In this live stream discussion, angel investor Ross Haleliuk joins Cribl’s Ed Bailey to make a big announcement about his new fund to shape the future of the cybersecurity industry. Ross is a big believer in focusing on the security practitioner to provide practical solutions to common issues by making early investments in companies that will promote these values. Ed and Ross also discuss trends in the industry and common struggles that both Cribl and his new fund seek to address by adding value and giving security practitioners choice and control over how they run their security program.

The cybersecurity industry has been shifting its focus toward addressing the pain points of practitioners — and we couldn’t be more on board. Engineers, architects, and other security professionals are the ones getting their hands dirty on a daily basis and keeping a close eye on emerging trends and threats, so they’re going to play a critical role in defining the future of the industry.

Trends in Cybersecurity

One of the biggest things that the future will include is the realization that security isn’t some all-in-one, prepackaged solution you can just pick up off the shelf. It’s not a single tool, but a collection of tools and processes you put together to protect your environment — the global data analytics market is growing so fast that cybersecurity professionals often have too many of these tools to integrate and manage.

Each of these vendors knows that other solutions are just a quick Google search away, so locking customers into their own tools has been an industry standard until recently. One of the most frustrating things I had to deal with as an engineer was needing to make changes to my infrastructure but getting constrained by one or more of my vendors — they either don’t support other tools or don’t let you remove the data you put into their lake.

The desire for choice and control over their own data is forcing organizations to push back against this practice, putting vendor-agnostic solutions like Cribl Stream in a position to thrive. The chance that one tool will solve all of any one company’s problems is slim, so the vendors that will be successful in the future will be the ones who learn to play nicely with the rest.

Introducing the Venture in Security Angel Syndicate

To promote the success of up-and-coming vendor-neutral organizations that focus on cybersecurity professionals and their needs, Ross Haleliuk has recently launched the Venture in Security Angel Syndicate. The group is a collection of technical security practitioners that fund and support seed-stage cybersecurity startups.

Funding from the Venture in Security Angel Syndicate lets startups build connections with their champions, who are also their potential customers. Having security professionals as your investors can bring unique insights from experts with real-world experience, as well as access to networks of security executives, industry leaders, and strategic partners.

Their goal is to invest in companies that focus on engineers and architects, so that cybersecurity can eventually rid itself of the things holding its practitioners and industry back — spending hours and hours of their time attending demos or hunting down technical documentation that’s strategically hidden by vendors is just silly at this point. It should be easier to get full control over your security posture, visibility into your environment, and solutions to technical problems — the Venture in Security Angel Syndicate supports startups that are making that a reality.

Watch the full live stream for more insights into cybersecurity trends and information on how Ross and the Venture in Security Angel Syndicate are reducing the barrier to entry for cybersecurity startups, giving security practitioners the ability to decide what security products should exist on the market. Give Cribl’s vendor-agnostic tools a try with the online tutorials in our sandbox.