Sword & Shield CEO Shares Strategies For Sales Growth

Henderson: The continuous new ways hackers think of to cause problems. A lot of it is not technical. Businesses are still not doing the basics they should be and that were identified five years ago. Beyond that, there are new challenges on a continuing basis.

There are a lot of challenges that relate to maintaining our business and continuing our business in the industry. There's a lot of M&A going on, which means we are competing with larger entities with a lot more resources. There are also challenges as far as new technologies; you have to keep up so you can advise clients. And, to some extent, every small and midsize business faces training new employees and maintaining control of finances.

VARBusiness: How do you engage a company that may not fully understand the importance of security audits, etc.?

Henderson: Some customers have low expectations: Some know they have compliance issues and think that they'll be fixed by doing a security audit, but even after the audit, they still don't fix things. We look at telling people what they need, but then it's up to the people. A lot of it is that these companies have limited resources to operate. For them, operating on a daily basis is more important than improving security. But it's evolving: Large companies did things five years ago that midsize ones are now looking at, like information risk management.

Information risk management, is a process in which instead of saying, "We need firewall," a company looks at its information system and analyzes risk overall. You have data, some sensitive, some not so. Let's apply money where the risky stuff is, like social security numbers, health records, and so on. It's a process of looking at risk, and looking at how to protect the very sensitive stuff. It's a systematic approach. Looking more broadly at systems rather than saying we need to protect everything at the same level. Compliance regulation has driven this to a large extent. Banking regulations, health regulations [to a lesser extent] and payment card regulations are forcing companies to improve what they are doing on security front.

VARBusiness: What is the outlook for the next 12 months? What are the hot spots in the industry?

Henderson: We see continuous growth for vulnerability testing, but I there is a trend toward more encryption of data at risk and data in transition. Data loss prevention (DLP) is a really growing area that only a few vendors have solutions for. Data portability is a big issue: How do you control your data. Often, unintentional problems are created by people just trying to do their jobs. Sending data via email without encrypting it, for example. People within your company are trying to do their jobs efficiently, but they often put data at risk. It's a huge problem that's going to get bigger and bigger. More solutions are needed.

There is definitely no lack of opportunity in security. There may sometimes be a lack of solutions -- or of funds to pay for those solutions -- but never a lack of opportunity.