This article appeared in News in the Channel magazine issue #34
Cybersecurity threats are growing quickly, and businesses want protection – but tailored to their unique needs. To this end, Kyocera has just launched Kyocera Cyber, a dedicated brand to do just that for mid-market companies and above.
This year has seen headlines made repeatedly with several large and well-known businesses being hit by widescale cyberattacks that have, in some cases, cost the business hundreds of millions in lost revenue and reputational damage.
Understandably, businesses of all sizes are now looking to ensure their operations are as protected as possible. But alongside this, many businesses – especially at the mid-market and upwards – want a security provision that is tailored to their needs, rather than an off-the-shelf solution.
To address this, Kyocera has launched a new brand, Kyocera Cyber, dedicated to providing the bespoke solutions customers are demanding.
“We already had our business in the UK, which included IT managed services, and we were seeing the increasing threat landscape around cybersecurity,” explains Andrew Smith, chief information and security officer at Kyocera Cyber. “Our customers were asking us what capability we had and what we could offer in this space, so we set about creating a dedicated cyber security operation about two and a half years ago. Over that time, we built our capability, mainly through investments, and brought a lot of new skills into the business.
“We also noticed that customers didn’t want to buy cybersecurity just from their managed service provider (MSP) who has started to do a bit of cybersecurity. Our customer base wanted to buy cybersecurity services from specialist companies – companies that can clearly evidence that they have invested in this space and are experts in it. That’s when we recognised that we needed to create a dedicated brand that represented the investment that we had made and are continuing to make here at Kyocera.”
The result is Kyocera Cyber, which was launched earlier this year and is aimed at businesses with upwards of 50 seats. “We saw in our market research that smaller companies are quite happy to get their cybersecurity services from their MSP,” explains Andrew. “But as soon as you go above 50-60 seats, companies are looking for a specialist that can show they’ve invested in and understand the threat landscape.”
Wide threat landscape
The launch comes at the right time. The threat landscape is larger than ever in terms of the number and variety of threats posed to businesses. “The threat landscape is in an unprecedented moment,” says Andrew. “Digital adoption post-COVID is going up significantly, and the problem is IT teams are moving more into a transformational space with IT being used as a transformation engine and an enabler to evolve businesses. But with this increased role, we’re finding that IT teams are subsequently overwhelmed with workloads.
“When we’re speaking with our customers, we see that they are dealing with cyber hygiene, IT patching, hybrid working and increasingly they have IoT devices now as well as networked devices. Back in the day, everything used to be behind the firewall, so as long as you looked after the firewall, everything was okay. That world isn’t there anymore and it is a lot to deal with.”
Proactive security
This widened threat landscape means that security needs to be proactive. “Users are signing up to things, more data is being created but where’s it going? That’s why IT needs to be proactive in managing their threat landscape that’s also relevant for their business,” says Andrew.
“Reactive cybersecurity isn’t working anymore. You’ve got to live in this space where you’re almost assuming you are going to have an attack, and you’ve got to make sure your doors and windows are locked and make it as difficult as possible for attackers to use you as a target. Obviously, nothing is foolproof in the cybersecurity space, but you want to make it so difficult that they move on to the next target.”
In some cases, keeping up with security needs are beyond the skills of in-house IT teams – or they simply don’t have the time. “We have seen customers who have recognised early doors that they haven’t got the skills in-house and therefore are happy to outsource,” says Andrew. “Then we’ve seen IT teams overwhelmed and it’s a real struggle for them to keep up with everything and take that additional workload on top of ensuring IT is an enabler to the business, so they are now turning to managed security operations instead, such as Kyocera Cyber.
“SaaS security, identity security, third party risk is all growing. In collaboration with our partners, key providers such as Microsoft, CrowdStrike and Torq, we’re continuously evolving our security proposition, which is crucial as we are continuously making it more difficult for our customers to be a victim of these attacks. With our architecture powered by Torq, we’re uniquely spaced to really offer different solutions tailored to customers.”
AI impact
AI is crucial to defences, and this is something that has been core to the development of Kyocera Cyber from the start. “Attackers are freely using AI now, which is opening the population of attackers to be much broader,” explains Andrew. “Often when I speak to people about this, they think hackers are these uber technical guys that know computers inside out. But with the advent of AI, you don’t necessarily have to be.
“AI is being used by adversaries to attack companies, but vice versa too – our protection approach utilises the same technical ability that’s in the market. Utilising AI allows you to take data points at vast scale and really see whether something is happening within a customer environment and make sure you’re getting real life data points to make fast decisions to stop attacks or improve an environment. It’s that vast scale and speed that really is pitching cybersecurity services ahead of those that don’t utilise AI.”
Andrew explains that one way AI helps is that automated systems can analyse users’ behaviour, flag up any usual activity on a user’s profile and interact with the user to verify if it is them or not. “In the past, an agent has had to deal with that,” he adds. “But now with hyper automation and AI, I can have our platform interact with a user without an agent touching it. That gives an agent, once they get the case, a wealth of information to make informed decisions quickly, so breaches can be shut down before they get to do much damage.”
Torq sense
To help Kyocera Cyber to scale at the rate it required, it has partnered with Torq. “When we started two and a half years ago, we knew that Kyocera had a good customer base in mid- to enterprise-based organisations,” explains Andrew. “But what we didn’t want to experience was the same pitfalls that our customers were in their operations, such as not being able to scale quick enough and struggling to keep the cybersecurity service relevant to the IT operation.
“We were hearing from customers that were outsourcing these services that they were offered a one size fits all package, but what they wanted was to have it tailored to their needs.
“That posed a real big problem for us – to scale and provide a tailored offering is a tough proposition, so we went to the market. There are various providers that do hyper automation and AI. We wanted to have a platform that was integrated into our architecture that allowed us to customise solutions for our customers without breaking our operation. That’s where Torq came in to give Kyocera that capability.
“The big difference of Torq for us was they matched our energy and the pace we wanted to move at. They wanted a partnership where they grew with us. Their technology, I would say, is above the competition, but most importantly they were passionate about partnerships and what we were trying to do in the market.”
Positive response
While Kyocera Cyber is new to the market, the response to it so far from customers has been overwhelmingly positive, says Andrew. “Customers are saying that it’s cool to see a corporate of our size be agile enough to start a brand and react to customer needs in this way. People have been impressed and are keen to understand more because they can see that we have built Kyocera Cyber from the ground up and it is based on expertise in security.
“Of course, Kyocera had funding to do that from the parent company, whereas startups would struggle more, but it’s been built around that customer voice from the outset. New customers are also impressed that we are moving into this space and doing it at scale and investing, rather than just putting a shop front on it.
“We have our heritage too; Kyocera is known as a very safe, reliable corporate business in various aspects of IT and print, which gives security to the customer to buy cybersecurity services from us. We also have the accreditations that smaller operations struggle with and the financial backing to ensure we can scale as necessary.”
Plans
Andrew says that the immediate plans for Kyocera Cyber is to continue to get the messages out about the brand and how they are disrupting the market by offering tailored cybersecurity services that are embedded into customers’ businesses from the outset. “What we offer is differentiated by the value they bring to raise people’s cybersecurity posture overall,” he adds.
“We don’t sell a service to a customer and just speak to them when they get hit, we’re in continuous contact with them about what they are doing about their weaknesses, how they are reviewing their weaknesses and even their strengths to make sure they’re still strengths. It’s a real, true partnership we have with our customers. That’s what we’re focusing on, as well as continuing to grow the business under this dedicated brand.
“But we are also continuing to innovate as well – the threats continue to evolve and change and therefore so are our solutions. For instance, we are rapidly producing dedicated solutions for the public sector space – schools and the like – as they are coming under increasing attack too and Kyocera has a strong heritage in the education sector.”
Andrew is confident that the positive launch of Kyocera Cyber will be built on as its services become more proven in the market, and ensure their customers are not added to the list of businesses that have fallen victim to a cyberattack.
