How To Convince Customers
That They'll Always Need Security

Page 2 of 2

How can you help organizations take cybersecurity more seriously? Help them understand :
1. the threats that exist,

2. what the risks are and how it relates to their markets.

Reading about security events in the news and sharing research reports with your customers only acts as a long sword when they require a scalpel to fully dissect their cyber security needs. Assist them with evaluating their assets, intellectual property, processes, expertise and resources so they can ascertain what’s the most valuable and invest in security solutions that meet the scope of their needs the most. Here’s where to start:

Evaluate your customers' most valuable assets and offer a customized solution to protect them.
• Assess the market and threats with your customers IT infrastructure/existing technology.
• Conduct a security audit to evaluate strengths/weaknesses and develop a plan to secure the most valuable areas for your customers.
• Look at the tools that are available.
• Look at alliances.
• Evaluate vendors’ interoperability and integration ease.

Adapt to new threats by expanding your portfolio of protection
• Can you broaden by selling adjacent technologies?
• How can you wrap services around vendor offerings?
• What are the tools/barriers to entry?

Who to choose? Finding the right vendors
• What percent of their business is channel?
• Can you continue to build your business with them?
• How deep is their threat analysis team?
• Are they global? Can they meet geographical requirements like IT support in native languages for each region?
• What percent of employees are in their R&D team (i.e. how deep is there R&D)?
• What are their key strengths? Solutions, support and expertise, etc.
• How well do they know the threats in each market and geography?
• Can they offer solutions that fit these diverse needs?

How can you prepare your customers to meet emerging threats with new technologies?
• Are your vendors flexible enough to support virtual and mobile platforms/needs?
• How well can they integrate with existing IT infrastructure and system management technologies?
• How often do they expand and update their portfolio of security solutions and products?

Proof of Concept (POC) – Why it’s important to you and your customer
• As a solution provider, you continue to show your expertise and relevance to your customer.
• POCs will demonstrate and validate the capabilities of your recommendation solution prior to full deployment and installation.
• POCs are another way of activating your professional services business unit and on-going contact with the selected vendor.

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