Now That's IT: Stories of MSP Success
Now that's IT: Stories of MSP Success dives into the journeys of some of the trailblazers in the Managed Service Provider industry to find out how they used their passion for technology to help turn Managed Services into the thriving sector it is today.
Every episode is packed with the valuable insights, practical strategies, and inspiring anecdotes that lead our guests to the transformative moment when they knew, Now, That's IT.
This podcast provides educational information about issues that may be relevant to information technology service providers.
Nothing in the podcast should be construed as any recommendation or endorsement by N-able, or as legal or any other advice.
The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the podcast does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent.
Views and opinions expressed by N-able employees are those of the employees and do not necessarily reflect the view of N-able or its officers and directors.
The podcast may also contain forward-looking statements regarding future product plans, functionality, or development efforts that should not be interpreted as a commitment from N-able related to any deliverables or timeframe.
All content is based on information available at the time of recording, and N-able has no obligation to update any forward-looking statements.
Now That's IT: Stories of MSP Success
From Pentagon to Product Leader: Robert Johnston’s Mission to Transform Cybersecurity
What does it take to go from defending national secrets to defending MSPs? In this episode of Now That’s IT: Stories of MSP Success, Robert Johnston—former Pentagon cyber operator, DNC breach responder, and co-founder of Adlumin—shares his journey from military red teams to building one of today’s fastest-growing cybersecurity platforms.
We unpack how Robert transitioned from CrowdStrike to launching Adlumin, a company that reimagines MDR and XDR for modern MSPs, why simplicity and automation matter more than ever, and how AI is reshaping both threats and responses in real time.
Whether you run a 10-person MSP or lead global operations, Robert’s mission to transform cybersecurity offers real lessons in scaling services, serving clients, and staying ahead of attackers.
Let us help you unlock your business's full potential.
N-able Business Transformation is Expert led and Peer informed.These valuable executive programs are tailored to provide effective guidance and a faster path to a scalable and successful business.
Book a Call with Chris Massey now to learn what Business Transformation can do for you!
'Now that's it: Stories of MSP Success,' dives into the journeys of some of the trailblazers in our industry to find out how they used their passion for technology to help turn Managed Services into the thriving sector it is today.
Every episode is packed with the valuable insights, practical strategies, and inspiring anecdotes that lead our guests to the transformative moment when they knew….. Now, that's it.
This podcast provides educational information about issues that may be relevant to information technology service providers.
Nothing in the podcast should be construed as any recommendation or endorsement by N-able, or as legal or any other advice.
The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the podcast does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent.
Views and opinions expressed by N-able employees are those of the employees and do not necessarily reflect the view of N-able or its officers and directors.
The podcast may also contain forward-looking statements regarding future product plans, functionality, or development efforts that should not be interpreted as a commitment from N-able related to any deliverables or timeframe.
All content is based on information available at the time of recording, and N-able has no obligation to update any forward-looking statements.
One, two, three, four. Maybe, if I thought about it a little longer, I might not be here today, but 24 hours was just long enough to not really realize what I was getting into, but not long enough to realize how crazy it was right. I think 24 hours was just that perfect amount of time, and so I went in and I just did it. Welcome to Now. That's it.
Speaker 1:Stories of MSP success, where we dive into the journeys of some of the trailblazers in our industry to find out how they used their passion for technology to help turn managed services into the thriving sector it is today.
Speaker 2:In the spring of 2016, robert Johnson was working at CrowdStrike. Just months after he led cyber operations for the Pentagon Late 20s brilliant and already responsible for some of the most sensitive digital missions in national security. And then that same year, he'd end up at the center of one of the most high profile cyber attacks in modern history the Russian hack of the DNC. And yet, just a few months later, robert would walk away from it all. Why? Because he thought I can build something better. So today we have Robert Johnson, who's the co-founder of Adlumen, one of the fastest growing cybersecurity tools in MDR and XDR space, now an Enable company. I'm so excited to have you here today, robert. Thanks so much for being here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thanks. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:Awesome. So I read that you enrolled in the Naval Academy and your focus was on wrestling.
Speaker 1:You were an all-star wrestler in high school. I was All-state. I wouldn't say I majored in wrestling.
Speaker 2:Of course, of course.
Speaker 1:I did get a degree while I was there but, yeah, wrestling, the sport of wrestling, it has always been a big part of my life. I competed in high school, I competed in college and the wrestling team at the Naval Academy had we were a top 15 team actually in the country while I was there and we had a fantastic coach who was the two-time Olympic team head coach and, yeah, I love the sport of wrestling.
Speaker 2:I love it. It's been really interesting right now. I've been watching some of these uh, um, you know, guys, these heavyweights that are going back and wrestling, and and one of those guys is a military guy, so it's a. It's really, really interesting to see the, the power of the, the wrestling community, uh, through the armed services it's a really tight.
Speaker 1:It's a really tight-knit group. You'll you'll meet a wrestler anywhere in the world, right, and there's an instantaneous bond. Some might say a shared pain, a shared pain and suffering that takes place there. But you know, it's a really tight group.
Speaker 2:You've survived any sort of major disfiguration no cauliflower ear or anything like that right?
Speaker 1:No, I took. You know, I wore my headgear, I took good care of my ears, but I still. One's a little different than the other. In truth, one's slightly different than the other, but not overly noticeable, yeah.
Speaker 2:So how did you find your way behind a?
Speaker 1:computer, robert. It was in college, it was, you know, information technology and computer science was a new domain to the Naval Academy at the time. This is 2000 and you know 2008. And I took to it immediately, you know. I thought, well, do I want to do you know political science or engineering in some way? And I landed on, you know, information technology and computer science to be where I wanted to focus my studies and at first, in truth, I didn't like it that much because it was just all computer programming. But then I got to the information assurance classes and that's where interest really peaked for me, because it was like you got to be a cyber cop or a criminal, depending on which way you got to look at it, and it became exciting.
Speaker 2:Wow. So you became the leader of the Marine Corps Red Team and a team lead for the Cyber National Mission Force. You must have gotten the hang of IT, of computers, pretty quickly then, huh.
Speaker 1:Well, I wanted to shape my career pretty quickly then. Huh, well, I wanted to shape my career. I became so interested in school with this domain that when it came time to go into the Marine Corps, I wanted to shape my Marine Corps career doing something similar. So I spent some time in the fleet they would call it just out in the Marine Corps and then I got an opportunity to go to a place called the Network Operations and Security Center, which is like the security, the SOC, of the entire Marine Corps, which is, you know, pretty large, not as large as, say, the Army, but that became like where I wanted to go, and that was the first time I got to come back to start the journey that I had initially, when I left college, like set out to participate in, and so I got to come back and then I got a unique opportunity to lead the red team, which is doing exciting work. It's fun work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so 2015, 2016, you're still in the Marine Corps. You're also consulting with CrowdStrike. What was your life like at that time? What was going on?
Speaker 1:Well, I had left the Marine Corps, I had just left. I spent eight years and I spent a little time in the reserves. So I was technically, I guess, still in the Marine Corps and I left the Marines and I wanted to go out to the private sector. Like my dad spent 40 years in the Marine Corps, I spent eight. So it you know, I have like a family history there. But yeah, I spent eight years in Marine Corps. That was, that was great. But it was time to kind of begin the next, begin the next chapter, and so I I joined a CrowdStrike and really incident response is exciting too, it is like being a cyber cop. And so that's what I wanted to do. And they were. They were a great company. That was that was doing a lot of that work.
Speaker 2:So then, of course, you get called into what might be the one of the most infamous hacks in history, the hacking of the DNC. Can you share anything about? You know what that was like to go through that?
Speaker 1:It wasn't infamous at the time. You know the. You know the day that those engagements come, you know, to your inbox. You know it's just another day at the office and so at the time it wasn't infamous and you didn't know what it would eventually become. But months after its conclusion, you know it became clear that this was going to be, you know, a pretty big deal.
Speaker 2:Conclusion you know, it became clear that this was going to be, you know, pretty big deal, wow. So how did you end up on your desk, like what were you doing, sort of at the time?
Speaker 1:I was actually on a run.
Speaker 1:I was on a run and it was in the afternoon and they gave me a call and said hey, you know, dnc has been breached, you know, and it's just another IR engagement, another day at the office, right, and you know, and I lived in DC and not far from the center of politics, and so I said, yeah, you know what, if I turn around right now on my run and I pick it up a little bit, I can be back in, you know, call it 30 minutes and then I'll head over there. And so that's what I did, and so that was kind of day one. It was Friday afternoon, I think. All the big breaches, by the way, happened like Friday 5 PM. Yeah, it's like, you know, it's they got something against it. You know, cyber criminals are out there. Maybe they end their day job and then they get to their, you know, and and they and and they get to their hobby. But in this case it was Russian SVR, which is like their CIA. But yeah, 5 o'clock on a Friday pm, you can count something going wrong.
Speaker 2:Wow, how quickly did the team, or maybe even you, recognize really what had happened and how serious it was.
Speaker 1:Well, I had picked up anecdotal information because how that breach came to be was through law enforcement notification initially and there was only so much they could say. And so when you're hearing from the people that were notified by law enforcement, they don't know who APT 28 is.
Speaker 1:They don't know who Russian SVR is right, they don't know these names. And it was Cozy Bear is one of the names for this organization, Russian SVR. And so I think what came across my desk was like the bears, like that was, we've been breached by the bears. But you know, I had been around this, so I kind of put two and two together and I said, okay, this has got to be probably Cozy Bear.
Speaker 1:And I had actually probably six or eight months before that, I had been at the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff breach by the same threat actor, by the exact same group, while I was in the military, and so it just so happened, I had a very recent encounter with the Russian SVR and so I said, well, okay, I know where to look for these guys, so let's just take a quick peek and see if things are lining up to be the same. And, sure enough, we take a look at one area on the system and they're exactly where Cozy Bear would be. And I said, you know, we, we take a look at one area on the system and they're exactly where cozy bear would be. And I said, all right, this is this. It's pretty clear, this is the same group, same people, same everything.
Speaker 2:Wow, in those types of situations, sort of a, a normal person might get very anxious or or or start to uh, maybe dread the potential reality of how big this could be, how big of a deal that could be. How do you stay focused? Obviously you're ex-military, but how do you stay focused in those sort of high profile or I guess you didn't know it at the time, but the potential to be a high profile type of a breach?
Speaker 1:When you're doing incident response it's a little more like you're an EMT, right, you're showing up after the accident has already taken place, which is an immediate kind of stress reliever. But you've also got to realize that your customer or client on the other side is having one of the worst days of their life. Now breaches are a little more regular and they happen all the time, but still, you know, it's usually the customer's worst day, and so they are stressed to the max. So you have to manage that, and if you manage that, okay, you'll be all right. But look, I had done so many breaches at that point and so many breach investigations that it's another day at the office.
Speaker 2:So just out of curiosity, maybe the listeners are curious as well. Some people may have turned that into a talk show or a tour or a book deal or something like that, maybe even running for Congress. Did any of that ever cross your?
Speaker 1:mind Robert. No, not at the time, not at the time. Not at the time it was such a whirlwind and you know, running for Congress maybe in my future at some point, but at that time and today, you know, not in the cards.
Speaker 2:Awesome. So let's talk a little bit about the beginnings of Ed Luman. Things started to really they were going really well at CrowdStrike. Then you get a marketing email from this incubator I think you mentioned Apply, and so you did that right and you quit the day after. Talk a little bit about that story.
Speaker 1:Some people, when they start a business, maybe they got this brilliant idea or this, that, when they start a business, maybe they got this brilliant idea or this, that? Uh, for for me I got a. There was an incubator in the area called mock 37. I think it still exists today and their their thesis was, in the DC area, which you have a lot of intelligence community agencies, that it's a good place to breed security companies, right, because you have all this knowledge that could be coming out of places like the CIA or the NSA or the Defense Department. And so they stood up an incubator and they were sending out marketing emails and, for whatever reason, it landed in my inbox.
Speaker 1:I think I had been to a few of their happy hours or events or or events. Uh, and I figured, why not? And and I just I applied to the incubator and I got in, and I got in, and so, uh, you know, I figured I had nothing to lose. That was literally it. I figured I had nothing to lose and so I got into the incubator. Uh, I walked into work the next day and I quit my job. That was it.
Speaker 2:That could be extremely stressful for a risk adverse or someone that's in risk intelligence Sort of a crazy thing to do. Hindsight's 20-20, right, you can look back. You know it's the right decision you made at the time. But what was going through your mind? How long did it take? Obviously 24 hours, right For you just to go. This is the right thing. I feel good about it. In my gut it feels good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I felt like I had nothing to lose. I was also working in security and security and there's a little job security and working in security, just because you can go work anywhere you know, and so I really felt like nothing to lose and it felt like a great opportunity, fun, exciting. I wasn't married, I didn't have any kids at the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:These kinds of things help, and so, yeah, you know, a little longer I might not be here today, but 24 hours was just long enough to not really realize what I was getting into. But not long enough to not really realize what I was getting into, but not long enough to realize how crazy it was. Oh right, I think 24 hours was just that perfect amount of time, and so I went in and I just did it thank goodness you made that decision back then, robert.
Speaker 2:So what was the responsibility split between yourself and your co-founder?
Speaker 1:Tim. I was responsible for product, so I was doing software development and and engineering, and he was responsible for product, so I was doing software development and engineering and he was responsible for sales and marketing. It became a very nice distribution of duties, I think, and then we were both responsible for kind of approaching customers and selling to customers.
Speaker 2:You describe how long it sort of took for you guys to go to market. I mean, you start this business in the incubator, you start to build something. You personally were building it right, I think you told me you're sort of learning how to code At the same time you're sort of building this business. How long did it take before you had something to go to market with? You had a client, you could bring them in, you could listen to them, you could continue to evolve. What was that process like?
Speaker 1:so, like any software company, you can't sell anything. It's different than services, businesses, right? You can't sell anything until you have something to sell. Yeah, so until the the software reaches a certain maturity point, there's nothing to give. I would say that took about probably five months, six months, reasonably just working on the software. Until then we were still approaching customers, but it was more like a PowerPoint deck. This is what we're working on, this is what we're building. Is it interesting to you? If it's not interesting to you, those were almost better conversations, because then you would ask well, what would make this interesting to you, like what is interesting and that reflects his customer pain? And then you bring that back and you say, okay, you know, maybe we should modify our software to do this or do that so that it fits the market a little bit better. And so that took six months, you know, six months to get a product that was production ready, that, uh, that customers would want to buy, that solved some of their problems.
Speaker 2:Did you and Tim know who your ICP was, who that market was in those first five months or so or was that a part of it as well? As you were talking to partners, talking to customers, and you're realizing, ooh, I see enterprise, I see this gap. This is who we want to target, this is what we want to go after.
Speaker 1:We did, we did, we knew we wanted to build a cost-efficient, easy-to-use and simple-to-integrate. Back in 2016, siem product for the channel and the mid-market. Specifically, we focused on mid-market banking. So still today we have a huge customer constituency in regional banks, credit unions, middle market banks you know Main Street, not Wall Street banks, right, and that became a big portion of our customer base in the beginning and we focused there. But at the time, sim and still largely today, our customer base in the beginning and we focused there, but at the time, Sim and still largely today was a very enterprise-focused tool.
Speaker 1:You know it had a lot of features and it could do a lot of things, but you had to configure it, which became really hard for middle market customers, mostly because they didn't have the time or expertise but mostly the time right they don't have 40 hours a week to work on this one thing and we wanted to build one that had a high level of automation and a really low requirement for customization, that could meet the channel where they mostly do business, which is in the middle market.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's. I know they weren't MSPs, weren't necessarily your initial target, but what you just said there resonates specifically to MSPs, because I remember we were a large MSP and we couldn't afford an enterprise SIEM product or the expertise to be able to deliver a SOC out of our four walls, and so trying to find that partnership was was a really a key and and we'll talk here a minute about, about how you, how you led to that. But so just just a reminder for everyone that's listening how much development experience did you have when you started Adlumen?
Speaker 1:I didn't have any professional development experience building enterprise software applications, which which, by the way, is not, I think, entirely uh. On unique, that's right, um, you know any college kids that starts, uh, you know the next whatever multi-billion dollar company has never worked in professional development and still, and still gets it done. So that's not on unique. But I had an interest and I and I cared to figure it out and, as the story goes like, I knew a lot about endpoints and um and endpoint investigations, and so that was extremely helpful, but I didn't know anything about building a user interface, a web interface, uh, and so, because I knew nothing, I went out and I signed up for this online UI bootcamp, this online web development boot camp, and it was the best $10,000 I ever spent. I didn't even complete the program. It might even be on my LinkedIn as I completed the program, but I never made it all the way.
Speaker 1:It doesn't matter, but it got me enough knowledge where I could build a web app. I could build a web app user interface for our product, and it used to have these mentoring sessions. Uh, I could build, I could build a web app, a user interface for, for our product, and, and it used to have these mentoring sessions that's what I remember. Uh, uh, this bootcamp had had these mentoring sessions with a guy who knew what he was doing, uh, and so I would get this mentor on and I would make him help me with building the web app for the for the company. I'd be like, yeah, I know it was supposed to work on those lessons, but we're not going to do that today. All right, today we're going to work on this and he would help me out.
Speaker 2:That just shows the sales side of you. Now, right, you were able to convince somebody to do something they hadn't really set out to do. So well done, robert. So you took Adlumen from and actually let me ask this what took Adlum from? Sort of that SIM-based to the MDR, xdr and then full security?
Speaker 1:operations suite. It was the market. You know, in the early days you really have to listen to the market and where they want to go with your product, and it was 100% the market. So we were building this SIM product, which later just kind of became XDR, you know, bringing in all the data sources, a fundamental feature of SIM or XDR. Uh, and and what was happening is, as time went on, we were selling that product, uh, but then customers would say, hey, we, we love your, we love your software, we'd also be willing to pay you to respond to these threats that you're detecting. And we took that on board and we said, okay, we'll do that too, right, and then we launched our MDR products and have been in that business ever since.
Speaker 2:How have you seen clients evolve? Obviously, you're delivering, you talk about, you saw an opportunity. Clients are telling you, hey, we need you to do this. But how have you seen their security practices evolving over the years?
Speaker 1:They've gotten a lot more sophisticated. What the middle market lacks in MSPs is not necessarily sophistication, but it is certainly time. That is the resource that they lack the most and that's the area that I believe we help them the most. There is a knowledge gap and a labor gap. That exists there as well, but there's a huge time gap, and so over time, I've seen sophistication rise, I've seen the need rise and I've seen the impact that our products and services have on these end customers just increase exponentially in value, going both ways over time we talked to our partners and I remember even my past MSP the types of problems we were solving 10 years ago versus today.
Speaker 2:It is a security-first market today and if you don't have something as comprehensive as an MDR or XDR solution, you feel like you're a bit behind the times with people.
Speaker 1:So you know, threats have to be responded to right away, and that's the immediate part of time. You know, no human can be up 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. When a threat comes across these systems, it doesn't matter what system it is. But a threat comes across like it needs to be acted on immediately, and and that's where services like mdr really make their impact it's because they immediately act on them awesome.
Speaker 2:So talk a little bit about you building the business you have. You build a business with real structure, hr, finance, engineering, great alignment. You've brought some amazing folks. It's been great, great to meet a lot of these folks. Why did you go that route versus, you know, maybe just hiring people, sort of unknown folks? I mean, you made a real conscious effort to bring the best of the best in.
Speaker 1:You've got to build infrastructure to have a viable business. And as your business increases in revenue, like things just get bigger, they get bigger and bigger and bigger and and that creates a requirement for more infrastructure, middle management, executive management Uh, you know, I imagine it's not unlike the trajectory of of any business that makes it to that stage uh, in in their, in their life cycle, uh, it, it becomes a natural progression. You know, I'm not an expert marketer or expert salesman, but you reach a certain scale where you've got to get an expert in these different domains in order to continue to make an impact.
Speaker 2:Very good. So now AdLumen is an enable company, and from your perspective, robert, how did we get here and why is this such a great fit?
Speaker 1:We started with a partnership and so we were partnered for nearly 18 months and that went really well, obviously. And so, yeah, we started with a partnership and we were in the MSP space, but you're, you know, being an RMM one of the initial creators of it, and so that's where we started and this is where we ended.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and how's this? I mean, this has been obviously, this is, this is fresh. We're going on six, eight months, I think, since it was announced, and how's it been like to be a part of this, this bigger entity and obviously talking to MSPs of all different shapes and sizes now?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what, what? What has been the experience with Naples, like the global reach and the global output? I mean that that that has been an adventure. We're sitting here in Berlin and what an adventure it's been to speak to MSPs of all kind of shapes and sizes. Yeah, piece of all kind of shapes and sizes.
Speaker 2:I asked you a little bit earlier about sort of the maturation or how the security threats have evolved, but talk a little bit about what's maybe the new normal for cybersecurity.
Speaker 1:It's the number of breaches, I mean the level, the sheer amount. That has been shocking actually. That picked up Back in 2008,. It was only nation states playing this game. All you'd hear about is China, iran, you know the usual suspects Russia, the usual suspects, right, but in today's world, every day is like hand-to-hand combat, every single day, multiple times a day, actually. If you were to look at our MDR metrics multiple times a day, actually, if you were to look at our MDR metrics multiple times a day, is is hand to hand combat and that and that back when I first got into this business in 2008, technically right Wasn't like that.
Speaker 2:Wow, we've seen the MDR uh market sort of evolved from being just an outsource detection and response to something more proactive. Where do you see that space moving?
Speaker 1:yeah, the the further you can get out in front of threats. It's just so much better. Um, you know, left of boom, if you will, is where you want to be. Right, uh, not right of boom, right, uh. And so you know you want it.
Speaker 1:You want to get to them earlier, like, for example, most ransomware attacks. Where they start is on the microsoft estate or cloud email breach of some kind, and those attacks just progress over a period of weeks into ransomware. So where you'd prefer to stop that is in cloud email. Right, you'd prefer to stop the attack there and you'll never get to ransomware and take it out of the attack zone. You'd prefer to stop it as like a patched vulnerability or a configuration change or an account management policy or procedure. Even that's the best place to stop an attack. So the further you can move to the left of an attack, the better off you are. And in our space primarily, these attackers are going to go after, like, the weakest targets. Right, if you're a hard target and it's just too hard to reach you, you know these criminals. They're just going to move on because, trust me, there's a much easier target that they'll have to not work as hard to create pain and steal money, which is their primary objective.
Speaker 2:Can you talk for a minute about AI and how AI, the role it plays on the risk side and then also on the protection side? Obviously, we see more and more vendors incorporating AI into their software. But what about the services? Is there going to be an AI SOC before too long?
Speaker 1:There is. There are three places at Adlumen and Able where AI makes an impact. First is on the threat detection side. Right, so, obviously, writing algorithms that detect threats faster and more accurately In security. You're dealing with billions, trillions of telemetry messages and in those trillions of telemetry messages you know one might reflect an attack. So that's just, it's the perfect job for a computer. First of all, trillions of something, and you know trillions of noise, and you know trillions of noise and you know a handful of signals. Right, so, using AI to detect threats better. The second is decision making.
Speaker 1:When an event comes across our desk that requires action disable an account, isolate a system, revoke sessions, whatever it is You've got to make the right decision and AI can help with that.
Speaker 1:It can help with that because the body of knowledge that it can draw on is so much more than what a human can. When you put it into a human analyst's hands and he looks at that, he's drawing off his experience. Maybe he'll look at an SOP, he'll look at an sop, he'll look at what we've done in the past, but there's a lot of subjective experience that's going into that and and that's used to be why you paid a human analyst, but the reality is an ai analyst can draw on a much larger base of knowledge and make better decisions about what needs to be done about a particular event. So that's the second one decision making. The third is customer communications. In security you're often taking very sophisticated and complex events and you have to make that those series of complex events easily consumable for a customer that doesn't have a lot of time right and you're talking about. You know what event happened, what was investigated, what was done about it, and AI can help contextualize that for the end customer in a very clear and concise way.
Speaker 2:Excellent. So MSPs as I talk to more and more of my colleagues, I hear MSPs trying to figure out how to take AI to their customers, whether it be through education on how they can use it, internally, training, maybe even building some GPT-type interfaces or knowledge bases. But, as a security guy, are these things that folks should be concerned about? You know, are the hackers going to get access that? You know, the bad folks, the bad are they going to get access to those AI modules to be able to get access to information that they shouldn't have?
Speaker 1:So the answer is yes, it's inevitable. It is absolutely inevitable. The same tools that we use to detect threats, make decisions and contextualize information, they can use to conduct the same, similar actions. On the other side, they can use it to hide from detection. You know to make decisions right, and so it's inevitable. It's going to become a problem and the real question will be well, how will the security industry change in order to adapt to that threat? I've been in this business a long time. It changes every day. Every day you're doing something a little different. Every day you're making a change. Every day you're doing something a little different. Every day you're making a change. Every day you're improving the system and how it does its job, and I don't think that this introduction of new technology is going to change that Excellent.
Speaker 2:I think that's been. The really neat thing that I've witnessed firsthand with Adlumen is your development cycle. You're constantly evolving, what it is that you're bringing into market, and I think that's a breath of fresh air because the MSP industry and specifically they, don't see that it's a longer release cycle. It's hey, we don't get that new version for another year or whatever that may be, but because this is a mission critical interface, you obviously have to always be looking at that Talk. A mission critical interface, you know you obviously have to always be looking at that Talk. A little bit about what's next for AdLumen and EnableMDR.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so most recently here at Empower, we're launching breach prevention for Microsoft 365, which is really an enhanced focus on just the Microsoft estate At AdLumen. Probably daily, we stop at least one or two breaches just on the Microsoft estate. Forget all the other breaches in other locations that we detect and stop literally just on Microsoft one or two a day. Wow, and I've always said this cloud email is by far the most dangerous place on the internet at this particular time. It wasn't that way, you know, five years ago. Today, cloud email is the most dangerous place, and so we're launching this particular product in order to change to the threats in the environment, so that we can protect more customers in a different way and make an impact in a much bigger way.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's exciting, Robert. Can't wait to see that and hear the reaction from that announcement. So what's next for Robert Johnson? I heard maybe congressman down the line, but what's the short-term future look like?
Speaker 1:Yeah, for now I'm the GM here at Enable and I keep you know of Adlumen here at.
Speaker 1:Enable the GM here at Enable and I keep you know of Adlumen here at Enable and we're just continuing to build the product and the customer base and grow the company you know worldwide. I think it's a very exciting time where Enable is uniquely positioned at the crossroads of IT operations and security operations. I've often described it as you know two category five hurricanes heading together to create the perfect storm. Except, you know, george Clooney's not in this movie, right, and so that's the platform we're building here as a company and there's really no other platform like it in the world where we can take the proactive vulnerability another thing that's getting launched here today, right, uh, you know, uh enables vulnerability platform, and so you've got vulnerability patching, endpoint management, uh leading into security operations being uh primary.
Speaker 1:The ad lumen suite, right, sim log retention, m to data protection and recovery, backup and recovery. So from one platform being the company platform, they can go from proactive to recovery from a single company. I mean it's just an amazing platform. It's why we wanted to come here and it's why, you know, the story that we're building makes so much sense. So the question is for now continue to build that story, because it is truly a fantastic and great story that we're putting together here.
Speaker 2:I love it. I love the energy that you and your team have brought into Enable as well. It's been very powerful, I think, to watch you engage with partners here at the conference and hear them say, oh you know, listen to Robert and heard the direction he's taken the business. You've been really great for Enable, so I'm glad to have you here, Really lucky to have you, for sure. So let me ask you, Robert, we always love to ask this question. Right, it's the Now that's it podcast. Robert, when did you know Now that's it?
Speaker 1:When did I know? Now that's it. There's been those moments, you know, many times, but I will tell you that now that's it. For me was making the decision, the big decision to come here and enable and be part of the incredible story that you all and we all now are building here. It is truly exciting. It's a fantastic time to be in this domain too. Security is taking such a front step to everything that everyone is doing, and it goes to show you the size and scope of the problem, too. That that's the case when I talk to MSPs here. They tell me that you know. I say what's your number one seller, what's the number one thing that you're doing to bring to your customers, to provide value? They could tell me anything in the world that they want. They could say, oh, it's help desk, oh, it's coins or t-shirts. They could say whatever they want to say, and every single time they've answered that question, it's been security, yeah, number one.
Speaker 2:For sure, robert, I love it. Thank you so much for being here today. I'm so glad you got to tell your story and can't wait for everybody to hear this. If you have not heard of us before, please come to the enablecom and check out the AdLumen product line. It's fantastic and thank you so much, robert. Really appreciate you. Yeah, thanks for your time.