Solution Provider Tackles Security Threats
How does Perimeter differenciate itself in the security solutions business?
"The problem we try to solve is different from what most companies do. Most technology companies start with a specific problem in mind: Antivirus, intrusion detection, antispam. And they are very focused on that issue. We look at landscape of security. That's not how we approached it at first, but we saw a number of security technologies exploding. There seemed to be a new problem every day, and a new solution every day. It was never ending. The real problem was that companies do not have one specific problem: They have lots of problems and there are lots of solutions.
Seems overwhelming.
One problem was how does a company use a broad array of security technologies, without driving itself crazy. There are more than 100 security technologies, never mind brands. There are always going to be new problems. Spam one day, phishing the next. The average large company uses 32 different security vendors to cobble together one solution. There's no shortage of good technology. Perimeter eSecurity aims to solve the problem of how to make it easy to provide a broad array of security tech to clients.
Sounds like you simplify the solution
Our network security utility tries to make security as available as the cable company makes movies over the television. The cable company offers content and organizes the content and presents it to you. That's what our clients look to us for. We are their partners. Perimeter's on-demand solutions are offered on a Network (in-the-cloud), so there's no equipment at the customer's premises. By doing it in the cloud we build a certain solution once and let a lot of clients use it. They don't have to look at vendors, demo product, wonder how it works with other technologies that are similar but different. They don't want an IT project, that's our job. If they decide they want to stop spam, we'll do it. If the next day they want to stop phishing, we do that. It's like picking pay per view from cable. One of our catch phrases is, "no assembly required."
Many solution providers explain that it's a hard sell to convince their customers that they need security. Even in this day and age
We don't try to convince people they need security. We sell to people who already believe, and we explain that we can solve their security issues more easily [than the competition]. We tend to focus on industries that have a high degree of regulation, the nature of those industries requires them to be more sensitive, for example, banking and financial services. We partner with those with industry experts. As a "utility," it's very easy for people to partner with us and offer our service, so our partners include other VARs and solution providers. Our target market already knows they have a problem. We're not doing missionary work. We sell lots of different technologies, and we are not trying to sell you something, or convince you of a problem. Security vendors spend a lot of time convincing you. We know you have lots of problems: Your number one problem is putting a solution together. We can attack any one of those, or a combination.
What are some of the biggest concerns in terms of security?
Phishing in the financial services world is one of that industry's biggest concerns. Believe it or not, general Web surfing is pretty hazardous. Now viruses can be gotten from Web sites. Some viruses are extremely targeted. There is something now called "spear phishing," where [the emails] target a certain type of person. I just got an email in the form of a subpoena; it had the name of a law firm that I recognized on it, one of the top 25 firms. So, I get this subpoena, open it up and blew up my laptop. So they are very sophisticated to fool even someone like me who sees this all the time. The spear phishers get hold of mailing lists and when you receive the email, it's so specific to you, and you can't think it's a scam.