CrowdStrike Fal.Con 2024 | Ed Bailey & Vlad Melnik | Cribl

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Vlad Melnik

VP Business Development, Alliances

Cribl

Ed Bailey

Principal Technical Evangelist

Cribl

Cribl’s data integration strategy: Optimizing data for cybersecurity insights

In today’s digital landscape, a strong data integration strategy is essential for organizations to extract actionable insights in real time.The massive influx of data has created a critical need for tools that streamline data collection, processing and analysis. This is especially true in the realm of cybersecurity, where timely insights can mean the difference between thwarting an attack or becoming a victim, according to Vlad Melnik (pictured, right), vice president of global alliances at Cribl Inc.Cribl’s Ed Bailey and Vlad Melnik talk to theCUBE about data integration strategy.“Cribl is all about data. We are a data management company

play_circle_outline Introduction to Cribl's presence at Fal.Con 2024 with host Rebecca Knight and co-analyst Dave Vellante

play_circle_outline Discussion on data management and routing for IT and security by Cribl

play_circle_outline Unlocking Data Insights with Cribl: Revolutionizing Growth, Quality, and Solutions for Effective Data Management

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Ed Bailey & Vlad Melnik | Cribl

Vlad Melnik

VP Business Development, Alliances Cribl

Ed Bailey

Principal Technical Evangelist Cribl

Fal.Con 2024 and theCUBE's live coverage. Hosts are Rebecca Knight and Dave Vellante. Cribl is discussed by Vlad Melnik, VP global alliances at Cribl, and Ed Bailey, principal technical evangelist. Cribl focuses on data management for IT and security, helping companies route data efficiently. They work closely with CrowdStrike, enabling better detections and analytics with Next-Gen SIEM in days instead of months. AI plays a role in improving data quality. Cribl offers multiple products like Cribl Search and Cribl Data Lake. They have a strong ecosystem strate... Read more

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What is Cribl and what is their focus as a company in the field of data management? add

What is Cribl all about and how do they play a role in data management for both IT and security companies? add

What are some key focuses for a company that helps customers with data mobility and quality, as well as managing large amounts of data with limited licenses? add

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Ed Bailey & Vlad Melnik | Cribl

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Rebecca Knight

>> Welcome back to Fal.Con 2024 and theCUBE's live coverage. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, sitting alongside my co-host and co-analyst, Dave Vellante. Dave, it's day two. It's post-lunch. You'd think that things will be quieting down but there's still so much going on behind us.

Dave Vellante

>> It's rocking. This is perfect for Cribl. I tell people I got a Ring at home. I wrote them down this morning when I was thinking about you. I got a Ring, I got a Nest. I have a SimpliSafe, I got a Google Home, I have a Sonos, I got a doorbell app.

Rebecca Knight

>> Cribl everywhere.

Dave Vellante

>> I don't even know what it's called. I got generator app because it doesn't work with my mesh. And I have all these things, and I'm like, "Ah, bring them together." And so Cribl's going to solve that problem for IT. I love it.

Rebecca Knight

>> They are indeed. And they're right here with us today. We have Vlad Melnik. He is the VP global alliances at Cribl. Welcome, Vlad.

Vlad Melnik

>> Thank you. it's a pleasure.

Rebecca Knight

>> And Ed Bailey, principal technical evangelist at Cribl. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Ed Bailey

>> Thank you.

Vlad Melnik

>> Thank you for having us. Yes.

Rebecca Knight

>> So Cribl, as Dave was just saying, has incredible momentum right now. And I know the company is just coming off of $319 million series E round led by Google. Tell our viewers a little bit about what you do, what the company's all about.

Vlad Melnik

>> Yeah. Cribl is all about data. We are the data management company. We are the data engine for both IT and security. In the world where we live today, and we're right here at the Fal.Con event. And cyber security, it's all about data. You've heard CrowdStrike executives talk about how important it is to get the right data at the right time with the right action. That's what powers the way to the cybersecurity firms can actually resolve all kinds of breaches and attacks today. And that's where, again, Cribl comes into play because we allow and we help all kinds of companies to route the data the most efficient way.

Rebecca Knight

>> Excellent. Okay.

Dave Vellante

>> Okay. So Bob Picciano, a famous former executive at IBM, used to say, "Data is plentiful. Insights aren't." So you've got data everywhere. You guys funnel it in. I wonder if you could talk about how you feed into CrowdStrike, how you guys worked together. They talk about Next-Gen SIEM, which was a brilliant idea. Why not? Why not just pump it into CrowdStrike? You guys play a real key role in that, in real time streaming. Why don't you describe that a little bit?

Vlad Melnik

>> We have an alliance was CrowdStrike. No surprise there.

Dave Vellante

>> Yeah.

Vlad Melnik

>> There was a massive, very powerful alliance announced in 2023. I will let Ed cover the use cases that we have right now with the Next-Gen SIEM, because we are super excited. Ed, would you?

Ed Bailey

>> I love working with the CrowdStrike team with Next-Gen SIEM. We see it everywhere with customers. Customers are struggling to get the right insights from their data. It's Way too much data. And the cost is the collection and the storage, the values and the analytics. But too oftentimes teams don't have the time, and the time to get to analytics. So we help them collect the right data, get the data in the right format so now their tools work better. So now they can shift toward better detections, better analytics. Just a couple of... we've helped customers transition over to Next-Gen SIEM in a matter of days. Within traditional SIEM platforms that's just simply not possible. Help take the risk out of those migrations so they're able to get value from their tools. Customers put enormous investments in these products and typically, with seven to nine month migration cycles, they're burning up a lot of cash with no value. So now we say, "Hey, we can help you to get this done and then you could see value in days instead of months." And so it's just value over value.

Rebecca Knight

>> Is AI helping that in terms of, as you said, they're trying to wrangle their data? They don't exactly know how to find out what the... they don't even know what they want to know based on what they have.

Ed Bailey

>> Yeah. We spend a lot of time helping. AI's helping a little bit in terms of analytics. Right now the variability of data on the observability and security side is a killer. There's infinite variability. And so the idea is right now we help with standards. We start with the formatting of the tools, and then our big use case for AI is we're going to use AI to help our users use the tools better. It's a narrow scope and they see real value from it instead of just the inconsistent data quality you could see from other AI solutions. And then that's why I'm a real fan of how CrowdStrike uses AI with Next-Gen SIEM with their SOC. That's the real value.

Dave Vellante

>> So can we go back to late... well, 2017 I think you guys were founded. What was the state of the business that you're in back then and how is it different now? How would I solve this problem back then? Take us through the experience that your customers face today.

Vlad Melnik

>> Perfect segue because I was just about to add to what I was saying that, don't forget that AI also lives off the data. So the previous premise of what I just said, the growth of data is ridiculous. It's exponential. A known fact, 28% CAGR. And people think, oh, well what does it mean? Is it a lot? Well, it is a lot. It's literally 113%, which is you double your data in three years. This is incredible. And then, at the end of the day, the best data feeds the best AI.

Ed Bailey

>> Yes.

Vlad Melnik

>> So what we see is, if you refer back to our humble days of the beginning is that, yes, there was same issues that we see now. They just now have been propagated to the scale that is synonymous as with the growth of everything else we see around us. AI obviously, but then don't forget AI is also being used by the adversaries as well. So how do you secure that is a different conversation I'm sure to be had. But at the end of the day we're living in the world of data, and the data just keeps growing exponentially. So take that.

Dave Vellante

>> Okay.

Vlad Melnik

>> Yeah.

Dave Vellante

>> And it does take about seven years to build a company. Five, seven years. And you guys are right in it about seven years. So what is novel about what you guys have done? You clearly have traction now. As Rebecca said, you just raised more than $300 million in a series E, so good things ahead. But what's novel about what you guys have done? Help the audience understand that.

Vlad Melnik

>> Ed, do you want to cover the multi-product? Yeah.

Ed Bailey

>> Yeah. From my biggest standpoint, we help customers get data from anywhere to anywhere. You see everywhere in the business, everyone's, "Give me all your data. I'll solve all your problems." So that data mobility, that flexibility is key. The next is a focus on data quality. As Vlad mentioned, AI doesn't function with bad data. You're only going to get value with the right data. No security or operations problem is ever solved with less data, so having more data helps drive us forward. And then that flexibility to then... the age-old problem, I have 10 terabytes of data and two terabytes of license. How do I manage that? So because we can help that, and now we've expanded our multi-product portfolio. So now we have a Cribl Stream. That's the product we had since the beginning. We also have now Cribl Search, which addresses search in a very unique way, and also Cribl Data Lake, where we're empowering teams to get access to cloud storage without having to have cloud skills. So that's been very fundamentally revolutionary for our customers.

Dave Vellante

>> So when a company like Cribl gets through, let's say five years, starts to have some success, then you say, "Okay, we've got to keep growing. We got to expand our TAM." A big part of that is ecosystem. What's your ecosystem strategy? How are you connecting to partners? What do you bring? What are they bringing?

Vlad Melnik

>> Yeah. Great question. I love to answer this question since I drive alliances.

Ed Bailey

>> Yeah, of course.

Vlad Melnik

>> We are an integrations company at heart. Again, what does it mean? It means that we have to collaborate with pretty much everybody who we see here on the floor, and many more. Today Cribl has hundreds of integrations. We just launched this year our formal technical alliances program. It's been on fire since the day we launched it in May. I have 180 partners right now in the pipeline waiting. This is very exciting for us and for our team. Again, the message is very simple. We're being thoughtful in the way how we onboard them. We want to make sure that there's obvious criteria. There's a framework how we basically measure all of this and how we get partners into the loop. And then at the end of the day it's all based on the needs of the customers. So whatever the customers desire and whatever their needs are, that's what drives our selection.

Dave Vellante

>> Well, it's interesting, too. You talk about the growth in data.

Vlad Melnik

>> Yeah, yeah.

Dave Vellante

>> And we've been talking about that ever since I've been in the business. And every two or three years we look back and go, "Oh, that was nothing." And I'm certain the next two or three years we're going to look back at 2024 and say, "Wow, there's way more data now." And so part of that is, the big buzz now of course, AI.

Vlad Melnik

>> Yeah.

Dave Vellante

>> What's throwing off data today? You've got all this unstructured data. You've got this social data. You got applications throwing off data. Now you got AI and agents. That's the big buzzword now, is a agentic. Heard it at Salesforce this week. That's going to be throwing off more data. So if you're in the data business and you're in the business of know Picciano's law, data is plentiful, insights aren't, you're in the business of helping people get to those insights. What about agents? LLMs are like passe now. We're going into LLM 2.0.

Vlad Melnik

>> That's right.

Dave Vellante

>> What do you think about that?

Vlad Melnik

>> Well, with regard to the data growth, don't forget also that there is plenty of the assets that someone like CrowdStrike has to manage. They gave us the stats of growth of like 136% year-over-year, which is also mind-boggling. All of those assets are also using and generating data. And then if you think about, there was a recent report that Cribl actually published on the trends and what we see our customers, how they obviously push the data through. CrowdStrike has been one of the most desirable destinations. We saw the growth of almost 2.5 times of just using CrowdStrike as a destination for Cribl. Do you want to comment on the agents, Ed?

Ed Bailey

>> Yeah, absolutely.

Vlad Melnik

>> Yeah.

Ed Bailey

>> And that's why it's so important. With most vendors, the idea, you have to install our agent in order for us to work. But in Cribl we say we're going to support the agents you already have, the data sources you already have so, from a displacement standpoint, you're re-pointing your existing data sources to Cribl and now you can start getting value. You're not having to rip out anything, you're not going to have to install anything. And so that gives so much more flexibility. Now customers are getting value really fast. And being able to handle the chaotic environment of data that everyone's struggling with.

Rebecca Knight

>> Right.

Dave Vellante

>> So you guys are really good at making those connections technically.

Ed Bailey

>> Absolutely.

Vlad Melnik

>> That's what we do.

Ed Bailey

>> It's the fundamental basis. I was the second customer in 2018. When I saw that, he's like, "You mean you can work with all the agents I have?" Like, "What do you mean?" Because I'd never seen that before. And that's fundamentally different.

Dave Vellante

>> So from a customer standpoint, what questions... even Cribl was like a year old back then. They were new. And I love when IT practitioners take a chance on a startup to solve the problem. What were the kind of questions you were asking then, the concerns you might've had at the time? And what are the kind of questions you guys get today from partners and customers that-

Vlad Melnik

>> You are the customer.

Ed Bailey

>> Well, here's the funny part: those questions haven't changed. The funny part was the current CEO, Clint Sharp, was my sales rep. That's how early it was.

Vlad Melnik

>> Right.

Ed Bailey

>> And so the idea is like, does this really work? I need you to show me because I don't believe you because this doesn't make sense. Why hasn't someone else done this? And then they showed me, and then I was like... and we did a small pilot and we were able to see six figures of value, and it took about 30 minutes. And I'm just thinking to myself, wow. Because I've now just seen something that's really changed everything we do. I can now have choice. I don't have to worry about what my SIEM vendor supports because I can change the data to be what I want it to be. Really shortly after we buy Cribl my CISO goes out and buys a UEBA tool. And I'm thinking to myself, I'm just cursing because like nine months of work that I don't want to get into. We figured out, with Cribl we can now onboard that new tool. We did it in an afternoon. So now, because we had control, the data is code, we transformed our data. The tool's working. I didn't have to install any agents. And that's really changed my mindset about the flexibility I now have with my data and my tool choices.

Rebecca Knight

>> So now, as an evangelist, I love your description of trying that small pilot to show this proof of concept.

Ed Bailey

>> Right.

Rebecca Knight

>> Is that something that you continue to evangelize? Or how do you talk to customers about this?

Ed Bailey

>> I first talk to customers about small changes. And the thing is I don't want a staff to take on big projects. Let's talk about the series-

Rebecca Knight

>> Nor can they afford to.

Ed Bailey

>> Yeah, exactly. So let's talk about a small project. We're going to carve out a small amount of data that's now going to show big business value. And then we're going to see, here's how you're able to get value from this really quickly, much more quickly than you could before. And now here's the value that, in your tools, now your detections work better, your IR experience works better. And now we then move on to the next project. I think the whole idea about starting small and growing, it fits with companies' flexibility, it fits with their budgeting priorities, and I think the big thing is they're actually seeing value. How often do IT and especially security feel like I'm getting value for my money? That doesn't happen a lot.

Dave Vellante

>> Data is code. I love that John Furrier first heard that in 2010 when he said, "Data is code." Like, "Hm, that's interesting."

Vlad Melnik

>> Yes.

Ed Bailey

>> It's gold and it's oil and it's diamonds, it's everything.

Dave Vellante

>> Yeah. It's transformative. That ability to produce an event once and share it everywhere.

Ed Bailey

>> It is code.

Rebecca Knight

>> That is a note to end on. It's transformative, really.

Vlad Melnik

>> It is.

Rebecca Knight

>> It's all the things. It's all the things. Exactly.

Dave Vellante

>> Yeah. Great story.

Rebecca Knight

>> Yes. Vlad and Ed, really appreciate it.

Vlad Melnik

>> Thank you.

Rebecca Knight

>> Yes.

Vlad Melnik

>> Thank you much.

Ed Bailey

>> Thank you.

Rebecca Knight

>> I'm Rebecca Knight for Dave Vellante. Stay tuned for more of our live coverage of Fal.Con 2024. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in enterprise tech news and analysis.