, we do try to do the review, you know every week and it's been a couple of weeks. I think thank giving episode was with the last one we did and you know, we've had a lot going on first we were at reinvent so we will talk a little bit about aw3 event some of the announcements that they had there but it turned out that reinvent also got another nickname I would say and you know, we've spoken to a lot of the folks that we met with there and obviously a lot of our friends who we know we're in Vegas, even if we didn't see them and it turns out almost everybody got some type of respiratory issue didn't seem to be covid but folks are starting to call the conference AWS re in fact as opposed to reinvent. Which I think is apropos you we had six or seven people there.

I think five of them came back with some type of crop and then gave it to their Partners. It's the family business, right? You know, we have a number of different family members that work and live in the same house.

So, you know Mitch gave it to his wife Jody. We know that, you know kind everybody else that brought it back to their Partners as well. It seems that only Alan and I kind of escaped a lot of yeah the reenact no, it seems to always, you know, I had a great immune system.

So what's I right? Yeah, he must word on the show floor. We were in our we had a sweet over at the wind where we're doing business meetings and also recordings for text on TV.

And you know, of course people were coming in and out of there wasn't a gigantic part of you or anything. But like we're out on the show floor. So just in that space A Plus us going out and having dinner and being out that's right about you know, yes, we're exposed a lot.

You've seen Aerosmith. We got to see Aerosmith. So again white guys older than not so it was you know, that was that was a lot of fun.

They can't in mid 70s and these guys are still rocking out. I just I hope that we're able to continue to do the review when I'm 70 actually if I'm still doing the review when I'm seven. Yeah.

I failed it. That's something that's right around my Chevelle Malibu listen to eight track tapes of Earth. So yeah, there you go.

That's right. That's right. Same old song and dance.

Exactly exactly. So it was a great stop. Yeah.

It was it was and you know, you know, it wasn't that one. I can't tell you how many folks, you know, come up to the to the suite and and we chat and folks we hadn't seen in a long time and it it really was great aside from all the you know, kind of communicable diseases that need to be exchanged. It was great to see folks, right?

It was great to be in the same, you know, and I I did that a little bit of black cat right when I was there in August but it really was nice to just reconnect and and the idea of you know kind of human interact and you know would definitely miss that, you know over the last couple of years. So so being able to get back to that has been great. So that's me, you know, you just met them in the last year.

That's right. We didn't meet him in person. That's right.

So it's a combination of that's right. That's most new people. Yep, so I I agree with with that as well.

It was you know, kind of folks that you know, you see some folks are a lot taller than they look on Zoom or you know, maybe not as tall as you know built a little bit differently because you know, some folks have good filters on their camera to you know, make them feel a little bit. Different let's just call it different not I get I didn't know you were tall comment a lot. Yeah, it's just all that.

No. No, that's my he's definitely like 12 if you count his hair he's probably five ten but you know, that's yeah, so on a good day. I'm just great.

So so from from an announcement standpoint, right, you know, it just it didn't feel like it was anything groundbreaking right? They were a number of different things. You know, I'll talk a little bit about security side which once a little bit on the, you know, kind of developer and and and pipelines that on the security side.

The big news was the the new security data Lake service where they're allowing you to aggregate data. And again, it's kind of squishy in terms of exactly what kind of data obviously it's gonna be security oriented Telemetry and we'll kind of analytics are gonna be there but first and foremost, you got to aggregate the data right and have a place to put it so I This is a positive type of announcement from AWS. But I think it's also an acknowledgment by the fact that you know Sentinel, you know, Azure Sentinel is a thing, right and it's really starting to appear especially at lower end environments as as a legitimate competitor for security monitoring and and Sam you have Chronicle at the high end that comes out of Google Google Cloud which again, you know from an effect in this standpoint not you know, really clear that that it works all that well, but it does allow you to aggregate a crap on a data right?

Because that's what Google is is really good at so I think it's an acknowledgment bolt that you know AWS has to be able to compete on that space that they've got customers. You know that they don't want to have to use a Splunk cloud or Devo or you know a crowd strike or you know, any of these would set no one with these, you know kind of Next Generation back ends that you know kind of allow aggregation of significant amounts of data. Yeah, I think that AWS kind of said yeah, we're going to get movie but when you look at the at the product lines when you look at the lineups, they're behind right, you know, they're behind from a security, you know kind of services team and they got 70 things that you can use right maybe 50 things and you can use but when you think about kind of the offering right kind of a product family the product Suites Microsoft is just, you know, kind of Leaps and Bounds ahead from a packaging standpoint from an Effectiveness standpoint.

They make it really easy for you to use their speed of Defender Services. If you've kind of gone in on Azure and AWS is nowhere near there. So they really do need to kind of get their act together from the standpoint of what they're security products strategy is gonna be and deliver on that.

So again scary lakes and to be the first aspect of that they started talking about how AWS inspector which they recently we built earlier this year, you know to be kind of more on you know you As opposed to you know, having to run scheduled scans that it's now going to scan lambdas. So you're going to be able to look for IAM and network issues in the lambdas that you have. They're talking about more proactive stance on AWS config.

So again with the exception of data Lake nothing kind of groundbreaking but more trying to push forward the ability for Builders to protect their environment that they're doing in AWS to a greater degree. Yeah, there wasn't there wasn't any groundbreaking boom. Wow, that was a that was a biggie but you're right even in our conversations in our interviews data was a consistent theme whether it's data analytics data management data security all of the above, whether it's you know in the cloud or in containers or or or not was a huge part of it.

The other another thing that I picked up on is there were a lot of people who are introducing products around Lambda around serverless. And so one of my questions then is with is this real are people really using this now why why those kinds of applications would benefit from Lambda? And so it sounds like people are starting to at least experiment with it maybe doing some production applications with it.

I mean, yes, they are. Yeah unmask scale. No, but a lot of a lot of people using it the other thing I noticed my too is How many folks told me that we now have a SAS offering of our product, you know, and I kind of just assume that everybody's got a SAS offering of whatever they do, you know in multiple categories was observability or testing or different categories.

So it's easy to know the kind of what's happening on the front end of the wave and you forget that. Yeah, there's the whole the bigger wave of people catching up. You know, it would be interesting and I don't think anybody's gonna actually do this research because it would be a huge pain in the butt but to get an idea about you know, just cohorts of when companies were founded into the degree that their main product is, you know hasn't been satisfied.

Right? So if you look at any company that's you know, 10 15 20 years old from a technology standpoint, you know, they're based stuff to really make it work in Assassin's environment. You largely have to rebuild it right doesn't work and and you know to the degree that again kind of it's It's handling whether it's protecting or managing or or developing or something for a lot of on-prem resources you kind of go do I even really need to do that?

I mean, obviously there's the operational aspect of not having to you know, stand up servers and and kind of deal with you know patching and a lot of those operational things but you know to me so that's a cohort. It's a 10 year old product and they're just first, you know satisfying announcing. All right.

Well, what do you do? What do you do to rebuild it was? We platforming it.

Okay, that's one thing right. Are you building different operational motions around it? Okay, that's another you know thing.

But ultimately what's the customer driver, you know for moving something as a SAS besides the fact that they don't want to pay for a Perpetual license and they just want to try to you know, build it in the Ops, you know Opex as opposed to you know capex. And again, I think that there are accounting ways you can you know achieve that as opposed to you know, having to rebuild the products and so that's always an interesting, you know, kind of just I do want to get back. Yeah.

I do want to get back to the data point right because you know, we're we're hearing a lot about data right and you know, three four years ago. It was you know, Cloud security posture management, you know over the last year. It's been posture management, right?

So folks are getting into the, you know, help me manage work day and sales force and service now and a bunch of these other ones more effectively right? And now we're starting to hear a About data security posture management, right or data positive. And and yes, so it's just one of these things that posture has become, you know, kind of a huge word and again for guys that have been in the space for a long time.

It is kind of industry always, you know, kind of interesting and funny how the industry, you know, kind of does the same stuff that we've always done call it a new name and everybody thinks it's like all shining and stuff. I mean we've been we've been looking at vulnerability assessment is a posture assessment. Right?

I mean, you know, none of this stuff is really new but you know, we call it something new a couple of startups to get into this basic. They have a novel way to do it. And therefore we have a new thing.

So you'll see every you know comfortable or you know, basically every database management and and security product Rebrand as data Security Management over the last, you know over the next six months. So just wait for it because it's coming. Yeah, very true.

You know, it's it's interesting when I was running an IT organization and you know was during the emergence of the cloud and everybody's freaking out about we won't have jobs anymore. So don't worry. There's lots of great things that folks can do in the cloud.

Eventually, they'll need security data and applications to talk with and that's you know, we'll be here for them when they need those things and I think this year was the oh, yeah, you know software May rule the world but data is all the is all the fiefdoms as all. The people is all the population. I think that's what really fuels it.

You know, you're gonna do much with that data and it is a big Channel challenge because we keep so much more of it around Mike, you know, now you talk about lakes and things like that, but we throw off so much more data now, too. And so that volume of data is just getting larger and larger and you know the governance of it the access of it the control of it the location of it. You know, it isn't doubling your tripling.

I think it's you know seems like it's exponentially growing. I don't have dated to show that but it just kind of is growing on itself. It feels that way it does feel that way.

Yeah, so and and you know, so they'll be shades of these different things whether we call it the you know, again the nuances of what you know, one company says is data security posture management versus another that says it's Cloud security posture management and all to Shades of Gray and that's it. I want to get back to the serverless thing because we kind of just go off over that because I actually do think that there's a battle Brewing right, you know kind of when when you look at, you know, some of the new architectures that you can or new application types and and Concepts that you can deploying serverless versus, you know, kind of other, you know mechanisms and and how is that going to you know, really fit in with you know, kind of a cloud native or kubernetes based, you know kind of environment obviously there are locking concerns you you know, really Embrace serverless on any specific high for scale of platform because you know, you build an application with your tire back in you know, based on Lambda, right? You ain't going anywhere right?

Maybe not ever. So so, you know we talk about you know, the cloud, you know, and don't want to get it to lock in and and portability and all that stuff. No, right?

No you use a lot of these native Services. You ain't going anywhere, right? So so I do think that you know kind of an and it'll be interesting to see how kind of the cloud native machine, you know starts to position against a lot of these, you know kind of serverless, you know, kind of function environments because again when you think about it there, yeah a couple different ways to build on applications, you know from from a back end infrastructure standpoint in and and serverless doesn't allow you to use a lot of you know more open types of capabilities that are available there so that I think is something to watch as we you know head in 23, it seems that the most the applications that I would like to people about were either things at the edge.

Where you need it very very fast response time. And we talked about containers spinning up fast. Well tripolis is much faster generally speaking and also iot So lighter weight environments, so things like Kate not K-8 but k-3s and k08 kubernetes operating and those environments.

I you know, the edge is a big thing. It wasn't necessarily big theme at the conference. But that seemed to be where a lot of serverless is happening right now.

I just really curious to see what applications can continue to benefit from that you know, is it Yeah, we try things on on it and some things work and some things don't so you look for trends like that. Yeah, I mean, I just know my personal experience, right we built, you know, the third iteration of disrupt. Obso is serverless, right, you know 90% serverless on the back end.

So yeah, obviously that means our back end is gonna be in in AWS or ever, right? So, you know, we look at it from that scene again, it's just a lot of churning and and so, you know besides everybody getting sick I think to me of AWS is you know, folks are starting to do stuff. Right?

So you're starting to see some, you know, kind of new services at the edge try to fill out the product line. Um, but, you know kind of the Shades of Gray that you're gonna see, you know, they'll be 15 different flavors of data security posture management. There's 15 flavors of observerability and I talked about four or five companies and they have a different take on, you know on what observerability to them and using this thing work.

So, you know, once again the market years, you know, take a term, you know manipulate it to their own devices and confuse the crap out of the you know crowd so, you know, we'll go back to what Always do which is focus on your problems on the use cases and the solutions that'll you know, kind of solve those problems and stop worrying about what it's called, right and and what magic quadrant it fits into, you know when you try to pick vendors. Exactly, you know there was some other really good conversation that I had with some vendors who are putting their technology into the Ides the developers use sorry. I haven't maybe sitting my dogs here Hip Hops.

Yes, and and but what was important about it is isn't just like scanning code right when you're checking in. It's like integrate, you know, if you're working at IDE, it's kind of like autocomplete on steroids for everything for packages for code for functions for you know, you name it connections connectivity to whatever integration with other apps and that occurred to me is if you're gonna Elevate security and writing secure software, it starts there. It isn't when you check it in.

It's as you're writing it I mean and developers are used to this right like this three different parameters, or I could call it this way. I can use this function and if we can introduce more security better security or software for applications at that point. You know that plus all the other things we do I think could really make a substantial difference and there's some some really good vendors doing some work.

I like particularly around that so I'm excited to see more of that. Yeah, yeah, so, you know all told pretty pretty you know, kind of worthwhile trip on our part. We will be you know going to reinvent in the future so and and we'll even be you know, more structured about, you know, setting up meetings and and and interview slots and you know kind of a little bit more effective use of space, right?

We had a suite but it was where everybody was kind of on top of each other. So we'll we'll learn and and we'll improve so that's good. And yeah, the other big thing we have going on mitches is predict, right?

So January 12th, right predict is burning up a lot of cycles and I feel like Mike why were you what we were away right and reinvent, you know last week and you know this week we've been you know just consumed with with predict. All right. So the pals are coming together.

I'm happy to say we're you know feeling in panelists still have opportunities to sponsor. We are bringing some additional folks on but it is not too late if you want to be involved and You know panels will be talking about, you know, kind of the trends and you get to say your piece from the perspective of where you think technology is going so so happy to have those discussions but it's going to be you know, an interesting day for us, right? We're gonna talk about and cover a whole bunch of stuff.

We're gonna have a whole bunch of you know, really cool people with with very interesting perspectives about you know, kind of where stuff is going as we move into into 2023. And and again, we're doing it live right we're we're trying our you know to arrange and get all the panelists, you know, kind of organized where they, you know need to be when they need to be there. So, you know that creates another layer of complexity on top of staging the show so that's been burning up a lot of Cycles, but I'm I'm really excited for where we're taking the you know, the agenda and again the panelists that we have involved.

Well, this is I think the fifth or sixth year that Tech strong has done. Predict in various forms as media Ops as Tech strong and a lot of this it's been very successful. But this is a new format or very new format.

So first it's research lab, it's led by Mike and I it's built around the four to four concentration areas of Textron and Textron research digital transformation Cloud native cybersecurity. In devops, and it was really cool about it is you know, we're gonna be presenting some predictions and on those topics and then we're leading including with some of the sponsors the roundtables about their predictions around that so we'll kind of get let them call BS on it. So they don't like it or they may have another more things to throw in the fire and what their predictions are, but there's other things too.

Like there's a BC panel. I think Allen's gonna be leading one of those like Mike fizard might be involved in some that we have here but there'll be several of those and they're all be those kind of discussions. There's no slide where presentations you know, yes Mike and I'll be right now covering some predictions, but it's not the talking head kind of thing.

So it's it's very different. It's a research-led. It's our kind of coming out party almost in a way in front of the first conference that we're doing that's led by text from research.

So it's very exciting. It's fun to do it this way. It is and and we'll see right we'll learn.

Will of all will improve because that's you know, kind of how we do things. But yeah, that's that's burning up a lot of Cycles on R2 and there has been some you know other stuff in the news, right so and and it's more kind of continued high profile breaches, right? So last path that one out song they're a handful of others right just go over to Security Boulevard and scan.

There's you know variety of different news pegs for you know, folks that have gotten you know, kind of expectations compromised and and right right ratspace, you know kind of this week. So yeah, I mean, I think it's not and as opposed to trying to dig into, you know, each of these specific things. It's again, it's another reminder as to you know, the diligence that's required on the practitioner side to constantly be testing and refining your incident response process.

We talked about data before understanding where your data is, you know, kind of making sure that you understand and the security posture of a lot of these service providers that have Access to your protected and/or confidential and and private, you know data from that standpoint gets just another reminder that you know, you we count on a lot of these companies a lot of these Services these services are comprised of code that you built people people are imperfect which means we are going to have issues. We have to be ready for those issues. So we've been a lot of time on response.

It's a lot of time on detection. We're trying to you know, move the the cycle back to you know, something that's a little bit more proactive and preventative on that front, but the answer is not one or the other right? The answer is all of the above.

Yes. We have to try to prevent things more effectively. We've got to detect faster and we've got to be able to respond, you know more efficiently more effectively and and Factor on that.

Once again, these are just constant reminders and we're always gonna get there's two lessons too. I think coming out of this might well one is these are high profile companies operating, you know, very large sets of INF. Trash applications hosting all that kind of stuff this hosted exchange.

I think that happened at at Rackspace. It happened to them is gonna happen to you right? It's ransomware.

It's fishing, but the other point I think lesson to learn for us is developers are a big attack Vector right now. and we see more and more attacks directed at them fishing attacks, you know course software supply chain, all those kind of things so Security Professionals getting into the software creation process and the tooling and how software is built I think is even more critical than it's ever been. So don't ignore them.

It isn't just code coming out the end of the pipeline that you have to wrap some security around. That's right. That's right.

So one last thing Mitch, right? We're kind of coming up rapidly to the end of the year. So I think you know, I think next week we're gonna do our kind of year-end wrap up and a little bit of, you know, kind of dangling out a little bit of the taste of the trends that we're gonna talk about at predict.

And because I know you know kind of on vacation the week before Christmas and all the offices closed the week after Christmas so we won't be you know, kind of posting anything up in that two week period so next week we'll plan on on doing a little bit of a recap of 22 and and what we think's gonna you know happen in 23 and that'll obviously lead up to to predict on January 12th. Gotta have time to watch all those harm or Hallmark Christmas movies, right? Somebody has to somebody has good.

I've actually got with that and do before but you do I mean, but the question is do you watch them in July? That's the question? No, no see some people like to keep in the you know, holiday spirit all through the years.

So they'll bust out, you know, some Christmas miracle or something, you know movie, you know, sappy type thing and in the middle of July, so check with me next year. I'm not one of them really, you know, maybe that we will wrap up another episode of text wrong research review. And yeah and and again keep an eye out for our year and rap next week and again check out all the stuff.

We have an archives because we you know, it's not a lot of it is Newsies. A lot of it is still very pertinent to whatever your problems are and we will see you all on January 12th at the predict. com reach outs, right?

That's right. We'll see you soon.