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SplunkTrust | Where Are They Now - Michael Uschmann

GretchenFox
Community Manager
Community Manager

The Background

Five years ago, Splunk published several videos showcasing members of the SplunkTrust to share their story and passion for the Splunk community. Now, we’re revisiting those featured members to see what they’ve been up to since and where they are now.

Michael Uschmann was the star of the .conf19 video “Making Dreams Come True With Splunk Certification” when he was a Senior Consultant with Splunk Partner GKC. Take a peek at his video to get to know Michael and learn how his Splunk certification helped his family achieve their dream to live in New Zealand:

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Where is SplunkTrust member Michael Uschmann now?

Michael Uschman, aka @MuS on Splunk Answers and the Splunk community Slack, is currently a Senior Security Specialist with the Bank of New Zealand.  

We interviewed Michael for this Where Are They Now series of posts to share his career growth story with you. Read on to learn more about Michael as he shares his career growth story and what's been going on in the time since his video was released.

It has been four years since your video. How has your professional life changed?

When the video was first shown there was a lot of positive reaction; people told me what a wonderful story and how amazing it was. For a couple of months after .conf19 I received calls from recruiters as people became more aware of my skill set and the stuff that I was doing.

It was at .conf19 that I first heard of Splunk SOAR (fka Phantom). I used my free Splunk EDU credits I received as a SplunkTrust member to take the admin and user training for Splunk SOAR after seeing it at the conference.

That’s a great use of the training credits. Is Splunk SOAR part of your day-to-day work now?

Yes, and there are two parts to my role. We have an on-call part of my role where we triage any security incidents and perform our on-call operations. When I am not on-call then I work on projects, such as any Splunk environment uplifts, extending our Splunk SOAR automations, and we are currently working on a Splunk Cloud project.

Is there a recent project that you’ve worked on that you are particularly proud of?

It wasn’t just me; our team worked on it together. We used Splunk SOAR to automate the takedown of phishing websites. This was a big win for us because our previous process would take hours, if not days. Now we see sites taken down in around five minutes.

A major theme in your video was your family and the quality of life you have living in New Zealand. How is your family doing?

During the lockdown we were like a hermit island, and this gave us opportunities to travel within New Zealand as a family. Oftentimes destinations are already booked by international tourists,  so we were actually able to go to Queenstown and have a week of skiing.

My daughter, Kyra, finished college. We continue to enjoy building Lego sets together. The two of us are big fans of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings.

My wife, Denise, became certified in Yoga and has her own local studio where she teaches classes.

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You’ve had quite a career around Splunk, and have been part of the Splunk community since 2011. Any thoughts as you look over the past decade?

I still remember back in the day at a previous job my manager said to me, “Hey, you like to learn new stuff… How about you go to San Francisco for three weeks to learn Splunk?”

I told my wife about it, and she said, “Just go there and do it. I'm pretty sure one day it will pay off.”

Well, from here it certainly looks like it has. Thank you for your time, Michael! We appreciate everything you do as a member of the SplunkTrust and your contributions to the Splunk community! 

Interested in learning more about the SplunkTrust? The next cohort will be announced at .conf23. In the meantime, we recommend brushing up on your Splunk skills by checking out some of the Splunk Education courses that Michael mentioned (in addition to many, many others!)

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