ExtraHop is Here to Help, Not Fool

It's no secret that the tech sector loves April Fools' Day. Every year this annual ode to the gullible is celebrated with faked websites, easter eggs, joke press releases, among numerous other quirky ideas tech companies come up with to mark the day.

Like many tech companies, ExtraHop holds a special affection for April 1st. As the long time leader of communications for the company, I've frequently been pulled into various plots and plans–some more successful than others. But as a company used to running fast and lean, April Fools' Day is often more of a "Hey, it's March 25, do you think we should do something?" type of event rather than something we meticulously plan for months.

This year, we started out with the best of intentions. We even had an in-person meeting to brainstorm ideas before we transitioned to working from home. But since the beginning of March, as COVID-19 started to spread first in Seattle (where ExtraHop is headquartered) and then throughout the US, and as companies increasingly closed their doors or transitioned their workforces to remote access, our focus shifted too.

Instead of dedicating resources to the tech industry's annual flight with fancy, we focused all of our efforts on how we could support our customers as they worked to manage major transitions. The morning that I told my team that we weren't doing April Fools this year, there wasn't a word of protest. We all had our sights set on a different goal.

Today is April 1, and over the past few weeks, ExtraHop has built a growing library of resources for our customers. One of our sales engineers, Josh Snow, took it upon himself to build a WFH Bundle (aka an "app" for the ExtraHop platform) to help our customers get visibility into VPN connections. He's also done a Work from Home video series to help customers use our technology to manage and secure a remote workforce.

We've also started curating resources that can help everyone, not just ExtraHop customers, develop strategies for the new IT reality, including providing free access to reports from third parties like 451 Research. You can find all of that on our Secure Remote Access and Availability hub page.

I've been at ExtraHop for nearly seven years now, and the last three weeks are emblematic of why I still love working for this company. One of the founding principles of ExtraHop is that we do what we say we do, and we deliver on our promises. That approach has never been more important than it is right now. We're not out to fool you. We're here to help.

On behalf of everyone at ExtraHop, I want to take this opportunity to wish everyone a safe and healthy April 1st, 2020. It's not the day we'd planned for. It's not where we thought we'd be. But here we are.

I have two daughters at home, ages five and two, and there's a line from their favorite movie, Frozen 2, that I think about all the time these days, in both my personal life and my work: make the choice to do the next right thing. Let's all make that choice, today and every day.