Buzz Off

Splunk’s Lauren Wilson tries not to mention the industry’s biggest buzzwords while exploring how Computacenter and Splunk are shaping the future of enterprise security and observability.

Creators and Guests

Host
Oli Chapman
Head of Networking and Security at Computacenter UK
Guest
Lauren Wilson
Field CTO, Splunk

What is Buzz Off?

Straight talk on networking & security!

Every week there's a new phrase, trend or acronym dominating the networking & security conversations. Too often, the buzzwords get in the way of what you really want to know: What does it actually mean? Why does it matter? And how will it help my organisation?

That's where Buzz Off comes in. Hosted by Oli Chapman, Head of Networking & Security at Computacenter, we bring together experts from leading technology and security organisations to explore the biggest topics shaping the industry today.

But there's one rule: leave the buzzwords at the door. No jargon. No marketing speak. No hiding behind industry clichés.

Instead, expect honest conversations about today's challenges, emerging technologies, evolving threats, and the practical steps organisations can take to stay secure, connected, and successful.

Hello and welcome to Buzz Off.

My name is Oliver Chapman.

I am solution area director for networking
and security at Computacenter.

This is a web series
designed for customers by our customers.

The idea is I invite a different partner
on each episode.

And there are three buzz words or phrases
selected by our customers.

If they mentioned during the interview,
one of the buzz words,

you will hear this noise.

If they mention all three,

I will forcefully eject them
from the studio.

This week's buzzwords are “secure
by design”,

“low hanging fruit” and “best of breed”.

This week's guest is Lauren Wilson, field
CTO at Splunk.

Good luck Lauren.

Right. Lauren, welcome to Buzz Off.

How are you feeling?

Very excited. The studio is insane.

Nervous at all? Yeah. Yeah, a little bit.

Okay. There's, there is a bit of jeopardy.

Yeah. I'm not going to lie. Right.

So what keeps you at Splunk?

So, like, when I was looking at
where to go after my kind of career in

gov and C&I, and I wanted to have
a kind of global reach.

Splunk is steeped in history,
like in terms of security, pedigree

and like comes the data which is fuelling
the AI revolution, but also kind of like

where I seeing most of the challenges
that organisations see.

I think it was a natural home,
and particularly the Cisco,

acquisition of Splunk, the kind of
the strength of the brand is only growing.

So that kind of injection of support
and innovation and the ability to deliver

change
more globally, made natural sense to me.

Amazing.

So out of the local, into the global
and helping customers to change the world.

Exactly. And that's our steeped
in like kind of mission.

And what I see my career goal to be.
love that.

So from your perspective,
why Splunk and Computacenter as a partner?

Yeah, I suppose we operate
in similar enterprises, right?

Splunk isn't for all organisations

it kind of operates at a level
where, your customers also align with us,

and we need a partner
that has that deep Splunk expertise

across all the personas that we work with

and your ability to have both a dedicated
Splunk practice, but also have,

from architecture all the way through
to kind of post-sales implementation.

That breadth of expertise that you have,
is the kind of partnership

that we need to get the implementation.

It's like I speak to CISOs
and CTOs all the time,

and it's not often
kind of like a technology,

you know, blocker
in terms of getting stuff done.

It's that kind of change
and implementation.

And I think partners

bring in that resource and the skill set
to kind of make that happen.

Yeah.

And I expect making the technology
a reality for their individual

use case as well. Right.

So on that note, what what makes us
unique for enterprise organisations?

And it is that kind of like

breadth and depth
that you've got in organisations,

the fact that you have
so many different practices

working across the entire stack
with all the different personas,

all the different kind of,

units that a business needs in terms
of I.T infrastructure and, you know,

getting stuff done in the AI sphere
but also security,

observability, the whole,
the whole stack that you operate in.

Again, it's achieving
the same kind of missions that we are too.

So, yeah, hand-in-hand.
We can do that together. Fantastic.

So this is for customers

where we're putting this out
to a certain type of audience.

What right now, given the conversations
you're having with customers

as well, what question do you think
every CIO should be asking their teams?

Good one. So for me
it's about criticality.

So my, my
my background in incident management.

And I kind of saw that the bad cyber days
for organisations

and something that happened
time and time again,

if I could get out that one message
to CIOs, it's kind of

do you really understand your business
criticality, in terms of systems,

processes, because when it comes down
to, say, a cyber armageddon scenario,

you've got AD down or something
that's kind of completely critical

and you're almost at ground zero.

Having defined what the business
priorities in terms of critical business

services look like ahead of time, help
that kind of recovery.

Exponentially, because I've seen it
where organisations have that

that moment where all IT systems think
that the most important

and actually they're not, right?

There's always going to be ones
that truly are business critical

and having those decisions
and priorities ahead of time,

but also treating those business services
and then the systems

with that kind of risk profile at mind.

Because if they are truly critical

things like,
you know, backup, hygiene, recovery,

patching, the kind of stuff that,
you know, you should definitely be doing.

Depending on the criticality
in the business,

you should adopt a risk profile
that matches that.

So are CIOs really, truly
aware of the kind of business criticality

of their different systems?

And observability, which is kind of a key
part of the offerings

from Splunk, is a massive support to
that as well for those individuals.

So on that, I suppose keeping on that,
that customer theme specifically,

when you think about the outcomes
that we've delivered, like the really

impressive outcomes and things
that customers care about, saving money,

saving time, what would be the use case
that springs to mind for you?

Good one.

So, there's a telco organisation
and we work together to do a real overhaul

and kind of onboard many,
different services onto ITSI

and your ability
to kind of get hands on keyboard

and really support that implementation,
save them, you know, so much in terms of,

kind of the time, but also the kind of,
if they had to get

those skills internally, upskill staff
to be able to do that kind of stuff.

By that time, many resource
and moving people away on to kind of more

of project based support rather
than, you know, the current day job.

So the ability to kind of parachute
in the hands on keyboard,

you know, exploit that implementation,
allowed them to realise the value

so much more quicker, than just
if they had tried to do it alone.

Yeah.

And I think obviously the skill shortage
is still a massive problem.

Right. And finding
these people is definitely a challenge.

So obviously you mentioned earlier
this the Cisco acquisition,

what's the vision for Cisco, Splunk,
as a combined entity for customers.

And how are you seeing that playing out?

Yeah, it's it's exciting.

Like I say, it was one of the reasons

why Splunk was like a very solid
kind of brand and particularly

in a vendor landscape, right,
where do I go?

And it was really,
really kind of Cisco acquisition

that kind of strengthened that.

And I think it's

because alone, particularly in this
AI revolution, we really need each other.

So Cisco has the hardware,
you know, the deep expertise

that Splunk has in the data world
together, kind of, the synergies

and how we're going to really bring
that together, was super important.

So seeing that over time
and then how we're working together

and building
more of an integrated capability

and just kind of bolting on the side
like we're really focusing on integration

and and yeah, I don't think there's any
other players that can do the full kind of

from user to silicon kind of visibility
and then ultimately protection.

So, yeah, it's exciting.

And seeing how that we're going
to make that a reality is.

Yeah, it's exciting and why I'm here.

And it sounds almost like

kind of a full nervous system for,
for an enterprise customer.

And so final question.

You doing really well, by the way,

what excites you most about the Splunk
portfolio or roadmap?

You are a technical individual.

You know, I'm
assuming you get excited by technology.

What kind of things are you hearing that
that kind of just get you,

make you feel like
you're in the right place?

Yeah, yeah. And that's right.

And that you want to be in a vendor
that does that. Right?

You don't want to be kind of thinking,
oh, are we really tackling problems here?

Or are we just adding
AI to wherever we want to you know.

No we're really focusing on putting
AI implementation in the right places

and the place that I see that
most and going back to my kind of previous

career in the incident management
as a SOC analyst,

like I know how difficult it is to be
you know, in the trenches there

and some of the stuff
that we're doing with kind of Agentic SOC.

So creating agents

actually hand-in-hand with the SOC analyst
make their lives easier.

So triage agent helping them
make those really difficult calls.

That alone, you know, just yeah, I can't
I can't even imagine how beneficial

that would have been back in the day.

And things like, malware, reversing
agent like that, that's a skill set

that you either have to contract out

or you might have one guy in a room
that might and help do that kind of stuff.

But having agents in the SOC hand-in-hand
with the analyst

kind of really augmenting
the human skillset,

that's yeah,
that kind of agenetic SOC of the future.

Yeah, I wish I could have had it.

And then that that's
turning those individuals, I suppose, more

into supervisors,
almost like having to having to do to do.

Yeah, a bit of both. Right.

I think that's where...

I think this going to buzz it it -
but like it's very much a trust journey

and like as much as it is a technology
journey, it's very much about trust.

So we see that an automated
or kind of almost autonomous future

doesn't really feel in reach
for most CISOs and CTOs right now.

So having that kind of human in the loop
still and having that, like I say

more of the agentic hand in hand

that your best friend in the SOC,
that kind of supplements your skill set

rather than,
you know, automating it entirely today.

I think just build that trust to
hopefully, you know, take more of that.

autonomous approach to to SOCs.

Okay. Well look
you've made it through the core questions.

So congratulations.

I did feel like you were playing a little
bit faster and loose with us there.

You're definitely dropping
in some buzzwords every now and again.

I think you're playing an aggressive game,
I quite like it.

Well, Lauren,
thank you so much for joining us.

You did a fantastic job.

You avoided being ejected from the studio
and you avoided buzzwords as well.

So congratulations. Thanks for having me.

She made it!

Didn't she do well.

Lauren, what a fantastic job.

Thank you for joining us.

Great to hear about how Splunk has been
integrated into the wider portfolio.

And delivering for customers in security,
observability and really creating

that nervous system
for enterprise organisations.

We're back next time with a new partner
and three more buzzwords or phrases.

Thank you for watching. See you later.