In this lockdown period, wherein enterprises have enforced work- from-home for their employees, Rajeev Mamidanna, Co-founder and CEO, Technosprout Systems, believes that remote support is critical and organisations need to deploy solutions that will enable secure identity and access management
As a solution provider, how do you assess the current scenario and the lessons learned? What’s your preparedness to handle such unprecedented situations?
Having a background of data management and data availability, the basis of solutions support at our organisation is clear – always think of the worst-case scenario and be prepared to tackle it. Our solutions, support and internal infrastructure are always based on this. Since we are a young organisation, we have had the option of using SaaS based applications for all our internal needs. HR, CRM, SFA, accounting, collaboration, compute and storage that we use are all on cloud. This ensures that we are operating from anywhere.
Apart from Privileged Identity Management / Privileged Access Management (PIM/PAM), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) and cloud security, our major focus has been the professional services. As a result, we always had a team of resources certified, skilled and ready to be deployed. During the Corona pandemic, we have continued to provide customers with the best of remote support. A couple of customers earlier did not have a DR for their PIM/PAM solution; however, they have now realised its importance. We are remotely helping them with it. Also, a couple of customers had planned upgrades and we are on schedule without any hindrance.
How are you safeguarding your customers’ assets / premises in order to ensure continuity of their business operations?
As a policy, we always advise the customer to deploy a DR setup for all their PIM/PAM deployments. We generally do a health check every quarter. After a situational assessment, we have changed it to every month. Also, irrespective of when the customer health-check was done, we are doing it for all our customers.
With the sudden rise in cyber threats and attacks during this period, how are you ensuring your customers’ data is safe and helping them mitigate risks?
For our customers who have workloads on cloud, we conveyed our readiness to do cloud security assessments. This will help them understand the vulnerabilities existing around. Also, for their PIM/PAM setup, we have offered to run a Discovery tool to ensure they also understand the effectiveness of their existing PIM/PAM solution. In this period, wherein remote support is critical and the customers’ workforce is working from home, PIM/PAM and MFA solutions form the backbone of the customer’s security infrastructure.
During this time of total lockdown, how are you ensuring 24×7 service and support to your customers?
We work on a solution similar to what ERP is doing for the enterprises worldwide. We deploy PIM/PAM solutions for organisations, which means, we have to always have a helpdesk and support capabilities. Hence, even in normal circumstances, our whole support infrastructure is based on 24×7 operations and support.
Highlight some of the challenges being faced in providing service or support to the customers in this period?
In the initial stage of the lockdown, the focus of the IT teams was on working closely with business and HR in ensuring every employee has infrastructure to access the company systems from home, efficiently. For the initial weeks, the focus was on providing end-points and connectivity with moderate security. Now the situation has stabilised, the customers are ensuring that their infrastructure is absolutely safe.
When the lockdown came into force, most of the organisations were undergoing compliance audits. That took a hit because of the additional load of ensuring people to work from home. The positive to be drawn out of this is that now, with the relaxation and extension of deadlines, and the experience of sending people to WFH, the IT and security teams will be better prepared and get good time to assess and take corrective measures.
Soon we will witness business models changing, wherein there will be far more remote workers in any organisation. In such scenario, what are the best cyber security practices that your customers should adopt? How would you, as a solution provider, compliment in such a scenario?
We are in the business of identity and access management – it is like the ERP of security. Hence, we recommend every organisation, big or small, to deploy solutions that will enable secure identity and access management, which is very critical in these tough times. Besides, enterprises have to use solutions that are world-class, like a combination of CyberArk and RSA. For instance, for managed services, customers will be working with their own vendors, who will have access to the systems as well. Here, customers need to ensure that this access is regulated and monitored.
We also believe the regulatory bodies will have more confidence in SaaS-based security solutions because this takes load off the IT teams from an infrastructure management point of view. Above all, we are always on the lookout for good talent, and we are open hiring talent if we find someone inclined towards the right direction.
What’s your message to customers, so that they are assured of full support today and in the days to come?
For us, it is like business-as-usual, as a lot of our support is remote. At this time, we have assured our customers that we are open 24×7 for support. We are also providing customers the assurance that if they have an audit and compliance requirement or a DR drill, we are on standby. For us, it has always been ‘lookout’ and never a ‘lockout.’
