Feel the Love 🫶 Our Takeaways from the TAGITM and GIANTS Conferences

In back-to-back weeks in April, we attended two of the biggest conferences on our calendar. Both of them represent municipalities and government entities: GMIS Illinois' GIANTS conference is a gathering of cities and counties in Illinois, and the TAGITM conference represents our home state of Texas.

TAGITM is our Super Bowl every year: Too many customers and friends to count, and a great opportunity to catch up and plug in to get the inside story from some of our favorite people on the planet. GMIS GIANTS is newer to us, but we're reaching a tipping point there ... We have a lot of friends there now, too, and it's starting to feel like Homecoming every time we go.

So with that, here are a few of our takeaways from the past few weeks:

It Takes A Village

You can have your RSACs and your BlackHats ... give me TAGITM and GMIS GIANTS any day of the week. Why? It's all about community. Both of these organizations do a fantastic job of putting the vendors and industry folks on a level playing field with the municipality attendees. This give us as vendors permission to interact on a personal level you just won't get in a typical business setting. It's all about relationships here, and if you don't "get it", you won't succeed in this environment. There's an authenticity that can't be duplicated or faked.

And another thing: Since these are state and local goverments, they don't compete against each other. Sharing ideas, information, and resources is par for the course around here ... No industry secrets or competitive backstabbing, which makes it so much easier for us to spread the word about what we do, lean on others for help, or be there when someone needs a hand.

Forget about sales and the bottom line for a minute: The positive vibe at these conferences is contagious, and the sense of community is sincerely uplifting.

The Edge is Dead ... Long Live the Edge!

Almost two years ago we published a blog with that title, and it's even more true today. The pendulum has swung back slightly toward on-prem solutions, and it's still true that in government, it's pretty hard to simply "replace" the traditional perimeter.

Since our Outpost is all about the 'edge', we certainly heard the buzz around a few edge-related issues these entities are facing: First, it's no secret that firewall exploits are all the rage these days, given the slew of vulnerabilities uncovered in the past couple of years. Second - we fielded a lot of questions about brute forcing VPN connections; everything from the anxiety over the security risk to the performance hits their firewalls are taking by simply having to deal with the sheer volume of attempts. More on this one later.

Budgets In Limbo

Uncertainty at the federal level coupled with stagnant or falling property values has put a damper on many muni budgets. In our follow-up conversations (i.e., sales calls ;) we're already hearing about cuts to budgets, disappearing grants, and delays in purchases.

Pulling back the curtain a little bit, this type of economic environment can both help and hurt a small company like ours. Bad news is that there's less money out there to spend. Good news (for us) is that we're a relatively low cost solution that can check a lot of boxes and provide a lot of Band-Aids. We're a great bang for the buck, which is an asset in today's economy ... but not if there's no money to be spent.

DOGE cuts to CISA and MS-ISAC

When DHS cut $10M from the MS-ISAC in March, we all assumed that'd be big news at these conferences. Then in April, the Center for Internet Security (CIS) stepped in and said it'd cover that gap for at least a while. CISA and CIS presented at one of these conferences, mentioned this basically in passing, and then went on to do their normal presentation on the services they provide ... Honestly, it felt a little like, "move along, nothing to see here," and we're not sure what that means for the future. The EI-ISAC is still shuttered (we think), and no one's sure what's going to happen next.

Look for nimble vendors (like us) to attempt step in where possible to fill the gap (like threat intel and network visibility, in our case).

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