An Information Security Place

I have decided to start putting down some of the day-to-day events with this new job.  I think it will actually help stir my mind to blog more since I have not been writing near enough lately.  So here goes.

I have actually been kinda bored since my recent job change.  Though I have been getting in contact with our vendor partners and getting setup for training on products, the real action is out there selling and designing and proposing.  I really want to get thrown into the fire. 

Part of the reason I’m not out there yet is we do not have a sales person dedicated to the Houston market.  We need someone badly because the guy selling in Houston is based in Dallas, and he has a lot to do up there as well as down here.  However, he finally got down here today, and it got crazy quickly (be careful what you ask for).

The sales guy flew in at 9am this morning at IAH (Houston Intercontinental), but he didn’t get in my car (I was chauffeur today) until 9:25am, and we had an appointment in SW Houston at 10am.  For those of you who know Houston, IAH is on the far north side of Houston, and Houston is BIG.  I made the trip in about 25 minutes, which I was proud of.

Anyway, the talk was basically an introduction to Accuvant and what we could offer.  This was my first real meeting with the sales pitch thrown to a client, so I learned a lot (I learned even more through the day).  But to be honest, I think of the term “sales pitch” as negative.  What we did today was, technically, selling Accuvant.  However, Accuvant really has differentiated itself quite a bit from most “security” companies because of the unique approach to the industry.  I have talked about it before, but Accuvant just seems to do things right.  Yes, there are always going to be internal problems, but Accuvant just seems to be a company that takes customers seriously and at face value.  We don’t want to walk in and just sell a box then walk out until it’s time for a maintenance renewal.  We want to partner and grow with our clients, and this is no BS.  I am really impressed by Accuvant, and I know this compnay is going to succeed even more in the coming years.

OK, sorry.  Anyway, the meeting went well.  We have some strong offerings in compliance and assessment, and the client seemed to take to that well (we were talking to IT risk manager and audit types, so they loved the ControlPath product we offer for keeping track of compliance, risk, etc.).

The next client is looking at implementing Infoblox, which is a pretty sweet product in my estimation.  Infoblox offers simple and secure DNS, DHCP, IPAM, and RADIUS services in an appliance.  I have seen the box and how it works.  It is very simple.  Many companies are replacing their Microsoft-based DNS, DHCP, and RADIUS with this product, and I am seeing some great results. 

The next client was a partial introduction – I had previously worked at this client, so the intro was more for the sales guy and Accuvant in broader terms.  They are a property-management company who delas almost exclusively with apartments.  They are looking at wireless access for their tenants in new complexes, which is going to be fairly daunting for a lot of reasons that I won’t get into.  Suffice it to say that they want a lot for little.

So after that client, we went to an established client that is looking into SIM / SEM (some call it SIEM) for capturing very specific events in remote offices and centralize it to corporate (insert Rothman negative comment here).  We are putting Network Intelligence in front of them for the scalability and sheer EPS (events per second).  To put it simply, I like this product.  I might get into that at a later date.

Anyway, we left that client, located in Downtown Houston, at almost exactly 5PM.  Not a good time in Houston.  The sales guy’s plane left at 7pm, so, needless to say (but I am going to say it anyway), we were a bit rushed.  However, we found out after we got on the road that, due to a LOT of storms down here today, his flight was delayed for over an hour, so we calmed down.  Then, wouldn’t you you know it, we still made it to the airport in plenty of time for the original flight time.  I guess being relaxed during the drive helped me just go with the flow better, so driving was a lot quicker than I expected.

So, that’s my day.  It was very busy and crazy, but I finally got in the mix.  I have a lot of ”action items” from these meetings, so that is going to help me get even more familiar with the products we sell.  These meetings also helped me get down our philosophy (I think that sounds better than “sales pitch”), so I will be better prepared for future meetings with clients (especially since I know I will be mostly on my own until we get a sales person down here).  Things are starting to pick up, so I got out of the house, and I am glad for that.  I love my wife and kids, and they love me (or so they tell me), but we are all getting a little tired of each other right now!

More later.

Vet