Here you can find my interview to Ms Katherine Russ-Hotfelter,
Hexis Cyber Solutions Director of Channel Marketing which is published on this
link:
By Katherine Russ-Hotfelter, Hexis Cyber Solutions Director of Channel Marketing
Cybersecurity threats are a global issue – just ask Andreas Athanasoulias, Information Security Officer for Athens, Greece-based, Uni Systems S.A. and a Hexis Cyber Solutions partner. Last week at our annual EMEA Exchange event in London, we sat down with Andreas to talk about what his company is seeing from a global threat perspective. What Andreas had to say wasn’t surprising – it’s just further evidence that this particular technology topic isn’t going away any time soon. Here’s what he had to say:
Hexis: What do you see as the biggest cybersecurity threat facing companies today?
Andreas Athanasoulias, Uni Systems:
Undoubtedly, the biggest cybersecurity threat is the advanced persistent threat that every organization is facing. Nowadays, cyber-attacks are becoming more and more targeted and sophisticated. Cyber criminals target high-value organizations and spend tremendous amounts of time in order to create a “profiled attack”. That is to say, the attackers spend time profiling their targets, observing the organization structure, internal procedures and, of course, infrastructures. By assimilating this information, the cyber criminals prepare and launch their attacks, incorporating various techniques, such as viruses, Trojan horses, worms and social engineering.
Hexis: When you speak to security professionals at end user companies, what is their general security outlook? Why do they turn to channel partners?
A.A., Uni Systems:
Professionals at end user companies are worried that security threats may affect their organization. Advanced persistent threats, security incident and event management and trends like BYOD are just some of the many issues they need to deal with throughout their business day.
Moreover, end user companies face complexity on their infrastructure, internal processes and procedures. All of the aforementioned are the reasons why end user customers turn to channel partners. They need the unparalleled expertise of a channel partner to help them tackle the issues they don’t have time to themselves; as a result, end user organizations can spend more time continuing to build their business and less time worrying about IT security issues. For those organizations that currently lack security awareness inside their companies, channel partners act as trusted advisors and educators in this regard, eliminating employee bad habits and fostering a more secure IT environment.
Hexis: What are security teams at your customer sites doing right? Where have they made mistakes and how do you advise on alternative security strategies?
A.A., Uni Systems:
In my opinion, more often than not, security teams are increasingly budget-driven than quality-driven. Due to the current state of economic affairs, we at Uni Systems have identified countless cases where cost-effective solutions are being chosen over solutions that, to put it simply, work better. This short-sighted decision provides a cheap, “quick-fix” solution, but ultimately creates bigger, long-term issues. These issues can impact the IT security market as whole, the environment of the customer, and most importantly – the vendors and their partners. My advice would be to evaluate the security solutions not only by economic and commercial terms (value, business vision of the vendor, etc.), but also on technical perspective, such as efficacy, efficiency, interoperability and ability to execute on what the vendor promises.
Interested in hearing more about how EMEA Exchange went? Check out Hexis’
conversation with keynote speaker and Bloor senior analyst, Fran Howarth. If you’re a Hexis partner that wasn’t able to make the trek to EMEA Exchange, consider
registering for USA Exchange, happening in Las Vegas, NV, February 24-25.
