Build trust without hyperbole: 3 vendors that get it right with Scott Taschler - Cybersecurity Product Marketer

Have you ever felt that hyperbolic language in your cybersecurity messaging might be doing more harm than good? Are you looking for ways to improve your marketing approach to resonate with today's savvy buyers? How can your company's messaging inspire trust rather than skepticism in a crowded cybersecurity marketplace?

In this conversation, we discuss:

👉 The pitfalls of using hyperbolic language in cybersecurity marketing and its effect on customer trust.

👉 Effective marketing approaches like those of Panther and Lacework, focused on clarity and customer-centric benefits.

👉 Brinqa's nuanced use of emotional language and storytelling avoiding direct competitive bashing.

About our guest:

Scott Taschler shares his wealth of experience in cybersecurity, his transition from a technical sales background to product marketing, and his current dedication to helping companies with positioning and product marketing. His insights stem from past roles at industry heavyweights such as McAfee and Crowdstrike.

Summary:

Today's episode with Scott Taschler delves into creating customer trust through genuine marketing, avoiding hyperbolic pitfalls, and the art of differentiating products in a dynamic market. Tune in for a masterclass on cybersecurity marketing with actionable takeaways.

To connect with Scott Taschler, visit his LinkedIn profile.

Scott Taschler on LinkedIn

Book a 30-minute meeting with Andrew 

Transcript

Andrew Monaghan:
Relationships in cybersecurity are built on trust, not least between vendor and security teams. But when vendors make claims about their products that can't be true, we lose that trust. So says longtime cybersecurity evangelist and marketer Scott Taschler. In this episode, Scott and I look at three vendors' websites that are threading the needle really well on messaging, and we talk about what they're doing right. We name names, we give specifics, and we talk about where it can sometimes go wrong. Don't go away. 

Welcome to the Cybersecurity Go to Market podcast, where we tackle the big question, how can cybersecurity companies grow sales faster? I'm your host, Andrew Monaghan. Our guest today is longtime cybersecurity evangelist, engineer, and marketer Scott Taschler.

Andrew Monaghan:
Scott, welcome to the podcast.

Scott Taschler:
Thanks very much, Andrew. It's a pleasure to be here.

Andrew Monaghan:
Yeah, it's gonna be fun. You know, you and I have some shared experiences going back 15 years ago at McAfee. I remember you as, let's say, a leading light in the SE organization. My impression was always that if Joe Sexton or Mike Fay or someone like that needed someone to go parachute into work on a big deal or make a difference or solve problems with a customer, the question was, where's Tashler, and how fast can we get them there?

Scott Taschler:
Yeah, I guess on a good day, or I just was too dumb to stop raising my hand. One or the other.

Andrew Monaghan:
Yeah, you just had to say yes at the wrong time.

Scott Taschler:
Exactly. It's my Minnesota upbringing. I can't say no to anything. So there you go.

Andrew Monaghan:
Yeah. You're so close to Canada, you're polite and just say yes, right?

Scott Taschler:
100%. Oh, yeah.

Andrew Monaghan:
Well, you were in that role for a while, but then you also, I think, you transitioned to an evangelist role, and, you know, in my mind, the evangelist role is the perfect role to have in a company. Right. You get all the glory of coming in and speaking and people listening, and you have that other thing, but you're not on the hook for a quota or anything like that.

Scott Taschler:
I was gonna exactly say that. Like, you get to show up and be the smart guy, but you don't have to actually carry a quota. If I could do that again, I would do it in a heartbeat. But, yeah, not everything lasts forever.

Andrew Monaghan:
No one's asking you, are you forecasting that deal? Right.

Scott Taschler:
Exactly. They're like, what do you think? You know, 50 50?

Andrew Monaghan:
And then what was interesting was, after your tenure at McAfee, like many McAfee folks, you went to Crowdstrike and you ran the product marketing team at Crowdstrike for a while.

Scott Taschler:
Now.

Andrew Monaghan:
How was that transition from being essentially, I guess, on the sales side of the technical sales side and then moving over to. To be in the PMM?

Scott Taschler:
Yeah. So I started out as a kind of an individual contributor on the product marketing side, and it was moving across. Strike was my first marketing role as a sales engineer. It was tough because the marketing people were the people we made fun of. And now I have become what I myself mocked. But what I found was, what I came to realize was that in product marketing, it's still very much the same job, or very similar job anyway. I still needed a solid understanding of what my product did. I needed to know my customers and their pain points.

Scott Taschler:
I needed to be locked in on who my competitors were and what my differentiated value was. And then I needed to be able to communicate that in words that my buyers understood. And I think the main difference is instead of selling to one customer at a time, now I'm just selling to all of them at once. And so I actually found that transition a really natural transition. And I think a lot of SES, when they get. I had been an SE 14 years at McAfee, five years at other places before that. A lot of SES start to look around and be like, well, what else is there? And I think the product marketing role is a really good, natural step for folks who kind of want to lean into that positioning and messaging and competitive differentiation around their products.

Andrew Monaghan:
Did you hold yourself to a high standard, given that your previous roles.

Scott Taschler:
Yeah, man. Like, like, I think any good se prides themselves on, you know, telling it like it is and being, you know, like, like your whole ability to build relationships is built on trust. Right? So it means I've got to make sure that, you know, if my product doesn't do what the customer wants, I got to make sure that they know that because I want to sell them something down the road, you know, a future date and maintain that relationship. And I carried a lot of that with me into the marketing world where, you know, I think a lot of folks want to lean into more aggressive. You know, we are the best. We are the strongest. We will. We will stop everything everywhere, all the time.

Scott Taschler:
And obviously, that's just, that's never the case. And I've always wanted to make sure that I bring that forward into the stuff that I do.

Andrew Monaghan:
So let's. Let's put this in context. I mentioned that you're the. You're at Crowdstrike for a PMM role. You, you left a couple years ago, almost to the month actually, and you went out on your own. And now what you do is work with a bunch of cybersecurity companies, helping them with their positioning with product marketing type things, and you get the chance to see a wider aspect of the industry. You and I have talked a little bit, but I caught on to a LinkedIn post you made a couple of weeks back and I'm going to read this out to give this conversation context. And what you said in the post was let's play a game.

Andrew Monaghan:
Imagine a world where everyone in tech started marketing like we do in cybersecurity. And then you give some examples. Salesforce never lose another deal. Asana hit every deadline every day. Slack know what your coworkers are going to say before they say it. Docusign you'll never touch a pen again. Canva fire designers. You don't need them anymore, right? And you say, are you cringing yet? These are obvious hyperbole statements.

Andrew Monaghan:
If you saw this in the wild, it would immediately set off your bullshit detector and you question the motives of the company who put it there. Trust is lost. So I enjoyed that post because we're in this weird world where 3700 and something vendors and we're trying to make our mark. We're trying to get stand out or try and get noticed. And I think what your comment was that some people get a little bit carried away, let's say, and make claims that are beyond the pale.

Scott Taschler:
I think that's absolutely true. And it comes back to what I said earlier. So I think it really comes down to a matter of trust, right? Like in cybersecurity 1015 years ago, you know, people you could get away with selling on fear, uncertainty and doubt and making these broad, sweeping claims, hey, we're going to take care of your malware problem for you. Awesome. That's the problem I have and thank you for solving it. But today's buyers are a lot more sophisticated. I don't think any, like, nobody's getting fooled by that kind of, you know, these kind of exaggerated claims. And if anything, they kind of just, you know, they, best case, they filter through your ears and they don't land at all and nobody, no one hears anything.

Scott Taschler:
Worst case, people hear it and they, and they think, oh, this is not, this is, this is someone who's, you know, it calls all the rest of your messaging into question. And so I think it's just counterproductive in most situations. And it feels right, especially for people maybe who've come from other industries, you know, or they're like, oh, I want to, you know, like, I'm in cyber. I'm going to. Let's do, you know, like, let's. Let's tell people we solve their problems. But I think we know that, you know, the adversaries are smart, and we're all, you know, like, we're in this industry where we're head to head against somebody who's trying to fight, you know, and our customers are in the middle of this. And I think we are, as an industry, when we're.

Scott Taschler:
We're at a. We're at our best when we're helping to create clarity and not just create confusion with, you know, with. With claims we can't stand.

Andrew Monaghan:
Yeah, it's tough, right? And I I made a smart ass comment given that you were at crash tribe before. I said, where is we stop. Breaches fit in that realm of hyperbole. But I think it's definitely something people struggle with. I describe it like thread in the needle, because sometimes one person's hyperbole is like, well, that's kind of interesting, right? And sometimes one person's, well, that's very realistic. Is very boring, and it's tough to get it all figured out. So what we thought we'd do on this episode is let's not focus on the negative. Let's focus on the positive.

Andrew Monaghan:
Let's look at a. We had three companies where Scott's kind of picked them out and said, look, here's three companies I think are doing this. Well, their message on their website is threading the needle quite nicely. Let's say we want to pick out some good things about it. So let me, for those of you on YouTube watching this, you can obviously look at what I'm sharing on the screen. For those not, we'll try and describe what we're seeing and the words, etcetera, so that you can get a sense as well. Uh, the first one. First company you picked out, Scott, was, was lacework.

Andrew Monaghan:
So what did you like about the. The lace work message that we're looking at?

Scott Taschler:
Yeah, I thought. I thought there were a couple of things that jumped out immediately. Um, you know, obviously, right there. Right up. Right there at the top, there are. There are two things that helped me out a lot. One is, I think it's. It's nice that they focused on a very clear category, uh, cnAp cloud native.

Scott Taschler:
So immediately I know, like, hey, this is. This is what they have, and this is what it does. And if I'm in the market for a CNAP solution, I know this is something I'm interested in, so. Okay, so that's good. But also, then they've got this focus on speed as a primary benefit. And one of the things that I like about that is it's not, it's not an absolute statement. Right. It's like, we are the fastest.

Scott Taschler:
We are the, it's like we're going to improve your speed. We're going to help you, you know, get in front of these adversaries that are, that are already, you know, doing, you know, more damage and less time. There's no, there's no fud, there's no, you know, exaggerated promises. It's just like, hey, we're, this is the space we're in, and this is the primary benefit we're going to deliver for you.

Andrew Monaghan:
So the headline above the fold is time is cloud security's number one adversary. And then the paragraph underneath says, reduce risks and stop threats fast. Developer and security teams collaborate and accelerate with a unified CNAP. So there's three dimensions of time and speed in there. That's time, there's fast and there's accelerate. So that's what you picked up on there.

Scott Taschler:
Yeah. And then I really like this time theme because they keep coming back to it. So as you scroll down the page, you'll see that there are sub benefits underneath there. So you can see they talk about building securely, prioritizing risks, protecting your workloads and staying compliant. And if you click into each one of those, like, they have additional content that links back to the, you know, hey, here's how we speed up, you know, different portions of your workflow. So it's like, it's a, it's a nice continued theme, but it also provides meat behind it. Right? So it's like, hey, we speed you up. Well, now I'm wondering, like, well, how well we do it here, here, here.

Scott Taschler:
And each one of those has features that map to it. Like, here's, here's, here's the feature that speeds up this portion of the workflow that helps you get in front of your, you know, in front of your adversary.

Andrew Monaghan:
So, yeah, so under prioritized risk, they say, don't waste time on harmless risks. Under protect workloads, they say, find known and unknown threats faster. And then, you know, similar but different. Under state compliant, put audits on autopilot. So it's not taking up your own time, I guess.

Scott Taschler:
So I, you know, so I think immediately I kind of know what they stand for, I know what they do. I have some, some validation about how they do it. And then I also like these quantified outcomes here. Right. So you can see, you know, they talk about, you know, hey, with our tool, you can replace two to five other tools in your environment. Like, oh, that's good. I kind of, I, I definitely would, would prefer to have fewer tools in my environment. 81% of their customers see value in less than a week.

Scott Taschler:
And 100 to one reduction in alerts. Like, those are all very specific, measurable outcomes that I think provide some validation to their ability to provide value.

Andrew Monaghan:
One thing I would say just be slightly negative. I would believe the 100 to one. If it wasn't 100 to one, it was 98 to one or 103 to one.

Scott Taschler:
Yeah, that's a good point because I had that exact same thought on 81%. I'm like, oh, 81%, that's a very specific number. They must have measured that.

Andrew Monaghan:
Right, right. That's what we think. Right. There's a, there's a credibility that comes from specificity. So. And then the final point you had was, I think that further up, I really like that.

Scott Taschler:
Their call to action. Right. So they're up there, up there in the top. Right. Every web, every tech website on planet Earth, I think, has a, has a bubble up there that's, you know, and usually it's start now. Contact, sales schedule.

Andrew Monaghan:
A demo.

Scott Taschler:
Schedule a demo. Right. That's like, hey, and at this point, like, man, I don't want to talk to somebody yet, but I do want to know more about your product. And so the idea that they've, they've clicked what they have watch demo as their primary call to action, I think is great. And you can actually just, if you click on that, I think you can enter just an email address and in fact, and then you go to a bunch of demo videos that are actually pretty, pretty good. So anyway, I just, I thought that that call to action is particularly effective because it's, you know, it's something that I'm willing to do at this stage oftentimes, you know, like, you know, as I'm, as I'm just beginning to dig in on the, on the, on my journey understanding what these guys do.

Andrew Monaghan:
Are you a fan of the self control demo? The, you know, choose your own adventure just to get a feel for what's going on, man.

Scott Taschler:
I don't know that I've seen too many of those, but I absolutely, I like, I mean, even, even if it's just a matter of a few you bite sized recordings that have like workflows. Hey, are you, you know, are you interested in compliance? Well here, click this at 90 seconds. Here's our compliance journey. You know, I think that kind of thing is really powerful because again, not everybody, you know, different people are going to come into this from different perspectives and being able to get them what they want in the moment they want it is with the minimal hassle is going to keep them engaged.

Andrew Monaghan:
So some good things on here and they didn't fall into the hyperbole, right. They didn't say stop risks all the time and completely eliminate risks and things like that. It was actually credentialing how they zeroed in around the time, time idea.

Scott Taschler:
I think even also kind of, I mean with maybe, you know, low use of buzzwords also, you know, like obviously CNaP is a, you know, I don't think we can present, you can't say we're not going to use any buzzwords because sometimes they're important and they're a good way to communicate a complicated concept with a single word. But, but I think that's another thing, right? I'm not, they're not throwing around zero trust, next gen, blah blah blah. You know, it's, it's all just, it feels very authentic and clear and that's why I liked it.

Andrew Monaghan:
All right, let's move on to number two. What do you like about Brinka?

Scott Taschler:
Okay, so number one again, I think the focus on a very clear category in this case, vulnerability management. You can see it. And actually I really like the way that they brought that in. So about right there again, first screen above the fold, they have their NASCAR logos of different customers on their website, which is fairly common. I really like the way they phrase it though. The best vulnerability management programs run on Brinka. And I think the genius part of a statement like that is it really puts the customer at the center of the, you know, makes the customer the hero. Right? Like, hey, we're here as an enabler to make you awesome.

Scott Taschler:
Right? Do you want to run the best, one of the best vulnerability management programs? Then guess what? You know, like people who look like you use us. Yeah. Anyway, I just think it's, it's a, it's a, it's a very common chunk of a website to have and it, but I really like how they phrase it and that, and it also makes it very clear what it is that they're, that they're doing, what category they're delivering.

Andrew Monaghan:
So what we're looking at here is the headline is precisely reduce the risks that matter. And then the sub paragraph underneath is stop wasting resources on low risk findings across infrastructure, cloud and application security. And then they've got the headline that Scott talked about the best vulnerability management programs run on Brinka and they've got 12347 logos sitting right there, all of which you recognize they're not random weird companies out of turkey or something like that.

Scott Taschler:
Yeah I think again they've got a really good focus on primary benefits which are prioritization and efficiency. And they then go on to actually dig into the problems as you scroll down about why prioritization is so hard in vulnerability management which it shocks me that vulnerability management is not a solved problem in our world. You know it's, I don't know, maybe, maybe I shouldn't be shocked. I don't know. I don't know that we've solved any problems in cybersecurity. Have we? Like viruses? Nope. Phishing? No. Vulnerability management? Nope.

Scott Taschler:
We'll get there one of these days.

Andrew Monaghan:
Now it's all about reducing risk, not eliminating, right?

Scott Taschler:
Absolutely, absolutely. So that, and you know that's what they, that's what they talk about here. So again they're being kind of straightforward about what the problems are, why they're so hard. And one of the things I think is interesting that they focus so high up on their webpage about the problems which you don't see a whole lot. But I think in this case because they're in such a well established space they're almost surely going to be displacing someone. When you go in. It's not like you're probably going in and someone's like oh, we should be doing vulnerability assessment. That's interesting.

Scott Taschler:
Tell me more. So I think it's a good way to get everybody on the same page. You know, we've been doing this for a long time and it's hard. Here's why it's hard. And I think by this point, you know, like most people who are going to recognize themselves and realize that oh, this is a solution that solves a problem that I actually have.

Andrew Monaghan:
And what I like about this is that they're bashing the competition without bashing the competition. What they didn't say is why do current tools suck? They just say why is it so hard to prioritize or reduce what matters? And then they go into impossible backlog, fragmented visibility, ownership, complexity, things like that is kind of quite subtle, right?

Scott Taschler:
Yeah, that's a great point. And it, you know, because to bash a competing solution in a lot of ways is bashing the person and the organization running that solution. So I think that's a smart take on their part because, you know, you don't want to, you don't want to call somebody's baby ugly. You just want to help them acknowledge that they've got a challenge and that you're, you have, you have a tool that can help.

Andrew Monaghan:
Now, you called a couple of things here. You said a little bit of hyperbole because they talk about impossible backlog, and they use the word nightmare on here somewhere as well. What's your feeling about that?

Scott Taschler:
Yeah. So I think it's there to be provocative. Right. And to create a, to create an emotional reaction. And I'm, you know, I'm not saying that I'm not giving them a big black mark for that. I'm not sure that those were the you. I would use those, those same words if I was, if I was the product marketing guy putting this message together. So, yeah, I think it, you know, the risk of that is someone goes, well, I mean, it's not an impossible backlog.

Scott Taschler:
I mean, I've been dealing with it for years. It's just, it's just causing me a lot of stress, you know? And, and so when they, when they do that, then they start like, they're like, well, now I'm, now, now they've started pulling a thread, and now, you know, the human reaction is to go, well, what else, what other holes can I poke in this argument? And, you know, that's not where I, that's not where you want your, your audience to be.

Andrew Monaghan:
I like the direction, though, right? In a world full of bland, logical, sensible statements about things, to put in those emotional words, put in the nightmare, put in the crumbling under the volume and things like that. I mean, if I'm sitting there and I'm running a vulnerability management program, I've got my two other tools, and it's just the backlog is getting me down. And, you know, it's probably a nightmare to manage all this stuff that's going to connect with me. Right.

Scott Taschler:
You know, for you, maybe, you know, like, I don't, I think this is, this is the, the interesting dark art of messaging. And it's so interesting in cyber because the way our natural inclination is to lean into that kind of apocalyptic language, right. And you just run the risk of people being just tired and, you know, to lean into the, like I said, like, are you in a nightmare situation? And all this stuff? And I'm like, even if I am, you've just made me more anxious about it. You know, man, like, like, I just want to just help me figure this out, which, you know, and it is, it's a classic marketing move. Right? You know, you define the problem and then you agitate it for a little while and riles up emotions and hopefully drives a, drive somebody to act. It's just, it happens a lot in our industry, I think. And so I think, you know, at some point, it. At some point, it backfired.

Andrew Monaghan:
Well, Scott, let's learn a little bit more about you personally. I've got a list of 35 questions here, and what we're going to do is spin the wheel to figure out which of these questions that we're going to ask. All right? So, by the way, my wheel is highly optimized. It's next gen. It uses advanced AI. It's been audited by one of the big four to say, this is the most random way to generate some questions to ask my guests.

Scott Taschler:
Fantastic. I can't wait. Bring it on.

Andrew Monaghan:
It is quite the experience. You might even say, actually, that, you know, it's not a wheel, but a donut, and we're spinning the cyber doughnut. So just keep that in mind. All right, let me go ahead and spin it. All right, question number 29. How did you first make money as a kid, Scott?

Scott Taschler:
Oh, first make money as a kid? Well, let me tell you, I got one of my very early jobs in high school. Little known fact, the Minnesota Renaissance Festival, which is one of the finest renaissance festivals in the entire entirety of North America, where I started as a high schooler selling steak sandwiches behind the booth. But after three years of that, I made the jump to the entertainment, where I became, I took on the personality of Obi the wise, who was a random Renaissance festival peasant. And now I can't go to the renfest ever again because. Cause I'm so sick of it.

Andrew Monaghan:
So you went from a peasant to a career in cybersecurity sales.

Scott Taschler:
It's a pretty natural step. We can go through the other couple steps in the middle if you want.

Andrew Monaghan:
That's awesome. All right, let me spin the wheel again. All right, question number two. What's one of your more embarrassing or memorable moments in your career in sales and marketing?

Scott Taschler:
Oh. All right. I'm going to go back to project as a sales engineer. We at McAfee, we had a project to record bite sized videos of a bunch of different stuff. They were going to be used for social and a bunch of other things, and they tapped the Se team to do this to kind of record to be the subject matter. Experts in different things. And as I was sitting there on the couch with my wife recording videos, my wife leans over and says, you know what? You should record a video. How do you pronounce McAfee? Because, like, nobody knows how to do it.

Scott Taschler:
And I'm like, haha. So I typed, so I like, bang out this video, which I thought was going to be like. And I submitted it and I didn't tell anybody, like, you know, I just, I just thought it would get like, you know, like my manager would see it and it would. And it just kept getting approved and approved and approved. And so that was the video I was known for. Out of all the great content I produced, that one had ten times more views than any other video in the entire program. And it's still out there on YouTube if you go find it. So that one will follow me to my grave for sure.

Andrew Monaghan:
That was given to new hires, right? Because that was one of their questions. How do I pronounce the name of this company that I'm joining?

Scott Taschler:
That's right.

Andrew Monaghan:
Yeah. There's only two, three options. I love that. I remember that video, actually. It's funny. It's not why I remember you, but maybe some people did. All right, let's spin this wheel for the last time. What is the story about you getting into your first job in cybersecurity?

Scott Taschler:
Ah, well, it was, I think probably like a lot of people our age. It was completely by accident. I actually went to college, but I did get into cyber security right out of college, which was pretty rare in, you know, that was 1995. I was an electrical engineer, and I wanted to, like, design circuits and computer parts and stuff. And I got hired by a local company here in Minneapolis by the name of Secure Computing corporation. They hired me as a hardware guy, and I was working on, like, they had some government contract to develop an encrypted SCSI hard drive controller. And I was the hardware guy on this project, and I programmed this little SCSI chip, and it was a, ultimately, it never came to market. And, but then I'm working there and they're like, oh, you're a crypto guy.

Scott Taschler:
We're going to put you on this other crypto project. Right? And so then I, all of a sudden, I was like, I never touched a piece of hardware again after that. So now I was developing software, and then I made the move to another and then also snowballed from there. My next job was a sales engineer job for a startup here in Minneapolis. And I followed that SE track for a long time after that.

Andrew Monaghan:
Wow. That is. That's incredible. Your career. So secure computing. Entrust McAfee and Crowdstrike. That's quite a run of well known legacy companies in cyber.

Scott Taschler:
Right, there you go. You've left off the ones that no one's ever heard of, but, yeah, absolutely.

Andrew Monaghan:
No, that's awesome. Let's move on to the third one, which is Panther. All right, so when we're looking at Panther right here, I'll quickly describe it. The headline is, transform cloud noise into security signal. And the subheading the paragraph is, Penta delivers code driven detection response at petabyte scale without the overhead or cost of traditional sims. Stop ignoring your cloud logs and start generating security insights again.

Scott Taschler:
I think a nice, no nonsense description of what they do and what their primary value is. Like, right at the top, that first paragraph gives them. Brings out their differentiated capabilities. Right. So it's like, even in a. In a few. In just a. You know, there's not even any real graphics up here or anything.

Scott Taschler:
Right. It's like a few words and a. And a sentence, and I've kind of. Kind of got a good. A good feeling for who they are, what they do, and I can make it. I've got enough information to make a decision about whether it makes sense for me to keep scrolling.

Andrew Monaghan:
Yeah, yeah. And interesting what you're saying with the previous one where the customers that hear the story, two things here. One is actually underneath this, they've said love by the world's best security engineering team. So similar theme right there. I love that.

Scott Taschler:
100% the same. I love that, too. Absolutely.

Andrew Monaghan:
My question for Panther would be, how do you reword that secondary paragraph where Panther's not the hero of the story, rather than saying, panther delivers code driven blah, blah, blah, how can you say our customers, I don't know. Change the wording so the customer is the hero of that story.

Scott Taschler:
Yeah. That's a good call out. Always best to make the customer the hero, because that's ultimately, they're the ones with the problems to solve. We're just here to be the Obi Wan Kenobi to help you solve it. There you go.

Andrew Monaghan:
You're using words. I understand. What else do you like about it?

Scott Taschler:
I think if I were to criticize just a tiny bit, I was a little. I knew the capabilities, what this thing could do, but I wasn't really sure where they fit into, like, my, you know, an existing soc or security architecture. I got to wondering, like, do they replace my sim, or are they going to augment my sim somehow, you know, so it's very clear they're doing some analysis and threat detection and alerting on cloud logs and cloud, you know, cloud alerts. But I took, it took a little while to figure out, like, how they, you know, how they, how they, how they fit into that. So, and it makes me wonder. So, for example, there's not a specific category listed here. Code driven detection response is a capability, but I'm sort of missing a buzzword or an analyst category. And that's important because I need to know what am I comparing this to? Am I comparing this to a sim? Am I comparing this to, is it a, is it a cnap, is it a, you know, I'm not entirely, you know, I didn't come out of this section with a good mental frame of where, you know, where this, where this fits in the, in the overall landscape.

Andrew Monaghan:
And that's so important, Scott. Right. Because you have 3768 or something vendors right now in cyber. You know, when someone comes to something, I'm trying to make sense of all the categories that I know inside cyber, which is the one that this is closest to cycle, I can at least start putting frame around it. Right. I think that's what people come into websites have to kind of do. First of all, what is this similar to what I know already? And something just by saying like cnap or sim or whatever might, might help do that?

Scott Taschler:
Absolutely.

Andrew Monaghan:
Well, I don't want to call out negative ones necessarily, but there were, we did find some examples where there was the hyperbole. And people tend to get into absolute language, right? They talk about never or always or eliminating or every risk and things like that. Is that the kind of common things that you're seeing in sites where perhaps they've got, they aren't quite threading the needle all that well.

Scott Taschler:
Yeah. I think one word that really kind of every time I see it raises my spidey sense a little bit is when you see the word zero. And that could be zero trust or zero noise or zero false positives or zero dwell time or, you know, like anytime I see that and it's like zero, like really zero, like, you know, and again, and it's, and it's like, I see it and it's, it's, you know, zero false positives. Great example. Like, come on. Like, you can't really, like, there's never zero false positives. There's always that opportunity. And because you don't know every environment and every thing, you know.

Scott Taschler:
So when I see that, I'm like, okay, you know, and they're doing it deliberately to get a causal, like, oh, you know, again, it's a, it's, it's provocative, but I don't find it particularly credible. And it makes me call in a question then, you know, even if it's in a list of other, you know, five other benefits that are credible, it makes me call on a call, all of them in a question.

Andrew Monaghan:
There's one vendor out there and they, I forget the exact wording they use, and I don't want to name them, but I'm interested to get your take on this. They say something like, reduce your cloud security risk, and then they use the word guaranteed. What does that do to your spidey sense?

Scott Taschler:
It definitely causes questions, I think. I mean, when they say guarantee, then that implies that there's some kind of a financial contract behind the scenes. And so it's like, okay, well, wait, it does, you know, like if you're saying, if you're making this massive claim and then you say guaranteed, then there better be a, uh, you know, find out more link, because I want to know. Okay, tell me about this guarantee. Are you really going to stand behind this? Um, what are the, you know, under what circumstances? What's on the line for you if you don't meet this, uh, this, this amazing claim? I find, you know, I think it's a, a guarantee of some sort is, I think, a positive thing. We see it a lot, like in MD, in the MdR space. A lot of, a lot of MDRs will are bringing out like breach prevention warranties and things of that nature. I think that's a super positive claim, right? Or a super positive movement.

Scott Taschler:
It's like, hey, we're here to stop breaches in your environment. And if something gets through, we have skin in the game, right? Like, that's a fantastic piece of validation, in my opinion.

Andrew Monaghan:
I had the same opinion. It kind of made me stop. And like you, I had to process a little bit and say, well, what do you mean guaranteed? My initial reaction was, well, complete b's. I actually had me, huh. So that might be what they were going for at the time. Let me wrap up quickly by saying a couple of things. I think one of the interesting things is we talked about answering the question, what do these guys do? And the other question often to think about is, well, how is it different to the other people I know in this space? So you pick the subcategory in cyber, you do cnap, for example, or you do a Sim or DSPN, wherever it might be. What I'm looking for is to be able to say, okay, I get it.

Andrew Monaghan:
These guys say that they're the fastest or the one, whichever it was, zero to run time. I'm looking for something like that to say. This is their unique point of view. This is their approach that I'm trying to understand why they're different. I can't do that if they use a whole bunch of bland words, if it's the same words. And I want to pick on DSPM as a category. I think if you go through the vendors in there, frankly, a lot of it sounds a little bit samey to me, but I'm not a sophisticated technology buyer. Stuff in there that I'm not picking up on.

Andrew Monaghan:
But it seems a bit samey to me.

Scott Taschler:
Yeah, I can see. And, you know, it's a fairly new space. So I think, you know, there's people are out there and, you know, a lot, a lot of new, you know, in a young space, it's like a lot of new products come out really fast and then there's a, you know, you have to sort of check a bunch of boxes to prove that you're a player. And so I think as the space, as a space like that matures, I think you end up, you know, first some of the players fall out and, you know, get acquired, and the second, you know, the differentiation gets to be a lot more clear as the space kind of develops and matures. Yeah.

Andrew Monaghan:
And some of them are doing well and inside DSPM for sure. And it is an interesting space. It's consolidating literally week by week right now. So it's kind of a fascinating thing to watch. Scott, listen, we're at the end of the time here. Loved having you on, catching up and going over this. If someone wants to get in touch with you, what's the best way to do that?

Scott Taschler:
Oh, check me out on LinkedIn. Just look, search for. I think I'm the only Scott Tashler out there, so hit me up anytime.

Andrew Monaghan:
Awesome. Well, thanks for joining us today.

Scott Taschler:
All right, thank you. Cheers.