186Kloud director: 'Cyber is a tsunami of challenges and opportunities'

Stephen Hackett highlights the critical role of cybersecurity and addresses the challenge of staying relevant

186Kloud director, Stephen Hackett, highlights cybersecurity as one of the key priorities for the British distributor.

The company, he says, focuses on four main areas: unified comms (UC), networks, cloud compute and cybersecurity - the latter seen as a "a tsunami of challenges and opportunities".

He explains that cybersecurity is a major focus for the BT, Verizon and GoTo partner.

"Most businesses have an online presence, and the risk of compromise could be fatal," he argues.

"If you have if you have a ransomware attack, and you haven't got a backup that can be restored free of the ransomware attack then you're under the command of the bad guys who can blackmail you.

"Or, you actually can't restore your backup because they've got your backup as well. And it could lead to a lot of businesses going out because they can't afford to pay the bad guys.

"I think slowly businesses are realising that it could be the end of their business so rightly is becoming the number one priority."

Hackett also says that while some high-profile security breaches make headlines, many more businesses have likely had compromises but don't realise it or admit it publicly. The reality is that most businesses face a question of when, not if, they will get hacked or have a security incident.

"Many mistakenly believe they are secure when they are not. With our partners, we are building a cybersecurity ecosystem to evaluate customers' overall security posture. We take an insurance-like approach - cyber insurance requirements are not just a tick box exercise, because after a breach, incomplete security means denied claims.

"We aim to help customers implement appropriate security measures for their needs and risks."

He continues: "So we cover everything like cyber essentials training, endpoint security, network security, email security, pen-testing.

"We're going to be launching an automated subscription-based pen test service, because we're seeing lots of requests for pen testing where customers haven't had one done for a year."

He explains the system conducts pen tests every month and gives customers an opportunity to compare the results to the previous month.

The data gathered provides an insight on what's going on in the network and what areas need more training and investment.

Staying relevant

Looking at the market, Hackett says staying relevant is one of the main challenges right now - whether it being for traditional resellers, VARs or MSPs.

"The traditional model where an MSP or a VAR would get skilled up on vendors tech, incorporate its portfolio, incorporate the tech talks, engage the customers, then build support, there's only so many vendors they can do that for."

He argues the challenge is therefore staying relevant because the market is changing.

"So far, there's so many new cloud vendors coming along yearly that they can't be expected to have them all in their portfolio and take on the skillset for them all.

"But we can help them make sure that they get access to the relevant ones. So whether it's for the MSPs, the VARs or agents, I think relevance is the biggest challenge for the channel and we can help them overcome that."

He explains 186Kloud can teach partners how to leverage various technologies.

"We'll teach them about the top technology tracks, how to identify customer opportunities, engage with those potential opportunities, conduct discovery discussions with customers, and even get directly involved to show them firsthand how to execute on it. We provide hands-on training to fully equip our partners for success."