Are you getting ready for the upcoming RSA Conference, the world’s leading information security conference and exposition? The event is quickly approaching, taking place May 6 – 9, 2024 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. This year’s theme: The Art of Possible – as we collectively create works that will change our perspective on what we can accomplish. Let’s celebrate limitless opportunities, challenge the status quo, and explore new horizons together.
Ahead of the show, VMblog received an exclusive interview with Chas Clawson, Field CTO at Sumo Logic, a leading SaaS Log Analytics Platform.
VMblog: To kick things off, give VMblog readers a quick overview of the company.
Chas Clawson: Sumo Logic helps make the digital world faster, reliable and more secure. Through our AI-powered SaaS Log Analytics Platform, organizations can unify and analyze enterprise data, translating it into actionable insights. This single source of truth enables Dev, Sec and Ops teams to simplify complexity, collaborate efficiently and accelerate data-driven decisions that drive business value.
In one platform, Sumo Logic customers can ingest all the data across their entire systems and transform data overload into insights for security, developer and IT operations teams. Sumo Logic unifies and analyzes enterprise data, translating it into actionable insights through one AI-powered, cloud-native platform. And our new Flex Licensing model removes a common cost barrier for analytics, allowing customers to take full advantage of their ever-growing volumes of data to make data-driven decisions and accelerate innovation without gaps in visibility.
Sumo Logic Cloud’s security solutions – Cloud Infrastructure Security (CIS) and Cloud SIEM integrated with UEBA and Cloud SOAR – help secure the cloud journey, manage changing attack surfaces and modernize the SOC. All part of the Sumo Logic platform, Sumo Logic brings powerful security solutions and log analytics with security and observability capabilities together to break down data silos and accelerate DevSecOps initiatives.
VMblog: How can attendees find you at the show? How many folks are you sending? What can attendees expect?
Clawson: Attendees can find the Sumo Logic team in the North Hall – Booth 6271! In addition to myself, our CEO and president Joe Kim will be in attendance as well as Timm Hoyt, SVP of WW partners and alliances, Tej Redkar, CPO, and Steve Stover, VP of Product Management. We’ll have several activities at our booth, including live demos, games and free swag. Our experts including myself will also be available to address any questions and discuss topics such as DevSecOps, log analytics, zero-dollar ingest and more. To learn more or book a meeting visit: https://www.sumologic.com/rsa-conference/
VMblog: What are some of the security best practices you would deem critical?
Clawson: Maintaining robust cybersecurity measures remains paramount for companies as threats evolve with the sophistication of AI and social engineering tactics. Establishing sound cybersecurity practices, implementing an active user security awareness program, and leveraging a cloud-native SIEM with AI-driven predictive analytics are critical for detecting anomalous user behaviors and identifying potential attacks amidst false positive alerts. Even more, security teams need tools that ensure they are not working in a silo. This includes shifting security left into the software development lifecycle.
In this new era of cybersecurity, AI has a real opportunity to uplevel SOCs and drive the fifth-generation of SIEM solutions by providing predictive insights, automated threat detection and responses, and allowing for a seamless integration with DevSecOps. Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM has the foundation to lead the charge towards fifth-generation SIEM solutions and safeguard a secure future. Compared to XDR solutions, Sumo Logic uses machine learning and big data analytics models to analyze massive amounts of log data – the single source of truth between ops, dev and sec teams. Having real-time access to log data is essential to breaking down team silos and meeting the advanced needs of DevSecOps.
Sumo Logic also incorporates advanced user behavior analytics and automation to enhance threat detection within Cloud SIEM and integrates AI and machine learning capabilities, which are key to advancing toward fifth-generation SIEM. As threats evolve, AI must take center stage in security practices and equip SIEM solutions with self-learning capabilities, allowing them to scale and adapt with the ecosystem and DevSecOps processes.
VMblog: What market needs or problems are you addressing in the security space?
Clawson: Today’s increased volume of threats and cyber skills shortages require security teams to modernize their operations through advanced security analytics and cross-team collaboration. Sumo Logic provides security professionals with AI-powered tools that deliver faster, accurate security insights, break down team silos, and modernize security operations.
Sumo Logic’s unified and scalable log analytics platform centralizes, stores and analyzes security and other business critical data all in one place so organizations can reduce data overload and eliminate unnecessary silos between Sec, Dev and Ops teams. With our new flex licensing model, we are removing the cost of data ingest so companies can fully capitalize on their data for business insights without worrying about cost spikes.
Sumo Logic also helps security practitioners cut through the noise with Cloud Infrastructure Security (CIS) and Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM, which combines SIEM, SOAR and UEBA and is FedRAMP® Moderate Authorized. CIS features AI-driven anomaly detection, automated remediation playbooks and a unified security and compliance audit view so Sec, Dev and Ops teams can gain full security visibility of their environment.
VMblog: What are some of the key takeaways of your solution that RSA conference goers should be aware of? And what sets you apart from the competition?
Clawson: Users commonly face unproductive troubleshooting because most vendors can only conduct analytics on structured log data, resulting in limited visibility and uncontrollable spikes in costs. Additionally, these tools are typically either on-premises or single-tenant, posing challenges for scalability and processing data in real-time.
At Sumo Logic, we tackle these obstacles head-on by offering
- A unified log analytics platform that seamlessly integrates security and observability. Our platform is designed to analyze both structured and unstructured log data, providing our customers with enhanced flexibility over their log data within a centralized environment.
- Being a cloud-native solutions provider, Sumo Logic analyzes critical business data faster and provides real-time insights and visibility at scale.
- Our $0 ingest pricing model stands out by offering customers more adaptable options for analyzing their data and scaling their operations. The licensing model removes common cost and collaboration barriers, reducing gaps in visibility and improving the efficiency and effectiveness of security teams.
- An automation engine and out of the box playbooks at no extra cost so that customers can make huge efficiency leaps by automating away, common tasks, investigation, steps, and remediation actions.
We’re committed to making a difference for our customers by unifying logs, metrics, traces, and security solutions into a single, self-managed platform.
VMblog: Is your company launching anything new at the show? Can you give us a sneak peek?
Clawson: Organizations need to shift security left in order to defend against the evolving threat landscape, which requires security teams to work hand in hand with developer and operations teams. On May 6th at RSAC 2024, we are super excited to unveil new AI-driven security innovations that make DevSecOps possible and affordable, supported by Sumo Logic’s free data ingest licensing that gives customers the ability to use all of their critical security data to bridge visibility gaps and unlock hidden insights.
These innovations will be on display at booth #6271 in the North Hall. We will also be announcing new industry award recognitions for our solutions.
VMblog: Does your company have any speaking slots at RSA? If so, can you tell us more about those sessions so people can get them on their schedules?
Clawson: Yes! I will be leading a live session titled, “Many sources, one truth: Applying DevSecOps best practices” on Wednesday, May 8th at 12 pm in the North Expo Briefing Center. During this session, I will discuss challenges of cloud threat detection and discuss strategies for improvement, illustrated through a practical incident response scenario. I will also emphasize the importance of consolidating information into a single reliable source, breaking down team silos, and implementing DevSecOps best practices. Hope to see you there, or stop by our booth #6271 in the North Hall to say hello.
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