Signed

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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.

  1. 2d ago ·  Video

    Playbook: Brownfield vs Greenfield

    Before you compare a single vendor, a lot of the decision is already made. The systems you run today rule some platforms out, and the choices you make now decide whether a requirement three years from now means adding a license or replacing something the business runs on. In this Playbook, Max Clark, CEO of ITBroker.com, answers a question he was asked directly: which is harder, brownfield or greenfield? Brownfield means building on systems you already have. Greenfield means starting from nothing. Max walks through why your existing setup narrows your options more than any feature comparison or RFP, what to plan for when you're starting fresh, and why each situation needs its own approach. What You'll Learn How to tell if a new platform will work with the systems you already runHow your existing technology narrows your vendor options before you compare themWhat to plan for when you're choosing IT infrastructure from scratchHow to plan infrastructure for the next three to five years of business growthHow to avoid buying technology you'll have to replace laterWhy brownfield and greenfield projects need different buying approachesAnswer These Before You Compare Vendors What does a new system have to work with? List the hardware you plan to keep and the platforms it has to connect to, like Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace and your CRM. A vendor that can't support something on that list is either out or carrying a replacement cost.Which of those are you willing to replace? Some older equipment is worth replacing anyway. Decide that before the demo, so it's in the vendor's price instead of showing up during the rollout.What does your business plan say about the next three years? New locations and new compliance requirements change what your platform has to support. Write them down while they're still plans.If one of those happens, is it a license or a rebuild? Ask this about every platform you're considering. A feature you can turn on is a line item. A core system you have to replace is a project.If you can't answer two of these in writing, you're not ready to compare vendors yet. Max walks through both sides in the episode. The Playbook (00:00) - The three year test: add a license or replace a core system (00:32) - Why existing systems make vendor selection easier (01:32) - Why your current setup matters more than the RFP (02:31) - Starting from scratch: decisions that last five to seven years (02:59) - How your industry shapes what you'll need next (03:55) - Why neither approach is easier Resources Mentioned Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, Max's first example of a decision that already limits which platforms fitSalesforce and HubSpot, the CRM choice that shapes what you can layer on top of itUnified communications (UCaaS), the phone system category in Max's example of checking a new platform against the hardware you already ownAbout Signed Signed is the podcast for buyers in a market built for sellers. Playbooks are the solo format: 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: Brownfield vs Greenfield

  2. Oct 13 ·  Video

    What AI Is Doing in Your Company (That You Don’t Know About)

    Steve Wilson built his own AI assistant the careful way. He gave it its own Google account and read only access to his calendar, and told it not to talk to strangers. His company's CISO had a pen testing team go after it, and 4 days later the assistant reported that it had compressed his source code and attached it to a meeting with an outside consultant. A fake email from a lookalike domain, written as if it came from Steve, was all it took. Steve Wilson is Chief AI and Product Officer at Exabeam and founder and co chair of the OWASP Gen AI Security Project. He joins Max Clark to break down what AI agents are already doing inside companies, who is responsible for them, and what to check before you approve one. They get into why an agent using an employee's login is its own identity, why you can't filter prompt injection out, why blocking AI tools only sends people around IT, and what Steve's forecast of 10x the digital workers and 10x the attacks means for security teams. If nobody at your company can say which AI agents are running and who answers for them, this episode starts there. What You'll Learn What are the biggest security risks of AI agents inside a company?How do we know what AI agents our employees are running?Should an AI agent use an employee's login, or have its own identity?Who is responsible when an AI agent does something it shouldn't?Can an AI agent be tricked into leaking company data?Can you stop prompt injection with a filter?Should we block employees from using AI agents, or approve one and manage it?Can AI help a security team, and what does it do in the first minute of an alert?In this conversation: (00:00) - Intro (00:44) - What an AI agent does in the first minute of a security alert, so a human starts with a finished investigation (11:51) - Steve's two-year forecast: 10x more digital workers on your network, 10x more sophisticated attacks, 100x the data to sort through (19:30) - Insider threats now include AI agents that malfunction or go off course (37:41) - Blocking AI just sends people around you. Approve one tool and manage it instead (44:04) - The three kinds of AI agent in your company, and why you can't filter prompt injection out (49:32) - Who owns an AI agent: security, IT, the business, or the employee who built it (56:10) - He gave his AI assistant its own identity and limited access. It still got phished (01:02:44) - Shadow AI spreads faster than shadow IT, and your approved tool gets abandoned (01:22:53) - Why AI won't shrink your security team, and the entry-level hiring gap it leaves (01:31:48) - AI is moving back in-house, and what that changes for security What We Mentioned The Developer's Playbook for Large Language Model Security (O'Reilly). Steve's book. It lays out what can go wrong when AI is built into products and how to defend against it, drawing on the 400+ experts behind the OWASP Top 10 for LLMs. It is written for developers and security teams, and it is the plain language reference if AI agents already have access to your systems.OWASP Gen AI Security ProjectOWASP Top 10 for LLM ApplicationsExabeamExabeam Nova, the AI agent built for security operations centersOpenClaw, the open source AI agentClaude CodeClaude CoworkOpenAI CodexMCP (Model Context Protocol), the way software lets AI agents use itSalesforceMicrosoft SharePointOktaCrowdStrikePalo Alto Networks CortexMicrosoft SentinelDropbox, Steve's early example of shadow ITSOC (security operations center)SIEM (security information and event management), the central system that collects security dataMSSP (managed security service provider)MDR (managed detection and response)EDR (endpoint detection and response)Prompt injection (hidden instructions an AI follows as if they were yours)Pen testing (authorized attacks used to test your defenses)About Steve WilsonSteve Wilson is Chief AI and Product Officer at Exabeam and founder and co chair of the OWASP Gen AI Security Project. He wrote the first OWASP Top 10 for large language models and the O'Reilly book The Developer's Playbook for Large Language Model Security. Steve Wilson on LinkedIn | Steve Wilson on X | Exabeam | Exabeam on LinkedIn | OWASP Gen AI Security Project | OWASP Gen AI Security Project on LinkedIn About the ShowSigned 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 TranscriptClick here to view the episode transcript.

    What AI Is Doing in Your Company (That You Don’t Know About)

  3. Oct 6 ·  Video

    Playbook: Cybersecurity Truths

    Before you compare a single vendor, a lot of the decision is already made. The systems you run today rule some platforms out, and the choices you make now decide whether a requirement three years from now means adding a license or replacing something the business runs on. In this Playbook, Max Clark, CEO of ITBroker.com, answers a question he was asked directly: which is harder, brownfield or greenfield? Brownfield means building on systems you already have. Greenfield means starting from nothing. Max walks through why your existing setup narrows your options more than any feature comparison or RFP, what to plan for when you're starting fresh, and why each situation needs its own approach. What You'll Learn How to tell if a new platform will work with the systems you already runHow your existing technology narrows your vendor options before you compare themWhat to plan for when you're choosing IT infrastructure from scratchHow to plan infrastructure for the next three to five years of business growthHow to avoid buying technology you'll have to replace laterWhy brownfield and greenfield projects need different buying approachesAnswer These Before You Compare Vendors What does a new system have to work with? List the hardware you plan to keep and the platforms it has to connect to, like Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace and your CRM. A vendor that can't support something on that list is either out or carrying a replacement cost.Which of those are you willing to replace? Some older equipment is worth replacing anyway. Decide that before the demo, so it's in the vendor's price instead of showing up during the rollout.What does your business plan say about the next three years? New locations and new compliance requirements change what your platform has to support. Write them down while they're still plans.If one of those happens, is it a license or a rebuild? Ask this about every platform you're considering. A feature you can turn on is a line item. A core system you have to replace is a project.If you can't answer two of these in writing, you're not ready to compare vendors yet. Max walks through both sides in the episode. The Playbook (00:00) - Intro (00:41) - The mistake: treating insurance's four checkboxes as the finish line (04:22) - The play, step 1: what security buyers skip past SWG, CASB, and ZTNA (09:07) - The play, step 2: what actually gets security budget approved, and why ROI is the wrong pitch (13:19) - The play, step 3: test your backups before you need them (14:38) - What to watch for next: measuring security by detection and containment speed, not tools bought Resources Mentioned Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, Max's first example of a decision that already limits which platforms fitSalesforce and HubSpot, the CRM choice that shapes what you can layer on top of itUnified communications (UCaaS), the phone system category in Max's example of checking a new platform against the hardware you already ownAbout Signed Signed is the podcast for buyers in a market built for sellers. Playbooks are the solo format: 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: Cybersecurity Truths

  4. Sep 29 ·  Video

    Playbook: CSPs

    Buying Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, or Azure direct feels like the simpler choice, until you need support or get locked out of your own tenant. In this Playbook, Max Clark breaks down what a Cloud Solution Provider (a CSP) actually does between you and the platform: faster support and escalation, help recovering a locked tenant, engineering and migration support, and access to vendor funding you can't reach on your own, usually at little or no added cost. If you're deciding whether to buy direct or through a CSP, or renewing that decision without ever having checked it, this one's for you. The Playbook (00:00) - The cold open (00:51) - What a CSP actually is (01:29) - Why Microsoft and Google aren't built to handle support directly (01:55) - Where a CSP actually sits between you and the platform (02:24) - The market development and incentive funds vendors push through CSPs (03:19) - The dedicated admin account problem most companies skip (04:17) - The real causes of a tenant lockout (05:14) - How being a sub of the CSP changes your escalation path (06:11) - The engineering, migration, and configuration work a CSP's own staff can do (06:38) - Why CSPs range from pure billing pass throughs to full service providers (07:03) - Tier zero versus tier one support (08:26) - The difference between support built for end users and support built for admins (09:25) - Why CSPs get paid through the platform's margin (10:17) - Max's bottom line: why the CSP relationship is worth having almost every time About SignedSigned 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: CSPs

  5. Sep 22 ·  Video

    Did You Choose Cloud for the Wrong Reason?

    A customer walked in sure they wanted colocation. The quote in their head was $10,000 a month. Once Jeremy Pease's team modeled the real requirements, staffing, connectivity, compliance, the number came back at $80,000. Jeremy Pease is CEO of Aptum, a hybrid multi cloud managed service provider. He joins Max Clark to break down how IT leaders should actually decide where applications run, across public cloud, private cloud, colocation, and bare metal, instead of starting with the platform and working backward. They get into egress costs that can exceed the infrastructure bill itself, the VMware exodus ahead of the April 2027 contract deadline, why most companies are running workloads at a scale they never needed, and why repatriation almost always requires someone willing to make the unpopular call. The question isn't whether you negotiated a good rate. It's whether you're on the right infrastructure in the first place. What You'll Learn How to tell if a workload actually belongs in public cloud, private cloud, colocation, or bare metalWhy egress fees, not compute, are often the real driver of a surprise cloud billWhat's forcing companies to leave VMware before April 2027, and what it actually costs to stayWhy "multi cloud" rarely means what the marketing impliesHow to build the ROI case your own IT team can't build for itselfWhat a real disaster recovery conversation looks like once the price tag is on the tableIn this conversation: (00:00) - The colocation quote that changed after the real requirements came out (00:53) - Why the application should dictate the infrastructure, not the other way around (04:16) - The myth that cloud is automatically more secure or compliant (06:15) - Why shared cloud workloads create a real compliance gap (08:11) - The five Cs: cost, compliance, customer service, complexity, and visibility (09:27) - Gently explaining to a customer that their plan is wrong (10:42) - When a board mandates cloud migration without understanding the tradeoffs (13:17) - Why small IT teams can't manage what they've been told to run (15:03) - Patching still exists in the cloud, just under a different name (16:14) - The rise and quiet retreat of the multi cloud pitch (20:38) - How much of infrastructure strategy is really about a toxic relationship with IT (22:15) - Running infrastructure alone for six of the largest US banks on $130K a month (26:25) - Ad tech, real time bidding, and why egress became the real cost center (27:13) - Internet connectivity now costs more than the infrastructure itself (29:03) - FinOps isn't cost control, it's just explaining the bill (31:54) - Why repatriation needs a founder willing to make the unsafe decision (32:56) - The cloud spend threshold where a real conversation starts (35:44) - Data sovereignty, the US Cloud Act, and owning entities by country (37:01) - The EU tiers where US controlled infrastructure becomes disqualifying (40:12) - Is data sovereignty the real trojan horse for repatriation (43:02) - Aptum's seventy two to seventy five percent average cost reduction (43:48) - Walking a repatriation curious customer from first call to signed contract (47:13) - Why some staff can't follow the migration to a new platform (48:11) - Cloud as the ultimate expression of tech debt (50:38) - Why your AWS account team is incentivized to grow your bill, not shrink it (52:23) - A CEO's gross revenue cloud spend becoming a business viability problem (53:31) - Why finance teams hate the cloud: no control, no predictability (55:11) - What people get wrong about disaster recovery in the cloud (58:48) - Why dedicated DR instances still cost less than running them live (01:00:27) - The real question for any circuit: more or less than $500 a month (01:02:12) - Why some customers blame the public internet for problems they chose (01:04:33) - The coming skills gap: why electricians are becoming the new high demand hire (01:07:09) - Being an expert generalist in a market that rewards niching (01:11:01) - Nine hundred and sixty seven vendors, narrowed to eighty two (01:13:41) - Controversial take: IT is a solved problem, most issues are self inflicted (01:15:32) - Shadow IT and the spreadsheets built because IT wouldn't touch it (01:19:27) - VMware's relevance after the Broadcom price increases (01:20:39) - The Oracle playbook: raise prices until only the trapped customers remain (01:23:19) - What April 2027 actually means for every VMware contract (01:25:36) - What percentage of VMware customers actually use its differentiators (01:29:31) - Migrating off VMware: where the majority of workloads are actually going (01:32:15) - Short executive tenure and who's left holding the decision (01:34:19) - The customer who insisted on colo, until the real number was $80K a month (01:36:29) - Nobody cares about the technology, they care what it lets them do (01:38:10) - Building the ROI presentation the IT team can't build for themselves (01:40:44) - Helping IT teams speak board, not just TCO and ROI (01:42:49) - Aptum's real ICP: one to three thousand employees, five to ten IT staff (01:43:47) - Migration work versus simply needing an expert to run it (01:48:01) - Efficiency and specialization: why selective outsourcing wins at scale (01:48:46) - Self serve without losing control: automation when they want it, service when they need it What We Mentioned Aptum AWS Microsoft Azure Google Cloud VMware (now part of Broadcom) Broadcom Nutanix Proxmox Zerto Megaport Equinix Digital Realty Netflix (one of the earliest and most public cloud repatriation cases) Dropbox FinOps EDP (Enterprise Discount Program) RI (Reserved Instance) RTO / RPO (Recovery Time Objective / Recovery Point Objective) DR (Disaster Recovery) About Jeremy Pease Jeremy Pease is CEO of Aptum, a global hybrid multi cloud managed service provider. He has more than two decades of experience leading data center, cloud, and managed infrastructure businesses, including executive roles at Hivelocity, Colohouse, DataBank, and Aptum. Jeremy Pease on LinkedIn Aptum About the Show 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

    Did You Choose Cloud for the Wrong Reason?

  6. Sep 15 ·  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 (00:00) - Why "nobody gets fired for buying IBM" still runs every enterprise tech decision (01:28) - The mistake: the consensus default isn't neutral, it's the product the market is built to sell you (03:05) - Proof from history: the safe choice and the weird choice have traded places twice before this one (04:37) - Today's default: AWS, US East 1, and what the October 2025 outage actually cost the buyers who never questioned it (06:32) - The play, step 1: the average cost structure you guarantee yourself by matching every competitor's stack (08:00) - The play, step 2: the cloud flexibility trap, committed spend agreements, and what cockroach mode actually protects (08:57) - The play, step 3: a16z, 37signals, and Netflix chose three different answers, on purpose (13:51) - What to watch for next: this isn't anti-cloud, it's anti-default (15:00) - The buyer's job: ask "compared to what?" on every consequential decision Resources 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

  7. Sep 8 ·  Video

    How to Tell If Anyone Is Actually Managing Your Technology Spend

    A 270 line wireless account doesn't look like it has much room for savings. It had $4,000 a month sitting unnoticed, almost $40,000 a year, nobody had looked closely enough to catch it. Tommi Ellis is Channel Director at Intratem, a telecom and technology expense management company built on auditing invoices against the contracts, inventory, and usage behind them, not just processing the bill. She joins Max Clark to break down why invoice approval and invoice validation are two completely different jobs, and why almost nobody is doing both. They get into what actually happens when an employee's personal device gets pulled into a legal discovery request, why POS line replacement generates more noise than it deserves relative to its actual cost, and why the biggest myth about outsourcing this work is that it threatens somebody's job. What You'll Learn Why invoice approval isn't the same as invoice validation, and what gets missed in betweenWhat size company actually needs a dedicated TEM functionWhy BYOD stipends create more legal exposure than most IT teams realizeHow to spot a vendor that says they manage your telecom spend but doesn't actually do it wellThe five questions that actually matter when evaluating a TEM providerWhy POS line overbilling keeps slipping past companies for years at a time In this conversation: (00:00) - Cold open: the $4,000 a month hiding on a 270 line account (03:24) - What TEM actually means, beyond telecom cost cutting (05:51) - Who the real customer is inside the company: IT, finance, or both (08:00) - Why bills are wrong so often, and why carriers are slow to fix their own mistakes (10:54) - Why the fear of outsourcing fades once a company sees real savings (13:36) - From telco to wireless to SaaS: how TEM kept being renamed (16:27) - How AI license waste mirrors old wireless waste, and what size company actually needs a TEM (19:14) - Why in house control rarely means real control (22:26) - Stackable services: how mobility work turns into wireline and MDM work (24:43) - Why MDM deployment is still scary, even when it's the right call (28:49) - Why bills are wrong so often: disconnects that keep billing, and bad tax codes (31:17) - Why first bill reviews exist, and what they usually catch (36:08) - The lifecycle problem: phones in a drawer, and what nobody reclaims (36:47) - Help desk as an untapped part of TEM, and what it actually solves (39:26) - The hidden cost of sending an employee to the Apple Store (41:05) - BYOD vs. corporate owned: where companies actually get into trouble (44:43) - Why e-discovery is the real argument against personal devices for work (46:39) - Spoliation: the legal risk of not being able to produce an employee's device (52:10) - How MDM solves geolocation, not just security (54:49) - Does a company need a TEM and FinOps separately, or do they merge (59:30) - Why visibility, not cost cutting, is the actual product (01:01:39) - Reinventing the same IT problems generation after generation (01:03:42) - Top three onboarding mistakes: HR feed delays, "we're already optimized," and fear of being audited (01:07:15) - Do companies negotiate good contracts and then just stop enforcing them (01:08:22) - The biggest myth about TEM: that it replaces someone's job (01:10:41) - Spotting a partner who says they do TEM but doesn't do it well (01:14:10) - What a real first 90 days of onboarding actually looks like (01:16:57) - Reconciling four different sources of truth down to one (01:20:20) - What a human account manager actually does that software can't (01:22:13) - How a people led business scales without losing the human part (01:24:23) - Who actually receives the invoice, and who pays it (01:27:32) - What's included by default versus what's billed as an add on (01:29:32) - Rip and replace versus optimizing within what a client already has (01:32:38) - Why TEMs and aggregators solve the same problem but bill differently (01:34:00) - Does the customer relationship change once the big first year savings are gone (01:38:21) - How the TEM and carrier relationship is quietly changing (01:40:10) - Who actually signs the check: IT, finance, or a split (01:42:07) - What a good channel partner does that a mediocre one doesn't (01:43:48) - The five questions that actually matter when evaluating a TEM (01:45:54) - The biggest red flag: a vendor that leads with the portal (01:46:26) - What protections to put in a TEM contract, including term length and exit clauses (01:48:06) - Private equity's growing interest in TEM, and what that means for customers (01:51:20) - The $2,000 a month POS line nobody noticed (01:53:21) - Why POS line retirement keeps getting delayed, even when the carrier wants out (01:55:13) - Why POS lines get disproportionate attention next to the bigger problems (01:57:18) - Speed round: broken billing systems, the best unused negotiation lever, iPhone vs. Android cost, and 30 years of career advice What We Mentioned Intratem Verizon Wireless AirTouch Cellular ServiceNow Microsoft 365 (E3, E5) MDM (Mobile Device Management) BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) MACD (Moves, Adds, Changes, Disconnects) TEM (Telecom/Technology Expense Management) FinOps e-discovery and spoliation POS lines (Plain Old Telephone Service) LOA (Letter of Authorization) About Tommi Ellis Tommi Ellis is Channel Director at Intratem, where she was brought on to build out the company's partner and channel program. She spent 20 years at Verizon Wireless, first in retail stores and then as a corporate trainer, before moving into telecom and technology expense management. 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. Tommi Ellis on LinkedIn Intratem About the Show 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 TranscriptClick here to view the episode transcript.

    How to Tell If Anyone Is Actually Managing Your Technology Spend

  8. 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. What We Get Into (00:00) - The rules of engagement: isolating a device when the CEO's machine is ground zero (00:37) - From VAR to vendor: 14 years across VAR, Nutanix, Rubrik, and eSentire (01:27) - How selling changed when hardware became a subscription (08:40) - What to size up on a first call, and why the customer is the biggest liar (13:22) - Selling cybersecurity to someone who isn't actively shopping for it (17:21) - Why "dragging them through the glass" backfires, and what works instead (21:14) - The real disconnect between sales leadership and what a rep can actually sell (25:08) - Why buyers now know what they want, but just want to pay less (30:35) - What's actually driving purchases: compliance, not fear (32:49) - The RFP pet peeve, and why AI is now writing most of them (41:21) - Why "how much data do you have" is a trick question, and the shift to unlimited SIEM (47:50) - The biggest buyer mistake: "just tell us everything you do" (54:04) - Who should be in the room on the buyer's side and almost never is (01:01:49) - Guided remediation versus an MDR provider that actually takes the response (01:10:43) - What a buyer's team composition reveals about how the deal will go (01:19:32) - Gartner invented SSE and SASE, and now admits MDR is just as muddled (01:31:52) - Microsoft E5 entitlements nobody turns on, and the hardening gap (01:38:29) - The two-to-three-year stale relationship problem, and re-selling existing clients (01:42:33) - Closing: AI, junior analysts, and the CNC-machinist parallel What 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
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About

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.

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  • Creator
    ITBroker.com
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2026
  • Episodes
    229
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2020–2026 Information Technology Broker LLC
  • Show Website
    Signed

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