Articles
Field notes on cybersecurity, networking, and the craft of technical sales — from the Alliance archive.
July 27, 2026
Two AI Concepts Every Technical Sales Professional Should Understand
Artificial intelligence has introduced an entirely new vocabulary into enterprise technology conversations. RAG. Multimodal AI. Vector databases. Agentic workflows. The terminology can make relatively straightforward…
Read articleJuly 27, 2026
RAG and Multimodal AI: What Technical Sales Professionals Actually Need to Know
Artificial intelligence has introduced an entirely new vocabulary into enterprise technology conversations. Terms such as retrieval-augmented generation, multimodal AI, embeddings, vector databases, agentic workflows, and large language models can make the sub
Read articleJuly 24, 2026
Five Questions Every Discovery Must Answer
The 5 Questions Every Discovery Session Must Answer I once walked into a customer engagement where the organization had already selected the SIEM it wanted to buy. The product had been researched. The vendor had been…
Read articleJuly 24, 2026
From The Founder
Most Successful Technology Project... Most unsuccessful technology projects do not begin with bad products. They begin with incomplete discovery, unspoken assumptions, misaligned stakeholders, and expectations that were…
Read articleJuly 10, 2026
Technology Doesn't Fail. Expectations Do.
Walk into any post-implementation review after a troubled technology deployment and you'll often hear the same conclusions. "The product didn't meet our expectations." "The implementation didn't go as planned." "The…
Read articleJuly 10, 2026
From the Founder
First, thank you. Whether you've been following Technical Sales Alliance since the beginning or you've only recently joined our growing community, I appreciate you being here. Technical pre-sales is one of the most…
Read articleDecember 27, 2025
Big “S” vs Big “E” — How Sales Engineering Really Breaks Down
I once had a more experienced Sales Engineer explain something to me that stuck—and I’ve found it to be consistently true over the years. There are two kinds of Sales Engineers in the market : Big “S” Sales Engineers…
Read articleDecember 23, 2025
Sales Engineers, Trust, and the Work That Actually Matters
In complex cybersecurity sales, the most effective Sales Engineers are not the ones who push the hardest. They are the ones who understand risk, context, and consequence — and help customers navigate decisions they may…
Read articleNovember 25, 2025
What makes a cybersecurity sales engineer?
A cybersecurity sales engineer is a crucial link between the technical aspects of cybersecurity solutions and the sales process. Here are some key components that make up a successful cybersecurity sales engineer:…
Read articleSeptember 4, 2025
The Role of a Corporate Evangelist in Cybersecurity
In cybersecurity, trust is everything. Customers don’t just buy products — they buy confidence that the technology will solve real problems, integrate into their environment, and keep their data safe. One of the most…
Read articleSeptember 4, 2025
The Solutions Architect Journey in Cybersecurity: From Junior to Principal Architect
In cybersecurity, the title Solutions Architect (SA) carries weight. Customers see SAs as trusted advisors — people who understand not just products , but problems , strategy, and long-term architecture. But how does a…
Read articleSeptember 4, 2025
Sales Engineer vs. Solutions Architect: What’s the Real Difference in Cybersecurity Pre-Sales?
When it comes to pre-sales roles in cybersecurity, the titles Sales Engineer (SE) and Solutions Architect (SA) often get blurred. Both sit at the intersection of technology and sales, both support account executives,…
Read articleSeptember 4, 2025
The Sales Engineer Journey in Cybersecurity: From Junior to Principal Architect
Introduction The Sales Engineer (SE) role is one of the most critical — and misunderstood — positions in cybersecurity. Too often, people assume SEs are just “the demo person.” In reality, a strong Sales Engineer…
Read articleFebruary 10, 2025
Mastering Cybersecurity Discovery: Best Practices for Selling SIEM and MDR Services to Enterprise Customers
Introduction Conducting an effective discovery session is the foundation of a successful SIEM or MDR sale. Enterprise customers have complex security needs, and a generic sales pitch won't cut it. Instead, a…
Read articleSeptember 4, 2024
What is WCCP?
This is a new type of post that I want to start writing. Doing this helps me to learn more and remember what I am learning better. I was recently in an interview for a role with a company that I have been trying to go…
Read articleJuly 25, 2024
Leading U.S. Cybersecurity Awareness Company Unknowingly Hires Remote North Korean Hacker
Elizabeth Montalbano, Contributing Writer | July 25, 2024 A software engineer hired for an internal IT AI team immediately became an insider threat by loading malware onto his workstation. A security firm recently hired…
Read articleJune 3, 2024
Ticketmaster confirms hack which could affect 560m
Ticketmaster owner Live Nation confirmed "unauthorised activity" on its database after a group of hackers said they had stolen the personal details of 560 million customers. ShinyHunters, the group claiming…
Read articleMay 5, 2024
What makes a cybersecurity sales engineer?
A cybersecurity sales engineer is a crucial link between the technical aspects of cybersecurity solutions and the sales process. Here are some key components that make up a successful cybersecurity sales engineer:…
Read articleJanuary 26, 2023
DNS: Types of DNS Records, DNS Servers and DNS Query Types
Need a refresher on DNS concepts? This post introduces DNS and explains: three types of DNS queries— recursive, iterative, and non-recursive three types of DNS servers— DNS Resolver, DNS Root Server, and Authoritative…
Read articleJanuary 25, 2023
The Top 6 DNS Attack Vectors per ChatGPT
The Domain Name System (DNS) is a critical infrastructure that is used to translate domain names into IP addresses, and it plays a key role in the functioning of the internet. As such, DNS is a common target for…
Read articleDecember 7, 2022
The 10 Domains of Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity Industries and Domains What, you might ask, are industries and domains within cybersecurity? Simply put, industries are groups of related companies based on their primary business activities.…
Read articleSeptember 9, 2022
How Network Traffic Can Mask A Serious Cyber Threat
Our network is always moving. Data flows from place to place, between all the endpoints that require rapid internet access. But like any traffic, this data can become congested – and some of it can be dangerous. …
Read articleJune 14, 2022
Can Cybersecurity be Automated?
Cybersecurity is time- and resource-intensive. The threat landscape continues to evolve, and security analysts are feeling burnt out. According to research , 54% of security operation center (SOC) teams say that…
Read articleApril 26, 2022
5 Common Indicators of a Phishing Attempt
Phishing is one of the most common and effective cybersecurity attack vectors , accounting for roughly a quarter of all ransomware attacks between 2019 and 2021, according to research from Cloudian . As…
Read articleDecember 17, 2020
5 questions every higher-ed security leader should ask
In the day and age of COVID-19, we have witnessed a transformation of the way we work. If I were asked before March of 2020 how long it would take to make the progress in digital and security transformation that we as a…
Read articleApril 28, 2020
Building A Home Cybersecurity Lab
Part of our blog series “How to prevent a WordPress site hack in 2019: lessons from a former hacker” Hello all and welcome to the first episode of a new blog series focused on how to prevent WordPress site hacks. In…
Read articleJuly 22, 2019
Prevent Wordpress hacking using this Pen Testing guide
Welcome back to the next edition of “Hacking WordPress”. Find Part 1 if you missed it . Let me start with a PSA message. It is illegal to hack, log in to, penetrate, take over or even hack, a system or network of…
Read articleMay 15, 2019
Hacking WordPress: Building the Lab
Hello all and welcome to the first episode of the Hacking WordPress series. With this series, I will be putting together a series of videos and articles that will comprise a set of tutorials to show you the ins and outs…
Read articleMarch 19, 2019
10 Steps to Creating a Secure IT Environment
Every day, as a part of my work at AlienVault, I talk to prospective clients. Many of them are trying to put together a security plan for their business. Most of the people I talk to are IT professionals who, like…
Read articleJanuary 19, 2019
The Dark Web has a Serious Deduplication Problem
In a post released on 1/8/19, I wrote about the record number of breaches in 2018 . This brought to mind a podcast that I was listening to a few days back hosted by Corey Nachreiner, CTO of WatchGuard Technologies, Inc…
Read articleDecember 4, 2017
WannaCry (2017): The Ransomware That Moved Like a Plague
The Story It started like a digital sneeze. One infected machine. One unpatched vulnerability. One exploit leaked from a government stockpile. Within hours, entire networks around the world were coughing up red ransom…
Read articleJune 24, 2017
NotPetya (2017): The Malware That Pretended to Be a Ransom Attack… Then Destroyed Everything
The Story If WannaCry was chaos, NotPetya was calculated brutality. It began in Ukraine — inside a widely used tax accounting software called M.E.Doc. Attackers compromised the update server and delivered a poisoned…
Read articleDecember 25, 2014
Lizard Squad’s Christmas Chaos: The DDoS That Took Down Gaming (2014)
The Story Christmas morning, 2014. Kids open new Xbox Ones and PlayStations. Parents are half-awake with coffee. Millions of people try to log in. And nothing works. Xbox Live? Down. PlayStation Network? Down. Gaming?…
Read articleDecember 4, 2014
Heartbleed: The Bug That Bled the Internet Dry (2014)
The Story Picture this: A simple typo. Just one missing bounds check in a sea of OpenSSL code… and it became a digital knife that could slit open the encrypted heartbeat of the internet. In early 2014, security…
Read articleApril 14, 2014
The Sony Pictures Hack: The Movie That Started a Cyberwar (2014)
The Story It started with a flicker. Every workstation in Sony Pictures’ headquarters suddenly lit up with a red skeletal grinning face and the message: “Hacked by #GOP This is just the beginning…” Then the screens went…
Read articleDecember 23, 2013
The Yahoo Mega Breach: 3 Billion Accounts Exposed (2013–2014)
The Story Yahoo thought it was just another day in 2013. But deep inside their authentication systems, attackers were already rummaging around like they owned the place. They weren’t smash-and-grab hackers. They were…
Read articleDecember 17, 2013
Target POS Breach (2013): The Christmas Heist Nobody Saw Coming
The Story Snow was falling. Christmas music played in every Target store. Parents were hunting for deals. Kids were begging for toys. Target’s network was buzzing with the electrical joy of capitalism. And deep inside…
Read articleFebruary 22, 2011
RSA Breach (2011): The Day a Spearphish Sank a Giant
The Story RSA wasn’t supposed to be vulnerable. They were the company that made security tokens for militaries, governments, and Fortune 500s. Their job was to guard secrets — not lose them. But in March 2011, an intern…
Read articleJuly 4, 2010
Stuxnet: The Virus That Sabotaged a Nuclear Program (2010)
The Story Stuxnet wasn’t written like malware. It was written like a surgical weapon . Somewhere in a classified facility, engineers from two allied nations built code the way precision machinists build instruments —…
Read articleOctober 2, 1988
The Worm That Crashed the Early Internet (1988 — The Morris Worm)
Date: November 2, 1988 Victim: Thousands of Unix systems across universities, government labs, military networks Hacker: Robert Tappan Morris Global Impact: 10% of the internet disabled, millions in damages, CERT…
Read articleNovember 12, 1971
Captain Crunch & The 2600 Hz Whistle: The Toy That Opened the Phone System
The Story Long before ransomware, zero-days, or nation-state APTs, the world’s most powerful communications network could be hacked with a plastic toy whistle from a cereal box . And one man — a brilliant, eccentric,…
Read article