On August 25th, several hundred IT and security leaders gathered in Tulsa, Oklahoma for the state’s premier IT event, and I was fortunate to present to the audience. I talked about scaling security and operations teams, the second most common question I get from CIOs and CISOs. (If you’re wondering, the most common question I get from CIOs and CISOs is “Who are you and how did you get in my house?”)

The audience was different from other events I have attended. Banking and financial services, technology companies, insurance, and healthcare dominated prior events, like Gartner’s Security and Risk Summit and Snowflake’s Summit. While the Oklahoma event had those industries represented, it was dominated by companies in the oil and gas industry. These ranged from pipeline inspection firms to rig services and even trucking firms.

Many of these companies hadn’t heard of Cribl before, but their needs around scaling existing staff aligned with Cribl’s core value proposition to give them control over their security and observability data. The average security engineer spends most of their time struggling to get data into their tools, leaving little time for actual work. Our message around choice and control resonated, and partners like Optiv helped reinforce our value proposition.

Three attendees asked the same question, and it threw me a bit. Each asked if we had an appliance. After the classic Silicon Valley episode, it’s hard to consider appliances as a realistic deployment option. I mean, how do you follow the Gavin Belson Signature Edition?

However, these attendees had a great reason to ask about an appliance. They work in air-gapped operational technology environments. Simply installing software isn’t possible for them. A plug-and-play appliance makes perfect sense. I’ll keep pestering Clint about it. Maybe we’ll have something ready by early April.

One last thing before I let you go. This was my first time in Oklahoma and I’m still surprised at how friendly everyone was. From Uber drivers to airport staff to conference attendees and staff, the people of Oklahoma were incredibly warm and welcoming. I look forward to going back next year.