Cybertraps Podcast

7. Hunter Weiffenbach
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[00:00:00] Welcome to the cyber traps podcast. I am Jethro Jones. Your host. You can find me on all the social networks at Jethro Jones. The cyber chaps podcast is a proud member. Of the be podcast network. You can see all of our shows at two B podcast. dot network. And today on the show we have. A special interview from the inch 360 conference.

That's the inland Northwest cybersecurity hub. They put on a conference each year and I have the great fortune of being able to go. Go to that conference. And interview a bunch of people. So that's what you're going to hear on this episode. I hope you enjoy it. And if you want. To learn more about inch 360, go to inch 360 dot O R G.

Alright, we are here at the Inch360 Cybersecurity event, uh, here in beautiful Spokane, Washington on Gonzaga's campus. Hunter, tell us about WatchGuard? First and why it's important for you to be here at this local regional event. Watchdog First.

[00:01:00] absolutely. Uh, it's important for WatchGuard to be here over at Spokane, partially because of the focus that we have on our customers and, our product lines in general. So what we do really well is we focus on the SMB market, um, as well as we make our cybersecurity products more simplistic in nature.

So a lot of our features end up being check boxes. That's kind of what differentiates ourselves with the industry is we focus on the SMB market and we try to make it as simple as possible to actually

manage and deploy. Okay, so what does that look like when you say our features are check boxes? What does that mean for the average user who's going to be using it?

What does that look like? What are they checking the box for?

Yeah, so I mean, we have a multitude of different features, and, in comparison to a lot of other vendors, some of those features take a long time to actually configure and then deploy to an environment, versus a lot of ours are very default, using setup wizards, it is a checkbox, and the feature turns on.

And the real challenge with a lot of people [00:02:00] for cyber security stuff is that it's confusing. A lot of acronyms, lots of things that we don't understand like what is even SOC 2 compliance and why does that matter to me as someone who isn't in the IT department. How do you make those things simple for people so that they actually care enough to do it and not just say, okay, whatever, let's just move on and get through this.

That's actually a really hard thing to do. personally, I'm a channel account manager, which essentially means that I support everybody who sells, uh, my products to an end user. and I think that that is a very difficult thing to get around. There are people who are in the industry, in the industry for the 20 years, and as new products come out, and new acronyms come out, and frankly, the only way to do it is to change it.

Try to learn. So that's what my job is. I work with resellers to try to teach them about what the industry standards are of today. And obviously then the side project is let's get you to sell WatchGuard for me.

And so if somebody is like, well, well, what is WatchGuard? What is [00:03:00] that? What does that mean?

What am I buying when I buy a WatchGuard? What is that?

Yeah, so my elevator pitch for WatchGuard is that we are a firewall vendor out of the 90s, one of the first that came to market. Um, and in the last 20, 30 years, we've been able to diversify the portfolio that we have. We no longer really want to be known as your security, or sorry, your network firewall vendor.

We want to be known as one of your more unified security platforms. So what we've done as a company to broaden our product lines are, acquiring new companies to fold into our systems. we have networked firewalls, obviously, uh, multi factor authentication, access points and endpoint security.

Uh, we're starting to dip our toes into the MDR world as well as the XDR, which we talk about acronyms. What do those actually mean? I would suggest that you actually go look up what Gardner decision or decides that these mean. cause I think that every vendor has a different little. understanding of what some of these acronyms mean for their

businesses.

Well, and the challenge is that we, we do have people who define things differently, but we also need, we need to [00:04:00] understand it well enough to know what we're getting and why we're getting it. And, and so that self education piece, I think is really important. That's part of why we're doing this podcast, because, this is something that is needed and people need to, They need to know about it and know what the risks are and know what the, benefits of being security aware are and things like that.

So, so in closing, what, from the conference today, what's, I know it just started because we're doing this early, but what's your takeaway from the, from the feel and the people that are gathered here?

Yeah, you've got a very diverse population here. You've got students, you've got resellers, you've got a couple of vendors here.

And I think it's really cool just to see everybody trying to work with getting a little bit of a deeper knowledge in the eastern Washington sort of state. Um, which honestly is pretty behind in cyber security from what I've seen out in the industry. resellers. And one of their number one things that they always say is, Cyber security is too expensive.

I don't understand what I'm getting for my, dollar that I'm spending, can you help [00:05:00] me understand this? And a lot of the times, I find that, Some end users won't end up purchasing any things that would be protecting their environments, Until they get hit by a cyber security threat, and that's when it's far too late.

Well, and I appreciate that perspective because it is a barrier understanding what's going on and that's that's why we put on events like this to help people learn about it and understand it and And make sure that people know what we're dealing with and what we're getting into so hunter Thanks for being part of the cyber traps podcast great.

How can people get in touch with you or learn more from you or your company?

Yeah, um, we got students and IT professionals here, so this is going to be a two parter. Um, and it's not just WatchGuard, but a lot of vendors, like myself, offer free resources for students. It'll be disguised as, hey, we're trying to teach somebody how to actually use our product and purchase it, but a lot of vendors out in the world don't do that.

Offer these free classes, free certifications, or hey, go [00:06:00] study up and then go take a paid exam. You don't need to take the paid exam to learn the materials. We have so many things available in the world just to teach you what cyber security is. I'll be honest, I'm not the most technically savvy person, but I'm armed enough to be dangerous and it's partially through just playing around in portals, asking for free trials, which virtually every vendor in the market has.

from the reseller aspect, I'm a channel account manager. I focus on Washington and a handful of other states in the area. If you need to get a hold of me for WatchGuard purchasing processes and things like that, you can reach me at Hunter. W at WatchGuard. com.

Thank you, appreciate you being here, supporting the conference, and for being part of CyberTrap's podcast.

Thank you.