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A Double Blow to Hackers: HPE Datacenter Care advantage option for Security

By Alexander Au

Worldwide Product Manager of Security and Digital Workplace-Related Advisory & Professional Services, HPE Pointnext

Given the endless headlines about data breaches and ransomware attacks these days, itโ€™s easy to assume that companies are responding by doing all they can to identify vulnerabilities and strengthen their defenses. But the reality is quite different. True, in traditionally sensitive sectors, such as financial services, we do see a high level of security awareness and sophistication in protecting their applications and processes. These organizations have always had a clear picture of the legal, reputational and financial damage that could result from, say, a loss of customer data.

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But in some verticals, security has never really been a core concern, and it doesnโ€™t always get the attention it deserves today. A midsize educational services provider, for example, likely wonโ€™t be able to afford the same level of security spend as a large financial services firm. Attack surfaces change as businesses evolve; a bricks-and-mortar retailer faces very different threats when it moves online. I can think of a dozen other reasons why security concerns are often left unaddressed. According to a Ponemon Institute report, 55% of companies say itโ€™s hard to protect an expanding IT perimeter with IoT, BYOD, mobile, and cloud. Nearly one half of survey respondents cite shortages of security staff and skills as a reason for security gaps.

Another big factor for many businesses is the lack of insight into the scale of the risks theyโ€™re facing. What would be the actual financial damage if a major application is breached by a hacker, resulting in the loss of, say, 100,000 customer records? It's very hard to quantify. What about damage to the brand? Without knowing the potential costs, many organizations simply do the minimum thatโ€™s required for compliance and accept the risks beyond that.

2 Breakthrough Services

Clearly, many companies could benefit from a more consistent, programmatic approach to security. We at HPE Pointnext believe that it makes a lot of sense to work with your data center support provider to develop that approach. HPE Datacenter Care customers know that we deliver the proactive support and global expertise to keep your business running smoothly. Itโ€™s a unique relationship that puts us in a particularly advantageous position to provide guidance around security. We understand your business strategy, and we have specific knowledge of your IT environment. To help you manage security risk at the tactical and strategic levels, weโ€™ve introduced optional HPE Datacenter Care advantage option for Security. We offer two new services:

HPE Continuous Security Improvement Service. This is our strategic security offering. It provides advice on your security technologies, people, processes and governance over an extended time frame, at least one year of your HPE Datacenter Care contract, renewable annually. We assign a dedicated security advisor to work with you and coordinate all service-related activities. You get access to remote security expert advisory sessions (up to 2 hours each) on security subjects of your choice.

We also provide a security posture and compliance readiness assessment, benchmarked against ISO standards, with high-level findings and remediation recommendations. And we help you close any security loopholes, for example by providing a custom solution for the infrastructure design for certain applications. The HPE Continuous Security Improvement Service gives you the peace of mind that comes from knowing you're operating in a secure way, and that your security program is up-to-date.

HPE Datacenter Care Vulnerability Analysis Service. This tactical offering enables you to identify, defend against, and remediate threats to particular business assets: applications, mobile apps, and infrastructure. Many of the companies I work with are looking for this type of service to provide an assessment of their applications, especially if the application is customer-facing, or has some sort of linkage to financial or personal data. Mobile systems are another common target; they can get really complex these days, and customers want to make sure that the security level for their mobile applications is the same as it would be if they accessed it via the web.

HPE is known as a leader in the infrastructure space, of course, so a lot of the time weโ€™re working with customers on large infrastructure implementations. They often request a scan and penetration test to make sure that all the elements within the infrastructure are indeed configured correctly and there's no back door, no loophole in terms of security for criminals to get access to data from the infrastructure. HPE Datacenter Care Vulnerability Analysis Service is a great way to get insights into the risks youโ€™re exposed to, from both the external and internal perspectives.

Tapping into the power of crowds

HPE Datacenter Care advantage option for Security lets you leverage not only the vast experience of HPE Pointnext experts and our global expertise in IT security, but also innovative crowdsourced security testing through our partnership with Synack. We can call on the services of large numbers of background-checked โ€œhackersโ€ โ€“ 40 to 50 on a single test, on average โ€“ to test your systems. Now, this is not your traditional security test, where a big consultancy might put two or three people on the job and end up telling you โ€œwe checked it and nothing happened,โ€ and your peace of mind depends entirely on the consulting firmโ€™s reputation. Our โ€œhackersโ€ are highly incentivized to find vulnerabilities; in fact, they only get paid if they find something new.

Itโ€™s an approach that may seem risky at first glance, but actually the opposite is true. If you think about it, if youโ€™re putting an asset up on the Internet youโ€™re already pitting yourself against a crowd โ€“ potentially a crowd of threat actors. Why not get the power of crowdsourcing on your side from the start and use it to minimize your security risk?

Thatโ€™s the kind of innovative thinking that makes HPE Datacenter Care advantage option for Security a powerful ally for businesses operating in todayโ€™s turbulent threat environments. Learn more about HPE Datacenter Care Service here.

 

About the Author:Alex.png Alexander Au is the Worldwide Product Manager of Security and Digital Workplace-Related Advisory and Professional Services for HPE Pointnext. Alex has years of experience in IT security consulting and solution/product sales; he holds more than a dozen industry certifications, including two CCIEs, CISSP, CISA and CISM. 

 

 

 

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