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Want a peak behind the curtain into one of the best places to work in cybersecurity and the minds of the innovators behind the industry’s leading security operations platform? Tune in to The Howler podcast!
Hosted by Chelsea Lowman, People Experience Specialist, and Mary Newville, People Experience Senior Manager, the culture duo connects with pack leaders on leadership insights, mental health and overall wellbeing, and how they lead their teams to advance our mission of ending cyber risk.
The Howler - Debra Sevelius_AUDIO
Mon, Jan 06, 2025 10:08AM � 56:22
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
New Year's resolutions, holiday anticipation, childhood bedroom, bunk beds, legal career, curling trivia, commercial legal, work-life balance, remote team management, cyber risk, leadership philosophy, team collaboration, personal anecdotes, bucket list, rapid fire questions
SPEAKERS
Jacob Robbins, Chelsea Lowman, Mary Newville, Debra Sevelius
Chelsea Lowman 00:03
Hi, welcome back to the Howler Podcast. I'm Chelsea, I'm Mary, and welcome to 2025. A brand new year, a
Mary Newville 00:12
new year can't wait. I mean, actually, we're saying can't wait because we are recording this in December, so we both are anticipating the holiday right around the corner. Mm, hmm. And okay, so many things. I have a lot of thoughts today that I had in the car upon driving here knowing this episode's coming. But firstly, since the holidays are next week, Chelsea, you are I'm
Chelsea Lowman 00:39
home in Yorktown, Virginia. Fun fact about Chelsea.
Mary Newville 00:45
Share this detail, but yeah,
Chelsea Lowman 00:47
I mean, I share It's okay. If you're watching, you can see I'm in a bedroom I work. This is my childhood bedroom, but it definitely did not look like this when I occupied the room. Okay, take this back, like, to your a couple years childhood. Well, so actually, when we first moved into this house, when I was, like, seven or eight, I was in the bigger bedroom, because I was the oldest, oldest child, I had the bigger bedroom. And then I really, really wanted bunk beds. I don't know why I just wanted bunk beds for yourself. Well, I don't know. I think in my head, like my sister and I would share the room, and then this room would be like a playroom or something, but like, I didn't want to actually share a bedroom with my sister, you know what I mean. But anyway, my parents agree to get bug beds, so then I have bunk beds in my room, but come like, middle school, I don't want bunk beds, and no one's sleeping, like it's just me in that room, my sister in this room. So then I think sometime in middle school, maybe like seventh or eighth grade, we switched rooms, and I got this room and my sister had the bigger room with the bunk beds, and so when I was in this room, it was like a blue. Blue is my favorite color, so it was like blue on the wall. And the theme was blue, purple and green, because those are my three favorite colors. Spread was like this, like, vibrant blue, purple, green. It was just like it was so loud, okay,
Mary Newville 02:22
well, this has been a fun little blast in Chelsea's past by her recording location today. Okay, but also, yes, you're right. So everyone's listening to this in January, people are probably setting new year's resolutions we should do just like a really quick debrief at the end of this year on this podcast, you declared that your resolution was going to be everything you want. Is on the other side of this a little bit more eloquently, but I think that was the gist. Yes,
Chelsea Lowman 02:52
it was the person you want to be, or something like that is on the other side of this moment, mostly just trying to get me to calm down, take a breath, be patient, but also, like, challenge myself to, like, just get through the hard moment, like I said in my check in I don't know if I was like, super intentional around thinking about it throughout the year, but I do think I've been able to, like, work through some really challenging situations and not, like, be super reactive. So I do think I'm making progress there. Yeah. What about you? Your resolution was to get off the sidelines and get into the game, which we already talked about. You definitely have gotten into the game. But how are you feeling about your no
Mary Newville 03:45
totally I think, like that, intention really was a guiding light for me this year, and it's cool to close the year, it was such an adventurous and year full of growth and change and just leaning into new environments and situations and getting over the hurdle of, like, getting back into school. So yeah, I haven't set my news resolutions for this year yet, but, and I have no idea what they're going to be yet, but it was a good 2020, before. Yes,
Chelsea Lowman 04:16
it was a good year. Maybe in our next episode we can, in the February episode, we can discuss some resolutions or intentions for the year. Yes,
Mary Newville 04:29
okay, oh my gosh. I have so many topics I still have, and Deb is showing up in two minutes. Okay, so first one that I just remembered, um, silence might be listening. Oh, yeah, silence. We announced on Monday this week, as we recorded December, that the intent to acquire silence. Um, so if you're a silence pack member joining us soon, we are so excited. So if you're listening, shout out to you. We're so excited you're here.
Chelsea Lowman 04:59
Yes, so exciting. Wow, that's wild. I wasn't, I wasn't even thinking about that. But yeah,
Mary Newville 05:06
because I was working on the comms first them last night, and I was going to plug the Howler podcast, and I was like, oh, and then on the podcast, I think it was shout out, so if they listen, okay, but I am really excited for this conversation. This is another, this was a second, another thing on my little intro agenda that I thought about my drive. Mm, hmm. I was a kid, my dad always told me that I should be an attorney, because I never stop asking questions. And ironically, I didn't go into the legal field, but I am a podcast co host where I ask questions. We need to
Chelsea Lowman 05:45
ask questions. That's so true. So
Mary Newville 05:47
that said, I'm so excited to be having a conversation today with our Vice President of legal, Deb sevelis, as the head of commercial legal at Arctic Wolf. Deb is an experienced, collaborative and globally minded executive leader with a proven record in leading legal and cross functional operational teams that deliver pragmatic, Win Win outcomes, that maximize long term value, achieve process efficiencies and increase revenue. Prior to joining our Dick Wolf dev led global sourcing teams within a number of large public companies such as Northwest Airlines, ing, Ecolab and Thomson Reuters, and has served as an in house or outsource external commercial council for a number of early stage and late stage tech startups, including code 42 software. How are you welcome to the podcast? Thanks.
Debra Sevelius 06:36
Nice to be here. Oh,
Mary Newville 06:39
we are so excited. I was just telling Chelsea that I had this, like, full circle thought in the car driving to work today, because when I was little, my dad would always tell me he's like, You need to be a lawyer. When you grow up, you ask so many questions. You just, like, never stop with your questions. And obviously I did not become a lawyer, but I was just saying, but Chelsea, I co host this podcast with you, where I ask questions, the little Mary question asker found her way, just not in the field. My dad thought I would head
Debra Sevelius 07:10
Well, hopefully I have answers. I don't know that I'll have all the answers. Like, like, any good lawyer, Mary, are you able to make them up? Like, make up the responses. Like, even when you don't know something, you
Mary Newville 07:21
know I'm a terrible liar, like you can I wear my emotions on my face. So if I'm trying to be silly or funny or trying to lie, it just doesn't go well, because you can just know that I'm, like, trying so hard,
Debra Sevelius 07:36
I'll poke your face for Mary, I probably would have
Mary Newville 07:39
been a bad lawyer, had I pursued that field? That's not true. That's not true. Okay, I could have found my way. You could
Debra Sevelius 07:47
have, and it depends on, like, what you're practicing. So it depends on what kind of area law, and sometimes not having a poker face or being able to, you know, especially with the HR slant, you might have been really great at, like, something related to, you know, more public interest, or public policy, those kinds of things. I
Chelsea Lowman 08:20
Deb, well, we just dove right in, which was so fun. But we do start every podcast episode with, like, a fun little game. I think you're a listener, so you know, we usually do, like trivia, or would you rather, or something like that, with our guests. So I reached out to Andy Hill and myself
Debra Sevelius 08:41
that you're gonna pick what I want you to pick. So
Chelsea Lowman 08:45
okay, well, I said, Andy, what do you know about Deb? And first of all, of course, he had only the most, like, nice, sweetest things to say about you. He's so excited you're on the podcast and that the world will get to get to know you better, um, but he told me that you like curling.
Debra Sevelius 09:06
I do my husband and I curl. Oh yeah.
Chelsea Lowman 09:10
So today's trivia is based on curling.
Debra Sevelius 09:14
Oh my gosh, and I am not gonna know anything. Okay,
Chelsea Lowman 09:19
it's okay. It was just fun. Um, it's always, we always joke. Um, when I get these tidbits from other people, and I don't like fact check them, you know, like Andy could have been wrong. I mean, he knows you, obviously, but we're always waiting for for someone to just, like, jokingly tell us something wrong, just so that we they pull a fast one on their co worker. Oh, wow, good. So far so good. Like, everyone has told us a true fact, but you never know. Alright, alright. So we'll just do a quick little. Curling trivia. We'll all learn a little bit about curling, and then we can get back to the combo. Okay, when and where was curling invented Scotland,
Debra Sevelius 10:11
but I don't know when. Like 1600 1700
Chelsea Lowman 10:19
ding, ding. Well, okay, you got Scotland. It is Scotland in the 16th century, so 1500s but we're so close, so close.
Debra Sevelius 10:32
Well, I don't curl in a kilt. So Nord was my husband, although some people do at the St Paul curling club,
Chelsea Lowman 10:38
really.
Debra Sevelius 10:41
Yeah. Wow.
Chelsea Lowman 10:43
Well, we'll circle back to learning more about you and curling in a second. Okay, curling stones are made out of a special granite that you can only find in two places in the world. Where are those two places?
Debra Sevelius 10:59
One of them is Scotland and some island, yes, and I don't know about the other place,
Chelsea Lowman 11:09
okay, yes. One is like an uninhabited island off the coast of Scotland, and the other one is Trey for granite quarry in Wales. Oh, so please. I guess okay, you're doing so well.
Debra Sevelius 11:29
I'm just shocked as you are.
Chelsea Lowman 11:31
Okay. This one I would, I think you would know, but I don't want to jinx it. How much do curling stones weigh?
Debra Sevelius 11:39
42 pounds. 40 Correct. 42
Chelsea Lowman 11:45
that's your gut. Okay. Final question. Curling made its debut during the inaugural Winter Olympics in France in 1924 before being dropped the following Olympics. Curling was then intermittently held solely as a demonstration sport until men's and women's curling officially joined the Olympic program in what year it's in
Debra Sevelius 12:07
the 90s? Wasn't it 9290 like, When? When was it 80? No, 90s.
Chelsea Lowman 12:13
I love how you're just gonna wait until I like, give you I'm
Debra Sevelius 12:17
reading your facial
Chelsea Lowman 12:20
okay? The answer is 1998 but I think you are, think you are somewhat correct in 1992 in a sense that in 1990 in 1992 they held one of those demonstration games, and then the Olympic committee actually decided later to honor the demonstration medals. So like retroactively, 1992 metals became like real. Metals officially joined the program in 1998
Debra Sevelius 12:49
it is a sport of the future,
Chelsea Lowman 12:53
the past and future.
Debra Sevelius 12:56
Well, I started, I started in 99 at the St Paul curling club. How did you get into it? Um, a friend of mine from high school. His dad passed away a few years ago, but he was like the oldest curling member at the club at that time, but he was into curling, and so then, as we all started to graduate from college, and actually had some money, because it's not cheap to become a member of the club. Then we started curling. And so when I started really, there were limited women's leagues, so I curled on a men's open League, and it was open, but women really didn't curl in that those leagues, and so that's how I started. Well,
Chelsea Lowman 13:45
I feel like we could talk about curling and like, your experience curling for so long, but I do, I want to make sure we have time to talk, like, to get to know you more, and to talk about some other things, sure. Well, why don't we transition to kind of the start of your career journey, or even further back than that, like, tell us a little bit about what young Deb was like. When did you have an interest in law and kind of like, what led you to to eventually being here with us at Arctic wolf that's a
Debra Sevelius 14:21
long story, and I think you know, like with a lot of people, as you're moving through your career, right, sometimes it feels really disjointed. Like, if I were to go back 20 years ago, the thought that I would be where I am today didn't seem logical. But when you look back, it all seems to make sense, right? So the story kind of builds upon what itself and and somehow you look back and go, Oh, wow, that all kind of made sense. But you know, even when I was little, I wanted to be a lawyer, my mom was a legal. Terry. So I grew up and kind of the experience of the law and lawyers and different things, but I also was really like, the injustice in the world, and, you know, it was probably a little bit more philanthropic in the way that I was thinking about what I wanted to do. You know, I wanted to, like, when I was little dub, I wanted to, like, save the animals, and I wanted to protect children. I hated bullying, so I was always like, advocating and, you know, sticking up for people, and how that relates to Arctic Wolf and, you know, leading the commercial legal team kind of a little bit different, right? My path went a little bit in a different direction. But, you know, clearly, I went to law school, I started in private practice. Hated it. There was such a I didn't like it because I didn't get to actually immerse myself in what was actually happening with a client, right? I just got an issue, and then I was dealing with the issue, and I didn't get really the full context. I didn't get to necessarily see how it impacted the entirety of a business or something. And so then I went in in house, and I was at Cargill. So most of my career, I played in large corporate America, Fortune 100 fortune 500 obviously, Cargill is private, but started there again, just dealing with issues and my client, my internal client, was being sold off. And so then I went to work at Northwest Airlines with a partner that I worked with in private practice, doing tax and tax controversy work. Landed up finding my way into procurement and sourcing primarily on the IT side when I was there, so I ran the it sourcing organization. By the time I left, that's what I was doing. And then through 20 years of my career was really on the buy side. So I was doing a lot of the same things, but I was buying the technology, or I was running in direct sourcing, so I was buying a whole bunch of different things. And then eventually got to code 42 code 42 obviously, I met a whole bunch of people that are Arctic wolf now, and then came on and I'm on the sell side now, which so hearing all the same things that I used to say to the lawyers on the vendor side, and so this all kind of came full circle.
Mary Newville 17:29
So cool. I was going to ask you, what little Deb would have been like advocating for? Were you that would you like play lawyer with your family or friends? Would you or like, if there was a conflict, would you like, want to debate each side or
Debra Sevelius 17:45
I wasn't. I'm not a big debater, so like my I always had an opinion about everything, and then I was never afraid to like share that opinion, which I think people at Arctic wolf probably would attach to. But so it wasn't a big debater. It was like, right or wrong, and that's just the way it was. And so like, I'm not going to debate with you over that's like, a waste of words, so I'm just going to tell you what I think, and then there we go. Right? So, yeah, I'm not a big arguer. I just that takes a lot of energy. That's
Chelsea Lowman 18:26
a common characteristic of those that are like practicing like, like corporate or commercial law.
Debra Sevelius 18:36
No, I mean, I definitely think on the characteristics that have served me well, and then that serve my team well, like who, who is successful in these roles. And I would say that as a general matter, I am really irritated by the traditional lawyer, right? Because a traditional lawyer likes to make complexity out of things, right? Because more complexity than you know, like, there's so much, it's like, okay, but at the end of the day, what's the practical implication? Like, I don't like, I don't want to talk about the theoretical, like, what if? What? What about this and what could happen here. What like? Okay, let's just be pragmatic. So I think that there are certain different skill sets that, especially in the commercial organization here, and given the organization and our mature where we are in a maturity cycle, and all of those things. Like, if you're in large corporate America, probably the way in which we do things here is probably not what is looked for in a large corporate environment, right? So, like, when I was at. Gill in large corporate America, and the analysis and the explanations and the, you know, writing up like a whole bunch of risk factors and then analyzing all the risks like that, just that wouldn't work well here, at least where we are today, right? Yeah.
Mary Newville 20:18
Well, speaking of like, here in day to day, when we scheduled this podcast, you jokingly mentioned to Chelsea about, like, the glamorous life or the glamorous side of legal. We want to know about, like, I read that and I was like, Oh my gosh, yeah. I want to know about the glamorous side of commercial legal, yeah. So tell us you know pack members or people just interested in general, like, what's like the average day in your life, or if it's average week in your life?
Debra Sevelius 20:48
Well, it is all over the place, right? And it really, it truly is. My team is phenomenal, so I feel really fortunate to to have such a good team. And what I would say, like, when I hire for the role, right? It's not a traditional legal role where, like, we're enablers. How do we enable the business? So it's not, I say no a lot, but it's no and then how do we get it done right? What can happen? And how do we do that? Because obviously, sales are important to us, and so how do we enable the business and and having that kind of thought process is really important, and I think that the team does that really, really well, which I think is well received by the rest of the organization, and the way that we help problem solve and move things forward. You know, a lot of times what comes and hits our desk is we're in the 11th hour with a particular partner or prospect, and it's, how do we close that deal, and how do we get that over the finish line and being able to sell the story? So I like to think that commercial, legal is the last chapter of the book, and so hopefully that last chapter, if we've been selling a horror, horror book or thriller book that hopefully that last last chapter matches the, you know, the premise of that story, because if it doesn't, then we're going to blow up a deal. And so really creating that alignment across the organization is really important to us. Sometimes we hit the mark. Sometimes we don't, but for the most part, I think that we're really that we've been really good at enabling the business. And so from the glamorous side, we get to see everything right. We we get asked questions. We are, I'd like to think that we are the kind of sometimes, at least with respect to things that we handle and do that were kind of the connection point cross departmentally to make sure that we've got buy in, or that we've got, you know, we've got the perspectives from from all interested parties in order to put together something that works for the entirety of the organization.
Mary Newville 23:20
I do feel like I see shout outs for like, about you specifically, but and your team, like in Win wire, and I feel like sales would always like shout out to Deb or thank you so much for So would you say like, the majority of what comes across you and your team's desks are contracts to close, like legal legalities to close deals, or is it more like on the vendor due diligence side, like the deal is about to close, and then there's like, a legal questionnaire that we get
Debra Sevelius 23:50
it all right? GRC is integral, so like the Tara than the nifis, they're the ones that are in the trenches on those questionnaires, okay? And and we've also tried to create efficiencies from a process perspective, right with tools and systems that the SES and the sales team can use in order to drive some of that, because I think that having been with Arctic wool for five and a half years, my ability to provide the kind of service that I did when we were younger and when I first joined is very different than what is sustainable now, given the size of the team and the size of the rest of the organization, right, there's four of us on the commercial legal team at the moment, And so the thought is, I and I would get really involved in those security due diligence questionnaires in the earlier days, right? Nikki and I were doing a lot of that heavy lift. And now that the sales organization has grown and we've gotten global, like, it's just not possible, so evolving those processes and. A that allows us to scale, yeah, is is challenging, right? Because we have new people coming in all the time, and then having to re educate on those processes and things. But we get involved, we get asked a lot of random questions.
Mary Newville 25:15
I bet, well, I was thinking too. I imagine there's periods of time, like, end of every quarter, I imagine that you and your team are like, Yep, it's all hands on deck, all hours of the day. Outside of that, though, everyone is still trying to close deals, and it's always urgent, and some business is trying to get it in before their budget renews or something. So how do you manage your time in a sense of, like, how do you create work life balance for yourself? And some like, rhythms of normally, when your normalcy, when everybody's urgency, is put on your plate? You
Debra Sevelius 25:50
know? I I think of it a little bit different. Lee, I think maybe so for me, it's fluidity of life, right? So, and what I hope that I give to my team as well, what I take for myself is just understanding that, like, well, I might have to, I'm working, I have a call late to support Australia, or I have something going on in the evening, so I need to take an hour here, because I have to go and run to the grocery store or I have to do something right. So just creating that fluidity and that the ability to blend your work with your life right, is the way that I think about maintaining the balance. Because, you know, or, boy, I mean, I know that the M a legal team has been working non stop, obviously, on the latest silence announcement, right? And, and it's just kind of what you do, and then maybe you take a day or two off to recoup, right? So it's just creating that fluidity of of life, because work is part of life, and life, you know, your family is part of life, and so how do you just create something that that works together, right? I don't think, Oh, I have to work eight to five, and if I work more than eight to five, then my life is out of balance, right? Yeah, yeah.
Chelsea Lowman 27:21
I feel like we've heard similar themes from some of our other leaders that we've we've had on too. So it's definitely, I think, probably a healthy perspective to have, because I've heard a lot of conversation around this idea of, like, work life balance and that they have to be equal. It's just, like, unrealistic, and then puts even more pressure on us if we feel like we're not achieving said balance,
Debra Sevelius 27:46
yeah, well, then you're like, I'm failing at that too. And it's like, and I also, you know, I manage a remote team. I mean, I'm at my home office today because it's snowing here in Minnesota, and I was not going to try to battle my way to the office this morning. But as with the remote team right there are, there are managers who are not comfortable with that. They like to see people in seats and bots and seats, and that's how you prove that you know an individual is doing their share and doing what they need. I you know, I started in an environment where there was no remote working, right? I was always going to the office. You didn't do work outside the office. And then as my career had progressed, eventually became a little bit more flexible in that regard. Obviously, COVID changed a whole bunch in that world. But really, as a manager and a leader, learning how to manage your resources even when you're not seeing them on an everyday basis, I think just creates more of that fluidity in my mind. Right? Is really being effective in managing your team when you're not seeing them and then allowing for that kind of flexibility, but making sure that obviously their performance is on par for what your expectations are.
Mary Newville 29:12
Well, I just can say on the topic of, like the work life fluidity and stuff, I was going to ask, we know that you have your Friday night curling ritual. But do you have any other like rituals that I just imagine and for your role, whereas there's so much like pressure on the other side of the asks, like, I don't know if it's like harder to say, like, this can be turned off, yeah? Or, like, you know that I can take this pause because I can just get to it, XYZ, um, like, I curious your thoughts on how you manage that. But then also, do you have, like, what are your rituals and like, your work life fluidity that, like, just keep you happy and healthy and balanced?
Debra Sevelius 29:53
Oh, well, um, you know, I have a great team. So, like, when I. Have to take time. There was a time where I would be sitting in the curling parking lot working end of quarter deals, because, for whatever reason, the end of quarter, end of year, always seemed to fall on a Friday night. So like, so there was a while there where I didn't and now I have this, you know, awesome team who can pick up that slack, right? And so that's amazing. And then I'm really bad. I don't I wish I had, like, hobbies, or I talk to my friends about this all the time. I'm like, you know, I really need to think about hobbies. I don't really have any hobbies. I am such
Mary Newville 30:45
a cool hobby that is such a flex, yeah,
Chelsea Lowman 30:48
at least you have one. Some adults don't have anything like, at least you have clearly, and it's
Debra Sevelius 30:53
universally, and it's only part time during the year. It's not even like, you know, yeah, but, but I think about that, like, I need other things. I am a I like to do. I'm a medical junkie. So, like, I liked research. It's like I'm wearing a continuous glucose monitor right now, not because I have diabetes, but just because I think that's super kind of cool, like biofeedback and like, I can, like, learn, like stupid things. And then I bought this new device that's called Muse, and it reads your brain waves, and it can train you how to, like, meditate and turn your brain off. No way. I am not good at that. Can I tell you? Whoa. So I'm I'm trying to, like, figure out ways to be able to, like, call my brain and, yeah, you know, reach some kind of sentence state when I did it the first time, they said, you know, most people, when they try this for the first time, they're only at 40 some percent, and which means that, like 40% of the time you're in a calm and your brain is in a restful state. Mine was 27% so yeah, I have room for improvement
Chelsea Lowman 32:18
area and an area of opportunity for you, right? Okay, such an interesting, fun fact about the like interest in like understanding your body more, but that's so cool. Well,
Debra Sevelius 32:33
you know, it was either I was going to be a lawyer, I was going to be a doctor. So, okay, okay, one
Chelsea Lowman 32:39
of my things, I gotcha, okay, um, I really quickly wanted to go back to when you were kind of briefly touching on, you know, where you're a small team of four, where the company has continued to get bigger. We're a global company adding more and more countries. I'm just curious like, what are some of those challenges like, from the legal perspective, from your team's perspective, as we just get bigger and bigger, I'm assuming you all have to brush up on different policies, laws, etc, so, Yeah, just curious what that journey has been like, well,
Debra Sevelius 33:24
I can say most days I feel like I'm over my skis. So what Nick says? You know, we're going to be uncomfortable. Get used to being uncomfortable. Yeah, I'm uncomfortable. But part of it too is just, it's being able to, like, have that executive functioning and executive, you know, thought process, right? I don't know, nor do I expect my team to know all of the answers, but, but we can think through, okay, what are the risks? How does that normally work? And what we do know, and then, how can we make decisions that hopefully make sense for the organization? And then where we don't know, we're seeking outside council help, right there in the EU there are so many different regulations from a security perspective that we're learning about that we're trying you know, some of them are product related. Some of them are security related. And then there are different like certifications that the customers want us to be on and and part of it is really just as a business, deciding strategically what makes sense, what are the business opportunities? How do we allocate resource time to be able to do X, Y and Z? Because there's limited amount of resources, right? And so we can't do everything, but what makes the most impact for the organization, and being able to start thinking strategically about that as we go forward, and I think my experience has been, is that's what we're striving for, right? We're trying to collect the data. We're trying to. Understand impacts for some of that, and what does and what would make the most meaningful impact to Arctic Wolf, and how we, you know, drive our business so but for the most part, we just feel like we're, you know, flying by the seat of our pants sometimes. Well,
Mary Newville 35:19
you know, everybody, every single person I feel like at Arctic wealth and leadership says, like the number one quality you have to work here is like being able to, like, willing to learn, because in cyber security in general, like things move so fast, same thing. So yeah, it makes sense that across the org, we all feel it in different ways, especially when we're at a company that's growing so fast and all over the world
Debra Sevelius 35:45
well. And my philosophy really is, is like, you know, you put your stake in the ground, and then you're ready, willing and able to move it as you learn more, right? So I always want my me and my team to be moving in the right direction. It's not the destination, right? Because we're never going to reach that destination. But how do we go? Okay, given what we know, given what's happening and where we are, you know, because maybe we're in the 11th hour with a particular customer or whatever, right? There are things, there are circumstances that are driving decisions. And so how do we go? Okay, this is where I think it is, and we're just going to continue to evolve and improve and move the needle in the right direction. And that's just, you know, as long as you're not thinking that it has to be 100% correct, then, yeah, then it makes it a little less uncomfortable in your insides to know you know what we're making, the decision that we know at this moment time with the information that we have. And if, if the risk is that big, then we should be obviously reaching out and figuring out what the more right answer is, with experts that know that. But, yeah,
Chelsea Lowman 37:12
I love the visual of the like the stake in the ground, but we can move the stake because it's like, we have to be, like, rooted and grounded in our decision. You know, confident we're making the best decision with the information we have, but once we learn something, we can just move it an inch. Or, you know what that I love, that visual.
Mary Newville 37:34
Well, well, I was gonna say, speaking of the moves and moving the needle like, what makes you excited about our mission at Arctic wolf to end cyber risk and your role, you and your team's role, role in that
Debra Sevelius 37:48
well. So you know, any dream of a lawyer is to mitigate risk, right? So the whole concept of ending cyber risk, like, what are just like, it's our dream. Like risk. We're ending it, you know, for for the commercial legal, right? How? How do we end risk? And then how do we help mitigate the risk for Arctic Wolf, as we're pursuing that mission of ending cyber risk, right? So really kind of builds upon one another, I think, in in what, in what makes us excited, right? And cyber security is just in and of itself. You know, for someone like me, who, you know, wanted to be a lawyer, because I wanted to write all the wrong and, you know, the injustices in the world and, you know, make the world a better place. You know, in some ways, ending cyber risk, like stopping black actors from doing something nefarious with people's information or systems and different things. I mean, it just continues to resonate,
Mary Newville 38:56
yeah, yeah, like you said earlier, like the path was different than what you thought, but it all makes sense, yeah, because I would get
Debra Sevelius 39:03
that a lot early in my career. They because I'd be in sourcing, but you're a lawyer. Why are you doing sourcing? Why are you running indirect, sort and like, well, because I'm negotiating, I'm, you know, reading agreements. I'm drafting agreement. Like, it's legal, although I'm not acting in a legal capacity for the organization. And people didn't really grasp that right. Sourcing and supply chain, they all took a different path, and I you know, it just all eventually kind of makes sense. So that
Mary Newville 39:37
was great. We're going to take a quick pause right now to hear a security win from one of our security services pack members.
Jacob Robbins 39:43
Good morning, y'all. My name is Jacob Robbins. I'm one the tier two security engineers here at the San Antonio office in Texas, where me and my colleagues work together to help pardon our customers, cyber infrastructure. My duties particularly include Tria. Challenging customer data and alerting on any nefarious or malicious activity we may observe within the customer's environment. User compromise is typically the first avenue for a lot of cyber attacks that we see, just giving it simplicity, minimal work, it's arguably one of the most common forms of compromise. We see specifically business email compromises. Just as an example, any employee in any given company sometimes will utilize their business email to sign up for a service or any kind of promotion, just anything that requires the use of an email address. Unfortunately, these websites sometimes don't have the best security, and so their email and sometimes their password gets leaked onto the internet. Not everyone adheres to good cyber hygiene, so sometimes passwords get reused, or sometimes they're very, very simple with little to no complexity. And the wind I kind of want to talk about today is exactly that. About two months ago, we had a tier one engineer who was triaging events within the customer's environment noticed a restricted country login. It's an alert that we have that denotes the geographical location of where the login occurred. And since this customer was primarily based in North America, we had rules in place that would alert on anything observed outside of the United States or Canada. Now, there could be plenty of reasons why we get these alerts. The user, the employee, could be on vacation. They need to check something work related. Maybe they're utilizing a VPN and it gives them a different IP address from where they're actually located. So geolocation isn't an exact science. Just due to the nature of IP addresses and network address translation, just the reuse of IPS make it very difficult kind of muddies the water when you're trying to parse the truth out of the alerts that we come across. Um, and so we utilize a lot of tools here at Arctic wolf to try to find the source of truth regarding a lot of IP addresses. Just common practice we'll do. And in doing so, we discovered that the Singapore IP address was actually originating from Russia. Now, any kind of observed traffic from Russia is always a red flag from us, and when we see it, our standard procedures went into play. We reached out, called to the customer, wanting to get remediation performed on this user right away, because the user was also an admin account, so any kind of actions were taken from this account could be very critical. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get a hold of the customer the first time around, when we were calling them, not even two minutes after we placed those calls, they call us back. And I spoke with the customer firsthand, gave them all the details, all the events that we were seeing from this user, letting them know we're keeping this user under close observation, making sure we don't see any secondary indicators of compromise. We did see the account attempting to create a two way communication between where they were in Russia to the customer's environment, potentially to exfiltrate data. Thankfully, all the other security measures the customer did have in place, such as MFA and just general firewall rules, they were really able to isolate the malicious actor before he was able to perform any real, meaningful action. Ultimately, all the user sessions were terminated. The user's password got reset, so we essentially forced the malicious actor out of the network. Customer was very thankful for the call. If we hadn't called them, the customer probably would have not known about this, and it would have gone unnoticed. Malicious actor having access to an admin account for so long can be truly disastrous. Persistence is the name of the game with these cyber criminals trying to gain access to customer networks. And I really like reiterating this story because it really reinforces the notion that we as the cyber security professionals need to remain vigilant. Stuff that you come across may initially appear benign, but sometimes can turn out to be a true positive. And this is a prime example of overlooking some very minor details could have very disastrous results you
Chelsea Lowman 44:45
um, we always do like to touch on one of our culture tenants in the episode. And you've touched a little bit about you've talked a lot about your team, but we did want to talk about the stronger together culture tenant. And just curious like, how you live that. Out if there's anything else you want to add? Yeah,
Debra Sevelius 45:02
well, I mean, as an organization as a whole, I mean, there's nothing that the commercial legal team does without input and guidance and collaboration with every other department within the organization, whether it be GRC, product, sales, sales ops, you know, the engineering team. I'm sure I'm forgetting someone. CSM, right? Customer Success, like we, like we are all in it together, right? And when, if sales doesn't bring us deals, we can't close deals, and then Arctic wolf as a whole is not successful, right? So like we all play a part, we all have a position on the team that we all have to fulfill. So from that perspective, stronger together, it's obviously very clear with my own immediate team and I if they're watching this, and I hope that they agree with what I'm about to say, but I do feel like we all win together, right? We there's nothing that my team does that I wouldn't roll up my sleeves and do myself. So we just all play together, and we are all winning together. And how, you know, so that's just the way that I that I look at my immediate team, but stronger together certainly permeates the entirety of the organization, right? We all play. I mean,
Mary Newville 46:28
that's my favorite things. I mean, I always say this and like, well, this is my favorite thing, but it is such a special thing about working in the pack. Every part is appreciated. I don't feel like there's like, a certain I mean, we love us too on the front lines, but I don't feel like there's any like golden department that is like treated better than any other, like, whether you're no matter what part you play, like it's appreciated and valued for what we bring to the to the entirety of the org and our goals together. So I would agree.
Debra Sevelius 46:58
I would agree. I mean, people are, for the most part, are phenomenal here, right? Think we have some amazing people that are here and people that I call friends. So it's really great.
Mary Newville 47:13
It's a good crew. Okay? One, quick one, last one before we move to rapid fire. Tell us a little like you've talked about your team and, you know, rolling up your sleeves and doing the things that they would do or they do, and winning together. But tell us a little bit about leadership. How do you define it? How has it evolved over time? For you, leadership,
Debra Sevelius 47:33
to me, is just creating an environment that people choose to want to be part of, right? So creating opportunities for the team feeling like that my team feels like they're supported, that I have their back, that you know, that we're all in it together. So that, to me, is part like there are things like, through the course of my career that I've learned like, authentic, authenticity, to me, is really important as a leader. You know, I having grown up in very command and control kind of organizations where I got the party line sometimes from leaders, it really created a distrust, because I knew that it was wrong. So, like, for me, being able to present authentically, kind of the corporate message in a way that I can still gain buy in, right? Like, I might not agree, but how do we do this in a way that, you know, everybody feels good about, I think, is important to me. One of the things that I learned when I was just starting as a manager, right? I'm pretty driven individual. So, you know, I'm all about getting stuff done and jumping right in. And the guidance that I got from a friend and a manager leader that I worked for was like, Hey, Deb, you got to ask people before you just jump into work, you got to ask them how their day was, or how it's going, or what did they do last night? And I'm like, oh, and I have to tell you, like, it is still, like, something that I think about. And I go, Oh, wait, I have to, like, ask, how did you do, like, how was that last night? Or what did you have for dinner, or how was your child doing? No, so like those things, it's just some of those things just stick with you, and it's things that I am not perfect at, but I continue to try.
Chelsea Lowman 49:35
But there are, there are certain people out there too that don't want to do the small talk, especially you know, it's your seventh meeting of the day. It's like, let's just get to it. You know,
Debra Sevelius 49:46
I want to go home. Let's do
Chelsea Lowman 49:52
okay. Well, we haven't approached the rapid fire questions, which are our final questions of episode. These are. Fun ones. Not that our other questions aren't fun, but these are just first thing that comes to your head. Okay, best concert of your life.
Debra Sevelius 50:08
I'm not a concert person, so I went to Billy Joel when I was in high school, and I was like, up against the stage, and he touched my hand. Oh, my
50:21
goodness, that's
Chelsea Lowman 50:23
an amazing concert story, yeah, okay, um, your favorite word?
Debra Sevelius 50:30
Oh, I have words that I use way too often that shouldn't be my favorite word, um, I would, you know, I have a word that, um, makes me happy, because it was a word that my kids, we used to teach them when they were little. We would teach them weird words, and people go, why are you teaching them that word? And I'm like, that's just a word, but pensive. So we would say, How do you like when we were teaching about emotions, like, show me your sad face. Show me your, you know happy face, yeah. And then we go, show me your pensive face. And so then we teach them, and then go, oh, pensive makes me all happier.
Chelsea Lowman 51:17
Pensive is pensive is a good word, even now that I'm thinking about it like, even without your heartwarming story, I like the word and
Mary Newville 51:27
honestly, how adorable to hear like a five year old tell you that they're pensive, that's right.
Debra Sevelius 51:33
And they and they still like, okay, they're 21 and soon to be 20 today, and I'll go, oh, remind me again, what does pensive look like. And then, if they'll entertain that, then
Mary Newville 51:46
they'll get so cute that are listening. It's kind of like a side, a profile with your finger pointing towards your mouth. A coil,
Chelsea Lowman 51:56
sorry, Yep, yeah. A thinking, a thinking face, yeah, okay, a place on your bucket list, Australia.
Debra Sevelius 52:06
Australia. Okay, I need to find a reason to get to Australia.
Mary Newville 52:10
Hey, we do. A bunch of people going, oh no.
Debra Sevelius 52:14
Every time you're in town, I say, I gotta get to Australia. Although I was watching something like, okay, Mindlessly scrolling Instagram. I don't know about anybody else, but there was something about only in Australia, and it was all of these crazy themes of snakes and kangaroo that just come in your house and koala there. I'm like,
Chelsea Lowman 52:38
koalas are apparently kind of aggressive. Really, they look so cute. I know, I don't know, but
Debra Sevelius 52:48
I mean, like they have spiders like the size of your head and absolutely
Chelsea Lowman 52:53
not, no, but still want you to, we'll still try and find a business case for you to get there. Alright?
Debra Sevelius 53:01
Australia,
Chelsea Lowman 53:04
okay, um, what's something that people often get wrong about you?
Debra Sevelius 53:08
Um, I would say that personally, I don't negotiate for anything.
Mary Newville 53:13
Oh, wait, so it's your way of the highway. Personally, no, I
Debra Sevelius 53:17
just go. Oh, you want this much money. Here you go, Oh,
53:22
okay, okay, negotiator.
Debra Sevelius 53:23
I like, I'm, like, we're buying a car, yeah, you go deal with it. I'm, I like, just, I don't negotiate anything.
Chelsea Lowman 53:31
Okay, last question, um, give us a snapshot of an ordinary moment in your life that has brought you joy.
Debra Sevelius 53:38
My kids, you know, just watching them, they're both home, so I get that, and they have this weird way of communicating with each other that my husband and I kind of just, they've always been that way. And they would like they would go to school together, and then they wouldn't be in the same class, but then they come home and it was like they hadn't seen each other for five years, right? And just like, just like, so I have that now, and I would say that that's probably one of them. I mean, there's so many, but that one that's so sweet,
Chelsea Lowman 54:13
so sweet. I always love ending on that question, oh, I
Mary Newville 54:18
just said, are they Irish twins? You said 121's
Debra Sevelius 54:20
2014, and a half months. So no, but close. Okay.
Chelsea Lowman 54:24
Well, unfortunately, I'm actually, honestly so sad that we have to wrap up like this was so fun talking to you, Deb, and I feel like I still have so many more questions for you. Well,
Debra Sevelius 54:36
I really appreciate you thinking I would be interesting enough to ask me to be on the podcast. Well, thank you. Well,
Chelsea Lowman 54:41
thank you so much everything you and your team do for the pack. We really appreciate it. Truly couldn't do it without you. And yeah, thank you so much for being on the podcast, and have a great rest of your day. Thank you, you guys, too. Okay, that was such. Such a fun conversation with Deb. I truly meant it when I told her that I could have kept talking to her for five more hours. She's just so personable and fun. Agreed.
Mary Newville 55:10
And I feel like, Yeah, I had some I there was questions. I held back because I was like, Okay, time for rapid fire and rapping.
Chelsea Lowman 55:19
I feel like in that first chunk, we could have just kept asking more and more and more, but it was like, oh, we should get to some leadership and some some other things. So yeah, um, okay. Well, with that, thank you all for listening. If you are part of the pack. Currently, in January, we are hosting our annual well wolf wellness challenge, so make sure you read the Howler newsletter for more information on that, and also make sure you're in the well wolf Slack channel for more there. Yes,
Mary Newville 55:51
we hope this finds you having a great start to 2025 wishing goodness and all the good things for you this year. We will talk to you in February. Oh, and if you want to join the pack, you want to join our unique and vibrant community on mission to end cyber risk articles, combat flash careers, talk to you in February.
Chelsea Lowman 56:14
Thanks, everyone. Bye. You.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai