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 the newscast for episode 176 for the week of August 17th. Alex, uh, how you doing this week?

I'm good. How are you, Robb? I can't complain. You know, we were just mentioning before we started recording that the fires have been very noticeable. We went out for a bike ride yesterday out to Cherry Creek Reservoir, and the air was not— wasn't great.

Wasn't a really great time to go for a bike ride. No, I mean, it's sad. I mean, the fires in general are sad, but the, you know, then the air quality too, it just makes you not want to go outside. My— your eyes itch and Yes, sniffly and coughing and stuff like that is no good. And of course, I mean, I haven't done a ton of reading, but I heard that one of the big fires over by Glenwood, you know, the whole other side of the mountain range from us.

So if it's impacting us, it's just some— I'm sure being anywhere in the mountains or over there has been terrible. Certainly thoughts are with those folks. Yeah. And I think the one that is north of Grand Junction, I think, is like in the top 10 biggest fires in Colorado or something like that. So it's like history, you mean?

Like, yeah, there's a— it's a big one. Well, obviously a lot of, a lot of risk there for families and businesses. Hopefully, hopefully people get that under control and folks stay safe. Exactly. But we can't— this is not the Colorado Equals Fire show.

Let's talk about some security. You know, reminder, we have a Slack channel with a vibrant 1,500+ people contributing. And we just added a new channel this week for— oh man, what was there? There's a food and drink one and a Dungeons and Dragons channel at the request of a few folks. So I missed that one.

Whatever your niche is, uh, they're, they're getting created. Yeah, for sure. And if you come in and there's no place to talk about something, we're happy to make you a channel. And if you're wondering, but how do I get access to this thing? Go out to colorado-security.com and click on the Slack button and you'll find your way there, uh, just as easy as that.

Also, while you're on the website, uh, if you scroll all the way to the bottom, there's a form to fill out to put your email address on our mailing list. That mailing list does one thing and one thing only. It gets you one email a week with the show notes as soon as the podcast comes out. And of course, we are excited for you guys to know what's coming, and that's all we ever do. We would love to do more, but we don't have any time for it.

We'd love it if you would also rate us and subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcatcher. That's the way they say it now. Instead of podcast listening app, it's your podcatcher. So whatever your podcatcher is, rate us and subscribe so folks can find the show. Also, reach out to everybody you know and tell them— friends, foes, enemies, allies, relatives, whoever it might be— let them know about Colorado Equal Security and all the stuff that's going on here.

Send them to the website, have them listen to the podcast. We love people spreading the word around so we can get more people involved. And of course, if you want us to do even more than that, there's another couple other ways you could participate. We have a Patreon campaign, you can financially help support the show. And we do really appreciate the folks who are sponsoring us.

You know, it makes a big difference for us to, rather than paying for all of this out of pocket, to have some of that helped out by the community means a lot. It means that, you know, we're part of a group effort. So thanks for those who do it. Yeah. And then of course, as part of the podcast, we try and have an interview every week.

It has become harder and harder for Robb and I to get those interviews done for various reasons. So if you want to interview somebody, we would love for you to do that. Reach out, we can help you get set up and maybe even find some people that you might be able to interview. Or if you have somebody that you know you'd like to hear on the show, then maybe reach out to them and then we can figure out how to get that interview done. Awesome.

We have a couple of cool pieces of news in the community. You know, one thing that we started doing last year based on feedback and requests from the community was a Colorado Equal Security salary survey. So instead of, you know, instead of having to trust recruiters or other, you know, or monster.com or whatever, we figured we could do our own salary survey and anyone who contributes to that will get the results and hopefully use that for your next job career decisions and negotiations. It's underway right now. The link to that will be in the show notes and it's also in the Slack channel, in the general channel.

We'll keep pinging people about that. We'll have it open for a few weeks, but get it in there early so you don't forget, and certainly you can get the results when it's all done. Also, we have a book club that was started through the Slack channel. This month is the, the second month of that book club, and they are reading The Hard Thing About Hard Things. The meeting that they are going to have to talk about the book is going to be on the 27th of August, so if you are interested in participating in the book club, First thing would be to get that book, but then also join the Slack channel and the book club channel, and you can get all the details there.

Awesome. All right, let's jump over into the news. Uh, big— the big news this, this, uh, week is a big acquisition. Um, so Denver-based Vertafore, which was actually the 4th largest tech employer here in town, was acquired from the, the private equity firms that owned them in a $5.35 That's a pretty good number there, Robb. Lots of Bs in that.

So congratulations to Vertafore. Vertafore, if you don't know what they do, they make software for simplifying and automating insurance. So they're pretty widely used at this point, and it seems like they're only on the way up. Yeah, they sell to insurance companies. We've talked about Vertafore quite a few times because they moved their headquarters to Denver a few years ago.

The CISO over there, Stephen Edmonds, is a friend and former colleague of mine. It sounds like a pretty good thing. Roper, the company that bought them, in their history has never sold a company. They buy companies for the long haul and they look for these B2B— so Vertafore sells to insurance companies, not to consumers. They look for B2B software companies that they can help optimize and help run for the long haul.

This is a good thing and they're not going to be changing names. They shouldn't be losing any employees. It's going to be just kind of the future for Vertafore in a new organization. Yeah. Also, it seems like it was probably a good thing for the private equity companies that owned them prior to the sale.

I think that they bought them for about half as much as what they sold them for. So, nothing wrong with that. If you can double your money and I think doubling your money at $1 million is a lot different than doubling your money at $2.7 billion, right? It's a good return. They're probably pretty happy on that chunk of change they got out of it.

Yep. All right, next. There's a story this week talking about how Colorado public companies are making progress on getting women onto their boards. So, that's pretty cool. I feel like we've talked about stories like this before.

I'm sure this is something that comes out annually-ish. And this time around, it showed that— this study showed that 19% of board positions at just under 100 Colorado public companies are held by women. Previously, this was 2011, was the previous data point that they have, and it was only 7% held board positions. So that's a pretty big jump. Yeah, that's fantastic.

I think that it's nice to see that the movement is making a difference, and it's reasonable to say that the reflection— or excuse me, the composition of the board of directors is going to make a big difference in diversity inside those companies. You can see at the top of the list, I'm not sure if I can say this right, but is it Vyviv Medical? Is the company that has 50% of their board is women. That's the only company in Colorado with that high a percentage. But number 2, right behind them, is Vail Resorts with 4 out of 9 of their board members being women.

So there are a number of companies that I recognize on the list. DaVita's near the top, Ball Aerospace, Newmont Corp. So companies who you know and love are making an effort here, and I know it's a big trend that we're going to keep seeing moving forward, I hope. Yeah, definitely. I do think that's a good thing.

And I think we're only going to see it improve in the future. All right. So our next story is actually, it's a press release by, by OtterBox, or it's Otter Products. And they're, you know, they've, they're the company who I think we all know for what, decades have made these highly durable phone cases, right? And if you didn't know it, they are headquartered up in Fort Collins.

They're one of our local Colorado companies. You know, they're getting in on the COVID thing. And in addition to their high-quality, durable cases, they're now making sanitization products. Yeah. I mean, I think in general, people have known about OtterBox as long as the iPhone's been around, right?

So as soon as the iPhone came out and you had this super expensive phone that basically exploded when you dropped it, they've been making cases to make that much more safe. But yeah, they have these devices that you can put your phone in and it will use UV light to kill some of the germs on there, 99.9% of them, 99% in fact. So the devices are called PhoneSoap, but there is no soap, the UV light is the soap. Don't throw it in the water, please. Right.

Yeah, it's cool. If you click the link in the story, you can see a picture of the device and you can see the little UV light shining going on there. I didn't know something like this was created. Created, and I think it's going to be a good idea. It's a good market for them to create.

Yeah, I think, you know, part of this is talking about going back to school. Obviously, you want to keep devices clean as you go back to school. But I mean, in addition to that, you're going to have probably shared devices at schools, and being able to keep those clean is even more important. Yeah, as a parent, I'm not sure how I can best help with that problem. But I certainly think it's an important one.

For sure. All right. Next, we have a story talking about the 2020 Inc. 5000 list. And this is a list that I know we've talked about in the past. And these are the 5,000 fastest-growing companies in America.

And so, there were a number of companies in Colorado, 151, in fact, that were on the list. So, the way they measure growth is from where the revenue was in 2016, and you had to have a minimum of $100,000 in revenue back in 2016, and then where your revenue was in 2019 with a minimum of $2 million there. So, your ratio between those 2 years. So, yeah, like you said, over 150 in Colorado. There's a few I pulled out.

I'll say there is a security company on the list, Direct Defense. We've talked about those guys on the show a number of times. They were Number 2,904. Also, not surprisingly, there were several marijuana companies in Colorado that were on that list. But the number 1 Colorado company on the list I had never heard of is called Brewmate.

Yeah, me neither. Insulated drinkware. They came in at number 14 with nearly 12,000% growth. That is pretty big. Also, Guild Education, who we've talked about several times on the show, was just under 10,000% growth.

All those are gigantic numbers. Yeah, there was a bunch of other companies that we talk about on the show quite a bit that made the list. Guild Education, you just mentioned, Pax8, Ibotta, Bonusly, TrackVia, DataVail, those are tech companies. And I pulled out the fact that Chiba Hut made the list. I don't know if you know, Chiba Hut is a sandwich joint.

Uh, pretty funny to see those guys make the list. Um, joint is, is key in the, their name there. Um, yeah, there was one, there was one company that I called out on this list that's not a Colorado one because the number one highest ranking, highest growth company in the entire country was a security and privacy company called OneTrust out of Atlanta. I was going to mention that as well. Um, you know, OneTrust is, is really big in, in privacy helping with privacy requests from individuals and things like that.

And with GDPR and CCPA and other regulations like that where people need to track requests and process people's consumer information, deletion requests, things like that, they're just exploding. So I had never heard of them in 2016 and I'm now a customer of theirs. So that's— there you go. There's an anecdote for you, right? Exactly.

That's why they were at 40,000% growth. 40,000%. Well, that's a big number. All right, moving along here. Our next story is about a Boulder company called Stream that does in-app messaging, and they have just landed a $15 million Series A investment.

Yeah, so they do, as you mentioned, in-app messaging and basically helping companies insert those kind of things into their applications in an easier way, as opposed to having to develop them themselves. And, you know, part of the story here is talking about how initially when COVID hit, you know, they had some pretty big impacts because current customers, all of a sudden their revenues were drying up. So they were losing some customers. But then as everyone moved to doing everything virtual, all of a sudden there was a whole bunch of new companies that needed to do the things that they help them do. They do have some, some names of their customers on the list.

I know PowerSchool pretty well. They're like an online learning company. StockTwits, Match, TaskRabbit. So some, you know, some fairly big companies that work with them. And it's nice to see a Boulder or Colorado-based company do well and hopefully grow some staff and bring some more jobs to the area.

Yeah, good for them. Next, we have another story this week talking about the ransomware attack from Lafayette that we talked about a little bit last week. This one is actually from the Colorado Sun, and, you know, we are fans of the Colorado Sun here and of Tamara Chuang, who is the technology reporter over there. So this one goes into a little bit more detail than the story we had last week, which I think was probably from the Denver Post. Some similar information talking about, you know, what happened in Lafayette and other events that have happened in Colorado in the recent past, but lots of good detail about what's going on.

Yeah, well, I think we've said this in the past, but, you know, the way I look at Colorado Sun is, you know, they do the kind of reporting that we're too lazy to do, and I appreciate the fact that Tamara gets it done. And, you know, it's nice to see some of the security folks that we know, like Benjamin Edelman, who's the— we've had on the show previously, and he's the CISO for the City of Boulder, and Debbi Blight, the CISO for the state of Colorado, they were helping this and helping Lafayette recover from the incident. I think it's just great to see the community in action. Definitely.

I think I'm up next, right? Coalfire. We have a story this week from Coalfire, and it's all about how to scope your ISO 27001 certification. So this is, I'll tell you, you know, a few years ago when I decided I wanted to go after ISO for my current employer, It was— it would have been really useful to have an article like this that just kind of starts from scratch. What is— what does it look like at the beginning?

And, and how do I decide what should be in scope? And how do I decide where— what physical offices I need to do? It gets a little bit intimidating. This is a great, approachable, relatively short article that's a good way for you to get your introduction to ISO. Yeah, I think it's a great just idea in general too, right?

So if you're if you're trying to do some sort of compliance certification, whether it's ISO or something else. And, you know, it can seem pretty daunting if you think, oh, well, I have to apply all of these controls across everything that I do. That may not be the case. So I think thinking about first what is in scope for what you're really trying to accomplish is important. And there are definitely some good points in the article that reflect that.

Yeah, good enough. Cool. Next, there was an article from the National Cybersecurity Center talking about mobile voting and what the opportunities and challenges are with mobile voting. I think, in this year's election cycle, there was, you know, initially some talk about electronic voting, maybe not necessarily mobile voting, but some sort of electronic voting, and then, you know, mail— wider mail-in voting, all because of the COVID pandemic, but this really is going into how we could potentially do voting from mobile phones or things like that, and why we still aren't doing that. Yeah, I think it does a good job talking about where the risks are.

It seems like, hey, the technology exists, we should be able to do it, but one thing we don't maybe put in mind is the fact that there is no centralized voting authority, right? This is all state-based, so you have to get your states to be bought into whatever you're going to do. So it just takes more of a collaborative approach to getting— a consensus-based approach to getting anything done. You just can't dictate stuff. Right.

Yeah, and then, you know, it's pretty high stakes, right? You can't really get this wrong and have a successful election. You know, I have heard people say before, well, you know, if I can do banking on my phone, why can't I do voting on my phone? And as strange as it may sound, there's actually a greater leeway for fraud in financial services than there would be in something like voting. Yeah, it's kind of built into the system.

Uh, I think if you have— if you can't trust your elected officials, it does an awful lot of damage to your society in general. Definitely. All right, so next we'll jump over to Optiv, released a report this week. Um, it's their 2020 Cyber Threat Intelligence Estimate, exploring vulnerability attack methodology and vertical industry trends. So there's a pretty good mouthful there.

Um, but really what it's coming down to is just telling you what's going on in terms of attackers in the world right now. Yeah, um, it seems like in general this is the time for whatever reason, maybe it's because, uh, Virtual Black Hat just happened, that all of the companies are releasing their, uh, 2020 reports on 2019 activity. Um, but, uh, so some interesting, uh, information in here talking about, you know, where the threats are in verticals and other things like that. What was for sale on the dark web? Lots of good information if you're really looking to see where attacks are happening and what is being targeted.

Yeah, I thought that one of the interesting stats that they, they called out here in the summary is that 46% of marketplace sales were actually for passports or other illegal documents. So it's kind of interesting that I wouldn't have probably thought of that as being the top of the list, but apparently that's what the bad guys are most looking for. Yeah, um, and also nearly 2/3 of the incidents in the sample were phishing and brand misuse. So I think not surprisingly, those are, uh, the, the biggest avenues of attack these days. Good stuff.

Our last story is, uh, is actually one from Security Pursuit. We haven't had a lot of their content in the past, but I thought this was a, an interesting topic and one that's timely. It's how businesses can prepare for the oncoming IoT surge. How do you get your company ready for IoT? Yeah, I thought it was a good primer in that, talking about, um, you know, what they mean by IoT and what types of IoT risks there are, you know, where you should be looking for these things, um, and then, you know, some potential things that you can look at, like, um, the OWASP guide for top 10 for IoT devices.

So yeah, good intro to that and some good information on, you know, what you should look for in securing IoT devices. I did appreciate it at the beginning, they kind of break the IoT use cases into 5 different ones. And I bet most of us have a tendency to kind of think of 1 or maybe 2 of these 5 as, you know, what does IoT mean? And it probably just depends on what our exposure is. So consumer IoT is one category, voice assistants and smart homes things, and I'll be honest, that's probably the one that comes to mind first for me.

But then they get into, they call commercial IoT, so pacemakers in healthcare or vehicle tracking for industrial fleets. Industrial IoT, like HVAC digital control systems and smart agriculture. Infrastructure IoT for smart city applications. And then the last one, which I probably wouldn't have thought of at all, is military IoT. So wearable combat biometric sensors, drones, and surveillance robots.

Interesting that, you know, they're kind of helping us think of these different categories so we don't, we don't miss something that's probably critical. And I think I agree, I would not think of the military IoT one, but it is probably the most important one because that's really the only one that can, you know, potentially cause damage to your house if it was, if it's taken over, you know, having a drone all of a sudden come after you. Yep. It's good to see that. And of course, this is from our friend Steve Fox.

We probably should have him on the show one of these days. Or back on the show? Have we had him in the past? You know, I, I think— I don't think we have. I remember talking to him at one point about getting an interview, and I don't think it ever happened.

Yeah, we got to get him on the show. All right, uh, that's it for news. Let's go ahead and jump over to the Slack message of the week. Big thanks to Andre Gaeta. Andre has been an extraordinarily loyal supporter of the show for the whole time we've been around, and he's every week allows us to, to give a prize to one of the great comments we have in the Slack Slack board this week.

So this week, who do we have, Alex? This week, the Slack message of the week goes to Jason Jaques. Jason has been trying to sort of in general organize fun things for, for the community and recently is organizing a fantasy football league for Colorado Equals Security. So if you're on the Slack channel, you may have seen the announcements about that. But his post was posting the trophy that will be awarded to the winner of this year's fantasy football league, which is a pretty cool-looking trophy.

It is actually beautiful. I opted out of fantasy football just due to time constraints, but I kind of wish I had got in there now that I've seen it. You might be able to. I don't know if there's still any spots left. I'd also point out Jason's also regularly organizing poker tournaments.

Anyone who wants to get involved, Get, get in the Slack channel and meet some folks. Yeah, and you may also notice or recognize him from doing some of our guest interviews. So he's everywhere. He's everywhere. We love it.

So Jason will get to pick one item out of the Colorado Equal Security store, and we will look forward to seeing more great Slack messages from him next week. Awesome. Let's move over to events. We've got a few events upcoming in the next couple weeks. First, Cloud Security Alliance is doing their August meeting on the 18th.

We— on the 20th, we have the Colorado Springs ISSA chapter doing their August online series. On the 25th, Denver ISSA is doing a behavior-centric approach to securing data. On the 26th, ISC2 Pikes Peak is doing their August chapter meeting. On the 27th, ACES, the physical security group, is doing a women in security coffee chat with Carrie Darling. And I gotta point out that some— it's not, it's not yet, so we shouldn't be talking about it yet, but in a couple of weeks, ACES is doing a skeet shooting event.

So if you are someone who loves to shoot, this is an event you might look at. And I think it's sometime in middle September. You can go out to colorado-equal-security— colorado-security.com to find our event calendar and find all the events, all the details out there. Awesome. I guess last one for this month is on the 28th.

DC303 is doing their August meeting that's online and Uh, should be a lot of fun. All right, let's jump over to jobs. All right, University of Colorado Denver, the Anschutz Medical Campus is hiring a Director of IT Security and Compliance. Now, is this working with you, Alex? Um, this is not working with me.

It does have the Anschutz name on it, but it is, uh, not part of our organization, just something that, uh, Mr. Anschutz put his name on. So, uh, next job. Corhio is looking for a cybersecurity officer. Corhio is a medical— you said help doctors get placed, is that what you said earlier? Uh, yeah, it's a medical services company, you know, so it's not, um, not a hospital kind of organization, but, you know, in the medical industry.

Uh, Ball Aerospace is hiring an information systems security officer. That's probably on their cleared side based on that title. Twitter is looking for a staff product manager for security, privacy, and data protection. I thought that sounded pretty cool. Yeah, a product manager for, for those.

I'm trying to figure out exactly what that means because I don't think they have security products. Maybe they're building some, or maybe this is just how they embed security into their internal products. Well, they're Blue Team Alpha, the company. Blue Team Alpha is hiring senior security engineer focused on incident response. Nelnet is looking for a cybersecurity engineer for servers.

Zoom is hiring a senior security analyst for their SOC. Elevations Credit Union is looking for an information security engineer. Charles Schwab is hiring a senior cloud security engineer. And finally, Galvanize is looking for a cybersecurity curriculum development SME. So Galvanize, you know, they're a, you know, boot camp education company, so it looks like they're trying to build some cybersecurity content as well.

So if you want to teach the next generation of developers how to do security, number one, that'd be super valuable. Number two, here's your opportunity. Sounds good. All right, Alex, I think that is it for our news this week. I think we— but we do have a feature interview that you put together, right?

We do. This week, I believe we have an interview with Sara Avery. Sara is well known in the community if you've been around. She was at LogRhythm for a long time. She helped start the ISSA's Women in Security group here in Denver, and, you know, it's just an all-around great person.

So I sat down with her and had a nice chat about, you know, where she's from and where she's going. All right, looking forward to hearing it. Alex, thanks for your time. We'll talk to everyone again next week. Sounds good.

Thanks, Robb. Hello, this is Jeremy Cooper-Leavitt, Managing Director of Assurance at Charles Schwab. This is Colorado Equals Security for Colorado security professionals by Colorado security professionals.

Welcome to Colorado Equals Security. This is the feature interview, and today I have a very special guest. I would like to welcome Sara Avery. Hi, Sara. Good afternoon, Alex.

Thank you for having me. I'm good. How are you? I am doing well. Good.

What have you been up to? Oh wow, that's kind of a challenging, uh, question in COVID. COVID treating you well? You guys, uh, hanging out okay? Yeah, I mean, what have we been up to?

I think it's sort of the same old same old of Groundhog Day, but, um, we're making the best of it. And I'm incredibly lucky to have a wonderful spouse that I love spending the time with. Awesome. That makes all the difference in the world. Yeah.

Well, um, I think I originally knew you from Logarithm, and most people around town know you probably associated with LogRhythm, but you've also got a new job. I do. You're not with LogRhythm anymore. I am not. After 11 years and 11 months, I decided it was time to make a change.

And it's interesting because most people do know me as Sara at LogRhythm, so I've had to pivot the, you know, sales identity crisis, or who am I, because that was such a part of my psyche for so long. Well, I mean, 11 years is a long time. 11 years, 11 months. Well, because that's my lucky number, so I like to like say 11:11, you know, a long time. Did you give notice on November 11th?

Uh, no, no. So what, you have to like rain on my 11/11 parade? Thanks a lot. I'm just checking how far you're taking this, Sara. Just, just checking.

11/11, 11 years, 11 months. Um, yeah, and I'm at Zscaler, and I am absolutely thrilled to be somewhere new, doing something different, learning something else, um, and taking on a new challenge. That's cool. Cool. Before Zscaler and before LogRhythm though, you are actually a Colorado native.

That is not something that folks around here see very often anymore. Unicorn. They call me a unicorn. I envision a unicorn with these flowy hair and glitter. Sparkly.

So let's go with sparkly and pink hair. I am, I won't say how many years that I have been in Colorado because that will date me And since this is a podcast without cameras, they don't know how old or young I am. But yes, I have grown up here and enjoyed every moment of it. Well, that's good. I did live in Phoenix for 8 years and I didn't enjoy that.

But anyway. Well, when you, when you move to the, the center of the earth and, you know, there's everything is on fire. Correct. I can see where you might not like that. Yeah.

The people, great. The heat, not my thing. Yeah, I had a member of my team who you know too who moved to Phoenix, my Pulte team, um, and, uh, he's like, yeah, I love it except for the summer, you know. So anyway, yeah, I had somebody tell me when I moved down there, oh, it's not too bad, it's a dry heat. And I'm like, I don't care, 118 degrees at a dry heat, it's still hot.

So you know what happens in dry heat? Things sleep. Things dehydrate. They desiccate, right? Like they turn to, they crush.

Wither up and die. Exactly. And we don't need any of that. No, we do not. Awesome.

Oh, they do have a lot of pools from where we started the conversation pre-podcast. They do have a lot of pools. They do have a lot of pools. It's kind of nice. So that is a bonus.

You probably get more pools in your backyard than you do here. 100%. So since you were born and grew up in Colorado. Yes. I think you have a unique perspective and, you know, it's going to be a little different than most people.

How have you seen Colorado change from when you grew up here to when you are now? I mean, I guess sort of in general, but then also, you know, maybe like in a business sense or something too. Okay. So we will take this from the perspective of pre-COVID because I think everything is going to be turned upside down and on its head with COVID But I can remember back in the day driving to Winter Park because I was in the Eskimo Ski Club. If anybody's been around here a long time, they know what the Eskimo Ski Club is.

For people who don't know, it was a, you know, a ski organization where the kids would get on buses and we would go ski every Saturday. And we loved— we had our friends and we had the boys and the buffs that were cute, like all the things that would motivate us back then to go skiing. And we could get to Winter Park in, I don't know, 50 minutes on a bus. So one of the big changes is, you know, the, the growth that we've seen, the amount of people that we've seen come in. And, you know, that kind of goes to the traffic because now I go to Winter Park or Mary Jane and sometimes it can take you 4 hours.

So I would say the, you know, population has definitely grown. A lot. I think it's 800,000 people moved to Colorado last year. Don't quote me on that, but I think that's about right. That's quite a few people.

It's quite a few people. And so with that comes, you know, the expansive, you know, housing and the development with the buildings. Um, so a lot of people moving here, you know, specifically other than, you know, traffic, one of the things that has changed is the downtown skyline. Right. You know, I remember waking up every day to that blue Quest sign, right?

Um, and you know, that's gone and took me a little while to get used to it. But now we have beautiful buildings like the Optiven Gates Building and the Four Seasons. So it's changed, not necessarily, you know, better or worse, but the, the growth is there for sure. Yeah. As you know, my wife also grew up here and, you know, we live on the south side of town and she's always pointing out to me, oh hey, when I grew up, this part over here, this just used to be empty fields.

You know, there was nothing here. And now it's, you know, a shopping mall or an office park or whatever. All of it. Not too many empty fields anymore. No.

When I will drive down to Colorado Springs for meetings, it's insane to me. Like Castle Rock didn't exist, but certainly there was— it was empty fields and, you know, farmland and whatever. And now it's, you know, housing project after housing project after housing project. So a lot of growth. My first job out here was at IBM up in Boulder, but, but I lived in Denver, so I drove 36 every day.

Easy breezy. And, you know, you'd get past, you know, like the first exit at, you know, for Westminster, and then it was like there was— it was fields until you got over the hill and you could see your building. Yeah, yeah. And now it's not quite exactly that way anymore. There's some A little bit of a development over there.

But the good part of that is now there is an express lane. That's true. So even with the driving, you've got the express lane. But yeah, as long as the highway doesn't fall apart, you know, we're all good. So a little bit of a— what was that, a hole or, uh, yeah, something that kind of fell apart.

I wasn't there at the time, which is good. I'm still alive. That is good. Yeah. God, you weren't too.

Yes. Yeah. And the other thing I was gonna say on that topic too was When I've— I've been out here 23 years now. Yep. Um, and I remember like the biggest thing I could remember about downtown Denver when I first moved out here was like, wow, there's so many parking lots.

Like, like downtown was like, you know, 2/3 surface parking lots. And not anymore. Now it's— those are all gone. Well, the ones that are left are now being used as, uh, outdoor eating areas. So I guess that's good that there are some left.

Right. Yeah, that's good too. Yeah. So the growth, the skyline, from a technology and business perspective, I mean, there was a lot of oil and gas. Kind of sad to see where, as you know, yeah, you know, kind of what's headed there.

A lot of empty buildings downtown, I think, as a result of the pandemic. But here we go, dating myself again. But MCI, and I mean, we or huge telecom 20 years ago. Yeah, maybe. So I think we've seen kind of the way of telecom, telco, telecom, you know, kind of go away, although Dish is here.

So maybe bringing that back a little bit. And then we've had to, you know, reinvent ourselves into different lines of business, which is where technology and cybersecurity comes in. I think what we just moved up the ranks to be number 7 for technology. Yeah, um, so good stuff. I think Colorado does a good job pivoting when we see something going awry, to pull it back and, and find a way to thrive.

For sure. So for sure, for sure, for sure. Uh, so we just said that you spent almost 12 years at LogRhythm. Yes. Um, but I'm gonna give away a secret.

You probably had a job before that. So where did you start? Oh, where did Where did I start? Yeah, we want to go like way back on where I started or my tech career? Uh, well, whichever you want to do.

Okay, well, I'll tell you my first job out of college because it was actually— I love this question— um, the most rewarding job that I've ever had, um, which is what took me to Arizona. Okay, I, uh, went to work for a clothing company, and when I was offered, uh, the job for a clothing company back then, I didn't do my research probably before interviewing, I didn't know any better, and I thought, I'm gonna go to work for this hip clothing company in Arizona and meet all these people. I was young and didn't know any better. Well, as I get into the process, it was actually a clothing line for folks that needed adaptive clothing in residence homes, like nursing homes. So the backs were cut out.

Yeah, that served a purpose. What's not stylish about that? That sounds perfectly stylish to me. Oh, let me tell you how I made it stylish. I was gonna make this stylish come hell or high water.

So it was adaptive clothing, and, you know, the part that I loved about it was, you know, I had to get creative and find a way to help the residents enjoy what was left of their lives while also, you know, I wanted them to feel good in the clothing that was being presented to them. And some had a mind and some of them didn't. I did fashion shows, so I would go in and I would I can't— this is going to be on, on podcast and forever, but I would go in and set up these fashion shows. I would take the clothes, I would take the racks, I would have the, the, you know, women and men come in. I would sit them down because I really love elderly people, like it's my obsession, and a few in a next life I want to do that.

But I would sit them down, I did their hair, I did their makeup, and we did fashion shows. I know, it was awesome. So that was my first parlay into the sales world, if you will, but turned out to be not maybe cool but really rewarding. So yeah, taking it back. Yeah.

So, uh, so what was it, um, that brought you back to Colorado? So you were down there, you said 8 years? I was down there 8 years. Um, after my nursing home gig, I went into the trash business. Real glamorous.

Yeah, selling recycling services. Something that's got to be done, you know, it's got to be done. And it was recycling was really cool and hip and new back then, or I tell myself these things, right? It's what you believe in, um, kind of keeps you going. So I was working for Browning Ferris Industries, okay, trash company, and wanted to get back home to my family.

I'm really close to my dad and stepmom and wanted to come back, and there was an opportunity through the trash company to relocate. Nice. You must be desperate that I'm on the podcast. I was really excited. I'm just kidding.

Everybody's got their own story. This is my story. And they bring me back to Denver, and yeah, so I worked for the trash company for a little bit, and that was before Y2K and all of the things, you know, Y2K could— all the conspiracy theories in the world, computers were controlling everything. I'm like, I want a piece of that. Like, I just— maybe it's the angst or the anxiety.

I want a piece of what's really controlling all of us. Yeah. So I went to work for— do you remember South Seas Data? Oh yeah, back in the day. And they gave me my first tech job as— Jeff Kowalski.

It is Jeff Kowalski. And I can't remember, Mark something, or I can't remember the other guy's name. But every time I see Jeff, and I'm sure he's so tired of hearing me say, you gave me my first tech job, and they kind of laugh about it. So that's awesome. Yeah, South Seas, and then through there.

Yeah. And then you ended up at Logger So I started, I went to EMC. I don't want to go over that. I stayed 4 years at EMC. I know people think that's kind of a grind.

I absolutely loved it and thrived. That was through the whole, like, kind of MSSP phase 1. And then, yeah, fast forward, went to a security company and then ended up at LogRhythm. Yes. Yes.

So 12 years is a long time at a company. 11 years, 11 months. Are you not gonna get there with me? I think they're gonna say I left anyway. Well, I know, I'm getting it.

The— from the time that you were there till the time that you left, I know for a fact the company was very different. So talk about Logarithm when you got there. I'd imagine it's still a fairly— it was still a fairly small startup at that point. I was employee number 40. Okay.

And I remember that always because that was my extension. And if you can like think about this concept way back, like logging was like bringing all of your logs into a centralized repository, like kind of was a thing. People were starting to think about it. I remember thinking when they were talking about logging that, man, this is the coolest, most disruptive thing I've ever seen in my life. Because I, again, like, you know, challenges and things that don't go with the flow.

You know me as a human, that kind of goes with my character. And then this whole idea of correlation and taking stuff and giving it to people where they really need to figure out what they need to do in their— like giving them the visibility that they didn't have or like what's going on based on all this computer data basically to take action with a human. So it was disruptive at the time and I just, I loved it. So employee 40, that's where we're at. Cool tech.

If you fast forward now, it's one of the most saturated markets. Quote me on that. But one of the most saturated markets that's out there developing security operation centers and getting into AI. And, you know, it went from something that was, you know, kind of new to something that everybody's trying to do. And that's when I decided it was time to leave.

Yeah. So did you have essentially the same role the whole time you were there? Were you always a, a salesperson account manager kind of role? Salesperson account manager. But as you know, at one point I had half of the US, and then it would just kind of— as companies grow, my territory shrank, but your quotas go up.

Um, the area that I was in the longest was Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma before deciding airplanes weren't really my jam anymore and I wanted to come back to Colorado. And I met you. Yes. And best account manager I've ever had. I love you.

You're the best. Thank you. I try hard. I mean, that's the whole thing we started with. Like, I'm— I like people to be happy.

I want to take care of people. And that's just who I am to the core. So I think that makes me good at it. I think it makes you good at it, too. Thank you.

So I think, you know, in many industries, but our industry especially, I think people just they don't like salespeople. Yes. The technical folks in our industry. Correct. They don't want to be sold to.

They've had bad experiences of being sold a bill of goods. Pressure. They can do it better themselves. Tight budgets, all that kind of stuff.

So what is it that— how did you approach things differently to be successful in an industry where, where people didn't want to talk to me? Right. I would say I did a couple of things differently because relationships are so important to me. I mean, I established those first. So when I took over the Colorado territory, I found that there were a lot of people that were pretty unhappy with LogRhythm and the technology, and I did the right thing to make people happy.

So you at Pulte, for example, were pretty unhappy. We got you a free appliance, you got happy. But through that, getting to know you, we established a good relationship, you know, and trust. And I've done that— there were a lot of technology issues back then— I've done that through a lot of people. So I really, I live by the mantra, do the right thing and the money will follow.

So I go in, I know people will do— I go in and I really try and solve people's problems. I mean, I really do. But I go about it in a way, and it's not strategic or conniving, of getting to know the people, educate in a low-pressure way about the technology. And then, I mean, I'd love for you to tell me, but if I have educated you and we have a good relationship and you know that for a Zscaler example and you're going to journey to the cloud, you're going to call me and I don't have to do, you know, a lot of outreach. So relationships, taking care of my people, and then, you know, women in security.

I didn't start that to get to know people, but as a part of that, it's helped me with my brand and also helped me get some, you know, folks who know who I am that will take my call if I have to in fact call them. Right. And yes, and I definitely want to touch on the women in security stuff, but yeah, I want to ask you a couple more LogRhythm things first. You go. So, your show.

Yeah. So, so, you know, we talked about how things were at the beginning and how the the company grew. Yeah. Um, you know, through any sort of startup's, uh, life cycle— well, not any, but, you know, many— it's, um, you know, we're, we're independent, we're running on our own, we're, you know, figuring out where the money's coming from. Um, at some point you take money from somebody, and then you take money from somebody else, and then they want it back, and then they want it back, and a return.

There's, there's pressure on that. And then, you know, I mean, ultimately with Logarithm You know, they were purchased by private equity, which is, you know, even that sort of next step beyond. It's not just taking money from somebody. It's, you know, giving up ownership in the company for money. How did you see the company change over that, that timeframe?

Wow. You're going to set me up here.

How did I see it change? Well, keep it, you know, if you don't have something nice to say, don't say it at all. I think is the— what your grandmother would tell you. But the way I saw it, you know, private equity comes in and if I read what private equity companies do, they come in and take struggling companies, figure out profits, loss, EBITDA, all of that to turn them around to be more attractive companies for another purchase or IPO or whatever, whatever that is. And I think I was a little bit blind to if we were struggling or not struggling at that time.

So when they, you know, came in and do what all private equity companies do, you know, they, they cut a lot of things. And so, and a lot of people have to turn the profit and make it look good. So for me, what changed was a lot of the people that I loved started leaving. I mean, when LogRhythm was LogRhythm in the day, we were working so hard to build the coolest company and we all felt like we were a part of something and we were a part of something good. We, we didn't feel that way, or I didn't feel that way.

I don't want to put words in someone else's mouth when private equity came in and then the cuts started impacting me and my ability to take care of the customers and my relationships. And I just stopped feeling good about it because he said, why am I successful? I can't go at the core of what Sara Avery is and who I am because I don't have the support for my customers. I mean, it's just the most important thing. So yeah, so yeah, I mean, and that's, that's always the hard thing, right, is there's always going to be change.

You know, you, you can't stop from growing and there's only certain ways to grow. But I've been in places where— I was just going to ask you. You start at— I mean, even so, I started my career at IBM, and while it was a gigantic company, the managed security services group that I was in was really small. We were small and tight-knit, and it was great. We were almost like a little startup within IBM.

Then we grew, and then IBM bought ISS, if you remember ISS from back in the day. I do. And then there was an integration there and it kept getting bigger and different people and now everything was, I don't want to say out of control, but like— You lose control of what you have. Yes. It's not the same as what it was and, you know, it just makes it hard.

And, you know, in my case, I don't fault anything or anybody or hold any grudges like that because stuff is going to change and you can't help that. Yep. But, you know, you always hearken back to those times, the good old days. The good old days. You know, back when it was good.

The good old days. Yeah. I mean, I miss so much when it was good and we were all working towards that common goal. And, you know, when you start to lose control, I think, yeah, it gets hard. Yeah.

You talked about it a little bit, but sort of more generally, not LogRhythm-specific, but, you know, I think a lot of people— sorry, a lot of salespeople struggle in connecting with, um, you know, with their buyers in security. You know, you talked about relationships, but, you know, as someone who has been successful, and I think you do it the right way, what would you recommend to those— the people that are cold calling me every day, or that are um, you know, high-pressure sailing me to, to buy their stuff. But, you know, what advice do you give to them? When I'd like turn that around a little bit on you and ask you a question, because I'm always here to learn and grow, and I know that I don't have all of the answers. You know, as salespeople, a lot of our, um, you know, salaries, but a lot of the money we make is tied to commissions.

And so then we also have— we all have external pressures from our bosses who want us to make sales and, and do these things. And so then the necessary evil is those— the cold calls. But I don't want to say tell people not to cold call. And I'm gonna go back to Randall. Randall, I hope you're listening so you hear me say this.

He's the one who taught me to get involved in the community. Don't pick up the phone and cold call, but get involved in your community. Show people you care.

I'm just not a cold caller, and I don't want, you know, to hear this like I'm not picking up the phone and calling, because if I believe you do it a different way, getting to know people, contacting them through what used to be events, but just get creative in how you're connecting, and a cold call is not gonna do it. Let me ask you this question. So I recorded a video because I still now at my new job, I'm trying to connect with people in Arizona and New Mexico areas I've never called on, and I recorded a video of like who I am. I'm not trying to sell you anything. I just want you to know who I am, kind of what we do.

Is that a different approach than a cold call? Would you even look at that? And tell me what works for you, because for me, I know people here and I just established relationships because I love, love people, you know, and use my— your peers, like you would help me in accounts too. Well, and I think Did I even answer your question? There's so much to it.

You did answer it. Okay. But I think, you know, from my perspective, one thing is if I have met you and we've made a relationship through an event, through a something, through whatever it is besides your sales activity, if you're calling me, now it's no longer a cold call. Right. You know, maybe it's a lukewarm call depending on whatever, you know, it could be, you know, you know, warmer than that depending on what our relationship is.

But, um, you know, at least I know who you are. Yeah. And I, I know what you're doing and stuff like that. If someone just reaches out to me blind— yeah. Um, and the thing I hate the most is someone will send you a meeting invite.

Uh, that drives me bonkers. I would never do that to someone without ever having met before. It's like, hey, I want to meet with you, here's the invite. Because someone's going to accept that, right? I— somebody must.

If, if they keep doing it, then someone must actually accept it. Or like people higher than them think that that's a relevant strategy. Maybe. But it kind of reminds me of timeshare sales. Yep, right.

If some— if you go to a timeshare and then they have the whole high-pressure, well, you know what, this deal is only for right now, if you don't book within the next 2 minutes, uh, then it's gonna go away. It's gonna be a lot more expensive if you really want it. Yeah. Um, you know, you've got to lose so many people because of that, because no one wants to be told what to do or how to do things. But they continue to do it, so it must work on some people.

Well, if it works on the timeshare— I mean, that was a big business for a while. But I feel like what that makes me lose— if I, if I were to say to you, and I would not, your price goes away, right? If I say that it's and somebody's making me say it, I'll say, but it's not really going to. Like, I'm right. I lose credibility because we're always going to honor that price.

And so for me, in building the relationships, it's all about I'm going to tell you the truth where I'm going to be, you know, not force you to do something.

Yeah, it just like I am genuine. Like, you have to be genuine in what you do. And those are tactics. And someone on your side of the chair will see right through that. It's not our timeline, it's always your timeline.

And as a good salesperson, if you plan that timeline together, you're probably gonna execute on it better. And salespeople won't be in this, oh my gosh, why didn't we get it done? It's the end of the quarter. And, you know, playing all these games. Like, do your business the right way, manage it the right way with your customer, and you don't get into those high-pressure games where I'm gonna take this away from you.

You know how much I love people taking stuff away from me. Not at all. So I, I think one of the other things too is, um, some of the responsibility does fall on our side too. Yeah. Um, I think we need to play— we being the, uh, the buyers— need to play by the same rules also.

And I try and be as open and honest as I can. You always are with, with salespeople, right? It's like if you come to me and say, hey, I want to sell you XYZ, and we're having a conversation and I say, okay, I would love to hear about XYZ. I don't have a project for XYZ. I don't have a budget for XYZ.

I probably don't even need XYZ, but I'm willing to hear you out about what it is. I've just laid it out there for you so that when we have this conversation, you know after, you're not gonna turn to me and go, okay, now how many are we gonna buy? I told you, if you wanna keep this relationship going, you're welcome to, if I have the time, But, you know, it's probably not going to be fruitful for you, at least not right now. And listen to what you've heard. Don't always— it is not at the end of the day.

Yes, you want to, you know, earn the money in your paycheck by getting this done and retire a quota. I mean, that's the, that's the gig. But you don't want to not hear what people are saying to you. I mean, that's the quickest way to, you know, you want to have a relationship. Quickest way to burn a bridge.

I mean, you did it for Zscaler. The other day. I thought it was amazing. I got to listen in, and at the end, you know, in the beginning you kind of set the stage. I want to learn about this great technology.

I might be putting words in your mouth. Let's go with— I think you said great technology. I said, this is amazing. This is amazing. I want to buy right now.

Wait, you're not gonna hard close me on that right now? But if the rep had tried to push on that harder, right, then you won't take that call anymore. And so it's just kind of not worth it. And just the whole high-pressure thing, I just So let me ask you a question. Sure.

So since we are salespeople and do have management asking us to do things and we do have quotas and we do need to feed our families, to make it a little dramatic, wouldn't be Sara if it wasn't a little dramatic, you know, what is the best approach for you? Like, if someone doesn't know you, is there a way So I know not everyone is like this, but me personally, if someone says, hey, and you know, COVID is, you know, we'll take COVID a little bit off the table because it's a little bit different now. But if someone says, hey, I would love to buy you a cup of coffee and just spend half an hour talking, I almost always will accept an invitation for someone to go have coffee. And, you know, is that part of your— you want to educate yourself on the technologies in the world kind of a— so I, I think this more goes back to my, my feel of community. So if someone wants to come and, and hang out and spend half an hour and talk about— if it's their, their product, great.

If it's about what's going on in the community, it's about how— if it's about how they can be better and connect with people, or yeah, Whatever it is, or if it's just, hey, I want to get to know you in a, you know, genuinely get to know you, not try and sell you something. That's the key, right? And yeah, I mean, I do understand as well, right? If you are trying to get to know me, then there's probably some underlying reason for, you know, whether it's sales or whatever, but I'm still willing to have that half an hour of coffee with you, and I will be open and say, hey, okay, this has been a nice conversation. Great.

Um, I'll give you a call. Well, I'm, I'm not going to blow somebody off, but I mean, it's, um, if it's not right for me, if it's not right for them, whatever, I, I get it. Um, and it's that, that openness. But if you just say, hey, I'd love to buy you a cup of coffee, I'll only take half an hour of your time, great. And the second part is that now we have a relationship.

Yeah, right now, that's, that's all that you have established, a connection to let it kind evolve the way it's going to evolve, as hard as that is for people. Even if I never see you again as part of your current role, maybe you go somewhere else and you're selling something that I might be interested in. Okay, I know you now, we have talked before, then it makes it that much easier. Again, I know not everyone is as willing to give up some of their time to do stuff like that, but you know, that's kind of just— that's how I am. So when it goes back to if you do the right things, the money will follow.

Don't focus so hard on on the money and getting a deal. Focus on everything that's in between, because everything in between is going to be incredibly rewarding anyway. Let me ask you this question. So, um, now that I have your attention, it's the Sara story. Now it's my turn.

Okay. Yes. Turn this around on you. Well, I mean, you, you know me and you know I'm genuine and I like, I have to, um, there, you know, there are sales techniques that I'm hearing about and one of them is, you know, look up— so I like to try and, you know, hone my craft— look up something that they've done recently and send an email like, I saw you present at blah blah blah blah blah. So for me, that feels disingenuous.

Well, if you, if you actually did— well, of course I would only do it if I did, but still. So it's, um, how many other people are doing that? Yes, I agree. Um, it, to me, it usually does sound disingenuous. If you, if you did it as part of another ask, like, hey, I'm not just blindly reaching out to you because you're on a contact list.

I do know a little bit about you and I did see this thing. Okay, maybe. But I mean, in general, I'd rather you just reach out and say, hey, I don't know you. I know you, I know you don't know me. I would just, I would love to spend 30 minutes.

That's all I'll take. What, you know, whatever it is, I won't sell you. I'm just want to start something, that kind of thing. Understand where I'm coming from. I got my bosses breathing down my neck and yeah.

Well, and I mean, I get it from their perspective. They want you to sell stuff. That that's what they're they are. But you know, hopefully if if there are more people like you that are trying to do it the right way, then eventually there'll be more people that are you know regional sales managers and VPs and whatever that are like oh well. I'm not gonna pressure people in this way, even though I know we need to make numbers.

But maybe if we can solve the world's problem, yeah, solve the world's problem. It'd be really great if you guys could publish all of your projects and who you're willing to look at and when you could take phone calls from us Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and then let us call you. Like, you tell us what to do. Yeah, how soon you can send the check. I don't have to say who's the champion and who's my business buyer if you just publish it or send us a, you know, in an email what your priorities are.

But what are, um, Yep, Sara's show. We're going to turn the tables a little bit more. Is that okay? Sure. So I read something the other day about, you know, priorities changing due to COVID.

One was forgoing upgrades. I think the other one was consolidation of tools, remote workforce, obviously, and making people more productive and effective. Are those things that you and your CIO are talking about? And like, What is COVID going to do, do you think, to budgets this next year and all of that? Yeah, how are priorities shifting?

I, I think, um, I think that there will be a lot of people that are looking to get leaner depending on, you know, what business segment you're in. It may be like really, really, really, really, really lean, like we're only going to keep the most essential stuff and, you know, work really hard to get out of contracts we already have kind of thing. Yeah. But I think even companies that are doing well, I think that they're probably going to try and tighten the belt a little bit just because of how uncertain things are right now. Do you think they'll take a pause and figure out what their security network strategy is going forward?

Potentially, but I also think that there are companies that— not every company, but I think there are companies that are going to be thinking strategically. And may say, oh hey, this whole thing caught us flat-footed. There are going to be some things that we need to do to make sure if something like this happens again that we are prepared. And that could be like business continuity-wise, that could be journey to the cloud. See how I did that?

You know, people-wise, you know, where people are, all that kind of stuff I think is going to be a focus for the for the smartest, you know, most strategic thinking companies right now. But there are, you know, there are industries right now that are still making basically zero revenue since March. And, you know, if you're not making any money, it's tough to spend money. So, but if you're not making any money, is it some, you know, realistic for me to think that you may, you know, look at what you have to consolidate spend to save? So, um, potentially.

My, my guess is that, um, if people could make the numbers work, they could think about consolidating to save. Yeah. Um, you know, it's tough if you have to put out a big outlay to save in the, in the long run. Yeah. I mean, sometimes that, that's a legitimate strategy and people do that, but I think right now it's more, okay, I, I I can replace these 3 products with one that has all the features.

Maybe they're not best in class, but I can, I can do that and get away with it. Or I know one platform I have, I can just add some licenses to that and get rid of another platform that has a similar function, but we weren't using it. Those kind of things. So yeah. Um, all right, my turn again, Sara.

Okay, gosh dang it. Um, see, build relationships and you ask questions and it's amazing what information you can get. That's right. So we talked a little bit about community. Yep.

And you are big in our community because you helped start the Women in Security group with ISSA. I did. So let's talk a little bit about that. How did that come about? How did it come about?

Well, if we go back to Sara's a native, it only seems apropos to talk about, like, my mom died when I was little. Throw the vulnerable part in there. I think they say that's a good thing to do when you're telling a story. I'm just kidding. But she died when I was little, but the things that I remember from my mom is, you know, she was a leader in the Equal Rights Amendment in the '70s.

I was raised on free to be you and me and free thinking and to be— they told me I was bossy. Now they call it a leader. But I mean, I was just raised to empower women, and so it's who I am to the core. It got started when I was covering Kansas and Missouri. I got linked up with a group of great cybersecurity professionals in Kansas and Missouri that were starting their own Women in Security group.

I was part of the initial meetings, and I loved the feeling and the empowerment and helping, you know, students get into cybersecurity. And, you know, a lot of tech folks— I'm generalizing, and I don't mean to generalize— but some people have challenges with large, you know, group settings and self-esteem anyway. So I just saw people that were scared to kind of talk in large groups. Yeah, won't give the specific example, just say, you know, this is the first meeting where I've felt comfortable expressing myself. So that was in Kansas and Missouri, and when I came over to cover Colorado again for Logarithm, I thought, you know, I want to do that because again, it's at my core.

So I was at RMISC, I think it was RMISC, MISC trade show, my first one in the region. I didn't know anybody, and I've had this on the brain, and you know me, it's like if something's like— I'm excited about something, I've got to talk about it. And this woman walks up to the table, I have no idea who she is at all, and I just said, let me ask you a question. What do you think about this idea of doing a women in security group here in Colorado? And she says, I think that's a great idea.

I think they've tried to start them here before, hasn't really started. You need to go meet this guy Robb Reck. Okay, I don't know who Robb Reck is. Come to find out it was Debbi Blyth. Either— I don't— you don't know him?

Yeah, you familiar with him? It was Debbi Blyth, and she was just good random person, right? I had no idea who she was, and she was so smart and nice and all of these things. And so my idea— she really gave me all the information I needed because he was the then ISSA president. To go have the conversation with him.

So I'm not gonna, you know, set up a call. I want to start a Wiz group. We chat, and he kind of gave me the look— you can verify this with him— like, we've tried to start this before, this never gets off the ground, here's another person who's gonna try. And I think he will tell you it was the fastest he's ever seen something get spun up. I got Liz from Optiv, Emily from Proofpoint, Steph from Netscope, she was at Check Point at the time.

We just gathered up, and of course Nancy, Mary, and Debbi, and Sue Lapierre, but we just got a group of women together and to see this thing take off, I think that was in, we had, I guess it wasn't RMISC, it must have been earlier in January. Anyway, we had a meeting spun up that had maybe 100 people within 6 weeks and a great board and it's just gone on from there. That's awesome. And so you guys, I know pre-COVID were doing quarterly meetings, getting everybody together in person. How has— how have things changed since everyone's been forcibly remote?

Yeah, well, like everybody else, we have moved to a virtual world. Yeah. But we have not seen anyone, I don't think, drop off from ISSA from membership. And the participation. So the last meeting we did was kind of all around security and the changes in remote workforce, and we had a panel with Debbi and Mary and Sue and Erica Boyle and Jane from Vertivore.

Great panel.

Everybody loved it. Like, everybody loved being back together, and we got t-shirts to make it like the community in here. We're all here to support each other. And then we have our next meeting September 15th. Okay.

I was listening to your last podcast, and Robb mentioned Tyler Warren for the, you know, from the summit for Cloud Security Alliance. We're doing it in conjunction with their September meeting. Oh, nice. Yep. So we can bring that together because this is as much about empowering women as it is empowering everyone.

And we, you know, the cohesivity that we need to work with our peers, whatever, you know, whoever, whatever gender, whatever pronoun that we have, we want to make sure that we include everyone. So yeah, we're doing that September 15th. And the topic, and this is The only time I've been self-serving a little bit is SASE, but I also— Secure Access Service Edge— but I also think it's a very relevant topic right now. We have Joe Skorupa, who was the SASE author from Gartner, has agreed to come and do a presentation with us. And the only reason they said they would do it is because all the vendors are playing so nicely together and empowering each other.

So Yep, and then we have a fabulous panel that's going to participate in their journey to the cloud, what it looks like, what they've learned, and all of that. So I'm really excited. That sounds really cool. I know people will be able to find more information about that on the Colorado Equal Security event page, but where else would they look for women in security stuff? On our— on LinkedIn.

So we have a women in security page on LinkedIn, and then since we did start through ISSA, Rob Rack. They send out all of our invites. They've been incredibly supportive, but the presidents and everything have changed to get the information out to our members, and so we do it all through ISSA. Awesome. Yep.

Well, you know what, Sara? We are just about out of time. What? Can you believe that? I feel like we just got started.

I know. Can I do one more shameless plug for Wiz? We just placed, I think, our 10th mentor intern into a full-time job. Talk about— talk more about that. You guys have a mentoring program?

So when we had a bunch of us running Women in Security, we had an official mentoring program. I don't know any other way to say it, but it's kind of me right now. But the good— like Chris Martinez from Bank of America, you— like people reach out to me and say they have internship positions, and through the meetings I know the people and we put them together. So yeah, wonderful gal who was the intern for Chris Martinez is now over in entirety, just secured her first SOC job. She's absolutely thrilled.

So it's not official, but I do everything I can when people reach out to me to put them in those positions and connect them with all you wonderful people who take my calls. That's awesome. I know from experience volunteering is very hard, so I want to say thank you for doing that. Thank you for saying that. It sounds like maybe you could use some help in workload with Women in Security.

If other people want to step up and help volunteer, or do you need people Well, let me rephrase. So the mentoring part has fallen to me, and it's also just because, you know, lack of time to build that back up again. No, I mean, Steph Jasper at Netscope has been phenomenal. She's kind of my right-hand gal. Liz at Optiv is still amazing.

Emily. So I know— Debbi, all the people I mentioned, everybody is still helping. So yes, volunteering is a lot. It's just the mentor program. It was our good friend Nancy who is now in Vegas.

Yeah, so I'm sure she would still do it, but we wanted her to get settled. And we miss you, Nance, so much. But anyway, it, it really falls on me that I haven't had the time to build it back up, and it's just, you know, we will. But thank you. Awesome.

Any other topics we didn't hit, Sara, that we— you wanted to talk about? Well, let me look at my copious notes. Um, no, I don't think so. Awesome. We're good.

I thank you for— appreciate it. I appreciate you stopping by and doing the interview. All you CISOs and CIOs out there who want to go to SASE, take my calls, please. Congratulations on the new job at Zscaler. Thank you.

I'm sure people will be hearing from you if they are in your target market and target area. Lovingly. Lovingly. Not pushing. No, not pushing at all.

Thanks again. Good talking to you, Sara. This has been Colorado Equals Security. And we will talk to you next time. 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 equals security.

Reach out to Alex and Robb by emailing info@colorado-security.com.

Until next time, remember, Colorado equals security. Security.