Automatically transcribed, so names and technical terms may be misspelled. The audio is the record.

The Colorado Equals Security podcast is your local source for regional security news, local events, and interviews with key individuals in the region. Now here are your hosts, Robb Reck and Alex Wood. Welcome to Colorado Equals Security. This is a newscast for episode 186 for the week of November 9th, 2020. How you doing, Alex?

I am well. How are you, Robb? Doing all right. Looking forward to a less eventful week coming up here. Yeah, I mean, it should be perfectly calm.

Nothing going on now. Much, much calmer than we've had. That said, we do have some awesome news for the area since we— I think we skipped last week because we were both spending Halloween with our families and, and going out on Halloween and recording didn't work great for us. Yep. But here we are back again.

Twice as many stories, same amount of time. There we go. Let's, let's get moving. We have our housekeeping. Of course, there is a Slack workspace you can join.

Lots and lots of great channels and conversations with over 1,600 of our favorite security friends. I think, you know, in the last week I've probably read as much about the election in our Slack channel as I did anywhere else. That's true. We are a source of breaking news. But good news is you do not have to listen to political conversation because that's all in the politics channel.

You can avoid it if you go anywhere else. You know, we also have a mailing list. If you'd like to get the show notes delivered to you every week in your email, go to colorado-security.com and sign up for the mailing list there. And of course, that's that same website where you can join the Slack channel. There's a button on there.

We'd love it if you would rate us and subscribe on your favorite podcatcher. If you get this in your inbox every week, you know how, how awesome the quality is and that we are Colorado's best security podcast. So go out and rate us, give us 5 stars, and hopefully you can help us find additional listeners. Also, please tell a friend or 2 or a dozen or however many. Depends on how many friends you have, I suppose.

But spread the news. Let people know what we're doing. We'd love to get more people involved in Colorado Equal Security. And if you want to help support the show financially, we do have a Patreon campaign. That's a way you can give, you know, whatever amount of money you want to each week or each month to help the show keep going.

All that money goes directly back into the community. We do not line our own pockets with it. We do not. I line my pockets with— what do you have in your pockets, Alex? With old Kleenexes.

That's what lines my pockets. Can you believe this is an unscripted show, people?

Also, You know, we're always looking for people to do interviews on the show. We've had some great guest interviewers. And if you would like to do the same, just reach out, let us know, and we'd be happy to help you get that done. Jumping into the news, Colorado is not only the number one place for security, but as of this new effort, Colorado is the number one place for the aerospace industry. Yeah.

So there are several groups, including the Wings Over the Rockies Museum, that are trying to get Colorado Renamed, named as Aerospace Alley. So this is pretty interesting. I think Colorado has the second amount of aerospace employment only to California, and not surprisingly, is highest per capita. Yeah. So we have over 30,000 jobs that are, that are in aerospace here in the area, which is larger than I would have guessed.

Yeah, me too. It's pretty good. I think we When we talked about it a couple years ago, there was what, like 18,000 security jobs? Yeah. So aerospace has got us beat pretty handily.

Yes, they do. Yeah. But, you know, you got to figure there's, you know, Lockheed is here and ULA, ULA, lots of stuff like that. So, I mean, I guess it makes sense and pretty excited to hear that Colorado is potentially going to be the aerospace alley. Interesting.

There are 280 aerospace businesses in Colorado. And more than 500 companies that provide support to those aerospace businesses. So lots and lots of companies here that are really making their money off of aerospace. So next time someone asks you where you live, you should say, I live in Aerospace Alley. TM.

TM, yes. Trademarked. Hey, all right, let's move along. The governor has appointed a brand new CIO who's going to head our Office of Information Technology. This is Tony Neal Graves.

Tony has actually served as the interim since September. Yes. And I think we talked about him on the show before as he was brought on to help with some other work, but he is, he is now going to be the official CIO. Yeah, that's pretty cool. So yeah, he was previously in the broadband office helping to lead the expansion of broadband in rural areas and other things like that.

So that broadband position will have to be backfilled. But, you know, he's going to lead over 1,000 technology professionals And, you know, working to help give services to over 31,000 state agency employees. Tony has experience previously 16 years as an executive at Intel, so he obviously knows IT well, and he's going to be hopefully a great leader for our IT department. And of course, working with our own Debbi Blyth, the CISO for the state of Colorado, who will help keep things secure. Yeah, it looked like he had a bunch of cool experiences on his resume.

I think spent some time in, in China for Intel and some other things like that, so So, so are you saying that we have a Chinese national as our CIO for our state? That— no, that is not what I said. That's not what you said. Okay. No, no.

Just want to make sure we— I don't quote you incorrectly. No. Clearly, he went to spy on the Chinese. Oh, good. And now brought that back to us.

Well, if he's going to do espionage, that's the way to go. Exactly. Hope this doesn't get him in trouble with the Chinese because I'm sure that they're parsing everything we say and— That's right. And categorizing it. All right.

Next, 2 years after it was acquired, these Denver founders are back with a new startup. So Uh, the founders of Nimble are back with a new project called Fulfilled. So, so we had talked about, uh, Nimble. I don't know if we talked on the show, but I at least saw that the news when they got acquired a couple years ago. Um, and as they were going through the process of making Nimble, which was an IT services company, they recognized a big need in the warehouse space, um, for how do you know how much space is available in your warehouse?

How do you know which products you need to get more quickly? Um, and they, their point was that ERP systems like SAP and other big ERPs do not, do not do a great job of managing anything that's not specific to them. They can't, like the whole warehouse picture. And they, so they've created this new product or a new company called Fulfill that's going to be, you know, revolutionizing the smart warehouse. Yeah.

And so it's a cloud-based solution. It creates one of my favorite terms, a digital twin of the warehouse so that you can see what you have, where you have it. And track all those things and, and get it then integrated into your ERP system. Yeah, it looks like it not only does it help you with your inventory, but it also can help optimize employee productivity, uh, which sounds like a good idea. I can't imagine, but there might be some, uh, privacy issues there tracking your employees' movements.

But hey, you know, they do specifically say they're using machine learning. Ah, they don't mention blockchain, so it's not the newest technology, but they're doing their best. Yeah, well, and I mean If they just said machine learning and not AI, I'm a little bit disappointed. But I mean, that is probably actually more realistic. Probably what they're actually doing.

Yeah. Right. Next, we have news from a startup in Boulder called ColdQuanta. I don't remember talking about them before, but they are— they're an interesting company. ColdQuanta just raised $32 million in Series A funding.

Yeah. And so they are working on cold quantum computers. So this is doing quantum computers at the things that are temperatures near absolute zero, which is really cold. That is cold. You don't get much colder than absolute zero.

Yeah, they— so I mean, honestly, I read this article and I don't know that I understand exactly what's going on here, but that's okay. But I did pull out some quotes that maybe will make other people better understand it. So they are— they're doing quantum positioning systems and real-time quantum signal processing based on their own technology. And they're, they're going to be selling this to— well, they already have deals with the Department of Defense and all over the place. This, this raise of funds gets them to $49 million raised.

And interestingly, they also have grants for over $30 million from the government. That's pretty cool. Robb, quantum positioning systems and real-time quantum signal processing. Those are all words that I understand, right? But, but I don't know what those all put together actually mean.

Yeah. Yeah, quantum computing is, is really different. Yeah, I think it's pretty cool though. Glad that we have them here. And I'm glad somebody is smart enough to figure that stuff out because I know I'm not.

So, so I think I don't remember if we talked about it on the show or we just talked about it and didn't put it on the show. But there was— this is the next story we're moving on to. There was a, there was a news article recently about a new headquarters that was coming to town that we talked about it that was going to have the average salary be like $460,000. Well, now we know who that company is. Yeah.

And I'm pretty sure we talked about it. I know I at least pulled the article for us to think about talking about because I remember the $425,000. It was too depressing for me. Oh my gosh. So HealthPeak Properties, which is a real estate investment trust that owns a lot of healthcare facilities, is going to be moving their headquarters here.

They chose Denver over Nashville and Dallas. So in your face, Nashville and Dallas. They're moving from Irvine, California. They, you know, which is the people who stole Chipotle from us. So yes, so suck it, Irvine.

Now we're taking these, these people from you. It looks like they're not going to have a massive number of folks moving. They're just going to have 20 to 25 over the next year. But those are the most senior executives, which is why they have such a large average salary. Yeah, it also sounded like while this will technically be their headquarters, it's not necessarily going to be their largest office.

I think Nashville, it sounded like, was their largest office already, and they will continue to have a large presence there. So, so looking forward to HealthPeak Properties coming to town. All right. Next, some more people raising money. This one's actually in the security space.

Everyone's favorite Colorado-based application security testing company, StackHawk, is raising another $10 million. Good for those guys. Uh, this is, they're going to use this money to, um, to build a go-to-market team. So, you know, they're going to have some sales and marketing, we assume. Um, they're going to continue product development.

And I love, they specifically call out that they're going to continue to support Zap, which is the open source project that their company's platform is built on. Yeah, that is pretty cool. Um, we talked to Scott Gerlach, uh, one of the co-founders a little bit earlier in the week, and he mentioned this to us. And I, you know, my response was, didn't you guys just raise money? And he said, well, we did raise money, but it was actually, you know, pre-pandemic.

So that, you know, time is, is a weird construct these days. So it actually has been a little while since they raised money. It's been like 8 months now. Yeah. Anyway, congratulations to those guys.

Looking forward to seeing what they do next. Uh, Red Canary has had a release this week. Um, so they have entered the cloud workload protection space. Um, they have created their own agent that can go on your Linux systems in the cloud and send back to, uh, data back to their platform and provide you with lots of great intelligence about it. Basically, they're offering, call it EDR or, or, uh, you know, agent-based security for your, your cloud-based Linux workloads.

Yeah, that's pretty cool, and it seems like something that is natural for them. Um, you know, their, uh, their whole strategy has been to build on commercial EDR agents, you know, which is all endpoint-based. Uh, so, you know, it does seem to leave out a little bit of, uh, of area which could be, you know, cloud workloads. And so to see that and bring it in kind of synergizes. Yeah, I think, you know, just kind of thinking about most of our— most companies' environments, um, now between what they had previously and what they have now, they've, they've got just about all your endpoints covered.

Um, it's not— I'm sure I could think of something they don't have, but, you know, for most of us, they've really covered the gamut. Yeah, pretty cool. Um, and, uh, neat offering from them. Next, Ping Identity has unveiled an advanced passwordless feature to transform digital experiences. Sounds exciting, Robb.

Uh, yeah, so, so there's a new thing that they're calling Ping Zero, and really what it is, it's not a new product, it's a, it's kind of a branding for a ton of work that we've been doing at Ping over the last few years around passwordless features throughout our product, uh, sets. And if you just do a bunch of little things here and there and, and they're kind of built in incrementally, you maybe lose the big bang effect of, hey, we now can allow you to do passwordless in every use case. And that's really what this press release is, is, you know, all these little changes we've made over the last few years and now, now allow you to have a passwordless experience for your customers on your, you know, your customer-facing websites, for your workforce internally, or for your partners that you do business with as an organization. So all this cool stuff, Ping Zero initiative that's kind of across all the different products. Nice.

Uh, so what you're saying is you're just getting rid of authentication. You know, I'm saying that authentication is now going to be totally seamless. Oh, okay. That's probably an exaggeration, but it'll be more, a lot more seamless than it's ever been before. Uh, I am very excited for our passwordless future with, uh, FIDO2 keys and other things like that.

And all you have to do is give a little bit of blood each time you log in. That's a joke. You can— totally optional. How about spit? Can I just spit it in instead?

Well, if you spit on your computer enough times, I think you'll stop having to put your password in. All right. Moving on. Next. This, in my mind, is probably the most exciting story.

Pretty cool news. Yeah. Optiv has announced a $40,000 scholarship for Black African American students in STEM. Yeah, this is really cool. They've created a scholarship that's actually $40,000 over 4 years of school.

So I'm guessing, it doesn't say it, but I'm guessing it's $10,000 a year if you get it. It's open. You're okay at math, Robb. Maybe I've got a shot. The scholarship is, or the applications are open until January.

Anyone who identifies as being African American can apply for this. There are some requirements around GPA, and you have to be going into a STEM program. But just such a cool thing that they're trying to build a pipeline of, of, you know, diversity within the security space. The Black— oh man, what's it called— the Black Employees Network within, within Optiv was the one sponsoring this, and some quotes from those guys, you know, about, about the importance of this initiative. Yeah, and the— I think that that's really the cool part is that, you know, this was driven internal from Optiv as part of their Black Employee Network, which is an entirely employee-driven part of their company's diversity, equity, and inclusion process.

So pretty cool there. But the company, you know, kind of put the money up behind it, right? Like, right, right. It's just so cool. I did not mean to suggest that their employees ponied up the money to help with this.

It's cool that there's that, you know, the employees came up with this idea and drove the idea, and then Optus said, yeah, we'll put our money where that, where that is. It's a really cool thing. Yeah. Finally, we have something that we don't normally talk about on the show, Robb, because we are an audio podcast. Um, but we have a cybersecurity infographic.

Yeah. I mean, there, to me, the reason I thought it was worth talking about is because there's some really interesting stats we can pull out of this and, and share, uh, from the infographic. If you just want to spend a minute, you could probably spend, you know, 90 seconds and actually get through this whole infographic on your own. But interesting stats. Uh, they do show that, uh, in terms of reporting structure, 22% of CISOs now report directly to the CEO, where 40% report to the CIO.

Yeah, and in this case, we we kind of skipped a little bit. They is logarithm. So this the graphic does come from logarithm. This was data that I believe was collected out of their Rhythm World conference this year from some surveys that they did. So, but interesting information in here.

Yeah, I think I just pull out a couple of the interesting stats. The they said, what's the which of the following would would help you reduce stress at your company the most? The number one thing on that list was increased security budget, which. I'm not sure I believe it's true, just so you know. Like, more money, more problems, as we know.

But they did ask the question, which of the following has made you consider leaving your job? And the number one answer on that was executives not being held accountable for strategic security decisions. I think that one actually— yeah, that makes a lot of sense. If you don't feel like you can make a difference, then you're going to be frustrated and you're going to want to leave. And this is all actually part of an ebook that they have called The the modern and evolving security leader key insights on achieving success as a CISO today.

That's awesome. So probably worth a download. And, uh, you know, there's, there's a couple different quotes from our friend James Carder in there. And actually Kip James made the— made the— James as well. Kip's the, the CISO over at, uh, T-Tech.

It's not Teletech anymore. All right, that's it for news. Jumping over to our Slack message of the week. Big thanks to Andre Gaeta, who every week, uh, shells out a little bit of his own hard-earned money to, to get one item from the Colorado Equal Security store for the winner. Is it really hard earned, Robb?

I mean, it's sales. I think he works a lot harder than we do. That's probably true. That's probably true. Uh, all right.

So, uh, congratulations to this week's winner, Jeff Ellis. Um, and I think Robb and I really both mean this. Yeah. Uh, so every year we, and this is the second year in a row by every year, we do a salary survey of security professionals in the Colorado area. And Jeff has been the one that has spearheaded it.

Um, he basically did all of the work this year. Uh, that, that salary survey is now out there. Um, congratulations to Jeff. It's, it's a great survey and, and hopefully people are getting that and using it to help them with their own, uh, salary negotiations. Yeah.

Big, it's a, just a big recognition to, to Jeff put in a ton of work on this. We did not. Um, and, and it's, you know, a small thing that we can give him to show appreciation for the work to the community. And, and hopefully, you know, there's hundreds of people who now have the salary survey and can use that to, to, to work with their own negotiations. As a side note, because I'm sure we will get some questions after this, the salary survey goes out to everyone that gave us data to put in the survey.

So don't send us an email that says, hey, I want it. If you didn't put your information in, it's, you know, you got to participate to be able to get the data back out. But if you did put data in and for some reason you did not receive a copy of the salary survey, let us know. Yeah, reach out on Slack. All right, we, uh, let's move over to events.

As a reminder, we do have a calendar of events on our website. End of the year is coming, a lot of kind of holiday-ish parties and stuff. So if you're, if you're thinking you want to get involved with those, check out the website and see what's out there. Uh, over the next 2 weeks, there's a decent number of things. Starting on the 12th, the Northern Colorado ISSA chapter has their November chapter meeting.

Also on the 12th, ISACA Denver is doing their November chapter meeting. Audit approaches to system implementation. Uh, the week of November 16th, the 16th through the 19th, there is a week-long virtual conference that's— it's, it's in the Springs in terms of it's put on in the Springs, but obviously anyone, uh, can attend since it's virtual. It's called the Peak Cyber Symposium. A lot of great content.

If you're looking for some CPEs or just a way to learn, I, I recommend clicking over there and taking a look at that event. Um, let's see, uh, I Totally lost where I was, Robb. CSA November virtual meeting on the 17th. On the 18th, the ISC² Pikes Peak chapter is doing their November chapter meeting. On the 19th, ISSA Colorado Springs is doing their November online meeting.

And finally, on the 19th, ISACA is doing their November chapter meeting as well. So you can get involved with any of those groups. Cool. Good stuff. Let's move over to jobs.

Robb, does Ping Identity have any open security jobs? Yeah, I got 3 open positions right now. You know, 2021's around the corner and we're kind of getting staffed up for the new investment that's coming into security there. We're going to be hiring a product security engineer focused on our SaaS products. We're hiring a manager in our GRC program who's going to help us do a lot of the vendor risk management, business continuity, policy standards, really the programs side of GRC.

And we're hiring a, a program manager focused specifically on FedRAMP as we build out a federal instance of our, of our product. This is someone who's going to help us with the compliance side of that and really help us build the maturity of a federal program into our security program. Good stuff. Vendavo is looking for a director of security. Jefferson County is hiring a cybersecurity analyst.

Travel Centers of America is looking for an IT risk and compliance analyst. I wonder if you get a discount on gas if you work there. You get one free, you know, gallon cup of coffee every week. Should be every day. All right.

Alteryx is hiring a SOC analyst. Arrow is looking for a senior analyst in global IT SOX. American Auto Shield is hiring a security and compliance analyst. And JumpCloud is looking for a security engineer focused on incident response. Awesome.

Well, that is it for the news, but good news is we do have an interview this week. We do. So it's going to be Jeff— is it Matisohn? Who's a senior director over at Charter Communications or Spectrum? I'm I'm not sure what I should call that.

Charter Spectrum Communications. Yeah. Spectrum Charter. So he sat down with Jason Jaques recently. We're looking forward to this interview.

Appreciate Jason doing the interview. And of course, looking forward to get to know Jeff better. For sure. All right. Well, that's it.

Everyone have a great week and enjoy the interview. Thanks, Robb. This is Tim Coogan, Chief Information Security Officer of Denver International Airport. Welcome to Colorado Equals Security for Colorado security professionals.

Colorado equals security. This is Jason Jaques. I had an opportunity to conversate with Jeff Matisohn from Charter recently. Here's the interview. Enjoy.

Jeff, thanks for joining me today. Absolutely. How are you? Outstanding. That is the best way to be, is outstanding.

Before we kind of dive into, uh, into the world of security, let's talk about your background a little bit. Sure. I know that you are from California. That's right. So you are naturally a surfer and probably a Raider fan.

Uh, no, actually not a Raider fan. Well, so where did you grow up in California? Let's talk about that. Sure. Uh, grew up in Pasadena, uh, so right by the Rose Bowl, about a mile from the Rose Bowl.

Okay. Uh, so grew up a, uh, a UCLA guy and, uh, was a Raiders and a Rams fan for years. Until they decided to move shortly after, I think it was the '94 season. And then at that point, I was kind of not willing to be the fan of somebody who would up and leave my city. So kind of, I kind of went to the bad side.

I always tell everybody, if my wife left me for another guy, I wouldn't root for her. I feel the same way about my football team. Okay. There you go. Yeah.

So they left me for another city and I just kind of went scorched earth on them. Yeah. And now they're in Las Vegas, so they're everybody's team. Oh yeah, totally. No, no, I can't wait to actually someday see a Broncos game there.

It's going to be a— it's going to be a home game, actually. Oh yeah. I imagine a lot of people head out there for it. Oh yeah, for sure. It'll be sweet for sure.

So Pasadena, California, is that also by the theme parks out there? Disney World? A little bit. Yeah. Okay.

So like Disneyland is about 45 minutes from there. Okay. On traffic. If there's no traffic, it's 45 minutes. If there's traffic, it can be 2 to 3 hours.

Yeah, yeah. Let's talk about a little bit, a little more about, uh, what it's like growing up in California. Yeah. Um, so is it all celebrities and famous people everywhere? And, uh, probably not as much as they want you to believe.

Uh, you know, depending on the area that you grow up in, if you're, if you're living near Hollywood, if you're living near downtown LA, you'll probably get a little more of that life. And then you know, depending on what schools you go to, what colleges you go to. Yeah. Uh, you know, you run into that. Um, I went to Pepperdine, which is, you know, probably one of the schools where you get to experience it a little more and, and see some of the folks that are, you know, part of the industry.

Um, but overall, I don't think it's as, uh, as, uh, as prevalent as they make it out to be. Pepperdine, um, you know, I always thought that was an East Coast university for some reason. So tell me a little about Pepperdine. Sure, it's, uh, it's in Malibu, and it's, uh, not right on the coast but, uh, right across PCH from, from the ocean. Uh, so while you're sitting in class, and especially when you're sitting in the library up at the top of the campus, uh, you have a nice little view into the water.

Okay. And it's nice to sit there and be working on a paper and having your buddies texting you from, from the beach going, where are you? Why aren't you surfing? Why aren't you drinking? And why weren't you?

Because I was trying get through school. Okay. All right. As much as I didn't want to, you know. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, um, you know, life is about poor choices. You, you should have easily gone to the beach and I probably made it to work there. Yeah, yeah, that's, that's funny. So, uh, were you a surfer? A little bit.

Uh, not an avid one, not, uh, not Kelly Slater or anything like that, but, uh, definitely enjoyed spending time at the ocean and, and being in the water and Uh, that was definitely a hard thing to leave when I left Los Angeles was, uh, you know, the, the water went away and I don't think I realized how, how much it would impact me until I actually did it. Yeah. Yeah. Do you have regrets about leaving? At times?

Yeah. Uh, there were the last place that I was at in California before I moved to DC. Um, you know, I'd, I'd be at the ocean at, uh, 6 o'clock on a Friday morning and, uh, get a little bit of time in out there and then head into the office for my Monday or my Friday morning meetings. And, uh, you know, I miss that for sure. Yeah.

Um, but, you know, the, the traffic there is terrible, the cost of living is ridiculous, so I don't think I miss that as much. Yeah. Is that ultimately what led you away from California? Uh, no, no, it was just, uh, it was time for a change. Uh, I was going through some personal stuff and, uh, you know, found DC to be a very, very opportune market for people in IT.

And, uh, and so I said, okay, let's do it. Yeah. Yeah. So did you jump right into IT out of, out of college? I actually started in it a long time before that.

Uh, my uncle was a network engineer for Caltrans, which is basically CDOT but for California. Okay. Um, and, uh, you know, he was a big-time, uh, IT nerd back in the early '90s, and he brought over, uh, random computers that he had broken and asked me to, to fix them, make them work. And that kind of got me started. That would have been like '92, '93.

Yeah. So I hadn't even graduated high school at the time, you know. I was just a young punk playing with computers. Yeah. And, uh, you know, before I actually got into IT professionally, I was going down behavioral sciences route, so psychology, sociology.

And, um, you know, that ended up not working out. And, and a little while before I got into IT, it was my mom who was like, you know, this computer thing's kind of taken off and you seem to be pretty good at it. Yeah. And of course, you know, at that age you're like, I don't want to listen to mom, right? But, uh, obviously I did at some point.

Yeah, sometimes the money talks. Oh yeah, it's funny, my story is, is very similar. I got into the tech industry in the '90s as well, and, uh, that, that dot-com era just kind of sucks you in. Oh yeah. Yep.

For sure. It was really cool to see everything kind of go from what it was, which was, oh man, we talked about this stuff, to, to what it became, which is everybody gets to play with it, you know. Yeah, it was really, really cool to see that revolution and be a part of it, you know, that young in life. So yeah, so as you're fixing these computers, were you, uh, using these computers to play games? Yeah, yeah.

I think the, the first one that I can recall, uh, was Rampage, uh, and I think that was on like an EVGA monitor with 4 colors. Okay, uh, so that was probably like '94 or so. Are you talking the game where you're the, the monsters destroying buildings? Yep. Oh, that was a great game.

Yeah, it was. Yep. Whatever happened to that? Why don't they make a new one? Uh, well, they made a movie about it a couple years back, right, with, uh, with The Rock in it.

Okay. Yeah, I didn't watch the movie though. No, I haven't, I haven't seen it either. But, but some days I feel like going home and playing a game where I'm just destroying buildings. Oh yeah, especially these days.

Yeah, yeah. So then at what age did you leave California and go to DC? So I guess it was right after my 32nd birthday, about a month later. Okay. I picked up and moved out to DC and, uh, got into the government contracting world out there.

Um, was in DC for about 4 years, uh, and it was, uh, probably the biggest culture shock that that I could ever imagine going from really laid-back beachy life in Southern California to a federal contractor on-prem at the government departments and agencies and very, very regimented, very business-oriented if you want to call it that. So, I really struggled with the lifestyle out there, just that constant grind. Kind of that just the DC East Coast mentality versus the, the beach bummyness of Southern California, right? Yeah, that's, that's 2 different extremes. So you were a contractor then, um, for the federal government?

Yep. Okay. Yeah, yeah, that's, uh, that's something I, I don't think I could do. Um, it's tough. Tell me, tell me, uh, is there any good stories there?

Yeah, uh, Well, there's probably a few.

Are you allowed to tell these stories, I guess, is maybe the better question. That's kind of the fun part of it is a lot of it is, you know, just you kind of go into work and the real story out there is you go into work and you put in your 10, 12, 14 hours and you go home and you don't really talk about much. And I think that really was the hardest part about, you know, that lifestyle for me, just coming from, you know, LA where the federal government is, is almost nonexistent, um, you know, to, to an environment where, you know, you just, you go home and you, you tell your buddies or you tell your, your significant other, hey, I went to work today. You know, you don't get into some of the details on it. Um, but yeah, that, that life was, uh, it was definitely It's definitely a little interesting.

Um, yeah, I've met some really, really amazing people. I think that was the weirdest part about DC is, you know, there's a lot of really amazing people out there, but the environment is, you know, it's just brutal. Yeah. And so you see good people that are constantly stressed out and stressed out for the right reasons, right? They're trying to do the right stuff for the government and for us as the citizens of this country.

But, um, you know, that lifestyle just kind of kind of chews them up, uh, and it did it to me as well. You know, I was out there for 4 years and was— 4 and a half years, whatever it was. It was like, you know, I, I just— this is not the lifestyle for me, you know? Yeah. So you were in the tech industry.

Had you, um, gone into security at this point yet? That's actually what got me into security. Okay. It was out there in DC? Yeah, yeah.

They, uh, you know, I stepped, uh, into the first place that I was at and Um, you know, I, I realized as soon as I did that security, you know, in the federal space is just a part of life. It's not just a word. Yeah. Um, and I don't think I really understood that, you know, going out there, like how much it's ingrained to your day-to-day life and operations. And, you know, a lot of what you do in those environments is stuff that, um, you know, I'd been doing for a while, just trying to make sure all the stuff that I'd built at home or stuff that uh, you know, my buddies and I had, had built up or, or, you know, constructed that nobody could get into it, uh, whether it was from the physical side— nobody's allowed in our little basement, including our parents, right?

We all had that little basement area. Yeah. Um, so from the physical side as well as, um, you know, the, the InfoSec cybersecurity side, just making sure any routers that we had online or whatever— yeah, we'd always kind of had that mentality of like, this is our stuff and everybody else needs to stay out of it and leave us alone. Um, and, and so we had been doing that for a while, but when I went out there, it was like that wasn't just, uh, us being IT nerds anymore. It was like a way of life, right?

You know, um, and so when I went out there, they, uh, they put me into a management role. And, uh, the— I think it was the first place that I was at, I had one, uh, one security team underneath me. It was, you know, like a small cyber ops team. And, uh, and really it got me pulled into a lot of the cybersecurity incidents that were going on. And from there, it just kind of took off.

It grew professionally, got bigger teams, more teams. And I think inevitably after that, almost every place that I landed at, there was at least one sort of cyber ops team that was underneath me. So that's really what pushed me into that portion of the industry versus just the typical system engineer, network engineer guy, right? So did you get a sense, or did you feel, being out there in DC, was there any kind of, I guess, political things that you had to deal with at your level, being kind of that, that security guy, that security manager, so to speak? Yeah, there's a, there's a lot of politics, uh, in DC when it comes to almost any position, whether you're, um, on the actual Fed side or on the contractor side.

Um, you know, if, if something's gonna make the— we always said, you know, you never want to make the front page of the Washington Post, right? Um, so anything that went on, you know, there was always this, this kind of cloud hanging over you of like, hey, whatever you do, you got to remember, you know, protect the environment, protect the people, uh, because you don't want your face on the, the Washington Post, you know. So there's that part of it. And then, you know, obviously being, uh, there for You know, some of the changes that went on in, in DC, you see how the, the political stuff plays out at a higher level. You know, your bosses change, especially as a contractor.

The mission of whatever team you're supporting or responsible for really changes based off the administration. So, you know, it's, it's always there. You know, there's— you either love it or you deal with it. Um, I think I dealt with it. I certainly didn't love it.

Yeah, otherwise I'd probably still be out there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, uh, yeah, it's definitely, it's definitely part of your day-to-day life. But 4 years is a long time still nonetheless. Yeah, it is.

And then, uh, and then your, uh, your path then brought you here, or was there somewhere else in between? Yeah, it brought me here. I was actually out here for work, and, uh, you know, being a West Coaster Um, Denver feels a lot like, uh, Los Angeles or Southern California, you know, kind of more laid back, a little, um, a little, a little hippier if you want to call it that. Yeah. Um, and so I came out here for work and, uh, we were here for about a week and I remember we were done with our job and, uh, we had like 8 hours to spare before we got to the airport.

So we, we went downtown to Lodo, uh, had a couple drinks before getting on the airplane and A couple of us were just talking and it was like, you know what, I think I want to move out here. Yeah, it was just kind of spur of the moment and everybody's like, oh yeah, sure, you're not going to leave, you're not going to leave. I'm like, oh really? I'll show you. And, uh, about a month and a half later I moved out here, uh, thinking, you know, originally when I came out that I would be here for, you know, maybe a year or two and then probably go back home to LA, SoCal, and yeah, you know, be with the fam and the high school and college buddies and everything like that.

Because your, uh, your family and friends are still largely back in California, right? Yep. Okay, so, uh, you came out here. Did you have a job, or did you just come out here and decide you're gonna find a job? How did that work?

Uh, so my, my first boss from when I moved to DC, uh, and like most, uh, most contractors, you know, kind of jump between the big guys— General Dynamics, Booz Allen, Raytheon, all of them. And, you know, we both worked at General Dynamics together and he had rotated back to them and was responsible for kind of doing some biz dev stuff. And, you know, he's a really, really good human people kind of guy. And, you know, I went back to DC after the trip and I was like, hey man, I got to get out of DC, man. Like, what's going on with GD over in Denver?

And he's like, are you serious? And I was like, yeah. So he said, okay, well, I'll tell you what, there's a cloud operations that we're building out there. For General Dynamics. And I was like, really?

And he's like, yeah. He's like, you gotta, you have to manage all operations, you know, so the SOC, the NOC, you know, a little bit of project management type stuff, a little bit of the, you know, just a day-to-day of building a cloud. Yeah. I was like, all right, cool. And he was like, give me your resume and I'll pass it off.

And I just kind of like shrugged my shoulders and I'm like, yeah, sure, bud. So I sent him over and like 2 days later I got the phone call and they're like, hey, you know, Sai is his name. Sai sent me your resume and we need to talk. I was like, okay, cool. And so we talked for about 3 hours.

Wow. And he was like, all right, let's do this. Okay, well, this was kind of like between me going to Denver and loving the environment and now this, let's do it 3 hours after conversation. It was like the world was saying to come out here. So I came out here with General Dynamics.

Okay. And we were standing up the GDIT cloud, which is a FedRAMP cloud hosted out of Westminster. Um, so yeah, I came out with them and that's really, you know, uh, I don't think I would have moved if I hadn't landed a position. Yeah, you know, um, just doesn't seem like the best financial decision. Like, hey, I'm gonna up and leave one of the hottest, uh, job markets in the world in Washington, D.C., especially with IT and security, you know, uh, to go move somewhere else.

People would have probably thought I was doing drugs and off my rocker, you know. I don't know, there's lots of people that, that do that though. I actually, um of the 3 times I've moved back to Colorado. Hopefully, I'm here to stay this time. But one of those times, yeah, I just up and moved.

I was like, I'll find a job when I get out there. It does happen, that's for sure. So now family, friends here. Yep. So that's good.

Yeah. Yeah. It's— the world was definitely telling me this is the spot to go. Yeah. You know, came out here with a really, really good job and a good opportunity.

And then, you know, ended up leaving the federal space after 3 and a half, 4 more years of it, whatever it was. And then came over to charter. But yeah, I met my wife here, had a kid. And, you know, I think when I first got married, it was kind of like, well, you're not going anywhere. And I was like, oh, we'll see.

But then having the kid, you know, and my wife's family being here, it was kind of like, no, you're really not going anywhere. Like, oh crap, I'm not going anywhere. Nope, you're not. You are stuck here. Yeah, for the long haul.

Hobby evolution from, uh, from California to DC to Colorado, because I am curious about this. You know, how do you go from, from California hobbies to DC hobbies to Colorado hobbies? They seem pretty, uh, pretty different and extreme. Can you walk us through that process? Yeah, uh, obviously California hobbies are, are the beach, ocean sports.

Um, you know, there's a little bit of snowboarding there, but I, I really wasn't a snowboarder in California. Yeah, I like the, the sun and, and the waves, you know. Uh, and then I went to DC where I don't think anybody has hobbies. No, no, they just work. They work.

Oh, okay. Well, okay, I was thinking, uh, so yeah, the hobby there would be drinking. Yeah, fair enough. I think so. I did that hobby really well.

And then coming out here, I think in my second or third month here, some of the guys that I work with were like, hey, do you snowboard or ski? It's like, nah, man, I'm from Southern California. We like the sun and the ocean. And they're like, oh man, it's just like surfing. It's just like the water.

Like, all right, I'll get up there and give it the old college try. I get up there and I strap a board to my feet and I'm like, wait a minute. I'm like, I can't jump off this thing. And if I wanted to jump off this thing, the ground is hard, not like the water. You guys lied to me.

This isn't like being in the ocean.

But yeah, and then I kind of stuck with it. I think my first weekend really trying it, I was in Vail for like 4 days. I came back down the mountain on Sunday and my back was just pure black. I mean, I wiped out so much. And I had to sleep on my stomach for about 3 days.

And, uh, you know, I think a lot of people at that point, uh, a lot of smarter people than me would have been like, this is not your sport. Uh, but I don't think that I'm that intelligent these days, probably. But you stuck with it. Yeah, that's what we all do. Yeah.

And I was just like, you know what, this mountain's not gonna beat me. So I, you know, I picked up the next weekend and went back up. And, and yeah, it took me a good 4 or 5, 6, you know, weekends on the mountain to get it. But, um, you know, picked it up and loved it now. And I, you know, I try and get 15, 20 days on the mountain each year.

And yeah, it's, uh, it's interesting how I think I, I've gravitated towards this a lot more than anything else, you know, in LA or in DC, other than maybe the drinking. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that follows everywhere. Yeah, that's, that's what I've noticed. I will say that water, when it's frozen, it is a lot harder.

So I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah, I think people were lying to me. Yeah, they don't, they don't bother telling you that part. They're like, yeah, it's just, it's just, you know, frozen water. Oh, also, uh, it hurts when you fall on it.

Yeah, it does. So then getting into the tech industry itself, it sounds— so you got into security when you moved to DC, but how did you get in? You got into the tech industry building computers in the '90s. Did you, did you have a tech job back there in California? Uh, I did, not in the early '90s.

Uh, you know, that's when I was still— it was still a hobby, still fun, you know, me and the buddies being nerds. Um, I didn't get into the actual tech side of it until about 2000, and I think it was either 2000, 2001 for a profession, somewhere around there. Okay. Um, and I started out on a, on a help desk at Beverly Hospital in Montebello. And, uh, I think, you know, because I'd been building, you know, Windows boxes, Linux boxes, and configuring Cisco, you know, devices for several years at that point, jumping on a help desk, I was probably a little farther ahead than, than some of the other folks that were starting out that way.

But yeah, I was on the help desk on the overnight shift for about 6 months. And they were like, you need to get out of here and actually go, you know, get your hands on the gear. So yeah, so that's, that's how I got started in it professionally. And did start out like, you know, like so many people do is on the crappy shift, you know, an overnight shift in a— on a help desk or a NOC or a SOC. You know, I think that, uh, that, that 6 to 12 months that most people go through is just so— it's so important to learn, you know, A, the basics and fundamentals, which, you know, still to this day is, is critical for what we do.

But then on top of that, really understanding that, you know, as you move forward, there's, there's always something to— that could, you know, that could be worse, right? You know, you're putting in those 10-hour days, but you know, you started out on that help desk on a Tuesday. I think it was Tuesday to Sunday, so like my weekends were shot, right? You know, um, but yeah, you know, I think it, it really gave me that understanding of, you know, you start out at the bottom doing the, the crappy help desk job and just kind of go up from there, you know. Based on your experience, what advice would you give people trying to get into, into the industry nowadays?

Yeah, I think the big word, uh, is really sacrifice. Um, you know, back then, uh, I was late teens, early 20s. I— it feels like I was— it was 40 years ago. Yeah, it was like a different lifetime for sure. Yeah, you know, I mean, I sacrificed, uh, the typical nights out, you know, um, as a young guy.

And, um, you know, then when, when I actually left the hospital and started getting more into you know, the network engineering and system engineering side of it, you know, there was some travel involved and there were some late nights for maintenance. Um, you know, you sacrifice again, right? Yeah. Um, and then obviously moving to, to DC and then ultimately ending up here, you know, I sacrificed, uh, you know, the, the friends and family back home, the, the people that I'd grown up with for 32 years or whatever. Um, but it was, you know, it was the best decision that that I made, all of those sacrifices are really that one word.

Yeah. You know, um, and I would tell anybody not to be afraid of it. And I know that's easier said than done, right? Because you sit there and you go, oh, okay, well, yeah, I'm really gonna sacrifice my Friday night, right? It sounds easy to say.

And then you get to it and you're like, oh man, all the guys and, and my girlfriend's out doing this or whatever. And I'm stuck at work. But, you know, you look, you know, 10, 15, 20 years down the road and You know, and that sacrifice really does pay off. Yeah, you know, um, and I think that's, you know, probably the easiest thing to do. I mean, there are people that naturally gravitate towards the tech industry.

There are people that every, you know, device that they touch, um, you know, comes supernaturally. And, and I think the sacrifice, uh, really kind of brings that around for them, uh, whereas the people that, you know, struggle with with, you know, the, the technical side at first, you know, their sacrifice is just learning how to do it right and taking the time to do it. So I mean, it just kind of ties into like everybody, no matter, you know, what kind of person you are, no matter what you want to get into or get into in our field, you know, that one word really ties all of that together and kind of gives you that view of the future, you know. Yeah, yeah. Now if you put in the time and energy and, uh, and sacrifice like you're talking about, that's That's how you get somewhere.

It is. It's definitely paid off for you. Yeah, it certainly has. Yep. So in terms of security, what area are you most passionate about?

Well, since I'm a senior director of network security, I've really gravitated towards the network side of the house. And that probably goes back to building Cisco configs and stuff 20, however many years ago. I'm getting old. I can't remember these years now. Yeah, I don't know.

They all blend together. I know, man. Especially just like the days of COVID they all blend together. I couldn't agree more. But, you know, I think fundamentally everything still goes back to how information gets from point A to point B, you know, whether it's up in the cloud, whether it's your traditional brick-and-mortar data centers, you know, whether it's your mobile device, whatever, the information has to get from point A to point B. Yeah, and protecting that and understanding that, that core of, of how that information gets there has really just been something that I've always gravitated to and always loved.

Yeah, and I'm fortunate enough to love the stuff and, and totally nerd out on it. And yeah, I go home and, you know, my wife, I just watch her glaze over when I start talking about stuff, you know, right? And she just sees that for me it's like, oh my gosh, this guy loves this stuff and I'm ready to go to sleep, you know. Um, so when we work some of the incidents that we have, uh, you know, in the office and, and the guys and I are texting about it over the night, you know, she shrugs her shoulders, shakes her head, walks off, gets another glass of wine, you know. Yeah, but we're still sitting there, you know, hammering away on our keyboards like, did you see this?

Did you see that? Can you believe they did this? You know, right? Yeah. Do you find the, uh, the challenges of the world of security more or less nowadays than, uh, because of COVID because of the pandemic, because of everything going on?

Is, uh, or is it the same challenges? Uh, no, I, I think the challenge has definitely changed. Um, you know, before, uh, go back 18 months, right? Everybody's talking endpoint, you know, endpoint for your workstations, endpoint for your servers, you know. Um, and now, you know, all the, all the stuff you see is While somebody's working at home, that endpoint can only do so much.

You only have so much visibility as to really what's going on on that home network. Can you get around that? And I think fundamentally the problems will always be there from a bad guy perspective. So I don't think it's any more of the bad guy. It's just a different flavor of the bad guy.

Okay. Right? Yeah. I don't know if that made sense or not. Yeah, yeah, that's a good way to put it.

Did you have any mentors getting into the industry? Uh, into the industry? Yeah, I, uh, there was a person that I worked for at the company in Los Angeles. Okay. Her name's Lisa, uh, and she was my, I guess, my senior director when I was, uh, just kind of a network analyst, network engineer.

Um, and I think from the technical side, she provided a little bit of technical guidance, like, hey, you know, think about it this way. I think from a growth perspective, yeah, um, you know, she, she really kind of taught me the business side of things, uh, which, you know, especially now 20 years later, uh, is probably more important than understanding the ones and zeros, right? Yeah. Um, and I think one of the things that I pride myself on is, is even though, you know, I'm at that senior director title or whatever you want to call it, still understanding those ones and zeros is still a a really big portion of, of me. Um, so I don't want to say that that's not important because that's a big, a big part of who I am.

But, you know, really understanding the business side of the house, uh, has made it easier for me to transition from just the ones and zeros guy to, you know, the business guy that understands the ones and zeros. Yeah. And she was, she was absolutely fantastic about it. Um, you know, she took time. She was actually in our Arizona office, and she would come out once a month And, you know, on our trips out, she would make sure she set aside a couple hours for me and would just sit there and kind of talk about, you know, where I wanted to go and, you know, how I could get there, whatever it was.

Whether it's, you know, opening my eyes to the sacrifice we were talking about earlier, or, um, you know, volunteering for stuff that might have been, you know, out of my normal wheelhouse, right? I was a networking sys guy, but, you know, she's like, hey, there's some development stuff going on, why don't you Why don't you volunteer for that? I, I don't, I don't know how to write C#, you know, but I learned. And, you know, and it was one of those things where, you know, I think if I hadn't had somebody who was willing to sit there and spend that time and, and say, hey, look at it from a different perspective and open your eyes to things that normally just don't feel natural to you, right, you know, I probably wouldn't have, have gone down that path, you know. And, and doing it just, you know, helped round me as a an IT professional back then and really opened my eyes to, you know, to where I could take my career now 20 years later.

Yeah, I enjoy hearing mentor stories. Any other mentors? Uh, yeah, there's, there's a couple that I've had. One in my personal life. Um, so I lost my parents when I was pretty young.

I was like 21 when my mom died and 24 when my dad died. And, uh, yeah, you know, when you're, when you're that young, you kind of, you don't know what the the world's about, right? And, uh, you know, I had a family friend who, um, you know, really has, has been there since I was, uh, probably 3 or 4. And, uh, you know, was a friend of my, my parents. And, um, you know, from a personal side, you know, I did my dumb stuff after, uh, like every kid does when they go through their, their trauma, right?

Yeah. Um, I did my dumb stuff, and, you know, she was there to say, you know, hey stupid, get your crap together and let's take care of business, you know. Yeah. Um, so yeah, she's been, uh, she's been very, very influential in my life given all of that. Um, you know, and, uh, all the times when I sat there and was like, you know, woe is me, the world hates me because of the stuff that I went through, you know, she, you know, was there to kind of pick up the pieces with me and say, hey, you know, while the world is giving you this crap, uh, you know, we can, we can definitely do something about it.

So, you know, and that wasn't even like a professional side of it, right? It was just that, yeah, I think she's 20 years older than I was and, or 20 or 5 or whatever. And, you know, just, you know, whether it was the school side of the house or the business side of the house or, you know, relationships, whether it was somebody I was dating or, you know, friends that I ran with at the time or whatever, you know, really provided that sounding board, right? Hey, this is what happened last night, and you know, you get the look, right? Yeah.

Are you sure you want to keep doing that? Oh damn, you're probably right. I don't want to keep doing that, you know. Yeah, it's, it's important to, uh, to find mentors in life, I think. I agree, you know.

Yeah, not just from that professional side. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Life is about helping other people. Yeah, absolutely. Yep.

Do you want to— is there anything relative to your current job, um, you want to discuss or give a shout out to? Uh, well, uh, say thanks to my boss Mary for the introduction here. Uh, I know most people listening to this probably know Mary fairly well. Uh, Mary Haynes. Mary Haynes.

Yep. Yep. I feel like if I say Mary and people know that I work for Charter, they know exactly who I'm talking about. Yeah, yeah, right. Like, I know her.

Um, but yeah, you know, I've— we've got a fantastic team over there. Um, you know, when I first started, I guess 4 and a half years ago now, I had like 5 people working for me. There was 2 other directors who, who had a handful of people reporting to them. And over the past 4 and a half years, we've gone from that to a team of, I think, 98 people all reporting up to her. You know, watching some of the people that have been here for that 4 and a half years grow and, and take what was, you know, what started out as really just Mary coming on and having to build that team, you know, watching the organization grow from that to, you know, multiple principal engineers, multiple security analysts that have, you know, been doing this for anywhere from 3 weeks to, you know, 15 years is absolutely incredible to watch.

And it really shows, you know, kind of where our industry is going, you know, how even 5 years ago, which doesn't seem that long, although with COVID it does. Yeah. But over that 5 years, you know, we've come as an industry and, you know, as a team for us, you know, so far, you know, our, I mean, our ticket or our metrics back then for our tickets, you know, average ticket life was a couple days and now it's down to under 6 hours. Our response time is like under 2 minutes. For something to come in and get picked up, triaged.

You know, just watching the growth of, you know, the industry, the cool tools that are out there, and, you know, the absolutely fantastic talent that we have in this area is— I mean, it's just been absolutely amazing to watch, you know. Uh, and when you take that, that 30 seconds, maybe a little more than 30 seconds, maybe 5 minutes, to just sit there and decompress from your week and, and look back at all the positive things like that, yeah, it really is cool to watch. It's cool to watch, you know, somebody that started working for me 3 years ago that's been promoted twice and now understands stuff that, you know, they didn't really get 3 years ago, you know. Yeah. And I know a lot of people that are, that are listening probably have that same experience, uh, whether you're the guy or gal that started 3 years ago barely, uh, understanding what TCP/UDP was, right, um, to now being like a really good tech, or if you're, you know, the leader that sat there and said, okay, I saw something, a fire in this person's eyes, and now they're like one of the best analysts on your team.

You know, I know everybody out there, you know, has got those experiences, and I would say sit down for a minute and think about them, you know, because that's, that's kind of what we do and that's why we're here. Yeah, you know, when you look at it that way, um, you put aside the COVID which has obviously been, been horrible for, for us as a as a species. But you put that away for a second and you look at, you know, just that, that stuff that we've come through as a, as an industry and as people around you is, is absolutely fantastic. Yeah, that's, that's fantastic advice and perspective. Yeah, thank you for sharing that.

Of course. So you're on Colorado Equal Security Slack channel. Is there any, uh, way for people to find or follow you on social media? Yeah, um, on LinkedIn Probably don't post as much as others. I'm going to blame my boss for keeping me super busy.

Yeah. So I gave her my shout out. Now I got to give her my ding. That's fair. That's fair.

But yeah, I'm on LinkedIn. And like you said, the Colorado Equals Security Slack channel. Well, Jeff, it's been awesome. Thanks for joining me today. Oh, my goodness.

Thank you. Appreciate it. And let's call it a wrap. All right. Sounds good.

Thanks. All right. Thank you. That concludes my interview with Jeff Matisohn. Be sure to follow and support Colorado Equal Security on Patreon.

This is Jason Jaques saying be safe out there.

Learn more about the Colorado security scene at colorado-security.com, where you can see information about local security groups, a calendar of upcoming security events, and learn more about Colorado Equal Security. Reach out to Alex and Robb by emailing info@colorado-security.com.

Until next time, remember, Colorado equals security.