7 Channel People Making Waves This Week at AWS, Verizon, Bugcrowd, More
One acquisition in the channel, worth $6.2 billion, just closed.
July 29, 2022
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The global average cost of a data breach has reached an all-time high of $4.35 million, according to an annual IBM report. This is likely contributing to the rising costs of goods and services.
Limor Kessem is IBM Security‘s principal consultant of cyber crisis management. She made waves this week for identifying the factors the cause breaches, such as poorly secured clouds.
“The more records are lost in each case, the more costly the breach,” she said. “We also see this in third-party compromises, where one breach can impact a number of organizations. The other is that we’re seeing more ransomware and destructive attacks than before, which are much costlier to businesses due to the disruption and downtime that follows. Twenty-eight percent of breaches were caused due to one of these two forms of disruptive attacks.”
Link here to learn more from the IBM data breach cost report.
Cyberattacks are increasing, forcing more and more businesses to demand cyber insurance coverage. However, it can be a challenge to get coverage and premiums are rising.
Jon Siegler is LogicGate’s co-founder and chief product officer. LogicGate helps ensure organizations have all the security controls needed to obtain cyber insurance.
Siegler made waves for explaining the ubiquity of the problem of compromised data.
“Even if you don’t think of yourself as a technology company, you probably have personal information and sensitive customer information that you’re storing in one place or the other, even if it’s just through your email,” he said. “Let’s say you email something to the wrong customer. That’s still technically a data breach and every company uses email today. So I think that puts it in perspective for a lot of companies.”
Read more from Siegler’s interview here.
Amazon has revamped its AWS Security Competency program with a new set of specializations, which were launched at this year’s AWS re:Inforce.
C.J. Moses is AWS chief information security officer (CISO). He made waves this week for his attempts to simplify security lingo.
“We want to assist customers in avoiding security jargon so they can pinpoint the third-party software needed to support them, all of course validated by AWS,” Moses said. “Because our AWS security competency partners are critical to extending the benefits of AWS, we took customer feedback to do a global design.”
He added: “[The] software security competency partners successfully underwent a rigorous technical and operational validation process with AWS security experts.”
Check out the AWS competencies here.
Unveiled at this year’s Microsoft Inspire, the company’s customer engagement methodology promotes a new approach. Microsoft’s direct sales force and partners now focus on consultative engagements with customers.
“It’s a consultative methodology because we’re at our best when we make technology serve business outcomes,” said Judson Althoff, EVP and chief commercial officer, who made waves for his call to action. “We start by listening and can try to understand the situational fluency and what a customer is trying to navigate in their industry, their line of work and what matters most to them.”
To learn more about Microsoft’s agenda, read Jeffrey Schwartz’s article here.
Sometimes one company loses its identity in an acquisition. In the case of Ericsson acquiring Vonage, this appears not to be the case for either.
Rory Read, Vonage’s CEO, made waves for reiterating that point.
“This partnership will strengthen our offerings to businesses across the globe by leveraging Ericsson’s leadership in 5G, global market presence and strong R&D capabilities. With the demand for UCaaS, CCaaS and communications APIs growing rapidly, the combined expertise, talent and innovation is good news for our customers and partners,” Read said.
Read the article to learn more about the $6.2 billion deal.
T-Mobile has agreed to pay $350 million to customers in a class-action lawsuit related to personal information stolen in a 2021 cyberattack.
T-Mobile disclosed the proposed settlement in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing. The lawsuit is pending in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri. The proposed settlement remains subject to preliminary and final court approval.
This is not T-Mobile’s first cyberattack rodeo. It has disclosed numerous data breaches since 2018.
Casey Ellis is founder and CTO of Bugcrowd. He made waves for his balanced assessment of T-Mobile’s predicament.
“On one hand, $350 million is a lot of money, and is a clear signal of the kinds of recovery and punitive costs which can be involved when a breach like this takes place,” he said. “On the other hand, 40 million records were involved in this breach overall. And a per-record penalty of $8.75 for losing something as impactful and difficult to protect and replace as a Social Security number seems like T-Mobile managed to get off fairly lightly here.”
Read more cybersecurity expertise about T-Mobile’s data breach here.
Verizon recently concluded the Boston portion of its nationwide National Elite VAR Roadshow, and the partners attending the roadshow included Connected Solutions Group, CTS Mobility, Industrial Networking Solutions, Mobility CG, and Source Inc.
Sarah Marsh is Verizon’s director of channel strategy and sales enablement. She said the events allow the Verizon sales team to understand the unique strengths of different partners. Marsh made waves for driving a message of collaboration between Verizon’s direct sellers and partners.
“Most of these VARs don’t have huge sales organization on their own,” she said. “So, to be able to leverage the Verizon sales team, pitching their solutions to customers across the country, is a tremendous value-add. It’s really a force multiplier partners.”
Read James Anderson’s story to learn more about the roadshow.
Verizon recently concluded the Boston portion of its nationwide National Elite VAR Roadshow, and the partners attending the roadshow included Connected Solutions Group, CTS Mobility, Industrial Networking Solutions, Mobility CG, and Source Inc.
Sarah Marsh is Verizon’s director of channel strategy and sales enablement. She said the events allow the Verizon sales team to understand the unique strengths of different partners. Marsh made waves for driving a message of collaboration between Verizon’s direct sellers and partners.
“Most of these VARs don’t have huge sales organization on their own,” she said. “So, to be able to leverage the Verizon sales team, pitching their solutions to customers across the country, is a tremendous value-add. It’s really a force multiplier partners.”
Read James Anderson’s story to learn more about the roadshow.
Channel people at AWS, Verizon, Bugcrowd and more are among the individuals making waves in the channel this week. Channel Futures’ Channel People Making Waves showcases those who have made an impact over the last seven days.
Last week the channel was rife with controversy. This week it’s a little quiet. There is one exception, however. T-Mobile is in the hot seat (again) for a 2021 cyberattack in which personal information such as social security numbers was stolen. T-Mobile has agreed to pay $350 million to customers in a class-action lawsuit. What do the experts have to say about the payout? Is it just? Find out in this edition.
Considering that, maybe it’s appropriate that one of our top stories involved an IBM report that outlined the average cost of a data breach. Can you guess the figure?
Lastly, a T-Mobile competitor is having a very good week. Our No. 1 story involves a carrier whose nationwide roadshow is fostering collaboration between direct sellers and partners.
Find out more in this week’s roundup in the slideshow above. You can find our last edition here.
Want to contact the author directly about this story? Have ideas for a follow-up article? Email Claudia Adrien or connect with her on LinkedIn. |
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