A Day In the Life: Matt, Director of Sales

In 2022 and beyond, we’ll be showcasing some of our team members with Q&A sessions about life at Finite State. See our previous post here.

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In our third day-in-the-life post, I’ll be highlighting Matthew Ziobro, a Director of Sales here at Finite State. Matt discovered Finite State while looking for a new challenge in the Product Security space. “The role at Finite State worked out great with where I was in my career and gave me the opportunity to grow even more. My vision aligned with what Finite State was presenting to me and to the market.”

Learn more about Matt’s role at Finite State:

What does your role at Finite State entail?

I help educate prospective customers on the value add that Finite State brings to product security teams— helping automate product security and analyze where gaps are in their current program today. I help them understand where product security gaps might be and show them how they can secure their products. Ultimately my goal is to work with them to make the world a safer place.

What are you most excited about working on in the next year?

I’m really excited after having some discussions with the Product team and learning more about the roadmap. I think we do a great job listening to customer feedback about enhancements to the product. So taking what we have now and putting more context around it, giving customers the ability to filter and customize what they see based on their internal policies instead of cookie cutter. We can say, “Here’s your policy and here’s why we think you need to fix this based on your policy” – more of a custom program than an out of the box cookie cutter solution. 

Watching us align with what our customers are asking is really exciting to me. Finite State is the first security company I’ve worked for that is actually listening to what customers say and that’s what I’m so excited about – telling customers, “If you think there’s something here that you need, we are good at listening and putting new features in the product.”

Who is your favorite coworker at Finite State and why?

I’ll say [EVP of Sales] Kirk Appelman– I work with him the closest and we talk probably 5 times a day whether that’s email or text or Slack. We make a great team. If he doesn’t understand a question from a customer or I don’t understand, we bounce ideas off each other. If I ask him something, there’s no such thing as a dumb question. We’re both open books, we can pick up the phone and talk to each other any time of day and hash out whatever we need to hash out.

How do our company values (Transparency, Results, Accountability, Customer Dedication, Courage) impact your work?

I will say, transparency is the most important one and I didn’t realize this until the values were rolled out to the team. I’ve always followed it as a core value but hadn’t really thought of it as one. What we do is so important—being transparent and taking ownership of things falls in line with that. 

If I make a mistake and I can jump in front of that, take accountability, be transparent about why it happened, and why it won’t happen again, that helps! If I’m as transparent as I can be, I feel like I’ve done everything I could to resolve an issue or expand on an offering a customer is asking about. If we’re not fully transparent, we don’t have every piece of the puzzle and maybe something is being left out. Having transparency as a core virtue helped me realize that and open up a little more without feeling like I’m going to be judged.

Where would be your ideal place to hang out with your co-workers for an all-hands offsite?

I’m in Minnesota and I don’t get out as much as I’d like to. So, I think someplace tropical, even in the summer months. We could lay on lounge chairs but at the same time everyone could get together and talk about important things and have a day at the beginning or end to spend time with coworkers outside of just work. I love an all-inclusive type resort for getting everyone together and excited and motivated – plus you end up kind of locked down, so people can be fully dedicated and in one spot working together.

What would you tell a friend who was considering a job at Finite State?

I would say, if you’re looking to get into a cutting edge technology that I think will be the way of the future in terms of protecting products and IoT devices, then Finite State is the place to be. There’s a world of opportunity here; we have barely scratched the surface of the kinds of customers we will be working with. We’re ahead of the curve. Security programs and policies are coming to fruition, and as they do, we’re going to just explode in terms of sales numbers and what the product can do. We’re sitting on a hotbed of opportunity and it’s going to be so exciting in the next 12-24 months to the point where we won’t even know what we’re going to do.

How do you think cybersecurity will be impacted by recent developments in the world?

I’ve already seen it starting. Like in the medical device industry, they have very strict requirements on everything. Implementing security policies from executive orders into must-have policies is not just nice-to-have, it is already happening. Healthcare is where it’s happening first because of their regulations and requirements, so I think we’ll see executive orders taken very seriously and for good reason. 

When you think about the supply chain – for a water company pumping water into houses or a medical device manufacturer – there’s always bits and components in their solutions that will be vulnerable, and adversaries know that. They know there are a lot of weak points and backdoors, and that’s where Finite State can shut those backdoors down. 

From a market perspective, it’s a matter of time before the market has to bring automation into their processes. Customers are carving out budgets that haven’t in the past, there are new titles like the Chief Product Security Officer (CPSO). Product security is an immense challenge when you look at it, a typical CISO doesn’t have the knowledge base to fully secure their product lines. They don’t understand all the layers that go into a product or device like a CPSO would. 

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Matt’s dedication both to the problem we're solving and to supporting the security practitioners who face these challenges are a huge part of the reason our team is so successful. We are always looking for team members who are passionate about creating a safer world and who serve as true partners to our customers and the larger cybersecurity community.

Ready to join a team like Matt’s? We’re waiting for you! Check out our jobs page and apply to our open positions. Think you can contribute but don’t see the perfect opening? Reach out to jobs@finitestate.io to discuss how you think your experience could contribute to our mission of protecting the connected world.