SIEM And MDR For MSPs (EP 993)

Robert Johnston’s journey goes from Marine Corps cyber operations to running incident response at CrowdStrike, to founding Adlumin and ultimately landing inside N-able as Chief Innovation Officer. We unpack why SIEM and MDR used to be “Fortune 500 only” tech, and how Adlumin intentionally built a cost-efficient, easy-to-use, channel-first platform that MSPs could actually deploy for community banks, credit unions, healthcare, and other compliance-heavy clients.

We also talk through the reality for most MSPs: you’re not going to hire 15–20 people to staff a 24×7 SOC, but your clients still expect enterprise-grade protection. Robert explains how MDR lets vendors aggregate security talent and software so MSPs can operate more like MSSPs, and how N-able now ties everything together with three pillars of business resilience: pre-breach hardening, real-time detection and response, and post-breach recovery with Cove.

Chapters

• 00:25 Robert Johnston intro and CrowdStrike days
• 05:30 Founding Adlumin and early SIEM vision
• 08:15 MDR demand from regulated clients
• 10:30 Talent shortage and MSP-to-MSSP shift
• 13:20 Defending endpoints, network, and cloud
• 14:40 Why N-able acquired Adlumin
• 16:20 Business resilience three-pillar model
• 18:50 Empower as a true user conference
• 20:50 Why Adlumin went all-in on the channel
• 22:20 Takeaway: selling business resilience, not tools

Guest: Robert Johnston, N-able (Adlumin) 

• Website: https://www.n-able.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertsjohnston/

Companies / Vendors / Products Mentioned

• N-able: https://www.n-able.com
• Adlumin: https://www.adlumin.com
• CrowdStrike: https://www.crowdstrike.com
• Microsoft 365: https://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-365
• Cove data protection (N-able Cove): https://www.n-able.com/products/cove-data-protection
• Empower (N-able Empower user conference): https://www.n-able.com/empower

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