Sysdig Customer Care Chronicles – Security Is A Team Sport

For the Sysdig Customer Success team, our mission is simple: ensuring that our customers get the most value from our product. Usually that means helping them use the product, answering questions, and requesting feature enhancements. In our line of work, sometimes you have to throw out the usual playbook to make things happen. 

This particular story started when we noticed a change in a customer’s agent usage. The customer in question was a company operating in the financial industry, and their primary use of our product was in Posture Management, Vulnerability Management, and Threat Detection, so this drop in usage was definitely concerning. 

To make sense of what was happening, we had to work closely with our account team and set up a series of meetings with the customer to diagnose the issue. We learned that the company had gone through staffing and management changes, and new people had ownership of our product. To make things more challenging, the management’s project had gone off track, and they were unsure where Sysdig fit in their new setup. 

This was not the first time we encountered this issue. We knew that with organizational transitions, learning a brand-new tool can be hard to prioritize. 

This is where the playbook-throwing part comes in.

The challenge 

Needing to convince a whole new set of stakeholders to fall in love with the product was a daunting prospect. It became clear we would have to go beyond simple feature-listing. Our customers were staffed with security experts, but business operations are rarely linear and never straightforward. This customer needed a true business partner.

We needed to re-establish trust. The new management team did not know us or what we could do for them yet.

From our conversations, the customer identified some product enhancements they needed to support the size and dynamics of their team. To help them accelerate their innovation, the customer asked us to:

• Include the ability to pass a scan policy with the option of separating OS and application packages. 
• Add additional support for the new EKS version posture requirements.

These modifications were necessary to accommodate the customer’s workflow and security needs.

Our account team deals with account logistics such as quoting, selling, and dealing with other administrative and selling tasks.

Customer Success deals with customer adoption activities, such as consulting customers through issues, delivering workshops on features, keeping customers up to date on features, bug fixes, etc.

What we did

We worked directly with the customer’s application teams to customize the product to their requirements.

During our calls together, we discussed their goals for security tooling and showed how Sysdig could help meet them, using live demos and roadmap sessions with our product team. After we zeroed in on the customer’s needs, the rest of the Sysdig team got on board to build the feature enhancements and additional support options.

Eventually, individual contributors also began to reach out with questions about integrating Sysdig into their infrastructure. With each request, we made significant progress toward reestablishing the partnership between our companies by delivering the features they needed. And these contributions were recognized by the management team, which helped us establish trust within the company.

Results

The team members we worked with went back to management to share the results they were able to achieve with Sysdig as a security partner. This opened up conversation with the customer’s leadership team and created a new champion, their director of cloud security architecture, for Sysdig.

With our new champion’s help, we were able to align strategically and truly move the needle for their business.

With the key support of many Sysdiggers, we delivered on all the feature enhancements the customer had requested. Sysdig now includes the option of separating OS and application packages, while still passing scan policy validation. We also offer extra support for customers who need to meet the new EKS version posture requirements.

The feature enhancements as well as the hours of demos, conversations with multiple stakeholders, and additional support helped our customer meet their security goals, while – crucially – staying on track with their broader business priorities.

Security is a team effort 

We know that security is much more than a checkbox. But, what we talk about less is the huge team effort required to keep an application and its users safe. Modern security teams need to reckon with expanding attack surfaces, threat actors moving at the speed of the cloud, artificial intelligence creating more risks, and working with their developer colleagues to ensure security doesn’t slow down innovation.

Security vendors need to join the team. The modern customer-vendor relationship has to go beyond providing a service and transform into a true business partnership.

As customers embrace Sysdig, our Customer Success team remains dedicated to guiding them every step of the way. We maintain an ongoing dialogue to address any hurdles they encounter, fielding spontaneous inquiries from both customers and their peers, and showcasing the latest product capabilities. 

Stay tuned for more stories — and if you want more details on what Sysdig can do for you, request a demo!