Palo Alto Networks and RightSec Take a Joint SOC Webinar to Government and Critical Infrastructure

Palo Alto Networks wanted its partner RightSec building security operations pipeline with Australian government agencies and critical infrastructure operators. RightSec wanted the same buyers to see its team as the advisers to call, so one campaign had to carry both brands.

This case study covers the partner campaign Filament ran for Palo Alto Networks and RightSec, built around The Future of the SOC webinar in January 2024. It explains how Palo Alto Networks came to Filament and what we built for the campaign and the webinar for each company.

About Palo Alto Networks

Palo Alto Networks is a cybersecurity company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. Founded in 2005, it made its name with the next-generation firewall and now sells platforms across network security, cloud security and security operations. More than 80,000 organisations use its products, and its Unit 42 team publishes threat research and runs incident response.

In Australia, Palo Alto Networks sells through channel partners that advise on, implement and manage its platforms. RightSec is one of them.

Founded by Virginia Calegare and headquartered in Brisbane, RightSec provides cyber security advisory services to federal and state government and to organisations in critical national industries. At the time of this campaign, it partnered exclusively with Palo Alto Networks.

Industry: Cybersecurity
Type: Software Vendor
Offering: Cybersecurity platforms for network security, cloud security and security operations
Target Market: Enterprise and government organisations, through channel partners
Channel Partner: RightSec

Filament Services Used:

Filament Solutions Used:

The Challenge: Serving a vendor's go-to-market and a partner's at the same time

In late 2023, Palo Alto Networks wanted to put demand generation behind RightSec through its partner programme. RightSec had built its reputation on strategic advisory and governance work for government and critical infrastructure. Its next step was a bigger role in those organisations’ security operations.

Those buyers faced a speed problem. Unit 42 research found the average organisation took more than three weeks to investigate and remediate a critical exposure, while some vulnerabilities were exploited within hours of discovery. A security operations centre (SOC) that responds in weeks cannot keep pace with that.

That gave the two companies different goals for one campaign. Palo Alto Networks wanted security leaders considering a SOC built on a single source of truth for network, cloud and identity data. RightSec wanted those leaders to see Virginia Calegare and her team as the people to plan that change with, then to speak with RightSec’s sales team.

So the campaign needed one combined brand story. A Palo Alto Networks product webinar with a RightSec logo on it would not have built RightSec’s pipeline. A RightSec services pitch would have left Palo Alto Networks out of the conversation.

The Engagement: A channel marketing leader brought Filament from Veeam

Palo Alto Networks did not run a pitch for this work. The campaign came through a channel marketing leader at Palo Alto Networks responsible for its pivotal partners in ANZ, who had worked with Filament at Veeam.

At Veeam, Filament ran a strategic campaign for AWS and Veeam with key partners, where the vendors funded the work and their partners took it to market. The RightSec campaign had the same shape, so when that leader moved to Palo Alto Networks, they brought Filament in.

Filament scoped the campaign in a Q4 2023 overview for Palo Alto Networks’ partner programme. It set out the audience, the purpose and a roles matrix that split every task between Filament and RightSec. Palo Alto Networks funded the campaign. RightSec supplied its database, approved the copy and design, and hosted and recorded the webinar. Filament built and ran everything else.

The Solution: A complete webinar campaign, run end to end

Filament delivered the full campaign around The Future of the SOC: the registration page, two LinkedIn posts with social cards, eight emails, two email headers and the CRM set-up behind every registration. Everything else existed to get the right people into the webinar and, afterwards, in front of RightSec’s sales team.

The Future of the SOC

Filament framed the webinar around one question: how a single source of truth for network, cloud and identity data helps a SOC plan for, detect, respond to and recover from advanced threats. Five speakers took part. Virginia Calegare, RightSec’s founding director, led a panel with Roni Khalil, Tahlia Castles and Hayden York from RightSec’s technical and governance teams, and Cameron Reeves, a Cortex systems engineer specialist at Palo Alto Networks.

With four RightSec speakers and one from Palo Alto Networks, RightSec carried the advisory and implementation side of the conversation while Palo Alto Networks spoke to the platform.

Landing page to convert registrants

Filament wrote and built the registration page at webinar.rightsec.com.au. The copy opened with the Unit 42 findings on remediation times and exploited vulnerabilities. We wrote a profile for each of the five speakers and listed the eight functions the session was written for, including executive technology leadership, governance, risk and compliance, and incident response.

LinkedIn promotion

Filament wrote two LinkedIn posts for RightSec’s company page and designed a social card for each. The cards carried six themes from the session, including automation, log stitching and orchestration, and the end of alert fatigue.

Email journey and registration management

We wrote eight emails covering the full journey: two promotional emails, a registration confirmation, a one-week reminder, a day-of reminder, separate replay emails for attendees and non-attendees, and a final email directing every contact to RightSec’s sales team. Filament designed two email headers, set up the CRM, ran the sends and managed every registration.

The Benefit: A lead mechanism RightSec owns, with Palo Alto Networks in the frame

RightSec came out of the campaign with a lead process it owns. Every registrant sat in RightSec’s database, split by whether they attended, and every one received an email pointing to RightSec’s sales team. Filament handed the full database to RightSec at the end of the campaign.

The recording gave RightSec’s team something to send ahead of a first meeting. It puts RightSec’s founder and technical leads alongside a Palo Alto Networks engineer, working through the SOC questions a government security leader is likely to ask.

Palo Alto Networks got its single-source-of-truth argument in front of government and critical infrastructure security teams, delivered by a partner already working with those organisations. Palo Alto Networks and RightSec can reuse the panel format and email journey for a new topic or segment.

The Result: Palo Alto and RightSec going to market together

The Future of the SOC went live on Thursday 18 January 2024, with RightSec and Palo Alto Networks presenting together.

Funded by Palo Alto Networks: The campaign ran through Palo Alto Networks’ partner programme, which funded the full scope Filament delivered.
Delivered from brief to handover: Filament produced every asset in the scope, ran registrations and the email journey, and handed RightSec a complete database once the post-event emails had gone out.
A relationship that moved vendors: A channel marketing leader who had worked with Filament at Veeam brought Filament into Palo Alto Networks for its partner campaign with RightSec.

Are you looking to take a cybersecurity product or service to market?

Filament plans and runs vendor co-funded go-to-market campaigns for MSPs and cybersecurity providers, from the evidence base through to lead capture. Talk to us about cybersecurity marketing, or read our guide to accessing Market Development Funds.