Signed

ITBroker.com

The IT market is built for sellers, not buyers. That's why 80% of tech buyers regret their last major purchase. Deals take longer than they should. Teams get locked into platforms that don't fit, contracts they can't escape, and vendors they wouldn't choose again. The pitches, demos, and analyst reports are built to close deals, not help buyers make the right one. Signed is the podcast for the buyers. Host Max Clark, CEO of ITBroker.com, talks with CIOs, CFOs, operators, and founders who've lived inside real enterprise tech deals — the ones who can explain what actually determined whether the deal worked. Plus weekly Playbooks breaking down the moments that matter most: renewals, M&A, compliance mandates, office moves, budget cuts, and the specific plays that separate buyers who get it right from those who regret it. If you're responsible for choosing, negotiating, or living with the consequences of enterprise technology, this show is for you. New episodes weekly. An ITBroker.com podcast.

  1. 1d ago ·  Video

    Playbook: Buy on Purpose

    You didn't choose your cloud provider. You inherited it, from whoever picked the safe option first and called it a decision. In this Playbook, Max Clark, CEO of ITBroker.com, names what that habit actually costs: three decades of consensus defaults, from the dot com era stack to LAMP to AWS's US East 1, and what the buyers who never questioned any of them paid for it, including the 15 hour outage this past October that took down Snapchat, Venmo, and a foreign government's tax site along with them. One question either ends the habit or exposes that you've never really made this decision at all: compared to what? The Playbook 00:27 Why "nobody gets fired for buying IBM" still runs every enterprise tech decision, and the gap between safe for your career and right for your company01:28 The mistake: the consensus default isn't neutral, it's the product the market is built to sell you03:05 Proof from history: the safe choice and the weird choice have traded places twice before this one04:37 Today's default: AWS, US East 1, and what the October 2025 outage actually cost the buyers who never questioned it06:32 The play, step 1: the average cost structure you guarantee yourself by matching every competitor's stack08:00 The play, step 2: the cloud flexibility trap, committed spend agreements, and what cockroach mode actually protects08:57 The play, step 3: a16z, 37signals, and Netflix chose three different answers, on purpose13:51 What to watch for next: this isn't anti-cloud, it's anti-default, and why cloud transformation mandates quietly die around month 1215:00 The buyer's job: ask "compared to what?" on every consequential decisionResources Mentioned Andreessen Horowitz, "The Cost of the Cloud: A Trillion Dollar Paradox" (Sarah Wang & Martin Casado, 2021)37signals / DHH's public cloud exit writeup (Basecamp, HEY)Netflix Open ConnectDropbox's pre-IPO infrastructure buildoutAWS US East 1 outage, October 2025Further reading: Most of Your Infrastructure Can Be Standard. Some of It Shouldn't Be. — the six-part decision filter for identifying which infrastructure choices actually deserve a comparison against the default, built directly from this episodeAbout the ShowSigned is the podcast for buyers in a market built for sellers. Playbooks are the solo format, 10 to 15 minutes, one trigger, one specific play. New episodes weekly at itbroker.com/podcast. If the trigger in today’s Playbook is one you’re facing right now, book an intro call at itbroker.com. We help buyers make the right call the first time. Buy tech without regret. Follow: @itbrokerdotcom Full Transcript Click here to view the episode transcript.

    Playbook: Buy on Purpose
  2. Sep 8 ·  Video

    How to Tell If Anyone Is Actually Managing Your Technology Spend

    You approved your last technology invoice. That doesn't mean anyone checked whether it was right. Tommi Ellis, Channel Director at Intratem, has seen $4,000 a month disappear into a 270-line account nobody thought to question, and audits as large as $1.2 million. This is what actually happens between the contract you signed and the bill you're paying, and why almost nobody catches the gap. Somebody on your team approved a technology invoice this month. Odds are nobody actually checked it against the contract you signed, the services you still have, or what you're actually using. That's not negligence, it's just that reviewing invoices line by line has never been anyone's specific job, it's one task out of a hundred for whoever owns it. Tommi Ellis is Channel Director at Intratem, a technology expense management company built around a human-led, data-backed approach to auditing telecom and technology bills against contracts, usage, and inventory. She's seen $4,000 a month sitting unnoticed on a 270-line wireless account, and audits on larger accounts recover as much as $1.2 million a year. In this conversation, she and Max Clark get into why invoice approval and invoice validation are two different jobs, what happens to that knowledge when the one person who understood it leaves the company, and why a good contract can quietly stop being a good deal within a few years if nobody's checking it. Want the full six-point audit to run against your own next invoice? Read the full breakdown: https://www.itbroker.com/blog/technology-invoice-audit Find Your Situation- Your invoice approval process is really just someone recognizing the vendor name and clicking approve. Jump to 07:06- You've signed with a vendor whose behavior is to bill you first and only credit you back once you catch the mistake yourself. Jump to 07:32- The person who understands your vendor relationships and billing history is getting close to retirement, and nobody's replaced that knowledge yet. Jump to 08:42- You've canceled a service and never actually checked whether the next invoice reflected it. Jump to 29:18- Nobody has ever compared your first invoice on a new service against the actual signed contract. Jump to 31:07- Your CIO and your CFO are looking at the same technology spend problem and calling it two different things. Jump to 1:00:48- You had a good contract three years ago and haven't looked at it since. Jump to 1:06:39- You've never heard the term MACD, and you're not tracking any of the four things it stands for. Jump to 1:31:20 Chapters- 03:24 What "technology expense management" actually means, not just phone bills- 06:09 Why IT and finance both think TEM is the other person's problem- 07:32 How some vendors profit from you never checking the bill- 08:42 What happens to your invoice knowledge when that one person leaves- 29:18 You canceled the service. The carrier kept billing you anyway.- 31:07 Why the first invoice on anything new is almost never right- 1:00:48 Why "CIO problem" and "CFO problem" are actually the same problem- 1:06:39 You can negotiate a great contract and still lose control of it in three years- 1:31:20 MACD: the industry term for every kind of billing change worth tracking About Tommi EllisTommi Ellis is Channel Director at Intratem, where she was brought on this year to build out the company's partner and channel program. Intratem positions itself as human-led and data-backed, auditing telecom and technology invoices against the contracts, inventory, and usage behind them rather than just processing the bill. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tommi-ellis-3a92b0112Company: https://intratem.com/ About SignedSigned is the podcast for buyers in a market built for sellers. Host Max Clark, CEO of ITBroker.com, sits down with CIOs, CFOs, operators, and founders who've lived inside real enterprise tech deals. New episodes weekly at itbroker.com/podcast. If you're in the middle of a real tech decision and want someone in your corner, book an intro call at itbroker.com. Buy tech without regret. Full Transcript Click here to view the episode transcript.

    How to Tell If Anyone Is Actually Managing Your Technology Spend
  3. Sep 1 ·  Video

    How to Tell If Your MDR Provider Will Actually Stop an Attack

    You're paying an MDR provider to protect you. Most of them will alert you and wait for someone else to act. This conversation names the one question that tells you which one you actually bought. Know the answer before it's 2am and someone's waiting on you to decide. You signed a contract for managed detection and response. You assumed that meant somebody would step in and stop an attack while it was happening. For a lot of MDR providers, what you actually bought is guided remediation. They find the incident, tell your team what to do, and hand it back to you to execute. That distinction is the entire reason you're paying for this instead of running it yourself, and most buyers don't find out which one they signed for until they're the one on the call at 2am being asked what to do next. Miles Lowry, Senior Territory Manager at eSentire, has sold cybersecurity from every seat in the market, VAR, Nutanix, Rubrik, and eSentire, and he walks through the one question that exposes the gap before you sign. This conversation also covers where the same blind spot shows up everywhere else in a typical MDR evaluation. Buyers send RFPs to eighteen vendors and get eighteen generic capability dumps back instead of a real fit assessment. Rules of engagement quietly change depending on whether the compromised machine belongs to your CEO or your help desk. It also gets into DLP requests that get approved without anyone defining what they're actually trying to stop, and security licensing already sitting in your Microsoft contract that almost nobody has turned on. The buyers with the best MDR outcomes never send a broad RFP at all. Miles names the one question he says he'd ask first if he were sitting on the buyer's side of the table. Know the answer before it's 2am and someone's waiting on you to decide. Want the exact test to run against your own contract? Read the full breakdown: How to Tell If Your Managed Cybersecurity Provider Will Actually Respond During an Attack. Find Your SituationTen real moments from this conversation. Find the one that's actually happening to you right now, and jump straight there. Your CISO or security lead has been in the seat under two years, and you're not sure if that's a coincidence. → 21:44You sent an RFP to eighteen vendors, and now you're buried in decks that all say the same thing. → 26:35You can't get the budget to build the security program you're actually expected to deliver, and you know it. → 31:14You've never checked whether a breach on your watch creates personal liability for you, not just the company. → 40:53A vendor asked how much data you generate before you'd even deployed anything to measure it. → 42:36You've never actually asked your MDR provider whether they act on their own or call you first. → 55:31Nobody on your team could name, right now, who gets called first if your CEO's laptop gets hit tonight. → 57:25Someone asked for a DLP tool and you're not sure anyone can say what it's actually supposed to stop. → 1:10:43You've never tested whether your MDR provider can actually act without you, or whether you'd only find out during the incident. → 1:18:16You're paying for Microsoft E5 and you have no idea if the security features in it are actually turned on. → 1:25:53What We Get Into 26:35 Who is actually answering the RFP you think you wrote31:14 Why CISOs use a vendor to share the blame when something goes wrong40:53 Why most CISOs at one conference had personal liability insurance42:36 Why "how much data do you have" is a trick question55:31 The real MDR test: alert versus response57:25 Your CEO's laptop, and who's actually authorized to isolate it1:00:46 Who belongs in the room on the buyer's side and almost never is1:10:43 The DLP request nobody asked for and nobody can explain1:18:16 The one question to ask before you sign1:25:53 Paying for Microsoft E5 security licensing you never turned onWhat We Mentioned eSentireCrowdStrike (Falcon Complete)Sentinel OneFortinetPalo Alto CortexMicrosoft Defender, Sentinel, and EntraNutanixRubrikVeeamGartnerNIST CSFLog4jTenableAbout Miles LowryMiles Lowry is Senior Territory Manager at eSentire, where he works directly with security leaders on managed detection and response. He's spent 14 years in enterprise technology sales, moving through VAR, Nutanix, Rubrik, and now eSentire, giving him a rare, direct view into where buyers get MDR wrong before they ever sign.LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cloud-ai-expert/Company: https://esentire.com About SignedSigned is the podcast for buyers in a market built for sellers. Host Max Clark, CEO of ITBroker.com, sits down with CIOs, CFOs, operators, and founders who've lived inside real enterprise tech deals. New episodes weekly.Listen: itbroker.com/podcast About Signed The IT market is built for sellers, not buyers. Signed is the podcast for the buyers. Host Max Clark, CEO of ITBroker.com, sits down with CIOs, CFOs, operators, and founders who’ve lived inside real enterprise tech deals — the ones who can tell you what actually determined whether the deal worked, not what the deck promised. New episodes weekly. An ITBroker.com podcast. Full Transcript Click here to view the episode transcript.

    How to Tell If Your MDR Provider Will Actually Stop an Attack
  4. Aug 25 ·  Video

    Playbook: Cloud Cost Ownership

    A VP spent weeks building a plan to cut an eight figure cloud bill. He walked into one meeting with engineering. Three words killed it: not my KPI. The bill lands on whoever gets handed the mandate to cut it, but the authority to actually change it sits with someone else entirely, usually engineering, whose time is already spoken for by other priorities. A FinOps platform will find you the free money, orphaned resources, idle instances, the stuff nobody has to defend. It won't touch the savings that require someone to decide engineering's time is worth spending on this instead of shipping. Run this before you spend a dollar on another cloud cost initiative Name the owner of the cost. Whoever's name is on the number when it climbs, that's accountability.Name the owner of the fix. Whoever controls the roadmap and the sprint, that's authority.Check if they're the same person. If yes, you have a real cost cutting project. If no, "not my KPI" is already on its way.Check if the cost is tied to margin, not just revenue. A product can bring in real revenue and still be a bad bet once its true cost is on the table. Revenue won't show you that. Margin will.Check if that picture reaches the executive team. Visibility only moves the decision if it lands with the people who can reprioritize across teams.If items one and two name different people, and item five has no answer, you're looking at an org chart gap. No FinOps platform touches that. Map who actually holds the authority before you spend the next dollar. The full checklist, plus the question most teams skip, is here. You can buy the platform. If the wrong person still owns the decision, the bill doesn't move, and now you've paid for the privilege of watching it not move. The Playbook 01:29 The trigger and why it matters02:54 The mistake most buyers make05:19 The play, step 105:48 The play, step 206:17 The play, step 307:13 What to watch for nextResources mentioned FinOps platforms, the cost visibility tools that surface idle and orphaned cloud resourcesCost tagging systems, deployed across cloud and data center infrastructure to compare spend apples to applesAbout the showSigned is the podcast for buyers in a market built for sellers. Playbooks are the solo format, 10 to 15 minutes, one trigger, one specific play. New episodes weekly at itbroker.com/podcast. If the trigger in today's Playbook is one you're facing right now, book an intro call at itbroker.com. We help buyers make the right call the first time. Buy tech without regret. Follow: @itbrokerdotcom Full Transcript Click here to view the episode transcript.

    Playbook: Cloud Cost Ownership
  5. Aug 18 ·  Video

    Playbook: Finding the Truth When Everyone Is Lying

    Every vendor stretches the truth somewhere in your sales process, and most buyers respond to all of it the same way, forgiving everything or torching a good deal over nothing. In this Playbook, Max Clark sorts vendor lies into three categories, a harmless stretch, one rep's invented promise, and a lie the whole company stands behind, and gives a different response for each. Then he turns the mirror on buyers, the shopped quote, the invented deadline, the fake executive sponsorship, because buyers run the same three plays back. Keep guessing which lie you just caught, or put someone neutral in the room who ends the guessing entirely. That's the only fix that actually works. Run this the next time a vendor claim doesn't sit right Creative embellishment. The provider is stretching into a category they do not quite fit, out in the open. Calling a router with a config page "SD WAN" is the pattern. Costs you nothing to see through. Note it, move on.One rep's invention. A specific promise nobody at the company authorized. "I text the CEO directly" is the tell. This is a person problem, not a company problem. Get a different rep, do not walk from the vendor over it.Institutional fiction. The whole sales org repeats the same claim with a straight face, and leadership blessed it. When the dishonesty is the official story, that is the provider you cut.Now run your own last vendor call through the same three buckets, from the vendor's side of the table. Telling three competitors they're each the front runner, that's your version of Bucket 1. Inventing a deadline that doesn't exist to force urgency, that's Bucket 2. Claiming executive sponsorship that doesn't exist because your whole team has quietly agreed to say it, that's Bucket 3. Keep guessing which lie you just caught, or put someone neutral in the room who ends the guessing entirely. That's the only fix that actually works. The Playbook 01:07 The trigger and why it matters02:47 The mistake most buyers make03:16 The play, step 103:46 The play, step 204:14 The play, step 304:31 What to watch for next Resources mentioned SD WAN, the capability category vendors most often mislabelPublic company 10-K filings, used to fact check inflated market share claimsAWS cloud spend, used as the scale comparison that exposes a fake top-customer claim About the showSigned is the podcast for buyers in a market built for sellers. Playbooks are the solo format, 10 to 15 minutes, one trigger, one specific play. New episodes weekly at itbroker.com/podcast. If the trigger in today's Playbook is one you're facing right now, book an intro call at itbroker.com. We help buyers make the right call the first time. Buy tech without regret. Follow: @itbrokerdotcom Full Transcript Click here to view the episode transcript.

    Playbook: Finding the Truth When Everyone Is Lying
  6. Aug 12 ·  Video

    Your Security Tool Says You're Protected. Is It Lying?

    Your security tool says you're protected. Most of the time nothing is lying to you on purpose. It's just reporting what it was configured to report, whether or not anyone ever checked if that setup was correct in the first place.  Zach Stewart, CISO and Director of IT at Steno, spends this conversation walking through exactly where that gap hides, and it's not only the tool. There's the BAA that only protects you if you configured it correctly, and most companies never click the button. The SOC 2 stamp that tells you someone ran a pen test, not that you're secure. An MDR service marketed as round the clock remediation that turns out to only detect, and a maturity score that gets handed to a board and answers a question nobody in the room actually asked.  It also covers the buying side of all of this: what it actually looks like to evaluate a vendor without falling for the slide deck, why nobody wants to buy secure web gateway until it's already saved them, and the exact moment a customer contract forces corporate owned devices with no plan in place.  Go find out right now if your tool, and everything else you're trusting, is actually telling you the truth.  Where to Start You're evaluating a new vendor and you're tired of getting a slide deck instead of the actual tool. → Jump to [49:20]A vendor passed every checkbox on paper, but something still feels off. → Jump to [1:17:36]You just got a SOC 2 report from a new vendor and you're not sure what it actually tells you. → Jump to [1:05:18]Your BAA says you're HIPAA compliant, and you've never checked whether the tool is actually configured for it. → Jump to [1:08:35]You're being sold on an MDR service, and you don't know if there's a real person on the other end at 2am. → Jump to [1:33:14]You need the rest of leadership to take a risk seriously before it becomes an incident, not after. → Jump to [1:56:38]Your security budget looks fine on the spreadsheet, but nobody's checked if it's enough for what it's supposed to protect. → Jump to [2:03:09]Your continuity plan treats an outage and a breach as the same problem. They're not, and that's costing you. → Jump to [2:06:30]A customer just told you their contract requires corporate owned devices, and you don't have a plan for that yet. → Jump to [2:22:28]You're bringing a maturity score into your next board meeting, and you already know it's not going to land. → Jump to [2:28:39]You're about to consolidate onto one security platform, and you haven't worked out what you'd be giving up to do it. → Jump to [2:39:50]You rolled out passkeys, and you're still not sure if you actually replaced your passwords or just added a step. → Jump to [2:48:24]Nobody at your company can tell you what percentage of your applications actually sit behind single sign on. → Jump to [2:57:47]You've read a breach postmortem and thought, any one thing on this list would have stopped it. You don't know if that's true for you too. → Jump to [3:07:02]Chapters  49:20 Show me the tool, not the slide deck1:05:18 A new vendor says they're secure because of SOC 2. What else to check1:08:35 The HIPAA BAA loophole nobody reads closely enough1:23:29 SSO can cost more than the product it's attached to1:33:14 The real math behind running your own SOC, and where MDR falls short1:40:07 Test your backups. Actually test them1:56:14 Sponsor break2:03:09 The company running its entire security budget at under a dollar per employee2:06:30 Outage risk and breach risk need two different plans2:22:28 When a customer contract forces corporate owned devices2:28:39 Why a one to ten maturity score means nothing to your board2:48:24 Passkeys are useful. Most companies deployed them wrong2:57:47 The SSO coverage gap nobody's counting3:07:02 The breach where almost anything would have stopped itWhat We Mentioned NIST CSFSOC 2 and HIPAAPCI, CMMC, and ISO 27001Google Workspace OAuth ("Sign in with Google")Microsoft Entra, E5/E7 security bundlingApple Business Manager and zero touch MDM enrollmentAbout Zach Stewart  Zach Stewart is CISO and Director of IT at Steno, where he spends his days doing exactly what this show is about: buying technology in a market built for the people selling it, then fighting to get it funded and adopted inside his own company. Max discloses in the episode that Zach is someone ITBroker.com works with directly, which is part of why he was on the show, no product to pitch, no reason to give a polished answer. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zacharykstewart/ Company: https://steno.com About Signed Signed is the podcast for buyers in a market built for sellers. Host Max Clark, CEO of ITBroker.com, sits down with CIOs, CFOs, operators, and founders who've lived inside real enterprise tech deals. New episodes weekly at itbroker.com/podcast. If you're in the middle of a real tech decision and want someone in your corner, book an intro call at itbroker.com. Buy tech without regret. Follow: @itbrokerdotcom Full Transcript Click here to view the episode transcript.

    Your Security Tool Says You're Protected. Is It Lying?
  7. Aug 4 ·  Video

    Your Security Vendor Can't Tell You If Their Product Works

    Your website is no longer read only by people. Tony Lauro opens this episode with a client whose sequential order numbers let a competitor read their daily volume through a public API. No breach. No alert. Just a number counting up in plain sight. The same blind spot shows up when a product drop gets sniped by bots in seconds, or when the large language models you're exposing to customers and employees get probed before anyone notices. Tony has spent 13 years inside Akamai's bot management and API security practice, watching exactly this shift happen. He walks through what replaced the old human-or-machine test, and it comes down to one thing: who decided your defaults, and whether anyone at your company ever checked. Find the Risk You're Already Dealing With Our security team still argues about whether traffic is a real person or a bot. Is that even the right question to be asking anymore? → Jump to [1:00]Some of our "customers" completing checkouts or filling out forms might actually be AI agents acting on a real person's behalf. Can our bot rules even tell the difference? → Jump to [3:54]We know some of the activity on our platform isn't clean, but cracking down on it would hurt our numbers. How do we actually think through that tradeoff? → Jump to [26:38]Our security team and our marketing team have never once talked about brand risk together. Should they be in the same room? → Jump to [29:03]Our provider pushes our blocking rules out to the edge before traffic even reaches us. What judgment calls are they making on our behalf without us knowing? → Jump to [36:57]We know AI is a risk somehow, but nobody's mapped out where it's actually hitting us. Where would we even start? → Jump to [45:01]We just turned on an internal AI tool or chatbot, and I don't know what it's actually watching for. What should it be catching? → Jump to [50:57]A security vendor ran a proof of value on us and found something scary in our environment. Is that actually proof their tool works? → Jump to [1:28:57]We just signed with a new security vendor and I have no idea what its default settings actually are. Should I be worried? → Jump to [2:04:38]What We Get Into 1:00 Why "human or bot" is the wrong security question now3:54 AI agents that act like your customers, and why bot management needs a third tier26:38 Brand safety versus listing volume: a marketplace's real tradeoff29:03 Cyber fusion: why security and marketing finally have to talk36:57 Pushing your security policy to the edge means trusting your provider's judgment call45:01 The three places AI is actually hitting your business at once50:57 Prompt injection and what a firewall built for AI actually watches for1:28:57 Every proof of value finds something. That's not proof it works.2:04:38 The default is the most important thing you never reviewedWhat We Mentioned Akamai, bot management and API securityAkamai's "Firewall for AI," announced at RSA ConferenceAkamai's recent acquisition moving the company into the browser (name unconfirmed, see flag above)robots.txt and llm.txt, the standards good bots and crawlers are supposed to honorAEO and GEO (answer engine optimization and generative engine optimization)About the Guest Tony Lauro, Security Director at Akamai. Thirteen years inside Akamai's bot management and API security practice, working the exact problem this episode covers: telling good traffic from bad without losing customers in the process. Connect with Tony: Linkedin | Akamai About Signed Signed is the podcast for buyers in a market built for sellers. Host Max Clark, CEO of ITBroker.com, sits down with CIOs, CFOs, operators, and founders who've lived inside real enterprise tech deals. New episodes weekly at itbroker.com/podcast. If you're in the middle of a real tech decision and want someone in your corner, book an intro call at itbroker.com. Buy tech without regret. Follow: @itbrokerdotcom Full Transcript Click here to view the episode transcript.

    Your Security Vendor Can't Tell You If Their Product Works
  8. Jul 28 ·  Video

    Playbook: Buying MDR Without Getting Burned

    Six months before the largest retail breach in U.S. history, Target's threat detection system worked exactly as it was supposed to. It caught the attack. It fired five separate alerts. Then nothing happened, because the system could watch, but it couldn't act. That gap between detecting a threat and stopping it is where most MDR contracts fail their buyers. Max Clark recently evaluated a well known provider for ITBroker's own portfolio and found the same gap hiding under the brand name: full "Manage Detection and Response" on paper, watch and email in practice. He breaks down why that one distinction decides whether you're protected or just informed, and the exact questions that expose which one you actually bought. Find Your Situation Our provider says they offer MDR. How do I know if they can actually stop an attack, or just tell me about it, and what should I ask before I sign or renew? → Jump to 12:45Our dwell time metric keeps improving. Is that actually good news? → Jump to 05:45Should we build a 24/7 internal security team instead of outsourcing to MDR? → Jump to 08:00We bought security tools and I'm not sure they're actually deployed correctly. What should I check? → Jump to 09:15What does real data say about self managed security versus paying for real MDR? → Jump to 11:30 The Playbook 01:30 The three questions almost nobody asks before they sign03:00 Why watch and notify is the same as having no SOC at all04:00 Why attackers now move faster than your team can respond05:45 Why falling dwell time isn't the win the industry sells it as07:00 Why 40% of security alerts never get investigated08:00 The real math behind staffing a 24/7 security operation09:15 Shelfware and the deployment gap nobody owns10:15 The default setting question, and why opinionated vendors are the safer choice11:30 What real cyber insurance claims data proves about self managed EDR vs. real MDR12:45 The exact questions that cut through the brochureResources Mentioned CrowdStrike breakout time research, the source behind this episode's attacker speed numbers, showing how much faster breakouts have gotten since 2021.Mandiant dwell time research, the source behind the dwell time and ransomware-specific recovery figures cited in the episode.A real cyber insurance ransomware claims study, the source behind the recovery time and claim size comparison between self managed EDR and real MDR.About Signed Signed is the podcast for buyers in a market built for sellers. Playbooks are the solo format, 10 to 15 minutes, one trigger, one specific play. New episodes weekly at itbroker.com/podcast. If the trigger in today's Playbook is one you're facing right now, book an intro call at itbroker.com. We help buyers make the right call the first time. Buy tech without regret. Follow: @itbrokerdotcom

    Playbook: Buying MDR Without Getting Burned

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The IT market is built for sellers, not buyers. That's why 80% of tech buyers regret their last major purchase. Deals take longer than they should. Teams get locked into platforms that don't fit, contracts they can't escape, and vendors they wouldn't choose again. The pitches, demos, and analyst reports are built to close deals, not help buyers make the right one. Signed is the podcast for the buyers. Host Max Clark, CEO of ITBroker.com, talks with CIOs, CFOs, operators, and founders who've lived inside real enterprise tech deals — the ones who can explain what actually determined whether the deal worked. Plus weekly Playbooks breaking down the moments that matter most: renewals, M&A, compliance mandates, office moves, budget cuts, and the specific plays that separate buyers who get it right from those who regret it. If you're responsible for choosing, negotiating, or living with the consequences of enterprise technology, this show is for you. New episodes weekly. An ITBroker.com podcast.