Stephen Hackett, Managing Director of Technology Services Distributor Intelisys Global, believes that businesses spend too long trying to protect against their last cyber-attack – and not enough thinking about what they need to do to prevent the next one. Making sure that you’ve got access to all the right products and services can help the channel to take the lead here.
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Stephen Hackett, Managing Director of Intelisys Global[/caption]
Perhaps the one certainty that came out of the recent global WannaCry Ransomware attack was that incidents of this type are going to keep on happening. With an estimated total economic interruption cost of $4 billion globally, WannaCry has clearly had a massive impact on corporate cybersecurity concerns, and it’s an issue that’s now top of the IT agenda given today’s accelerating threat landscape.
Unfortunately, the challenge for many organisations is that implementing appropriate cybersecurity protection is getting more and more complex. Organisations are already investing in a range of security hardware, software, endpoint security, identity and access management solutions, as well as a broad range of services.
Factor in additional compliance requirements, continued digital transformation pressures and the scaling of edge technologies such as Internet of Things devices and mobile, it’s understandable why IT teams remain nervous about whether their security investment is doing the job it’s meant to. They’re probably right to be concerned, as many in-house deployments seem destined to protect against known cybersecurity threats at a given point in time. And that’s a problem, as the teams behind ransomware such as WannaCry are no doubt already busy working on their next attack that’s likely to be even more threatening.
Helping organisations to protect themselves
Not surprisingly there’s a lot of concern now, with CIOs and their teams being put under pressure to re-assure the business that their IT infrastructure is secure. From a reseller perspective, this is a great opportunity to help customers, but it’s also a great time to differentiate. Anybody can sell default firewall solutions, install them and leave them to do their job. However, we’re way past that point now, and resellers need to be much more proactive around security. That’s why in-house Managed Security Services are becoming less and less of an option, particularly as most internal teams simply don’t have the in-house expertise to stay current.
Resellers need to bring the experts in – the people that do this all day long, who stay on top of the end-to-end security process. It’s the difference between remembering to action the latest Microsoft SMB patches and having a structured Managed Security Service in place that can detect all exploitation attempts, constantly runs network detection, and continues to receive additional ransomware prevention signatures immediately as they are available.
Leaving valuable security revenue on the table
But with cybersecurity now such a critical issue, it’s also a fact that too many resellers are having to leave valuable potential security business on the table because they believe they don’t have the specialist sales expertise and confidence to bid for the business. Many are also unconvinced as to whether they have the technical skills to deliver a true Managed Security Service for customers.
