Channel Driven Security

Channel Driven Security

The Channel. The People. The Business of People.

Cyber Security. The Science and Business of securing IT systems and processes of a Business, ensuring continuity.

My 2 favourite things - Cyber and People - 2 things that I have dedicated my entire professional life to, 2 things that I have always meld and mold into 1.

This is an opinion piece, a culmination of experience and thoughts, divided into various parts. This is a project that I have long sought to write, but never found time or the right avenue to do, in the hope that a reader, friend, colleague, partner, vendor, customer, will perhaps understand what it is we do in the channel, my innermost thoughts and aspirations.

And now that the business I represent has grown from strength to strength, this AISA opinion piece turns out to be the perfect avenue.

Finally, I like to attribute this piece to all my friends, colleagues, partners and loved ones, who has both enjoyed and endured the insufferable me.

 

Cyber Security

I have been in Cyber Security for more than 20 years. Some say its a long time, but strangely I have never found it long nor ever had a dull moment. I have always found Cyber interesting and intriguing, how IT systems and processes have evolved alongside how people work and communicate, and with that, new threats and new solutions.

Back in the day, it was all ACLs, viruses, web page hacking and the scary words were Millennium bug, Melissa worm and script kiddies.

Today, we are talking Ransomware, State Sponsored Threats, Spearphishing, API Threats, Identity Theft and Insider Threats.

How has Cyber Security all changed today? And how has it changed with the Channel Network?

 

The Channel Network

Probably the most misunderstood piece of any business, the channel has long been the backbone of any information and knowledge sharing. As early as Marco Polo, the famous early trader, some will say he introduced Pasta or Ice Cream to Europe, from his trips to China. In effect, he was the channel for Pasta or Ice Cream.

With globalisation, the introduction of the global marketplace, and now through the advent of cloud delivered solutions, the channel has at many a times negatively been regarded by the naysayers as the cost inflator, and often the target of removal in order to save costs to the end consumer.

When Michael Dell famously abandon the direct sales only model post 2007, it's been herald as a yahoo moment and a clear justification for the need of the channel.

There is an adage that goes "People buy from people". And no matter how much AI has advanced through the last few years, the one job they cannot replace are salespeople. And that is done most efficiently through a  trusted channel network.

 

The Channel - The Force Multiplier

The fact you are reading this opinion piece, in part of a vast AISA network, suggests that there is a role the channel plays in the provision of Cyber solutions and services to the Australia market.

The fact you hear about and deploy the solutions and vendors I represent, the channel network I support, and not much about who I work for, also says a lot to the system is working, and has been working for more than 2 decades.

What makes an Australian Channel Network successful is its ability to provide a Cyber solution to meet a need in the quickest most cost efficient way to the market. How this can be achieved is through understanding the needs of the market, finding the right solutions and able to get the skills up for the eventual need to support it.

The Australian market is a unique market, regarded as first world country, stemmed from a Western culture with roots to the Monarch, while being more similar to the US but closer in proximity to Asia, all of the above in one of the most sparsely populated and most diverse countries of the world.

With the above, how do we deliver the much needed and most effective solutions to meet the threats of today?

The best channel Cyber partners are those that are outcome driven, close to the end user needs, with a healthy dose of knowledge, skills and experience. I have seen many channels either only choosing either all services or all one product can solve a customer's needs. Almost always, it's both. Channel partners that only offer managed security services, or provision of a select product or product range, under the guise of managing a threat, often ends up paying more in terms of damages and outcome gaps.

No two people are alike, and as such no two end user companies are alike. It pays to listen and more often educate the end user to what their . A cyber threat or incident often is not quite easily diagnosed, and often not a single factor. Hence, why you see some large profile cases takes months to ascertain a cause, and this comes reported often only after the end user realises that its not able to contain the damage, which can be weeks or months after it was first detected.

I have seen channel partners succeed when they are often providing a right combination of products and services to the end user, and services being a constant delivery, rather than a single product license being fulfilled, which is often the hallmark of a transactional channel, and often precedes a potential cyber incident.