This week, Trustmarque is proud to announce the appointment of our new Cyber Security Sales Lead James Holton. We talk to him about the increasing importance of Cyber Security at a time when digital transformation is resulting in a rapid change to many of our customers’ IT environments.
What is your background?
I’ve worked in IT for 12 years and have been specialising in security for the last five. Most recently, I’ve been working with enterprise customers with the Capita Cyber Security Team before migrating into the Corporate Sales Team at Trustmarque last year. I’ll now be leading on all Cyber Security customer activity, working across both the public and private sectors. I am excited about the new role and the experience I can bring.
What interests you about Cyber Security?
I can’t believe everyone isn’t interested in Cyber Security. The speed of innovation from both the vendors and attackers is rapid and it creates a constantly evolving landscape; it would be a challenge to keep up if you didn’t have a genuine interest or passion in it.
Whilst the additional finance being pumped into the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) is encouraging, the burden of responsibility of actually delivering security over the next decade will fall squarely onto the shoulders of our customers and the partners they choose to work with. For me, that is the most empowering and exciting challenge. Every day we can make a difference.
Furthermore, from reading the latest breach reports about nation state actors and hacktivists, advanced threats just sound like something straight out of James Bond movie.
Do security teams still struggle to make their voice heard?
Security teams are now taken seriously and have a “seat at the table” in most of the clients I meet. Our customers recognise it is fundamental to their success. As our lives and the way we interact with the world becomes more digital, the importance of solid cyber security is paramount. The impact of an outage or breach, and the financial and brand damage associated with it, is now widely recognised. Security teams are slowly being empowered to deal with security challenges.
What is causing the increase in cyber threats?
I’ve described it before like a perfect storm, where you have a rapidly changing customer environment due to factors like cloud and digital transformation.
The sophistication and number of attacks organisations face every day is exponentially increasing. And the money and skills required to combat these threats are often in short supply.
“I’ve described it before like a perfect storm; rapidly changing customer environments…and skills that are in short supply.”
What is the single biggest threat facing your customers?
It’s really important for us to understand that each of customers is different. The business model they operate, the budget at their disposal, their risk appetite and where they are in their Cyber Security journey all affect their level of risk and security level. Taking all this into account means that the single biggest threat for one customer is not a focus for another.
But there are definitely some consistent themes.
Cloud is a key topic for Cyber Security across the board. Whether that is misconfiguration, Cryptojacking or compromised accounts. Cloud adoption is happening so rapidly and is built on a foundation of being agile, which is really challenging the traditional security operations teams.
What advice would you give to customers to ‘make themselves more secure’?
First of all work with a partner that truly wants to help you understand how you minimise your risk. There isn’t a silver bullet unfortunately.
However, if you are looking at the cloud and haven’t looked at CSPM or CASB, come and talk to us.
Why work with Trustmarque?
Too often resellers and IT partners are solely in one particular camp and wedded to specific vendors. We are staunchly customer focused and vendor agnostic, working across a vast network to bring the right solutions to our customers.
That said, it can also be difficult to cut through all of the noise in industry and understand how you can pragmatically improve your security posture working with a partner you trust. That is exactly what we aim to be; Tried, tested and trusted. A safe pair of hands.
“That is exactly what we aim to be; Tried, tested and trusted. A safe pair of hands.”
If you would like to find out how James and the Cyber Security Team can support your organisation you can visit our Cyber Security webpage talk to your Trustmarque Account Manager or email [email protected]
