Black Hat USA 2023: A Data Expert’s Take

As data experts in a sea of security professionals, we look at security problems differently. So it’s not surprising that our take on Black Hat 2023 is a little unique. 

First off, I was pleased to meet a lot of business and security leaders who are eager to solve their problems with a data-first mentality. However, I was also surprised by all of the seemingly identical marketing, even from companies that don’t compete with each other. Is every vendor really transforming the way security is done? Most likely they’re really great at a certain thing, perhaps even the best at that thing, but they’re casting a very large (very expensive) net hoping that it reels in at least a few fish. The volume of messages claiming to be all things to all people makes it very hard to understand what everyone is actually doing. 

On the other hand, seeing the sheer volume of solutions that CISOs and CIOs have to choose from at Black Hat further validates that security has a data problem. Nearly every vendor at the conference offered a solution that will generate vast amounts of data. Add up the number of solutions in a CISOs security stack and before they know it, they are drowning in data, with no way to use it effectively. 

At Black Hat, we were able to show people how Avalor solves this challenge firsthand. When we demoed our solution, I noticed people’s eyes lit up when they saw our platform in action. It was very clear they hadn’t seen a solution like ours before — at Black Hat or anywhere else. This was gratifying to our team as we are on a mission to help security teams make sense of their data for faster, more accurate decisioning. 

So how do you separate fiction from reality when evaluating the plethora of solutions in the market with identical messaging? We noticed that astute practitioners were direct in challenging us to:

1. Succinctly and clearly describe how our solution is different to earn their attention
2. Explain relationships between different data sets — and how our solution can help teams enrich their security data, whether overlaying it with intelligence data or connecting it to identity, CMDB, or HR data for further business context
3. Discuss how to customize our solution to their unique organizational needs, including creating customized risk scores and weights from any factors
4. Show a real product demo — beyond vanity dashboards, connecting any data no matter the type or source

We came to Black Hat prepared to meet security leaders where they are, answer their questions, show them our platform, and more. Their response confirmed for me how unique our product and our story is. We have something truly different, with built-in tools that allow security operations to scale and enable better business decisions — such as our AnySource Connector™ and query engine. 

And while Black Hat 2023 may be over, the pressing need for security teams to make their security data actionable to protect their organization is here to stay. If you’d like to see firsthand how we can help you do that, reach out to us. We’d love to show you an in-depth demo of our Data Fabric for Security™ and answer any questions you may have.