Channel Security Secrets

CSS_AI Compilation
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[00:00:00] Welcome to Channel Security Secrets. I'm Lou Ban. On this show, we expose the untold secrets and critical insights from the people shaping the future of cybersecurity sales in the Trusted Advisor channel. If you're looking to up your game around selling security, stick around channel Security Secrets is brought to you by cyber.

Group on a mission to shift cybersecurity from reactive to resilience.

Lou: we haven't mentioned AI yet, so we gotta mention ai.

We did talk about AI sending you emails, but like, how is AI affecting, or how do you see AI affecting, uh, security in general?

Quincey: I think AI is already here.

Lou: Yeah.

Quincey: In, endpoint. Being utilized in, firewall technology. It's being utilized in, , network access control [00:01:00] solutions, and SOAR technologies. It's, it's being used, across the board already. Um, I think in the future though, we're going to see a agentic AI take over, where they can really handle. a lot of the, uh, first tier analyst, type things. So, you know, when you look at a SOAR technology security automation, uh, orchestration and response technology, that is almost automating things, but there's still a lot of human interaction. Um, that, you know, has to happen. Uh, additionally there's a lot of, python, uh, uh, programming that needs to occur to make sure that everything is, um, uh, configured appropriately. But I think on the AG agentic AI side, you're gonna see the, use the wide use of, large language models and, APIs in order to perform specific actions, whether it's triage, whether it's blocking something, whether it's, pulling together a number of different tools to provide the desired. Outcome from [00:02:00] a security perspective.

So that's gonna be pretty, um, pretty exciting. So I, I feel like AG agentic AI is gonna be like SOAR 2.0. Um, I know that there are a number of providers out there, um, that are, uh, working on this and have early stage, uh, uh, AG agentic ai. But I think in the next 18 months we're gonna see, uh, we're gonna see that kind of, kind of explode in a good way,

Scott: ​So I've done, I did a fair amount of con content, for a while and I'm, I'm looking to get back into it here pretty shortly on AI and security specifically and how AI can enable more people, or enable better outcomes in, in a security environment. And, I would say that. One of the things that I'm really seeing is, I mean, there's still a, a real shortage of, of qualified people to be, to be handling security, affairs for customers.

And so figuring out, um how to get more out of those few people is, is a critical. [00:03:00] Thought process for a security leader and AI is a great way to do that, right? It can look at a huge amount of intake. Intake, a huge amount of information. Spot anomalies. Take the boring tasks Off of your people because if a person can do it, a person can screw it up.

and if it's a boring, repetitive task, they're going to, so take those boring, repetitive tasks and automate them. Put, put 'em in, in some kind of an AI cycle and um, and, and that's how you can really get more outta your, nobody goes into it because they want to back up information. Right.

That's not why anybody goes into it, but it has to be done. Um, so let's figure out a way to automate that and make, make sure that you're getting the immutable backups that you need from a security ransomware perspective, um, without burning your people out. And that frees them up to do much better tasks.

Lou: Yeah. And it's funny because everyone's concerned about AI taking jobs. It's, it's kinda like, well, the hammer's gonna take jobs, or the wheel is gonna take jobs. Like, yeah. For the people [00:04:00] that are maybe relying very lazily on. Um, you know, being the only wheel maker or something like that, when people start learning how to make their own wheels, they're gonna say, all right, we don't need you anymore. But if you become so invaluable to your point about, um, you know, because you're using AI as the tool that it is. Uh, to be better at your job, then you can work on higher level problems. And I think that that's what people are starting to realize. Um, you know, unfortunately, I think there's a lot of people that are overusing it.

We've, we've seen it where some people are running their whole lives through it.

​What's, the biggest secret Sharif to your success in the channel?

Sharif: People, human capital, it, it's kind of weird to hear that in the age of ai, right? maybe

Lou: so much?

Sharif: robotics or AI or something. Agentic having maybe AI do my work for me. No, it's humans. It's human capital. Three reasons. Three reasons. Human intuition [00:05:00] versus ai. I really don't hallucinate much unless I take something and thank God I don't. But that's usually when I would hallucinate as a human being. We've, I myself, I use all of my, all the LMS from Your Claude to your, chat, Grok Gemini's built in Chrome. Why wouldn't you use it? And there is a level of that hallucination where it's sort of going a little bit more. It's like, whoa, whoa.

Hold on. I need to get back here. It's almost like Google Maps. You put in an address, you're like, I know that dirt road. I'm not going there. You are gonna have to redo that. The second is you, the human firewall connecting concept. You know, us, we're, we're processing and reacting. You know, technology is just really processing. The reacting is almost an after effect. Almost [00:06:00] like when we talk about cybersecurity, how many people actually remediate? How many actually re react? I know that we're not really on that, but I, I kind of love to link things. And then just the resilience, the resilience together as us. Is just unstoppable. I'm a big Michael Jackson fan. Um, we, he had a lot of those songs, but we are, we are one, we are together, we are family. You know, at the end of the day we are one. And, And so that, that resilience engine, it's more than what technology can, can do. So you put those together, man. You can, you can do anything. can, you can get gold medals. In the Olympics, uh, you can, you can win championships, you can, you can turn lots of business and you can make things happen with the right people. So I, I, I really think that's, that's really the anchor

​

lou-rabon_22_07-30-2025_080351: Now you can just go to AI and say, Hey, how do you do this? Okay, we don't need that guy [00:07:00] anymore. But then also. You know, I think with AI and with, with people looking, it's just been, um, companies are leveraging AI for a lot of those more junior positions, but, um, there is a play for people still looking for a job.

So, I mean, you're working with AI and I'm, I'm really proud that it's taken us this long to even say AI since everyone is talking about it constantly and putting it out there. So what does AI mean when, when, when you say

Tony Pietrocola: ai, uh, what does that mean to you? Yeah, well, I'll say, I'll, I'm gonna bring it obviously down to Agile Blue.

What we do with our AI is it's able to autonomously investigate. Make a decision and respond. And in cyber, we think both speed and accuracy stop cyber attacks or at least mitigates that, that risk and damage, right? So if we can use AI to get out ahead of it, understand everything, make a decision, even if we're bringing in a human, then at the end we're moving so much faster.

So we've [00:08:00] automated 90% on level two, uh, of what a, what an, what an analyst does, and here's the, the, the huge part. About 47% more efficient when responding to a cyber attack. So that definitely means faster, 98% accuracy. So has that reduced jobs at Agile Blue? No, we just are, those folks are now working on more complex challenges and we're bringing in more engineers to create more AI that does that.

So to me, AI. Um, it just means, and I, I am not one of these people who thinks AI's gonna kill jobs. I just think people are gonna need to, how to understand how to use AI to do their job. And that's not a bad thing because if it could make us better, we can work more. You know, there's a paradox called Javins Paradox, and this guy did said this back in the 1800s Every time technology was created over the years, whether it was the railroad or the printing press and obviously the internet and computers, and now ai, people are like, oh, it's gonna decimate this. It's gonna kill [00:09:00] jobs. No, it created more. 'cause now we have more companies doing things, whether it's creating ai, supporting ai, building tools for ai.

It's gonna create more, will it reduce old stuff? Yeah, potentially. People will grow their careers, thus hopefully making more money as well. If AI makes us seriously more efficient, that's better margins that obviously if you understand financials, makes you a more profitable company. A way to invest more is to then obviously hire and grow your business.

So I do think that I'm a big believer in the Javins paradox. If you don't know what it is, look it up if you're listening to this, this. But I do believe it applies to ai and that's what makes me extraordinarily bullish on ai and both my daughters who are. Getting through college, you know, they're looking at their careers and one of them is, is an investment banker.

And, uh, in her internship, which is, uh, she's in her final year, she'll be, she's into doing her internship. They're not replacing investment bankers with ai. They're now using it. So now instead of [00:10:00] leaving the office at midnight, maybe they leave at 10:00 PM and everybody has a little bit of a life outside of it.

Lou: ​I just got back from an AI security conference in the Bay Area, which was awesome and um, You know, we gotta talk about it so.

AI security, you have a, a, um, a, You know, a product offering that can help with that. Exa obviously is there, there's a lot of use cases. I love the use case for seeing anomalous activity for AI agents. Um, again, is there anything that you think that trusted advisors should know when they're, You know, not trying to be experts in AI security?

It's brand new, so they're not, no one is truly, there are very few experts out there. But any advice to them when they want to have these conversations?

Craig: I mean, we talked about a lot of the major drivers we're seeing in the market. Um, at the end of the day, it's about creating more efficiency. And so you think about what's happening with all these security events. There's millions of events that happen all the [00:11:00] time, and it's very difficult for all of these analysts to investigate all those different activities that's happening. You know, within the soc. And so the beauty of AI is now we create efficiencies because AI can start to take care of some of those, baseline, activities that are happening. And the second thing that's really cool around what Exabeam does is we turn a basic analyst into an expert.

Lou: Yeah.

Craig: And so, and that's because we use AI to give 'em all the key insights. Our tool allows it to talk. You can talk to the tool in natural language instead of having to be like a, a hardcore, You know, security coder to, You know, to integrate in the tool. So that's been a big thing as well. And what we're seeing is just for leveraging the AI capabilities of our sim services. You know, we see about a 80% increase in efficiency of those analysts. So again, you think about what's [00:12:00] happening with this, the shortage of talent out there in the market. Like this is a, a key value proposition for companies when the AI can really help solve some of those talent shortages, You know, increase the efficiencies of the analysts themself.

So it's a good conversation to have. I would recommend that the trusted advisors really understand the insider threat use case. a big one. That'll open a tremendous amount of doors. a faster sales cycle as well, versus trying to go in and do a sim replacement.

eric-brooker_3_10-02-2025_124329: ​some of us old guys have adopted the newer technology, cybersecurity, and AI being on the forefront. For those of us that have, I think we're gonna clean house. Um, this is a conversation that MSPs have had for many, many years before.

The channel started having the conversation, but we're reaching this pivotal spot in, in the evolution of the [00:13:00] channel where MSPs are now becoming agents and selling connectivity and contact center. And agents are now selling managed services, including but not limited to cybersecurity. My thesis is they're gonna bump heads at some point and the client a, b, C company is eventually gonna say, well wait, hold on a minute.

I buy all of this as a service. Stuff from Eric. Then Lou's over here doing my managed services, but they're both telling me they can do what the other does. I'm gonna just work with Eric, or I'm just gonna work with Lou. Cybersecurity is the linchpin in that conversation. Cybersecurity is the thing that keeps business owners up at night.

Cybersecurity is the thing that, and I hate that old adage, but cybersecurity is the thing that keeps C-level executives up at night. Because if you look at some of the historically large breaches, I'm in Minneapolis, I immediately think of target people lost jobs. People [00:14:00] forget about the millions of dollars.

Forget about the um, the,

lou-rabon_59_10-02-2025_104326: loss. The, the, the

eric-brooker_3_10-02-2025_124329: the hard stuff. Yeah.

Or what was, uh. Uh, was it CloudFlare that had that days long outage a couple years ago that affected all the, uh, all the car dealerships across the country? If it wasn't CloudFlare, it was somebody else. I apologize. But the impact of not addressing cybersecurity as a C-level executive for the customer is their job is the potential bankruptcy of their business.

Cybersecurity. Is the hot talking point because everyone's arguing, well, Eric, sure. Cybersecurity was, but now it's ai. No, because you can't have the AI conversation without having cybersecurity policies. Otherwise, you're just letting all your information, all your IP out into the public atmosphere if your [00:15:00] General Mills or 3M or Best Buy.

Three M's. A great example. They have a cybersecurity AI policy. You can only use the AI platform that they programmed and built 'cause it stays in the building. It stays in the 3M family.

lou-rabon_59_10-02-2025_104326: Mm-hmm. That's right. You know, ai, uh, security AI governance is data governance,

eric-brooker_3_10-02-2025_124329: Bingo.

Lou: ​what kind of problems are you solving around AI for your customers?

Robert: It's, it's been awesome for us. It's our fastest growing practice right now. Um, you know, we really differentiated ourselves. 'cause when you look at sort of the, the traditional TSD channel right there have, they've been really focused on center and AI in the contact center. Um, and through my research. You know, the contact center, uh, market share is 2% of the overall addressable market inside of ai. So we said, Hey, how do we start to look at that other 98%? and we've really done it through [00:16:00] AI enablement. Um, and that's. Helped us uncover and the customers uncover really, what can AI do in my business, right?

We try to get the customers away from, you know, using Chat, GBT or Copilot or Gemini as Google, right? You're using 1% of what the LLMs can do. So by going in there and educating them on how to prompt and what to get. What, What, they can get out of it. see in these meetings, the light bulbs go off of, Hey, can I do this for the four things in finance or the five things in marketing, or how do I better equip my salespeople?

Um, so those opportunities then come up, you know, we'll walk out of an enablement meeting with 15 projects.

​

bana-qashu_2_10-24-2025_133751: Security is gonna be so hot right now because of compliance around ai, and so if we're not having the conversation or asking the question immediately after.

Okay. You wanna understand AI and how to integrate it into your [00:17:00] various divisions within the company for your internal customer, and how to implement AI strategies so that you can capture your external customer and continue to remain relevant. That's great, but how are you securing all this, you know?

lou-rabon_75_10-24-2025_103748: Exactly.

bana-qashu_2_10-24-2025_133751: It's such a great, like lead in into security.

So then you start weaving in the different motions of the sale and you truly become a consultant as opposed to again, like many of 'em. Yep. um,

lou-rabon_75_10-24-2025_103748: Yeah.

bana-qashu_2_10-24-2025_133751: exciting times.

lou-rabon_75_10-24-2025_103748: It is, it really is a ai, though. A AI security and AI kind of governance is data security. And then that's where everything that you're talking about rolling to cyber. Yeah. Like if a, if a, an organization wants to use ai, if they, they are doing it in an insecure manner, meaning they're uploading sensitive information, there's things that it's hap that are happening that they have no control [00:18:00] over.

Um. they're scared because they also don't want their, um, very sensitive, confidential data being used in a way that either could be exposed by the company they're dealing with, or, you know, uh, being used to train their models. And therefore, when someone says. Hey, company X, uh, what's the revenue of Company X?

And they're like, oh yeah, we've got the balance sheet. This is, um, this is their revenue. This is their debt. You know, it's like, um, no one wants that. And so that's the, the issue with, with, yeah, you've gotta have AI and SEC cybersecurity go hand in hand for

Lou: ​what are your thoughts on, on AI and how it's affecting security?

Carraig: I think it depends. Right? There are a lot of AI startups or ai. New security startups coming up that I'm pretty excited about. There is no doubt that there is a place for. AI and or what we're calling ai. I think [00:19:00] AI in and of itself is kind of a stupid thing to say 'cause it's not actually ai, but anyway,

Lou: Yeah. Machine

Carraig: the, the whole, right, exactly.

I mean, I still remember, I, for a while, I had a screenshot from, uh, nets, uh, um, yeah, Netskope, where like from before open AI went viral to after Chatt went viral. And it was like the same exact front page, but they just changed ML to AI or something like that. I had the, I had two screenshots like that for a while just to show, show the difference and you know, you, and so AI becomes a buzzword.

It loses a lot of meaning. Now Agentic is doing the same thing,

Lou: Yep.

Carraig: And how people define it is just wildly different. All of that aside, the L the, you know, leveraging machine learning with large LLMs is proving to be beneficial from a productivity perspective in many areas. Um, the ability to analyze large data sets to, I mean, there, there, there's some pretty cool stuff from that.

Lou: Hmm. Big

Carraig: And the flip side is people trust it too much [00:20:00] and a lot of folks are using, you know, this new vibe, coding, leveraging ai. And, you know, I'd be getting, you know, requests from, you know, people in various, you know, department, uh, business departments saying, Hey, we want this tool, or Hey, we want that tool. They bring these tools to market so quickly because they're just leveraging AI to do the coding for them.

That's a wrap for this episode of Channel Security Secrets. Thanks for tuning in. For show notes, guest info and more episodes, visit us@channelsecuritysecrets.com Channel Security Secrets is sponsored by Cyber Defense Group when it comes to protecting your business. Don't settle for reactive. Partner with experts who build resilience from the ground up.