47. Why shouldn't I run a Security Operations Center on my own? With Guest Ben Bohman

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Listen in as Ben Bohman, Director of Solution Engineering Comcast Masergy talks about the value a customer gets from their Security Operations Center, with everything from endpoint detection to threat hunting and remediation. The price to value in this offering is unparalleled!

Transcript of episode can be found below.

Josh Lupresto (00:01):
Welcome to the podcast that is designed to fuel your success in selling technology solutions. I’m your host, Josh Lupresto, SVP of Sales Engineering at Telarus. And this is Next Level BizTech. Hey everybody, welcome back. I’m your host, Josh Lupresto, SVP of Sales Engineering here at t Telarus. Today we are on talking Security, but we’re talking with Ben Bowman, the man with the most well manicured beard in the channel. He’s also the director of Solution Engineering for Comcast and Masergy on the indirect channel. Ben, welcome on my man.

Ben Bohman (00:38):
Hey, thanks Josh. Thanks for having me.

Josh Lupresto (00:41):
So today the track is why should I not run a security operations center on my own, obviously from the customer perspective. So Ben, before we kind of get into a little bit of the why and your product sets and some, some deals and things like that, I wanna hear your story. Uh, talk to me about your personal background, how you got into this world. Is it a linear path and you always wanted to be this, or did you have some crazy jobs along the way?

Ben Bohman (01:08):
Yeah, I’d say this definitely wasn’t linear, and even working in technology was kind of a nod. Like if I go back to like my days in high school and what I was focused on, it definitely nothing in technology and fast. In fact, when I got my first technology job, I had never even own a computer at that point. But anyhow, I was reading a newspaper at a Denny’s, I was working as a waiter at Denny’s when I was 18 years old. And it was back when the MCSE were getting very popular, right? Mm-hmm. , the, the Microsoft certifications were gaining traction. I heard some side people talking about people were making a ton of money as an mcse, and that really was the motivation. I was like, well, maybe I don’t have to work at Denny’s anymore, or something like that. And so I went and signed up for a MCSE course, uh, ended up getting my certification, was hired by a friend of mine who was running a IT department.

Ben Bohman (01:58):
He was an IT director for an international printing company, uh, out in Utah. And he hired me on just part-time to gimme a little bit of experience. And that just kind of took off from there. He actually quit one year later. I started running the computer department after like one year of total computer experience. , it’s all, yeah, it’s all surreal to me. I mean, literally, like I didn’t, he gave me my first computer as a Windows 95 by 86, a three by 86, like Windows 95 machine, because I own one, but I just somehow picked it up. I mean, Google was my best friend, right? . I just would Google everything and, and within two years, you know, I was, I was running the department and it just, again, it just kind of organically worked out. And then I ended up getting into the consulting side of things after that. And I think that was great, experiencing that buying side and being the IT director, and then also like getting into the consulting and understanding that, but understanding the pain points that you have when you’re dealing with vendors, especially the communication and all the, all those kind of problems in technology. You know, it, it helped me a ton.

Josh Lupresto (03:02):
So, uh, what I heard from that is that next time we get together, we’re going to Denny’s,

Ben Bohman (03:06):
We’re going

Josh Lupresto (03:07):
Where? To Denny’s?

Ben Bohman (03:08):
Yes. Denny’s, . I was, I was a great waiter at Denny’s. And I, you know, what’s funny is I always talk about like, uh, EQ over IQ when it comes to technology and engineering, right? I always talk about that. And I learned a lot of those soft skills being a waiter, like learning how to communicate with people, talk with people. And I think sometimes obviously you’re great at it, but I think that’s one of the issues that we have in engineering is there’s a lot of engineering who can design and and know technology, but they can’t talk about technology in a way that makes sense to other

Josh Lupresto (03:38):
People. A hundred percent. We talk about it, uh, for se we talk about do you want Big S little e or little s Big E Yeah. And I think the, the idea of Big E is gone. Uh, it’s the big s that certainly prevails

Ben Bohman (03:51):
A Absolutely. And, and we’ll talk about more, I mean a little bit more about how companies look at, especially, I know we’re talking about SOC today and everything, but how companies look at that and, and that’s why that, you know, that the Big S is so, is so important.

Josh Lupresto (04:05):
Agree. So let’s talk about, uh, your current role. Uh, you know, really your current role. Then talk to me about the whole Masergy Comcast thing.

Ben Bohman (04:15):
Yeah, so my current role is the director of solution engineering, like you said, for the indirect channel. So my role and my team’s role is a dedicated engineering resource for the channel. We just talked about that soft skill, right? That engineering skill as far as being able to tell a message and, and talk to a community that of sellers that don’t really understand the weeds or get into the weeds of technology, right? And that’s what my team does, is we go out and we talk about the technology, but we more talk about how are you leveraging the technology, how do you speak about the solutions that we offer, and use that to open doors. So we’re having technical sales training almost with the, with the partner community, just helping them again, understand how to open the door. And I think when you’re talking to the partners, the most difficult thing isn’t really having the conversation with the customer. Cuz once you’re doing that, you’ve brought in you, right? You’ve brought in your engineers, you’ve brought in the vendors, engineers, and the experts. The most difficult thing in sales is actually opening the door and having that conversation. And so when you can tie that technology into something that’s relevant to the partner community, it, it just really, it, it really means a lot to, and it resonates. They’re very appreciative.

Josh Lupresto (05:23):
So, so talk then about, uh, I love the approach. I agree. I think you do a phenomenal job at that approach. Uh, and, and we really love the, you know, how how much we can lean on you, uh, and it helps us, it makes our job easier. And so I, you know, there’s a, there’s this convergence with the Comcast Masergy side. Mm-hmm. , talk to me. I mean, we’re, to me, I think we’re just talking about a subset of the product sets that you guys have today. But, but talk to me about, you know, you came from that Masergy side and, and you know, I want to wanna have the partners that maybe haven’t worked with the broader family of the Comcast and Masergy, really, what’s, what’s all consistent in there from a product set? What’s the approach?

Ben Bohman (06:00):
Yeah, I mean, the, if you look at the core of the product set, right? If you, if you wanna call it the pillars or the three pillars, and this is, you could almost say the three pillars of many technology companies, right? Security, voice and collaboration and network, right? I mean, the, and if you just sum it up to that, like that’s really still, nothing’s changed, right? I mean, that, that’s still what those three pillars are. In fact, that’s still what Comcast three pillars are. There’s a couple things that I think both of us have done, and the way I look at it is Comcast has became a better company because of acquiring Masergy. And Masergy has definitely became a better company because of that, that acquisition. So Masergy has always operated on a global scale. That is one thing that Comcast has never really been able to do.

Ben Bohman (06:44):
They’ve never been able to get into that global, the, the global deals, the, those bigger deals that, again, that, that spread across, um, every nation mm-hmm. , which we’re able to do. Now, what we aren’t, weren’t able to do, especially like where most of our funding was with vc, you know, private equity, things like that, is we weren’t really able to scale. So we had the solutions, we had these very advanced and very unique solutions, but we were never able to scale those solutions because once the venture capitalist like made their initial investment, they don’t really invest more into like that r and d. So we got, we get great r and d up front, we get great investment up front, and then it kind of tape off now with Comcast, I mean, we’re, we’re going from a, from a decent size company to work now working for a $200 billion, $250 billion company. So now that budget changes and what we’re able to do and what we’re focusing on now, especially in the security sector, is, is really changing. So it, it’s been great. I mean, I was hesitant, honestly. Like at first I was like, I didn’t see that coming, but it, it’s been really pleasant.

Josh Lupresto (07:48):
So, yeah. No, good point. Uh, talk to me about, I mean this, you, you’ve got a lot of background on the security side. You, you see a lot of things, and I know we just summed it up with security and, and connectivity and voice in that. What do you like most about this? What, you know, of all the things you get to touch of all the parts of your role, what do you like the most?

Ben Bohman (08:07):
Well, I’d say, and this goes with security, but technology. And I always like having that bigger technology conversation because I think, and especially when we’re talking about security, now, security touches every aspect of a technological ecosystem, right? I mean, you have to agree that we can’t talk about voice network cloud applications without talking about security. So when I, when I look at technology and what I’ve always loved about it, and even talking to when I was 22 years old, right? I just became an IT director. I like the business strategy, I solving business problems. And I always talk about that. And when, of course, Josh, when you hear me talk, I’m always talking about we solve business problems, not technology problems. Yeah. And I love that. I love going in and almost reversing what’s done. Like right now, we talk about, a lot of engineers go in and they say, okay, well, we’re go, this is what we’re going to do to solve the problem.

Ben Bohman (09:01):
And so immediately they get on their problem solving this is what and how we’re gonna do it. But they don’t go into the, why are we doing it? Like, why is it needed? And that, that’s what I like, I like looking first at why is that technology needed? Why do, why do you need a maybe a SOCk as a service or an MDR platform? Why do you need sdwan? Why do you need any portion of technology? And it’s interesting, my, my ceo, when I go back to my, or president of the company, owner of the company, to my starting days in it, he sat me down and he is like, look, I don’t really care like how easy your job is. He didn’t mean this rude. He’s like, but what I care about and what your job is to do is to make everybody else’s job easier. Right? And so, right there, from a like young age, 22 years old, I was taught that, look, I’m brought on board from an IT standpoint to solve business problems, to increase productivity, to make the company money. He didn’t want to use it as a cost center. He wanted to, he wanted me to turn it into a profit center. And so again, that’s just kind of given me this passion of, I love looking at things from a strategic business standpoint, not just a technology standpoint.

Josh Lupresto (10:11):
Love it. Um, let’s talk about innovation here. We’re gonna get into SOCk and maybe a little bit of MDR and all that good stuff, and what that is, what it means, what you guys are doing. Yeah. But talk to me for a second before we get into the OEMs and all of that. Talk to me about innovation. Um, you know, you talked about, you know, what your ability was to do previously. Now given what your part of, what’s the approach to, to innovation, right? If we’re, we’re, we’re kind of fast forwarding a little bit, but, but how does the, how does the Comcast side of things and the Masergy side of things now approach, uh, innovation to stay in front of what’s next?

Ben Bohman (10:45):
Yeah, and I, I think this just ties into how the story of Masergy is developed now, the acquisition of Comcast is further developing it. So Masergy at its core is an engineering and innovation company, right? I mean, that’s like from the beginning time where I started at Masergy, that’s, that’s how we talked about it. So when you look at how we have invested the money, let’s say, and I talk about the VC firms coming in, they invest and you don’t get quite the investment. We have a very small sales team. I think overall 24 sellers in the whole company of ma. So going back into the roots, you know, we’d have 24, maybe 30 sellers, and we relied of course on the partner community, right on, on, uh, great partners like Telarus and and such. So they didn’t invest heavily in sales.

Ben Bohman (11:29):
And I think that’s where a lot of companies do, is it is this heavy investment in sales and just trying to get as much, again, sales. I mean, they’re not really looking at the quality of it, just the, the amount of it. Masergy did a different approach where they focused on engineering. So we are very engineering heavy. We are very r and d heavy. If you look at what we did with software defined networking at the beginning, we were doing SD WAN through our core network before SD WAN was even being talked about 20 years ago. Then you get into the security aspect, and we developed our MDR managed detect and response offering, which you can also call right? The SOCk as a service or mss, uh, depending on how you look at that. We invested in our own proprietary seam, our own security analytics engine.

Ben Bohman (12:12):
So of course, we still do use the, that best of, I don’t really like best of breed, but best of platform approach, meaning we have managed Sentinel one, uh, managed Bitglass purchased by Force Point, and we’ve put this all into this security analytics engine through, again, r and d. Now, what’s cool with Comcast coming in is Comcast is coming in with a obviously larger wallet. They’re coming with an e coming in with an eagerness to expand these services and grow these services. And really, their primary focus is what we’re seeing in the industry and that security. So what we’re tracking towards is not so much towards a sassy type of everyone’s chasing sassy, right? But we’re, we’re more approaching that SSE approach, right? That security service edge approach. And, and that’s where all of our r and d right now is going into. And the next year, uh, within the next year, you’re going to see a significant, I mean, improvement in what is already a very strong offering with us, uh, when you’re talking about sought edr, mdr, xdr, and all those.

Josh Lupresto (13:14):
So, let’s, uh, you touched on some really key things there. Let’s dive in further too, as we’re, we’re expanding what is in the security realm for you? We talked edr, mdr, you talked, uh, Sentinel one, we talked, uh, you know, we talked Bitglass layout. Let’s lay out either all those OEMs or OEMs and products, and then let’s dive into how that kind of feeds into your SOC offering.

Ben Bohman (13:37):
Sure. And so, and let’s actually start, I’m gonna even take one step back of something we don’t mention, and I, and I, and I agree why we approach security this way. So obviously that first layer of defense is most often your firewall, right? Mm-hmm. . And so our first SOC offering, when you talk about how is that security operation center, what are they initially looking at? And that starts with a firewall. We use fornet, and that’s a TMR or a threat monitoring response service, right? And so I think that’s where we start. When you talk about an OEM or a sku, that threat monitoring response, uh, has a lot of visibility, a lot of proactive updates, a lot of proactive responses to that, what I call that north south traffic, right? What’s coming in and out and looking at that. So that’s that first layer. And I always talk about defense in depth, right?

Ben Bohman (14:23):
When you’re talking about security, it’s not having one layer of defense. It’s having a in depth defenses to block all these vectors of attacks that are coming at us nowadays, right? So that set, so that’s that very first layer. Now the next layer, and let’s just talk about the most simplistic layer, but still key is that east west traffic. So now we’ve got the, our EDR endpoint detect response, and it’s really a managed Sentinel one offering, and what that’s protecting against ransomware. And you could call that next generational virus, next generation virus protection. Because instead of looking at signatures, it’s looking at behaviors, right? So it’s looking a, a ransomware doesn’t go in and have it the same kind of look and feel every single time it goes in. They’re adapting it to the company, to the environment and everything, connecting to different ips, setting up processes within it.

Ben Bohman (15:13):
So now we’re looking at behaviors within that environment that is also managed by our SOC. That to me, honestly, is the biggest bang for your buck in the security industry right now. Just, you know, it starts at $7 a seat. I mean, with, uh, managed sentinel, one with a SOC wrapped around it and remediation capabilities. So I, I just, it shocks me, um, that, that it’s that low and it’s really, uh, it’s a big deal with our, with our customers and with our partners. We’re making a lot of progress with that. Now, we go into casb, which is that cloud access security broker, right? So how are you protect, protecting your Azure environments, how you’re protecting your Office 365 and those cloud environments? Now, I will say that casb, I think that’s gonna be really taking off probably in about a year and a half, two years.

Ben Bohman (16:03):
I mean, we, it’s part of that sassy, you know, the zt and a CASB is part of that, that sassy framework that we talk about. But it’s going to gain momentum. I won’t say it’s there yet. The need is there, but it’s not as big of a need as it will be in two years as we continue this cloud migration, right? This, this edge migration for security. And then the, the last portion of it, uh, of the SKUs that we offer is our MDR managed detect and response. Again, SOC is a service. I try to use different acronyms because there’s, you know, there’s so many right in the street. So SOC as a service, or mss, managed security service is your mss. And that, that really is kind of your ultimate, that’s your bigger offering. That’s, uh, a full-fledged security service. It comes with remediation a SEM, which is actually digesting and looking at the packets.

Ben Bohman (16:53):
It’s looking at the events. It’s monitoring, again, the behaviors within the network. And that, again, that’s a higher, a higher end approach. We also have sensors and, and different points of access that we’re collecting information from on the network. And, and so that’s how you tie that whole I that, that holistically together, right? So you started the firewall. If we’re selling, uh, an SD wan, which is still a lot of SD WAN cells coming in, we’re starting there. And then we’re talking about the endpoints, how we’re protecting the endpoints. We’re talking about their cloud applications, and then we’re talking about that holistic approach to security and how much visibility. And really, when you talk about security, it is all about visibility, right?

Josh Lupresto (17:35):
So speaking of visibility, uh, I appreciate you laying all those things out. I think that helps give, give people, uh, understanding of the, the depth and the breadth of the product set. When we talk a little bit more about specifically visibility, uh, on the, the one right before this, we were on with Jeff Hathcote from Telarus, and talked about kinda the, the math behind why it doesn’t make sense for somebody to go do their own SOCk. Uh, and I know you guys obviously have an opinion on that. You’ve achieved great economies of scale, and you’ve got a great product with that mm-hmm. . So I would love to now maybe dive into, uh, with regard to the SOC offering. It feels like a couple years ago, uh, people thought, no, I’ve got the teams, I’ve got the talent. I can watch this. The world isn’t as bad of a place that is as it is now, but, uh, now we’re talking lack of talent, lack of people, no automation. What do you see? What do you see your SOCk offering doing? Differentiating? And then maybe, we’ll, as you kind of lay the foundation for that, then we can kind of go into an example.

Ben Bohman (18:40):
Well, yeah, first there’s a stat I always like to, and it’s an important stat when we’re talking about this. There’s 3.5 million unfulfilled, secure cybersecurity positions out there. So just open, I was listening to something, it was ba it was a podcast back from 2019, and they, they were talking about like that that was going to happen, and sure enough, it, it would happen. The other interesting thing that kind of ties into that story is the number one problem businesses have, again, it’s not technology, it’s not even cybersecurity. In essence, the number one problem they have is like employee retention. Yeah. And number of employees. And we, we see that, right? We feel that if we go to restaurants nowadays, if we go to any kind of retail, like we know that they’re understaffed, it’s just an inherent problem. It’s the same with the, it’s, it’s the same with these companies.

Ben Bohman (19:23):
And you think about retention, right? So yeah, even if you can actually find your security person, and we’ll go into why a security person doesn’t work, . But if you go in, you find your security person, retaining that security person is gonna be difficult because there’s so many offers and so many people trying to get in. But when you look at security being a 24 7 job, and this is the need for the, so right, this is the real need for a SOC. It takes, it would take six full-time people to be able to manage, truly manage your security system. Security’s a 24 7 job. You can’t sit there and, and rely on one guy. I said, even if you found one person, and then I kind of laughed because I was like, well, that one person, what’s he doing on the weekend? What’s he doing on Saturday at two 30 in the morning?

Ben Bohman (20:07):
So that’s really what we’re seeing as far as that, that need and how we’re, we’re helping, uh, customers with it. And I, and I would say the trends are falling within the partner community. If you look at the number one solution right now, it’s always ucas and C cas. I mean, that’s what we always see across the board right now. And that that’s just because of the amount of phone systems and the replacement of old legacy PBX systems is still happening. So that’s natural. But the two things we’re seeing most rapidly catch up to uca c a is security and managed services.

Josh Lupresto (20:38):
Yeah, a hundred percent agree.

Ben Bohman (20:40):
Right? And, and this is exactly why, exactly what we’re talking about now, how we approach it differently, again, as a holistic approach. When we, when Comcast business in ERG looks at a security solution, we’re or a, or we’re doing, we’re deep diving in with a customer, not just looking at security. We’re having to look at it under all the lenses I talked earlier, right? About how you have to look at your voice collaboration, your network. But that’s the approach that I think that we’re taking differently. And I always say, if you, if you have someone who just does security, go in and look at the security environment, that’s all they’re gonna look at in that environment. But usually they’re not gonna expand into these other aspects that they’re not comfortable with. Yeah. Voice collaboration, cloud applications, everything else. Same with, uh, a voice. You bring someone in who just does voice, well then guess what? You’re only gonna talk about voice Technology doesn’t work like that anymore. We can’t have single threaded conversations and the conversations that we’re having with customers, I’d say is a differentiator because our services are related around, and our conversations are around protecting the holistic environment, not just one aspect of it. Does that make sense?

Josh Lupresto (21:47):
It does. It does. And I think you guys have a, having that suite of services is really unique because you can talk about wherever they’re at, at, at the branch at the edge. Mm-hmm. needing voice, not watching that and correlating that. And I think that’s, to me, that’s the secret, uh, that, you know, we talk a lot about, and you see a lot of stats about dwell time, how long bad guys are in the environment before people even know. And to your point, I think you’ve got a great offering there that gives people that telemetry and then not only gives them the telemetry, but then lets you actually take action on it on their behalf, right? To your point. So great, great, great overlay. I think on the product per

Ben Bohman (22:23):
Protecting, more, I was gonna throw out there too, that we, like with us, we sell 2.7 solutions per opportunity. Because of that approach, we also are able to uncover more needs. Because if you’re having a security conversation and you don’t know what you’re protecting and who you’re protecting, then you really can’t expand that conversation. But then once you go into every aspect, again, I talk about that technological ecosystem, now you’re talking about voice. What are you doing with voice? Are you happy with voice? You’re talking about network, you’re talking about cloud, you’re talking about applications. And the coolest thing for the partner community in my mind and for your, for the Telarus sellers, is I am limited by the capabilities of my technology with the conversation I can have. But you, you guys are unlimited, meaning that you can overcome. You have unlimited ways to overcome objections, unlimited routes to go, unlimited things you can talk about when it comes to technology, because you do it all. You’re able to provide a solution in the entirety of every need of a company or every need that a customer has.

Josh Lupresto (23:26):
Yeah. Makes it makes our jobs easy. I I always say, setting up the appointment, knocking that down, uh, is, is way harder than us showing up and talking tech for sure. Yeah.

Josh Lupresto (23:37):
Uh, alright, let’s, let’s bring this thing home here with an example. I would love to hear, give me a situation that you got brought into. What were you told the need was? Uh, we can keep customer names out of this if need be for sure, but, you know, I’m kind of curious, did you, did you get brought in and say, ah, you know, we just need a firewall. Can you come talk to us about what you guys can do with Fort Net? And then, you know, reality, what did it amount to, right? If it started out weird or if it was exactly like it, it looked, but what did it replace? What did it do? What did it solve?

Ben Bohman (24:08):
Yeah. Well, so if you don’t mind, I, I’ve got one really quick one that’s gonna lean in on this, on the Managed Sentinel one and why that’s such, I mean, it, it’s such a low hanging fruit for the partner community. And then I’ve got one that maybe we can dig in a little bit more. That’s more of that holistic approach that starts somewhere and in somewhere else, right? Mm-hmm. . But we, we were working with an ophthalmology, uh, company and a partner brought us in on an ophthalmology company. They call me and they say, look, they already have a proof of concept with Sentinel One installed. Uh, is it worth you guys talking to ’em? I mean, they, they really need help with management. They don’t have a big staff. Do you guys even wanna talk to ’em? I was like, yeah, let’s at least see what, what they’re doing to management, what, what it looked like.

Ben Bohman (24:50):
And in 2,700 seats, I, I told you again, it starts at $7 a seat. We’re actually able to get this down to $5 and 40 cents, which was really cool. But, um, we, we start, we start there, we go in, we sit down and once we start talking about the SOCk capabilities and what the remediation, what we do with Sentinel One, helping set up the environment, helping them understand the detect and Protective Sentinel one, of course, that’s a bigger conversation going into how we fine tune the environment for best protection and then continue to monitor it, make sure it’s updated, it easily made sense for them to actually be like, okay, we’re just gonna purchase Sentinel one from you guys with your SOC, right? So that managed Sentinel one made sense. And it’s not that we’re competing Sentinel One still wins in that case, right? Because they’re still, they’re still getting that win.

Ben Bohman (25:35):
But when you throw that SOC and that management, the remediation, you always the mdr, what does the R stand for? Really response. But really, what does that remediation? What are you doing? It ended up being a really a no-brainer. And they, they swung that over and then that partner actually brought us in on another 2,500 seed, uh, EDR or managed one deal immediately after that that we’re able to win. And those turnaround times are, like, from the time we talked to the company to when we closed the deal and got signatures was a week and a half. Wow. The install was 30 days. So I mean, that means the partner’s getting paid very fast and there’s not as many problems as your traditional once you start throwing bandwidth and connectivity solution, right? It’s like, who knows? So anyhow, that, that’s kinda a quick one, but the another one that I like to look at is, uh, is a healthcare company, uh, kind of back east.

Ben Bohman (26:23):
And we go in, we start having a conversation with them, and really they were needing some changes on their SD WAN network. Now, we always hear, right, NPLS is dead, but private connectivity within SD WAN isn’t, which is kind of still that same idea with pls, right? We sometimes you need that private layer two connectivity to do some things that you can’t do over public internet. So we start having the conversation about SD wan, and then remember that that transition and that, like that flow that I talked about with security. So of course we start talking about the security aspects and their needs within the router and firewall and come to a need. Okay, well, definitely tmr, right? They have a short, they’re very short staff from an IT standpoint. I think they were running, it was like four total it, uh, people on staff.

Ben Bohman (27:11):
And this is with over 40 locations. So now we’re, now we’re talking about TMR and firewall, okay? And that’s now we, now we start pro probing, right? We start digging deeper into, okay, well what else? Like, what are we protecting? What’s going on in your environment? We always say pe it’s people, processes, and technology. And that’s the way we approach these conversations, right? So now we start talking about people, we start talking about the processes and start finding out that they’re very under, they’re not secured within that e east west traffic that we’re talking about. They had a need for edr. We also found out that they had a lot of work from home users. So they needed ems, they needed the Ford Net client on there to be able to remote into the network was ems, provide some additional like security functions on the endpoint with through for Dnet and the for client.

Ben Bohman (27:59):
And then we also find out that they’re in the middle of a teams integration, right? What are you doing for voice? And now this, now we get into the voice and they need help with the team’s integration. We end up selling 500 seats of teams direct, direct connect. So at the, by then, by the time we’re done, we’re starting at maybe a $35,000 SD WAN conversation, and we start talking about security, voice collaboration, and even some cloud peering that we were doing through our eex data exchange. This had grown into a $77,000 deal. Now, fast forward another year after this is all done and installed, now we’re looking over about a hundred, $2,000 a month spend on the, on this, uh, customer. And again, at start, it starts small. I mean, 40, 30, that’s not small, right? I understand that’s not small, small, but it starts on that smaller end. No, but once we start talking about security and holistically what we do, and you go, you layer on top of that, the customer experience, again, whenever a customer calls into us, they’re getting a engineer, not a take a taker, anyone like that. It just, it just made sense for them. It, it relieved so much pressure from them, from a security standpoint, from a resource standpoint, and not only that, it actually grew their security posture to something formidable and respectable.

Josh Lupresto (29:17):
Love it. Good examples. Uh, okay, so Ben, we’re gonna land this plane. Um, I want you to look into your crystal ball in Ben’s humble opinion. You know, we’ve, we’ve done this 180 from where years ago people would not even let us put a, managed any kind of box in their environment. Now we’re managing whatever gear they have. We’re augmenting that, we’re putting edge software on with, you know, things like Sentinel One, all of these things, and now outsource SOC and everything that comes into that. So if you look out six, 12, even 24 months, where do you see this going? Do you see the CASB things being more prevalent? Do you see us staying down the course? What are your thoughts?

Ben Bohman (29:58):
Yeah, so there’s two things that come to mind when I’m thinking about kind of the future. And there there’s two things that we’re seeing that are very telling. One less than 1% of cyber crimes are prosecuted. And if you think about that, I mean, obviously that’s telling us, look like cyber crimes are not going, it’s not going away. I always ask if less than 1% of bank robberies were prosecuted, how many of us would be out robbing banks? Right? Right. Like it be, obviously bank robberies would be a huge problem, right? And, and I just think that we’re gonna see, obviously see a rise in, in cyber crimes and even uniqueness and complexity, complexity of these crimes. Okay? Now the next thing that I heard this, this was the Forbes thing that I was talking about earlier, is that if we took every single person enrolled in, let’s say technology related college or training or what, even the MCSE stuff, right?

Ben Bohman (30:51):
All that stuff we took everyone enrolled into taking care of technology problems or that that eventual career path, we still wanna be able to fulfill the cybersecurity shortage, right? Even with all of them, and a lot of them aren’t even going into right. Cybersecurity, a lot of ’em are programming or different technology or different areas related to technology. So that problem, the people problem’s not going away. So I think what we’re going to see is actually a continued and even a larger need for managed, again, I talk about that managed services and managed. So, and now we’re, look, we talked about the cas, we right? Things going into the cloud, all the different areas and vectors and new AR vectors of a tab that are, and vulnerabilities that are now available. It’s gonna cause a bigger need again for managed services and experts to be able to go in and truly secure the environment. I mean, that like really, I think it leans back to the managed services and security. It’s just gonna continue to be a problem that we have to address.

Josh Lupresto (31:52):
Good stuff. All right, man, Ben, that wraps us up for today. I really appreciate you coming on and doing this with me, buddy.

Ben Bohman (31:58):
Yeah, thanks for having me. That was, that was fun.

Josh Lupresto (32:01):
All right, everybody that wraps us up. Uh, security. Why I should not run a SOCk on my own. We got Ben Bowman, the director of solution engineering from the Comcast Maer G indirect channel side. I’m your host, Josh Lupresto, SVP of sales Engineering at Telarus. And this is next level BizTech.