Trust Spotlight
Trust Spotlight is our series featuring the people behind every security review, every policy, and every customer trust conversation. They’re often behind the scenes, playing a huge role in keeping deals moving. We think they deserve a spotlight too.
Our third guest is Stanley Krochik, Team Lead Manager, GRC at Handshake, and one of the best security people in the industry. He’s the clearest proof that a small team with the right tools can outrun a big one, and he’s cut his questionnaire work by 90% to show for it. He’s also been one of Wolfia’s most demanding users from day one, and the first to tell us when something isn’t good enough.
How did you get into security?
In 2013, CryptoLocker hit one of my clients before most people knew ransomware existed. Databases went offline, support tickets piled up, and nobody on my team recognized what we were looking at.
The best part: the affected servers ran older versions of Windows capped at 3.5 GB of RAM, so the ransomware could never complete. We restored, it started again, and we repeated that until it was gone. It remains the one time outdated infrastructure saved me. That was 13 years ago, and I have been in security ever since.
What do most people get wrong about security reviews?
Most security reviews rely on a one-size-fits-all questionnaire, and the same questions go to every vendor regardless of what the vendor does. My guess is that 60-70% of the SaaS tools in a typical company never touch the crown jewels or support the availability of the service the company sells. Those vendors do not need a review.
Here is my hot take: when I receive questions about VMware infrastructure for a product that has AI capabilities, and nothing about the AI, the reviewer did nothing to assess me. That is lazy, and it looks like someone justifying their job. Understand the vendor first, ask targeted questions, and scope the process down to the vendors you need to understand better.
When I see thoughtful questions, I engage more in my answers, because I believe someone will read them instead of filing them in a digital cabinet nobody opens.
What’s something Wolfia does that you haven’t seen from other tools?
Wolfia handles unstructured data better than any tool I have used. I can throw almost anything at it, and it knows how to process the input well. When it does not know how to handle something, or the output has an issue, the team fixes it quickly. That responsiveness matters when you run a small team and have no time to wait on a support queue.
Wolfia is also getting much better at portals, which no other tool has done well. Portals are where questionnaire work tends to slow down, and Wolfia has made real progress there.
Thank you so much, Stanley, for the hot takes and for never letting us get comfortable.
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