What is cybercrime to a business? At the end of the day, it’s risk—and a big one at that. After all, online threats have reached an all-time high, and the trend is only getting worse.
As a partner selling network solutions to businesses, this should be welcome news. It means that businesses are desperate for technologies that help them mitigate the endless risks associated with cybercrime. And make no mistake about it: companies are investing heavily in network security solutions. In fact, according to PWC, 91 percent of organizations now follow a risk-based cybersecurity framework.
But what types of services should you be offering to your clients? Here are some security solutions to keep in mind, as well as talking points to guide your conversations:
Secure access: First, poke around for information about where customers are storing their sensitive information. Is it being stored onsite, or offsite in a hosted environment? The goal here is to find out what types of secure access controls (or lack thereof) clients have for protecting their critical infrastructure. For example, could an unauthorized individual simply walk in when nobody’s looking and steal information? Talk about the importance of solutions like mantraps, which physically trap people who enter the data center if they don’t have proper security clearance. Of course, smart sensors and security cameras are also important for keeping malicious intruders away from IT infrastructure.
Data protection: Another great topic of conversation is customer storage and transmission of private information. Talk about the inherent risks that come with data management, and ask customers if they are using technologies like tokenization (which involves substituting sensitive information with unique symbols) or encryption (which locks file access, and requires a special key to decrypt it). Also mention the importance of using a virtual private network (VPN) to establish a secure connection over the Web. A VPN is like a private pathway that businesses can use to transmit data over the Internet while avoiding public traffic.
Managed services: Your customer may already be interested in outsourcing IT infrastructure to a hosted cloud provider for enhanced protection. Many people, after all, believe that outsourcing IT is easier and safer than maintaining a legacy environment. What many fail to realize, however, is that it can be very difficult to manage data in a hyperscale data center environment. It makes much more sense to partner with a hyperscale cloud managed services provider (MSP) that can streamline cloud operation management while still promising a high level of security and expert guidance.
By focusing on these talking points, the hope is that your customers will open up about their network vulnerabilities—providing the perfect segue into how you can help keep their information safe. To learn more about our security solutions, contact us today.