Reconnected recently with Austin-based Tim Brown (who I knew back in the SolarWinds days). He’s out and about doing new things as well all do in tech. In my conversation, Brown articulated the clearest actionable strategy for SMB MSPs about making AI “real” beyond ChatGPT cartoon characters. He is suggesting you take a step back, go old school and engage in tried-and-true penetration testing (PEN TESTING) with your clients. This adds real value to the relationship.
Listen to the PODCAST HERE
You can connect with Tim on LinkedIn HERE
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 0:03
Hey, nation. Hey, hey, nation, nation. Harry here. Boy, good Dolly, Miss Molly. We are in early June. I mean, we're approaching mid-year. I'm with an old friend, Tim Brown. And Tim, you and I met, we're just discussing, this is about 10 years ago when you were at SolarWinds, and then my audience,
the MSPs were part of SolarWinds, and they've since broken off to enable, but can you believe it? That's a while ago.
Tim Brown 0:32
Yeah.
Ten, 10 years, time flies.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 0:37
Yeah, yeah, tell me. First of all, before we get into the topic, I really like the topic, by the way. I shared it with some other people, and they said that's the best explanation they've heard of what we're going to talk about. But you have today, you're at Team 8, and I believe you're also consulting to industry. What are you doing today here in the Austin, Texas? You're my neighbor.
Tim Brown 1:00
Yep, absolutely. So living in Austin still. Just joined Team 8, which is a VC firm out of New York in Israel, focused on really incubators and startups and, you know, kind of driving what we're going to build in the future. So it's a lot of fun.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 1:11
Oh, wow.
Yeah, no kidding. And then do you consult to industry as well?
Tim Brown 1:21
Yeah, so I'm out there on the speaker circuit a lot, so I'm speaking to a lot of people. And then, you know, anytime I can help, right? So I'm often out there talking to audit committees, talking to boards, talking about, you know, what a nation state attack looks like, what a recovery looks like.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 1:39
Yeah.
Tim Brown 1:40
you know, how to deal with things like the SEC. So all of those things, I, you know, kind of fit in my consulting side of the world.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 1:48
Yeah, yeah, nice ride. Well, let's get to the good stuff. So talked to you a couple weeks ago, and you're the first person that kind of brought it home for me. You know, I've been struggling with what is AI for the MSP? What is AI for SMB now?
I'm pretty clear on what it is at the enterprise level, and it's frothy. You know, that's a whole another story at the enterprise level. But you came up with the best answer I've heard. You said pen testing. So let's jump on that. What are your thoughts for us down in SMB and in the channel?
Tim Brown 2:20
Mhm.
Yeah.
Yeah, so what we consider good hygiene for many years, right? So if you look at good hygiene, it's been a steady state. You know, you get antivirus, you get backup, you get a firewall in place, you, you know, have somebody looking at your logs, you get to good hygiene. And that's been kind of steady. Okay, we had a
bump up a few years ago, five, six years ago with, oh, now we have MFA everywhere. And that's considered good hygiene. What AI just did was change the story of good hygiene. And that's for everybody in the world, right? When we always say good hygiene means it stops you getting hit from a drive-by. So
When we think about that, why, right? Because, you know, the power of AI in the adversary's hand makes it so that they can easily perform a task at scale that are very good. So that leads us into kind of a Gentic pen testing in many ways.
So why do we need to start doing more adversarial testing against our customers' environments? It's because the adversaries are doing it. And how do we do that at scale, right? And at scale, the price for a pen test, you...
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 3:34
Okay.
Yeah.
Tim Brown 3:43
to be anywhere between 20 and 30 grand for a basic one. That cost has gone significantly down because we can all, we can do it now with agents. We can do it now automated. We can do it at scale and at cost. So it becomes within the reach for MSPs to start providing to their.
client and it's so important, right? Because they will get popped if they don't have appropriate testing of their, especially their external facing infrastructure. So we really need to up our game there. So that includes their firewalls, that includes their, you know,
their routers, that includes anything about their, you know, external presence that they have. So all of those need to be kind of aggressively and consistently tested.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 4:36
Yeah, yeah, this makes me think of, you know, Tim, I consult to industry, you know, I have ADHD, so I do about four things, you know. And part of it is I still keep a foot in industry. And I went in house part time. And you know, the lights are still on at SMB Nation, but I went in house over in the oil and gas industry.
And it was interesting. But it's good for me to go to the private sector occasionally and see what it looks like because when I got there, it was a little bit of bring your own device and everybody was on different antivirus. At the time I was on PC Matic. I don't even know what some of the people were and it was their own laptops.
Tim Brown 5:07
Question.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 5:22
But we didn't have a good security posture, much less pen testing. And this is a firm that had some government contracts for the work they do. And they were gathering data. You know, oil and gas data is pretty sensitive, right? That's.
Tim Brown 5:37
Oh yeah.
Absolutely.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 5:40
Yeah.
And I was a little shocked and the founder was a little headstrong. You know, how many times have you seen that, right? The founder, I mean, I...
Tim Brown 5:42
Yeah.
Yes.
Headstrong never.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 5:54
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I'm not sure I won that battle. Our funding ran out, so I didn't really have to fight the battle. You know how that goes. One fine day, it was over. And that's okay. I turned on both lights at SMB Nation on Monday.
Tim Brown 6:07
Yep.
Ha ha ha.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 6:13
So, well, I'll tell you what, what's next? What, uh, what's next? It sounds like you found your lane. You know, you like Austin, you found your lane as, you know.
Tim Brown 6:22
Yeah, yeah, I really have. It's fantastic. So, you know, to be able to kind of shape what the future looks like, help the companies at their early, early stages, their ideation stages, and make sure they're doing stuff that's real, make sure they're doing stuff that's going to help change the world and shape where we're going.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 6:35
Yeah.
Tim Brown 6:42
Because, you know, this is a, we're at, the AI is an inflection point for it. It is really going to, you know, change the way the adversaries work. It's going to change the way we work. And, you know, we have to have a soft landing out of this. So, you know, what I'm hoping is that we can, you know, architect a soft landing for the world.
And, you know, at the end of the day, we're going to get better. And, you know, it's all going to be great. It's just going to take a little bit of time and we're going to have some hiccups in the way. But we've done this before, Harry, right? We've gone through many of these evolutions and not at all. So I'm not afraid of it. I'm excited about it. I think it's going to
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 7:14
Oh yeah.
Yeah, not our first rodeo.
Tim Brown 7:24
Yeah, we're gonna be able to do more and do better, and you know, hopefully protect the world a little bit more.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 7:30
Well, I'll tell you what, I'll end on this because it was good to reconnect with you. It'd been a hot minute and I've added you to my spreadsheet. I call it the Austin Geeks. There's about, since I moved here 6, seven years ago, I kept a spreadsheet of new friends, right? I mean, just literally who have I met and how do I reach them?
And so I have the Austin Geeks, probably over 60 now. So we're trying to get together quarterly. So consider yourself on the short list. You know, it's just meetups, you know, basically. Yeah, Thursday night up in Round Rock, one of the geeks bought a retired fire station, fire station #3.
Tim Brown 8:00
Yep, happy to do it.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 8:09
In Round Rock, turned it into music and film and all that, and so we get up there and BBQ.
Tim Brown 8:16
Excellent.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 8:17
All right, well, hey, have a nice day. The heat's a-coming. I want to warn you, it's coming. All right.
Tim Brown 8:21
I know. It is, no question. All right, thanks, Harry. Appreciate it.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 8:26
Take care, take care, Kim. Alright, bye bye.