Podcasts about sourcefire

What's up everyone, today we have the pleasure of sitting down with Moni Oloyede, Founder at MO Martech. Summary: Your buyers can't remember why they bought from you, our brains physically can't store that information correctly. But we've built elaborate attribution systems pretending otherwise. Moni helps us understand why we need to stop crediting random touchpoints and start measuring how effectively each content piece performs its specific job in moving people through your funnel. We also cover why not all marketing activities need to drive revenue, why you shouldn't ditch ideas just because you can't track them and why GTM engineering is just job title inflation. About MoniMoni started her career at Sourcefire, a cybersecurity company where she dabbled in everything from Eloqua, Salesforce and AdwordsShe shifted to the agency world and joined a revenue marketing agency and later a growth consultancyShe went back in house in cybersecurity where she would spend the better part of 5 years becoming a Director of Marketing InfrastructureToday Moni (moo-nee) is the founder of MO Martech where she teaches and runs workshops to help business that struggle with marketingMost Tech Stacks Are Stitched With Duct TapeBorn in the prehistoric age of marketing automation, Moni witnessed marketing technology evolve from early concept to tablestakes. Her first employer, a cybersecurity company, maintained such intimate ties with Eloqua that they earned a literal place in the vendor's office. "I cut my teeth in the early days of lead scoring and nurturing, like all those concepts were new," she recalls. While most marketers today inherit established systems, Moni helped build the prototype.Those early days bristled with raw technological potential. Her CMO burst back from a conference, wide-eyed about "this new thing called the Cloud." Marketing teams fumbled through uncharted territory, concocting solutions with no rulebook. Moni found herself repeatedly cast as the test subject for nascent concepts:* Early lead scoring algorithms that barely understood buyer intent* Rudimentary nurture campaigns that seem prehistoric by today's standards* Primitive ABM approaches before the category even existed* First-generation dynamic content that barely qualified as "dynamic"Her technical immersion might have continued indefinitely, but a pattern emerged across agencies and client engagements. The technology consistently underdelivered on its promise. "We seem to get to a point and then we can't ever get to the promise," she explains. The gap between vendor slideware and actual results remained stubbornly unbridgeable regardless of budget size, team composition, or technical architecture.This revelation propelled Moni toward the marketing roots beneath the technology. She uncovered the industry's dirty little secret: nobody has their marketing technology working smoothly. Not even close.> "Everybody always thinks that other people's tech stacks are perfect. You attend webinars and listen to podcasts and think, 'oh my gosh, that brand has it all figured out. Why don't I have it figured out?'"Pull back the curtain on these supposedly perfect marketing technology implementations and you'll discover chaos. That Fortune 500 company presenting their "integrated customer journey orchestration"? They can't even track basic lead conversion properly. That unicorn startup showcasing their "AI-powered personalization engine"? Most of their segments contain default content. The larger the company, the more chaotic the implementation. "The bigger the company, the more mess it is," Moni confirms. "It's more duct tape and glue and just hobbled together things."Marketing technology works as an amplifier, not a miracle cure. "Technology is not automagical," Moni states bluntly. "It can only do so much, and if the marketing's bad, the technology is not going to fix that." Her journey from tech specialist to marketing strategist stems directly from this understanding: fix the foundation first.Key takeaway: Stop comparing your messy marketing stack to the sanitized versions presented at conferences. Even the most sophisticated enterprises run on cobbled-together systems and manual workarounds. Focus first on creating marketing that resonates with real humans, then apply technology selectively to amplify what already works. You'll save yourself the frustration of trying to automate broken processes while building something sustainable that actually delivers results.The Marketing Ops Identity ParadoxMarketing operations professionals inhabit a peculiar career limbo. You build the systems that power modern marketing, yet find yourself trapped by your own expertise. Moni, a 16-year marketing veteran, captures this frustration perfectly: "For at least 10 years I've been doing my damnedest to try to run away from marketing ops, and it won't let me go."> "No matter what I do, I can't get away from it even though I've tried forever."This career quicksand pulls you back each time you attempt to climb out. Your specialized knowledge becomes both your superpower and your career ceiling. While executives strategize future campaigns in boardrooms, you transform their whiteboard sketches into measurable reality. The truth? Marketing strategy without operational execution amounts to wishful thinking on a slide deck.The operational brain works differently. You see systems where others see individual campaigns. You spot integration failures where others blame the platform. Your value comes from this unique perspective—connecting dots across the marketing ecosystem that others don't even know exist. Moni describes this experience viscerally: "There's so much nuance into making it work that they don't get or understand unless you're in it or have that historical knowledge."Marketing ops professionals often bear the weight of accountability without corresponding authority. When campaigns fail, executives look to you for answers. As Moni explains, "Since you're responsible for the results and the analytics, you feel like it's on you. When it doesn't happen, they come to you." This creates immense pressure: "You feel that pressure and it's like, 'but you gave me a crappy campaign that doesn't have good messaging and doesn't make sense to anybody. I'm not a magician.'"Rather than fighting this identity, Moni transformed it into something bigger. She embraced her role as a "marketing educator" focused on teaching fundamentals to a generation that reduces marketing to:* Getting attention* Creating content * Generating leads"That's the result," she argues. "That's not what marketing is." This educational perspective allows her to leverage her operational expertise while addressing systemic issues in marketing practice.Key takeaway: Your marketing operations expertise gives you unique system-level insights nobody else possesses. Stop trying to escape this identity. Instead, use your operational knowledge to command respect by translating technical realities into business language executives understand. Create clear boundaries around what technology can and cannot solve. When handed unrealistic expectations, respond with specific prerequisites for success. Your value comes from connecting strategy with execution; making you the bridge that transforms marketing from theory into measurable results.Stop Crediting Random Marketing Assets For ConversionsThat gnawing feeling you get when reviewing complex attribution reports should be trusted.. Your instincts know something your dashboards don't. Moni cuts through years of marketing dogma with a refreshingly brutal assessment: "I thi...

In this episode, we sit down with Marty Roesch, founder of Sourcefire. Sourcefire led the intrusion detection and protection (IDS/IPS) wave, raised four rounds of financing from leading VCs like NEA, Sierra Ventures, and Sequoia, and went public, later to be acquired by Cisco for $2.7 billion.Founders often believe that their first few customers cannot be large enterprises. Marty took the contrarian path. Sourcefire's first few customers were all six-figure deals - PWC, Intel, SAIC, and International Paper. In addition to that, Sourcefire was incredibly successful in working with industry research firms like Gartner and organizations like SANS in developing a new category. In this podcast, Marty shares what happened behind the scenes and provides founders with advice on how to work with enterprises and gain the interest of industry analysts.Almost two decades after starting Sourcefire, Marty has gone back full circle to being the CEO of Netography, a network security startup. Marty shares stories from both his Sourcefire and Netography journeys, discusses how he navigated the M&A landscape and explains where we should be excited about AI in security, and where it's wise to be cautious.

Tim Guleri has had a remarkable run at Sierra Ventures since 2001. He has invested in transcendent companies including Sourcefire and MakeMyTrip which both went public. Before that, Tim had a successful career as an entrepreneur and exec at companies like Scopus and Octane which was acquired by Epiphany in 2000.Sierra has one of the strongest future of work and AI portfolios that includes companies like Paro, Krisp, and SupportLogic which acquired Emtropy Labs which was founded by great former guest Harish Batlapenamurthy. In full disclosure, Sierra and I are both investors in ArmorCode.Listen and learn...Why the most successful venture investors were previously entrepreneursTim's thesis for investing in gen AI customer journey company SimulateHow Tim identifies "gen AI whitewashing" when hearing pitchesWhy gen AI is more than just another platform shiftHow gen AI startups can beat Big Tech incumbentsWhy all companies are ultimately "financial products"Sierra's primary data from CIOs: "...they're spending money on use cases that unlock employee productivity"What Tim means by "build horizontally but execute vertically"Which jobs AI will eliminate vs. augmentTim's "one that got away" pitch from his early days at SierraReferences in this episode...According to CNBC, 69% of U.S. adults are uncomfortable with AI that can mimic human thinkingAshu Garg from Foundation Capital on AI and the Future of WorkRory O'Driscoll from Scale Venture Partners on AI and the Future of WorkSierra Ventures

It's another holiday week, so enjoy this episode from the ESW archives!   The cloud and SaaS were supposed to make things easier, simpler, more scalable. Arguably, they _have_ done all those things, but traditional, legacy networks linger. Migrations are messy and take time. Nearly everything is encrypted in transit by default. Today, we interview Marty Roesch, the creator of Snort and founder of SourceFire, to discuss how things have changed and what defenders can do to catch up and restore some order to the madness. We'll step through some history along the way - listeners might be surprised at how much our current situation mirrors the reasons behind why Marty created Snort in the first place.

It's another holiday week, so enjoy this episode from the ESW archives!   The cloud and SaaS were supposed to make things easier, simpler, more scalable. Arguably, they _have_ done all those things, but traditional, legacy networks linger. Migrations are messy and take time. Nearly everything is encrypted in transit by default. Today, we interview Marty Roesch, the creator of Snort and founder of SourceFire, to discuss how things have changed and what defenders can do to catch up and restore some order to the madness. We'll step through some history along the way - listeners might be surprised at how much our current situation mirrors the reasons behind why Marty created Snort in the first place.

Marty Roesch is the CEO at Netography. Before Netography, he founded Sourcefire which sold to Cisco for $2.7b in 2013.

Cloud computing's velocity and dynamism make it hard for security teams to monitor and protect workloads in the cloud without impeding the agility of dev teams. ExtraHop Senior Principal Data Scientist Edward Wu joins ESW to discuss practical deployment approaches and scenarios to facilitate gathering and utilizing network data in cloud environments for improved visibility, detection, and response capabilities. This segment is sponsored by ExtraHop Networks. Visit https://securityweekly.com/extrahop to learn more about them!   The cloud and SaaS were supposed to make things easier, simpler, more scalable. Arguably, they _have_ done all those things, but traditional, legacy networks linger. Migrations are messy and take time. Nearly everything is encrypted in transit by default. Today, we interview Marty Roesch, the creator of Snort and founder of SourceFire, to discuss how things have changed and what defenders can do to catch up and restore some order to the madness. We'll step through some history along the way - listeners might be surprised at how much our current situation mirrors the reasons behind why Marty created Snort in the first place.   This week in the Enterprise News Adrian & the gang discuss: With Technology, there's no such thing as “Magic”', Cyber M&A Expected to Remain Robust Into 2023, Former NSO CEO and ex-Austrian Chancellor found startup, Field Effect raises USD $30M in Series A funding  led by Edison Partners, & France-based TEHTRIS raises €44M to help companies fight cyber threats in real-time!   Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/esw for all the latest episodes! Follow us on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/securityweekly Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/secweekly   Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/esw293

Cloud computing's velocity and dynamism make it hard for security teams to monitor and protect workloads in the cloud without impeding the agility of dev teams. ExtraHop Senior Principal Data Scientist Edward Wu joins ESW to discuss practical deployment approaches and scenarios to facilitate gathering and utilizing network data in cloud environments for improved visibility, detection, and response capabilities. This segment is sponsored by ExtraHop Networks. Visit https://securityweekly.com/extrahop to learn more about them!   The cloud and SaaS were supposed to make things easier, simpler, more scalable. Arguably, they _have_ done all those things, but traditional, legacy networks linger. Migrations are messy and take time. Nearly everything is encrypted in transit by default. Today, we interview Marty Roesch, the creator of Snort and founder of SourceFire, to discuss how things have changed and what defenders can do to catch up and restore some order to the madness. We'll step through some history along the way - listeners might be surprised at how much our current situation mirrors the reasons behind why Marty created Snort in the first place.   This week in the Enterprise News Adrian & the gang discuss: With Technology, there's no such thing as “Magic”', Cyber M&A Expected to Remain Robust Into 2023, Former NSO CEO and ex-Austrian Chancellor found startup, Field Effect raises USD $30M in Series A funding  led by Edison Partners, & France-based TEHTRIS raises €44M to help companies fight cyber threats in real-time!   Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/esw for all the latest episodes! Follow us on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/securityweekly Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/secweekly   Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/esw293

The cloud and SaaS were supposed to make things easier, simpler, more scalable. Arguably, they _have_ done all those things, but traditional, legacy networks linger. Migrations are messy and take time. Nearly everything is encrypted in transit by default. Today, we interview Marty Roesch, the creator of Snort and founder of SourceFire, to discuss how things have changed and what defenders can do to catch up and restore some order to the madness. We'll step through some history along the way - listeners might be surprised at how much our current situation mirrors the reasons behind why Marty created Snort in the first place.   Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/esw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/esw293

The cloud and SaaS were supposed to make things easier, simpler, more scalable. Arguably, they _have_ done all those things, but traditional, legacy networks linger. Migrations are messy and take time. Nearly everything is encrypted in transit by default. Today, we interview Marty Roesch, the creator of Snort and founder of SourceFire, to discuss how things have changed and what defenders can do to catch up and restore some order to the madness. We'll step through some history along the way - listeners might be surprised at how much our current situation mirrors the reasons behind why Marty created Snort in the first place.   Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/esw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/esw293

Network security pioneer Marty Roesch takes listeners on a trip down memory lane, sharing stories from the creation of Snort back in the 1990s, the startup journey of building Sourcefire into an IDS/IPS powerhouse and selling the company for $2 billion, the U.S. government killing a Check Point acquisition, and his newest adventure as chief executive at Netography.

Oliver Friedrichs is the Founder and CEO of Phantom Cyber, a four-time successful entrepreneur who has exited companies to McAfee, Symantec, Sourcefire, and Splunk. On today's episode, Jon Sakoda speaks with Oliver about the lessons he has learned along the way, including how to cultivate partnerships that lead to successful exits and avoiding valuation traps as a first-time founder.  Your Advantage Is Your Speed [17:47 - 18:39] - Many startups think they are smarter than big companies. Oftentimes their greatest advantage is their ability to execute and focus when a large company might be distracted by other priorities. Listen to hear why startups should not act like they are smarter than everyone else, but should act with speed and certainty when building their product. Don't Overshoot Your Valuation [22:41 - 24:24] - If you have a high valuation, it may take years for your company to grow before your investors believe they can exit a company. Having the flexibility to exit is important and a high valuation can limit and restrict the M&A possibilities for your company. Listen to hear why Oliver believes optionality to exit at the right inflection point is a founder's best friend.  Build The Right Partnerships For A Successful Exit [24:47 - 26:19] - Oliver subscribes to the idea that companies are bought not sold, and has cultivated valuable relationships throughout all of his startup journeys. To create an exit strategy that makes sense, work with companies to integrate your products and increase customer engagement. Listen to learn how to leverage your existing partnerships into successful exits. 

  “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.”  —Steve Jobs   “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”    —Wayne Gretzy   “If everything seems under control, you're not going fast enough.”  —Mario Andretti   Sometimes our show has very eloquently prepared blogs that would bring a tear to Shakespeare's eye… sometimes we offer Shonda Rhimes level quippy thoughts that should get us a spot writing for Inventing Anna   How bout for today we go with straight up statistics • The Small Business Administration (SBA) defines a "small" business as one with 500 employees or less. • In 2019, the failure rate of startups was around 90%. Research concludes 21.5% of startups fail in the first year, 30% in the second year, 50% in the fifth year, and 70% in their 10th year.   Courtesy of Investopedia   Who the hell would even want to do this?   Who the hell would leave a comfortable position in the corporate world complete with benefits, an expense account and really REALLY good coffee in the breakroom? Beyond that… what kind of lunatic keeps doing it over and over again? Well friends… I your lunatic right here…Today Matt Stephenson welcomes Greg Fitzgerald, co-founder of Sevco Security and sereal startup CMO. Our man isn't that interested if a company has over tons employees. He's here to build, not maintain…Dig it.   About Greg Fitzgerald     Greg Fitzgerald is the Chief Experience Officer and co-founder of Sevco Security. He is a veteran IT and Security executive with successful tours at TippingPoint, BMC Software, Fortinet and Sourcefire. Fitz was the founding CMO at Cylance and JASK.    About Matt Stephenson     My name is Matt Stephenson (@packmatt73) and I have hosted podcasts, videos and live events all over the world which put me with experts on every corner of the cybersecurity landscape. pm73media is my first solo endeavor. On this platform and others to come, I will continue to expand upon the tradition we started with the Insecurity podcast as I seek out the leading minds in the tech industry and beyond. I am always looking for fun people who may break things every now and again.    In 20 years in the ecosystem of Data Protection and Cybersecurity I have toured the world extolling the virtues of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning and how, when applied to information security, these technologies can wrong-foot the bad guys.    Whether in person, live virtual events or podcasting, I get to interview interesting people doing interesting things all over the world of technology and the extended world of hacking. Sometimes, that means hacking elections or the coffee supply chain... other times that means social manipulation or the sovereign wealth fund of a national economy.    Wherever I go, my job is all about talking with the people who build, manage or wreck the systems that we have put in place to make the world go round...   If you tuned in to any of my previous podcasts, there's great news…! pm73media is here! I will be bringing the same kind of energy and array of guests you know and love. Best part? We're still at the same spot. You can find it at Spotify, Apple, Amazon Music & Audible as well as Google, Gaana, Himalaya, I Heart Radio and wherever you get your podcasts!   Make sure you Subscribe, Rate and Review!

Martin Roesch, CEO of Netography and creator of Snort and former CEO of Sourcefire, joins Dennis Fisher to talk about why he decided to come out of retirement and what the big challenges are for security right now.

2+ years to interview Alfred Huger wasn't too long to wait. After spending 8 years at Cisco following the acquisition of SourceFire, Al recently departed the networking giant to do his 4th startup in as many decades. Unbound from the usual PR police, Al candidly speaks on a wide range of topics from why he has stayed at companies long past acquisition and how to distinguish between a miserable and a winning acquirer. Having raised venture capital funding in the 90s until now, Al's experience charts a timeline of what's happened to cybersecurity funding over the last 4 decades. From hardscrabble early days to today's megarounds and eyepopping valuations, Alfred explains how he's raising funding for his new company and why even a successful entrepreneur is not likely to bootstrap their business on their own funds alone.Al shares his playbook for spotting the right product ideas along with some blunt words of caution for those excited about the latest industry analyst report. While cybersecurity veterans critiquing reviews and analysts is by no means novel, we go beyond an explanation of the negative implications to a new development from an unexpected place that is improving transparency and the industry in general. And that marketing plan? Al explains how it starts with your product and not your website.If you've ever thought about starting a cybersecurity company and wanted to sit down with a “been there done that” serial entrepreneur for a clear-headed, no nonsense dialogue, this episode is for you.

Some of what Dina talks about: Finding a way to connect with your team in a way you haven't before Building safe spaces to allow people to be heard All slack channels are public Create a culture committee to have employees be a part of the solution Break down assumptions that have been made Time and space introduce attribution error Meet: Dina Bruzek has over 31 years of experience in technology with more than 23 years of experience leading teams in the development of market-leading cybersecurity products. At Huntress Labs, Dina is Senior Vice President of Product and Engineering and is responsible for guiding the execution of the company's product strategy across the engineering and product management groups to bring enterprise-grade solutions to Mid-Market and SMB partners. Prior to joining Huntress Labs, Dina was also the SVP of Product and Engineering at NSS Labs and The Media Trust. Prior to that, Dina led Cisco's Network Threat Defense (NTD) group, where she was responsible for a $1.5 billion product portfolio. Dina joined Cisco through the 2013 acquisition of Sourcefire for $2.7 billion. At Cisco, she led the company's strategy to deliver the first threat-focused next-generation firewall. In addition, she led the integration of the Sourcefire and Cisco development teams and the agile transformation of the development and test organizations to form the NTD group, which consisted of more than 800 engineers. Before joining Cisco, Dina was the Vice President of Product Development at Sourcefire, where she was responsible for software and hardware development for Sourcefire network security products. She has also held various technical, strategic, and management roles in Internet security at Secure Computing Corporation and Network Associates. She started her career as a communications systems engineer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Dina holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University and an MS in Engineering from Johns Hopkins University. If you have any questions for Dina, please feel free to reach out via: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dina-bruzek-997941/ https://twitter.com/dbruzek I hope you enjoyed the episode, the best place to connect with me is on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amirbormand (Amir Bormand). Please send me a message if you would like me to cover certain topics with future guests.

We speak with Adam Denyer-Hampton, International Lead for the Pre-Sales Engineering team at SecurityScorecard. We discuss the key security metrics and the basis for developing a Security Strategy for the Board to Monitor. We also discuss what to measure or what can be measured, as well as real-time versus intermittent monitoring. Adam has 15 years of experience in successfully delivering large and complex IT security solutions for major global companies, across Europe and APAC, including the defence and government agencies. Prior to joining SecurityScorecard, Adam held key technical roles at companies such as SafeNet, SourceFire (part of Cisco Systems) and IT Security Experts, where he managed solution deployments and technical consultations/trainings to meet customer requirements and successfully onboard them to new solutions. For further information and insights, attend a special virtual event with MySecurity Media & SecurityScorecard on Thursday 10 February, 1:30pm SGT - Presenting the Cyber Security Strategy to the Board of Directors - Key Metrics | Third Party Risk | Cyber Insurance - REGISTER HERE https://www.eventbrite.com/e/presenting-the-cyber-security-strategy-to-the-board-of-directors-tickets-251046265137MySec.TV version visit https://mysecuritymarketplace.com/av-media/key-security-metrics-measuring-monitoring-the-cybersecurity-strategy/ #cybersecurity #securityscorecard #securitymetrics #cyberinsurance

Marty Roesch is the founder and CEO of Sourcefire, one of the very first commercial open source companies, that was acquired by Cisco in 2013 for $2.7 billion. On today's episode, Jon Sakoda speaks with Marty Roesch on his journey to CEO, including how laser tag became his foray into cybersecurity and why he considers himself a “particularly good benevolent dictator”. Have Empathy For Your Users [14:19-15:19] - Marty got the motivation to continue developing Sourcefire alongside his 9-5 from the direct interactions he had with its users. Later on, his business model relied on the understanding he had of the actual problems users deploying Sourcefire had and creating solutions that go above and beyond. Sometimes You Have To Call BS On Yourself [15:39-16:39] - When you become encumbered by success, it's easy to lose sight of yourself. As Marty scaled Sourcefire, he had to re-examine his beliefs and have moments of introspection. If you're a founder experiencing rapid growth, remember to tether yourself to your fundamental values. Ask For Help When You Need It [25:59-26:55] - Marty created the success that is Sourcefire with a bachelor's degree in computer engineering. When he decided to branch out on his own and build a company, he had to be honest with himself and the people around him. Listen to learn how asking the simple questions got him to where he is today. Don't Try To Be The Smartest Guy In The Room [26:45-27:15] - When Marty was starting to understand how to turn his idea into a business, someone told him that the sole key to running a successful business is hiring good people. Listen to hear why he believes the strength of your organization is the strength of your people.

Mark Fernandes is Managing Partner at Sierra Ventures, an early-stage VC firm that specializes in Enterprise & Emerging Tech Companies. Mark hit a homer in his first at-bat when his first-ever investment in Sourcefire paid off big time when it was acquired by Cisco for $2.7B in 2013. If you want to understand what separates a good entrepreneur from a great one and how the high stakes venture business works, you don't want to miss this episode.

In this episode we cover:Finding early-stage companies across the country and being the bridge to Silicon Valley  Having a great idea is different than building a successful companyThree things necessary to build a great company: the capital, the people, and the playbookResources & People MentionedScopus Technologies, went public in 1995Octane Software, aquired by E.piphanyTwo Sierra portfolio companies that went public under Tim, Sourcefire and MakeMyTripCintrifuse in Cincinnati, OHRenaissance Venture Capital in Ann Arbor, MichiganShared portfolio company of Sierra and Refinery, Astronomer in Cincinnati, OHTreasure Data in Tokyo, Founded by Kaz, sold to SoftBank’s ARM groupVC research databases: Pitchbook, CrunchbaseMichael Driscoll, CEO - known by Tim and Scott Yara from GreenplumSierra’s CXO Advisory BoardTim’s motoring adventure in Endurance Rally, 2019 - Peking to ParisConnect with Tim GuleriFollow Tim Guleri on Twitter: @timguleriConnect with Tim Gueleri on LinkedInSierra Ventures WebsiteConnect with Tim SchigelFollow Refinery Ventures on Twitter: @RefineryVCConnect with Tim on LinkedInFollow Refinery Ventures on LinkedInSubscribe to Fast Frontiers

Cybersecurity startups are providing excellent opportunities for people who want to create and bring to market new products. They can also be financially rewarding. How do you decide if working for a startup is right for you? Do you understand the real risks and the benefits from a financial and career point of view? Join us as we talk with Jared Hufferd. Jared has made it a job in picking the right startups to work for as a cybersecurity account manager. Jared has had successful exits at Netscreen, Sourcefire, and several other successful organizations. We will discuss with him what he looks for in a cybersecurity startup and what he avoids.

James McNab, Director, Cybersecurity Marketing, (EMEA, Asia Pacific) at Cisco talks about his experience of being acquired by Cisco and how the art of simplicity made  Sourcefire an attractive acquisition for them.Read our Empowered Workforce Report here

The History Of Cisco Welcome to the History of Computing Podcast, where we explore the history of information technology. Because understanding the past prepares us to innovate (and sometimes cope with) the future! Today we're going to talk about the history of Cisco. They have defined the routing and switching world for decades. Practically since the beginning of the modern era. They've bought companies, they've grown and shrunk and grown again. And their story feels similar in many ways to the organizations that came out of the tail end of the grants tossed around by DARPA. These companies harnessed the incredibly innovative ideas and technology to found the companies who commercialized all of that amazing research and changed the world. These companies ushered in a globally connected network, almost instantaneously transmitting thoughts and hopes and dreams and failures and atrocities. They made money. Massive, massive truckloads of money. But they changed the world for the better. Hopefully in an irrevocable kind of way. The Cisco story is interesting because it symbolizes a time when we were moving from the beginnings of the Internet. Stanford had been involved in ARPAnet since the late 60s but Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn had been advancing TCP and IP in the 70s, establishing IPv4 in 1983. And inspired by ALOHAnet, Bob Metcaffe and the team at Xerox PARC had developed Ethernet in 74. And the computer science research community had embraced these, with the use of Email and time sharing spurring more and more computers to be connected to the Internet. Raw research being done out of curiosity and to make the world a better place. The number of devices connected to the growing network was increasing. And Stanford was right in the center of it. Silicon Valley founders just keep coming out of Stanford but this one, they were professors, and early on. They invented the multi-protocol router and finance the startup with their own personal credit cards. Leonard Bosack and Sandy K. Lerner are credited for starting Cisco, but the company rose out of projects to network computers on the Stanford campus. The project got started after Xerox PARC donated some Alto workstations and Ethernet boards they didn't need anymore in 1980, shortly after Metcaffe left Xerox to start 3COM. And by then Cerf was off to MCI to help spur development of the backbones faster. And NSFnet came along in 1981, bringing even more teams from universities and private companies into the fold. The Director of Computer Facilities, Ralph Gorin, needed to be able to get longer network cables to get even more devices connected. He got what would amount to a switch today. The team was informal. They used a mother board from Andy Bechtolsheim, later the founder of Sun Microsystems. They borrow boards from other people. Bosack himself, who had been an ARPAnet contributor, donated a board. And amongst the most important was the software, which William Yeager wrote, which had a little routing program that connected medical center computers to the computer science department computers and could use the Parc Universal Packet (PUP), XNS, IP and CHAOSNet.. The network linked any types of computers, from Xerox Altos to mainframes using a number of protocols, including the most important for the future, IP, or the Internet Protocol. They called it the Blue Box. And given the number of computers that were at Stanford, various departments around campus started asking for them, as did other universities. There were 5,000 computers connected at Stanford by the time they were done. Seeing a potential business here, Bosack, then running the computers for the Computer Science department, and Lerner, then the Director of Computer Facilities for the Graduate School of Business, founded Cisco Systems in 1984, short for San Francisco, and used an image of the Golden Gate Bridge a their logo. You can see the same pattern unfold all over. When people from MIT built something cool, it was all good. Until someone decided to monetize it. Same with chip makers and others. By 1985, Stanford formally started a new project to link all the computers they could on the campus. Yeager gave the source to Bosack and Kirk Lougheed so they could strip out everything but the Internet Protocol and beef that up. I guess Yeager saw routers as commercially viable and he asked the university if he could sell the Blue Box. They said no. But Bosack and Lougheed were plowing ahead, using Stanford time and resources. But Bosack and Lerner hadn't asked and they were building these routers in their home and it was basically the same thing as the Blue Box, including the software. Most of the people at Stanford thought they were crazy. They kept adding more code and logic and the devices kept getting better. By 1986, Bosack's supervisor Les Earnest caught wind and started to investigate. He went to the dean and Bosack was given an ultimatum, it was go the wacky Cisco thing or stay at Stanford. Bosack quit to try to build Cisco into a company. Lougheed ran into something similar and quit as well. Lerner had already left but Greg Satz and Richard Troiano left as well, bringing them up to 5 people. Yeager was not one of them, even though he'd worked a lot on the software, including on nights and weekends. But everyone was learning and when it was to benefit the university, it was fine. But then when things went commercial, Stanford got the lawyers involved. Yeager looked at the code and still saw some of his in there. I'm sure the Cisco team considered that technical debt. Cisco launched the Advanced Gateway Server (AGS) router in 1986, two years after the Mac was released. The software was initially written by Yeager but improved by Bosack and Lougheed, as the operating system, later called Cisco IOS. Stanford thought about filing a criminal complaint of theft but realized it would be hard to prosecute, and ugly especially given that Stanford itself is a non-profit. They had $200,000 in contracts and couldn't really be paying all this attention to lawsuits and not building the foundations of the emerging Internet. So instead they all agreed to license the software and the imprint of the physical boards being used (known as photomasks), to the fledgling Cisco Systems in 1987. This was crucial as now Cisco could go to market with products without the fear of law suits. Stanford got discounts on future products, $19,300 up front, and $150,000 in royalties. No one knew what Cisco would become so it was considered a fair settlement at the time. Yeager, being a mensch and all, split his 80% of the royalties between the team. He would go on to give us IMAP and Kermit, before moving to Sun Microsystems. Speaking of Sun, there was bad blood between Cisco and Stanford, which I always considered ironic given that a similar thing happened when Sun was founded in some part, using Stanford intellectual property and unused hardware back in 1982. I think the difference is trying to hide things and being effusive with the credit for code and inventions. But as sales increased, Lougheed continued to improve the code and the company hired Bill Graves to be CEO in 1987 who was replaced with John Mordridge in 1988. And the sales continued to skyrocket. Cisco went public in 1990 when they were valued at $224 million. Lerner was fired later that year and Bosack decided to join her. And as is so often the case after a company goes public, the founders who had a vision of monetizing great research, were no longer at the startup. Seeing a need for more switching, Cisco acquired a number of companies including Grand Junction and Crescendo Communications which formed like Voltron to become the Cisco Catalyst, arguably the most prolific switching line in computing. Seeing the success of Cisco and the needs of the market, a number of others started building routers and firewalls. The ocean was getting redder. John Mays had the idea to build a device that would be called the PIX in 1994 and Branley Coile in Athens, Georgia programmed it to become a PBX running on IP. We were running out of IP addresses because at the time, organizations used public IPs. But NAT was about to become a thing and RFC 1918 was being reviewed by the IETF. They brought in Johnson Wu and shipped a device that could run NAT that year, ushering in the era of the Local Area Network. John T. Chambers replaced Mordridge in 1995 and led Cisco as its CEO until 2015. Cisco quickly acquired the company and the Cisco PIX would become the standard firewall used in organizations looking to get their computers on the Internets. The PIX would sell and make Cisco all the monies until it was replaced by the Cisco ASA in 2008. In 1996, Cisco's revenues hit $5.4 billion, making it one of Silicon Valley's biggest success stories. By 1998 they were up to $6B. Their stock peaked in 2000. By the end of the dot-com bubble in the year 2000, Cisco had a more than $500 billion market capitalization. They were building an industry. The CCNA, or Cisco Certified Network Associate, and CCNE, Cisco Certified Network Engineer were the hottest certifications on the market. When I got mine it was much easier than it is today. The market started to fragment after that. Juniper came out strong in 1999 and led a host of competitors that landed in niche markets and expanded into core markets. But the ASA combined Cisco's IPS, VPN concentration, and NAT functionality into one simpler box that actually came with a decent GUI. The GUI seemed like sacrilege at the time. And instead of sitting on top of a network operating system, it ran on Linux. At the top end they could handle 10 million connections, important once devices established and maintained so many connections to various services. And you could bolt on antivirus and other features that were becoming increasingly necessary at various layers of connectivity at the time. They went down-market for routing devices with an acquisition of Linksys in 2003. They acquired Webex in 2007 for over $3 billion dollars and that became the standard in video conferencing until a solid competitor called Zoom emerged recently. They acquired SourceFire in 2013 for $2.7B and have taken the various services offered there to develop Cisco products, such as the anti-virus to be a client-side malware scanning tool called Cisco AMP. Juniper gave away free training unlike the Cisco training that cost thousands of dollars and Alcatel-Lucent, Linksys, Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, SonicWall, Barracuda, CheckPoint, and rising giant Huawei led to a death by a thousand competitors and Cisco's first true layoffs by 2011. Cisco acquired OpenDNS in 2015 to establish a core part of what's now known as Cisco Umbrella. This gives organizations insight into what's happening on increasingly geographically distributed devices; especially mobile devices due to a close partnership with Apple. And they acquired Broadsoft in 2017 to get access to even more sellers and technology in the cloud communication space. Why? Because while they continue to pump out appliances for IP connectivity, they just probably can't command a higher market share due to the market dynamics. Every vendor they acquire in that space will spawn two or more new serious competitors. Reaching into other spaces provides a more diverse product portfolio and gives their sellers more SKUs in the quiver to make quotas. And pushes the world forward with newer concepts, like fog computing. Today, Cisco is still based in San Jose and makes around $50 billion a year in revenue and boasts close to 75,000 employees. A lot has happened since those early days. Cisco is one of the most innovative and operationally masterful companies on the planet. Mature companies can have the occasional bumps in the road and will go through peaks and valleys. But their revenues are a reflection of their market leadership, sitting around 50 billion dollars. Yes, most of their true innovation comes from acquisitions today. However, the insights on whom to buy and how to combine technologies, and how to get teams to work well with one another. That's a crazy level of operational efficiency. There's a chance that the Internet explosion could have happened without Cisco effectively taking the mantle in a weird kind of way from BBN for selling and supporting routing during the storm when it came. There's also a chance that without a supply chain of routing appliances to help connect the world that the whole thing might have tumbled down. So consider this: technological determinism. If it hadn't of been Cisco, would someone else have stepped up to get us to the period of the dot com bubble? Maybe. And since they made so much money off the whole thing I've heard that Cisco doesn't deserve our thanks for the part they played. But they do. Without their training and appliances and then intrusion prevention, we might not be where we are today. So thank you Cisco for teaching me everything I know about OSI models and layers and all that. And you know… helping the Internet become ubiquitous and all. And thank you, listener, for tuning in to yet another episode of the history of computing podcast. We are so very lucky to have you. Have a great day!

In this episode of the Cybrary Podcast, we sit down with John Czupak the CEO of ThreatQuotient. Speaking with Cybrary CEO Ralph Sita and Myself Thomas Horlacher the Head of Creative Services, John discusses being at Sourcefire during the creation of the SNORT technology and how now at Threatquotient they are working to help with the issue of Alert Fatigue for security teams.

Snort creator Marty Roesch is leaving Cisco Feb. 1 for a new adventure, parting ways for the time being with the one of the true success stories in the information security industry. Snort, the ubiquitous open source intrusion detection and prevention system, is a mainstay in many homegrown and commercial security products. It was commercialized in 2001 when Roesch founded Sourcefire, which was acquired in 2013 by Cisco. In this conversation with Flashpoint Editorial Director Mike Mimoso, Roesch talks about the early days of Snort when it was a nights-and-weekends passion project for him. Roesch explains how his faith in the product and community supporting it guided him past early skeptics who doubted it could be commercialized. Sourcefire was ultimately acquired for $2.7 billion in 2013, and Snort's open-source roots remain a crucial part of the the software's legacy as it has been integrated into many mission-critical products at Cisco. 

Advancement in technology has created a "disrupt or die" notion among large enterprises. To remain one step ahead of their competitors, leading CEOs understand that they need to bring in new technology and seek out partners who can help them achieve that goal. In this episode of Greymatter, Delphix CEO and President Chris Cook and Greylock Partner Asheem Chandna discuss how to lead during times of company uncertainty, what to look for in a new hire and how startups can effectively partner with large enterprises.    Both Chris and Asheem know what it takes to scale enterprise startup companies. In 2016, Chris began as CEO and President at Delphix, whose mission is to free companies from data friction and accelerate innovation. Today, Delphix has nearly 400 employees in nine offices around the world and has grown the number of customer deals of more than $500,000 by 26% year over year. Prior, Chris served as President and COO of New Relic, a software analytics leader, where he spent over four years scaling the company's operations through a successful IPO. Asheem has helped create and grow multiple technology businesses to market-leading positions. He has served on 20 technology company boards including three public companies (Palo Alto Networks, Imperva, Sourcefire), and multiple companies that have been acquired in strong M&A outcomes including AppDynamics and Skyhigh Networks.

On this episode of Bootstrapped, we interviewed UMD alumnus, serial entrepreneur and President and CEO of ThreatQuotient, John Czupak. Before ThreatQuotient, John worked at Sourcefire in a variety of roles from 2002 to 2013, until he ultimately engineered a $2.7 billion acquisition with Cisco, the 3rd largest pure play cybersecurity acquisition ever. In this episode, John discusses the approach, mindset and key factors that cybersecurity startups must implement to be successful in a competitive environment.

Martin Roesch is the VP and chief architect, Security Business Group at Cisco.A respected authority on intrusion prevention and detection technology and forensics, he is responsible for the technical direction and product development efforts for Sourcefire's commercial and open source product offerings. Roesch, who has nearly 20 years of industry experience in network security and embedded systems engineering, is also the author and lead developer of the Snort® Intrusion Prevention and Detection System (www.snort.org) that forms the foundation for the Sourcefire Next-Generation IPS.

Episode 1 - Introducing a new alliance.  The first in a series of podcasts aimed at security professionals.  Introducing the Alliance, news stories covering the Adobe breach and arrest of Paunch, Kotters 8 step plan for change and the Sourcefire aquisition.