OK, so the calendar reads March 1, and I’m as ready for spring to arrive as the next fellow. But February always gets the short-shrift, and IT security is too important of a topic to abbreviate. So given this, gentle readers, we’re going to pretend it’s Feb. 29 and take one more dive into the topic before welcoming our March state of the industry focus on the vertical go-to-market approach.
We’ll pick up where we left off last week, with a sampling of solutions that dealers employ to help their clients maintain pace with the evolving scourge of intrusion threats to both data and systems. Jeff Leder, director of managed IT security services for Impact, notes his dealership’s offering consists of two primary aspects that enable it to confidently identify and handle threats.
The Lake Forest, IL-based firm’s assessment process entails using a combination of tools, many of which are the same ones intruders employ to infiltrate a client environment. The second variable is Impact’s enterprise-grade solutions, which are designed to effectively monitor and protect specific aspects of the client environment.
Jeff Leder, Impact
“Both of these aspects combined offer us insight and additional threat mitigation for our clients, and we continuously research and expand upon our assessment tools, processes and solutions to ensure that emerging threats are mitigated,” Leder said.
Cyber-Worthy
One of the challenges associated with working in the SMB space is the prevalent belief that their operations are too small and uninteresting to potential cybercriminals. As a result, many SMBs have fallen woefully behind their enterprise-level brethren in enhancing security measures.
“One of the reasons we cover third party and vendor contacts and integrations is we like to look at who’s interacting with your infrastructure and data, see what level of access they have and do they need that,” Leder remarked. “That’s one other avenue where if someone manages to maintain and advance a persistent threat in a small environment—it turns out it’s a sister company or some sort of vendor relationship with a much larger organization. It’s another conduit through which malicious actors can actually find their way, sort of island hopping between organizations.”
Derick Tallman, Access Systems
Derick Tallman, IT security and operations manager at Waukee, IA-based Access Systems, points out that just as the evolution of security breaches is fluid, so too is the dealer’s IT security offering. Augmented by industry newsletters, alerts from partners and vendors and U.S. government Homeland Security Alerts, Access System’s team is able to keep up to date on the latest cybersecurity threats, enabling it to constantly evaluate its IT security offerings. The dealer’s team also attends several conferences throughout the year where the latest threats and trends on cybersecurity protection are discussed.
“We are constantly monitoring security threats and controls to put in place to protect against these threats,” Tallman said. “This includes introducing new products into our IT security offering while working on minimizing the inconvenience factor, maintaining a strong and secure environment, and being cost effective for the client. We stay up to date on new products and services that are available to protect our clients and add the most value for our clients.”
Client Insight
Monique Phalen,
AIS of Las Vegas
Monique Phalen, director of IT at AIS of Las Vegas, believes one of the advantages a dealer has is its insight into an account, from the office manager right on up to the CEO, and can communicate the best practices in how to best conduct business in a secure manner. This guidance is not unlike the dealer’s role in providing training and guidance on copiers and printers.
“The new opportunities lie in making sure you have insight into all touch points into all end users, and you do awareness training,” she said. “It’s important to do simulated attacks in the financial services industry, do simulated external and internal hacks, just to see what (threats) are out there. I think businesses are going to have to go through that fire drill to see where they’re vulnerable and determine how to shore it up.”
