Exploring Cybersecurity with Difenda

💭CHARTER ENGAGE: KNOW IT Podcast – Exploring Cybersecurity with Difenda

In today's digital age, ensuring business continuity after a cyberattack is not just a priority but a critical imperative, highlighting the universal need for a robust cybersecurity plan. 

Discover valuable lessons and case studies of companies defending themselves against cyber risk as well as pivotal strategies for rebooting operations post-cyber attack, with our partner, Difenda. 

Hear from our guests, who deal with cybersecurity in the field every day, including Derek Nugent, the Vice President Revenue & Business Strategy for Difenda; and for Charter, our Security Practice Lead, Krisann McDonnell; Ronnie Scott, our Chief Technology Officer; and Mark George, the Vice President, Business Transformation & Prairies Market Leader, as they discuss the importance of Actionable Data and Visibility in the Microsoft Ecosystem; Developing a Cybersecurity Plan; Difenda’s Unique Approach in the Market; Starting Small with Discovery Sessions; Finding Gaps; Cybersecurity Best Practices; how Security is Business Centric; IT/OT Cybersecurity Services; Threat Prevention Innovation, and benefits of Charter working with Difenda.

Charter’s commitment as a reseller and solutions integrator in networking, IT, and security products, coupled with our comprehensive professional services, aims to empower organizations to navigate business transformation successfully by aligning people, processes, and technology for enhanced resilience and operational performance. This podcast series, our blogs, and webinars/ seminars are ways that we champion these messages every day. We hope you enjoy this episode of Charter Engage: Know IT!

[Approx. listen time: 40 minutes]

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Transcript

Charter Engage: Know IT Podcast – 

Exploring Cybersecurity with Difenda

April 17th, 2024

[Recorded in Calgary, AB, Mississauga, ON, and Phoenix, AZ]

Presenters - (in order of Appearance)

–- Mark George, Charter, Vice President, Business Transformation & Prairies Market Leader, Moderator

–- Krisann McDonnell, Charter, Security Practice Lead

 - Derek Nugent, Difenda, Vice President Revenue & Business Strategy

- Ronnie Scott, Charter, Chief Technology Officer

Agenda -

–  Introduction to the Cybersecurity Podcast

–  The Charter and Difenda Partnership

–  Actionable Data and Visibility in the Microsoft Ecosystem

–  Developing a Cybersecurity Plan

–  Difenda’s Unique Approach in the Market

–  Starting Small with Discovery Sessions

–  Finding Gaps

–  Cybersecurity Best Practices

–  Security is Business Centric

–  IT/OT Cybersecurity Services

–  Threat Prevention Innovation

–  Conclusion

Introduction to the Cybersecurity Podcast

[00:07] Mark George, Charter, Vice President, Business Transformation & Prairies Market Leader, Moderator

Welcome to the latest in Charter’s Ongoing Podcast series called “Charter Engage: Know IT.”  I’m your host, Mark George, the leader of our business transformation team and the Prairies Market Leader. Today’s discussion builds on a couple of podcast episodes that we produced last Fall, on cybersecurity. 

We previously shared our thoughts on best practices and how to plan and execute a cybersecurity strategy that protects the people, the assets, and the devices in an organization. We also answered the question, “Why is it mandatory that every organization increase their cyber aware capabilities and the mindsets across the whole organization?” We demonstrated that awareness includes information on threats to your networks, the risks that are introduced, and mitigating those risks using security best practices to guide behaviour. 

Mindset considers a layered approach to thinking holistically about cybersecurity and the engineering protection standards that are required for data, applications, information, and Cloud Services. When put together, it is an ongoing process of educating and training employees about the threats that lurk in cyber space; how to prevent such threats; and most importantly, what to do in the event of a security incident. 

Today, we're going to take the conversation up a notch, and we're going to consider the fact that a company's ability to ensure business continuity is essential following a breach. There is not one meeting that I attend today, with various executive leaders and technology leaders, both in the public sector and in the enterprise world, that we don't talk about the importance of a cybersecurity plan. Often, it begins with looking at insurance coverage. But it also leads to “What are the key elements that are in place to re establish operations after a cyber attack? It's amazing to me, but some still believe that it's not going to happen to them. But all the industry data points to the fact that you are either an organization that has been hacked, or you soon will be. Cybersecurity statistics indicating that there are 2,200 cyberattacks per day, with a cyberattack happening every 39 seconds on average. [1] In the United States, a data breach costs an average of just under $10 million. And cyber crime is predicted to cost over $10 trillion, by next year. [2] 

Why are we talking about cybersecurity today? For Charter, we’ve been building over 25 years as a reseller of networking, IT, security, and collaboration products. We continue to develop a comprehensive set of solutions integration business services that are focused on delivering professional services in critical areas, such as Application Development; App Modernization; Business Architecture; Cybersecurity; Governance, Risk, and Compliance, and the two are very linked; and an Augmentation Approach to Staffing. To do this, Charter will take responsibility for customers achieving business outcomes; delivering consultative subject matter and solutions expertise to help build a roadmap for a successful Business Transformation journey. 

We know from experience that to build better organizations and, quite frankly, enable the transformation process, it requires the alignment of people, process, and technologies to drive more effective communications; increase operational performance; and modernize the organization. 

Today’s session is going to feature one of our strategic partners, Difenda www.difenda.com  , and the work that our organizations do together to help customers defend themselves against cyber risk and deliver outcomes from innovative cybersecurity services. So today, I'm joined by three guests: Derek Nugent, the Vice President of Revenue and Business Strategy for Difenda; Ronnie Scott, Charter’s Chief Technology Officer; and Krisann McDonnal, the Security Practice Leader at Charter. We couldn't ask for a better team to help us take the whole cybersecurity discussion up another notch. 

So, Krisann, let’s start with you. You’ve been in the cybersecurity industry for many years. And after you joined Charter, you made the decision to incorporate Difenda into our product and service portfolio. Can you give our listeners some insight into why you chose to partner with Difenda, and the work that we’ve been doing, so far, in the market since we signed our partner agreement? 

The Charter and Difenda Partnership

[5:59] Krisann McDonnell, Charter, Security Practice Lead

Thank you, Mark.

Difenda and I have a bit of a back story, in a sense, that we were competitors, in a previous life. So, bringing Difenda on, was through [the] experience of facing them in the field – and losing to them. Regularly. Derek is smiling with that – but true. 

Difenda is, and through experience, like, not only did this come from Derek and I have many contacts in our Rolodex that are similar, including some of his accounts were personal CIO friends of mine, that rave about Difenda services. And I had no choice, as a competitor, to really understand who they are in the marketplace. And so, this decision was not made lightly. 

Difenda is a best-in-class organization in the Microsoft ecosystem – led by Derek Nugent, here, who is a top-level strategist. Yes, I am a big Derek fan. And, I’m proud to be partnered with them (and Derek did not pay me to say that.) 

[7:01] Mark George, Charter, Vice President, Business Transformation & Prairies Market Leader, Moderator

Well, Derek, you couldn’t have asked for a better setup. So, it’s only logical that I say to you, “Well, Difenda could have partnered with a lot of different other organizations. You chose to partner with Difenda. And, obviously, the insights that your organization has; the go-to-market strategies that you have, that you’ve helped craft; the alignment that you have with Microsoft. (And, I know, Ronnie and I are going to talk a little more about that in a few minutes.) Can you give us a sense, then, how the work you're doing with Charter helps to create a more mature security posture for an organization, as we work together in the market?”

[7:44] Derek Nugent, Difenda, Vice President Revenue & Business Strategy

Yeah, thanks very much. 

I think Krisann said it perfectly, and that is, “We take our craft very seriously.” And we understand that organizations, still to this day, struggle with how to mature their organizations. And things are changing drastically, with AI coming into the mix, and with so many bespoke or best-of-breed technologies, it just made sense that organizations need partners, like ourselves, at Difenda. And that’s why Charter, for us, was a very key component to how we go to market. 

The other key component to that was Difenda is very specialized, and there's a lot of components in the security maturity around the things that Difenda doesn't do. And this is where Charter is a great augmentation and helpful partner to provide customers a holistic solution. And being able to have one partner, one person to go to for not only today, but also in the future - which was a key component to our decision making process. 

[8:40] Mark George, Charter, Vice President, Business Transformation & Prairies Market Leader, Moderator

So, Ronnie, as the Chief Technology Officer for a growing business, like Charter, obviously, as Krisann alluded to, there’s many competitors in this space - we chose to partner with Difenda. Clearly, there’s an alignment with Microsoft, and I'm sure that had some influence as you, and Kelly, and the team strategized about how this should come together in the market. Maybe give our listeners a sense of some of the items you had to consider; how it fits into the Microsoft framework, or landscape; and then, more importantly, I’ve got a follow up question I have already thought of for you. So, let’s start there first.

Actionable Data and Visibility in the Microsoft Ecosystem

[9:19] Ronnie Scott, Charter, Chief Technology Officer

So, first of all, thanks Mark, for having me back. I love being part of these sessions. They’re a lot of fun.

When we looked at what we do, and let’s be clear, Charter is a security company. We have a security practice, we have leaders, we have technologists, we have architects, we have a variety of different skill sets across many parts of the security landscape. And, as an organization, who is very strong on the networking space, particularly, we’re looking, and saying, “Where are our gaps.” And here’s the big gap. We’re very good at capturing a lot of events and putting little tools and little controls in different places in your infrastructure and your network. We know about firewalls, we know about intrusion prevention, we know about endpoint protection, and all those kinds of things. But ultimately, what we are creating is thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, potentially millions of events a day that are just going somewhere into a log. And one of the things I’ve become very aware of, as CTO, and the IT Director for our organization, is there’s a lot we don’t know. And, by having tools, like Difenda, we get the single most important thing, I believe, which is visibility. It allows our customers to see what’s going on. It allows them to make informed choices. It allows them to take data and turn it into information. And so, when we look across the marketplace, we’re looking at organizations who care about their customers’ security and posture, and turning all of that data they’ve got, somewhere in a log, into useful, actionable information.

And so, I think Difenda was a very easy fit. It’s very, very reputable in the organization.  And it fits really well into that Microsoft space, as you talked about. And I’ll let the team talk more about what they do and how they do it. But the Microsoft part of the game is enormous. There are so many desktops, and applications, systems, and capabilities, that exist inside the Microsoft framework, that exist both on-premise and in the cloud. And with all of that noise, how do you get good information? And so, it was an easy choice. 

Developing a Cybersecurity Plan

[11:31] Mark George, Charter, Vice President, Business Transformation & Prairies Market Leader, Moderator

So, I’m interested in developing this a little bit more. Maybe raising it up a notch. So, data is the issue that we're all concerned about. Trying to figure out “How to do we protect the important assets of our organization?“ Because, as we all understand, it provides a competitive advantage to the company, or the not-for-profit, or the public sector client. But, in parallel, we also know that there's this threat landscape, out there, that’s increasing every day. All three of you have talked and alluded to that.

So, Ronnie, maybe as a follow up question, what are the important ingredients, or the critical components, of a cybersecurity plan? And, ultimately, obviously, it's Charter and Difenda that are going to be involved in putting that together. Because, in the end, it’s the execution. “How do you protect the data? How do you detect exfiltration? How do you respond in the event of a threat?“

I want to, just, lay the groundwork for this. What are the other components, because we hear these other technical terms - firewalls, and blah, blah, blah. But at the end of the day, these are really important parts of a cybersecurity plan. Can you help our listeners, kind of, frame that, maybe?

[12:50] Ronnie Scott, Charter, Chief Technology Officer

Sure, sure. So, at the risk of sounding a little boring because I’ve said this before in these podcasts, and I’ll say it again, I’m sure. 

The first part is that there’s a plan. And not having a plan, Is not having a plan. And, so, I think having some structure to that, having some guidance - that is important. 

So, we repeatedly talk to our customers about those basic five pillars of security. We have to be able to assess and understand where our organization is at a given point in time. Then, based on what we know about our organization, we can actually begin to put controls in place to protect it. So, the next phase is to protect. Once that is in place, then we have to see if there is something bad going on. You’ll all know that as the detect phase. And that’s exactly where Difenda is going to step in and begin to give us detection capabilities to see what's going on. But of course, if something happens, we now have to be able to respond. And again, that’s where tools like Difenda step in and actually help you make choices, or even react to the situation in real time. And, heaven forbid, something gets damaged or if there is injury caused to your organization or anything else, we ultimately have to recover. 

So, we still need plans that go beyond just “How do I stop the attack?” to “Do I have the backups and recovery in place?” So, five simple steps. And, in fact, the standards mentions a sixth one, at pillar zero, which is “Governance and Policy,” up front. [3] So, having some rules to wrap around all that is a pretty good piece of the puzzle, as well. 

So, if we can take those standard, well-understood capabilities and practices and align them to our technology and our business needs, then we can start building something that actually solves our business problem of keeping our data safe. 

Difenda’s Unique Approach in the Market

[14:46] Mark George, Charter, Vice President, Business Transformation & Prairies Market Leader, Moderator

Derek, from Difenda’s perspective, then, understanding that there's these different pillars, or phases, in an approach in building a comprehensive cybersecurity plan, when you look at Difenda’s role in the marketplace, are there particular market segments that you’re most successful in, or sizes of organizations? Because my sense is this is industry agnostic; this is company-size agnostic. It's just, fundamentally, it doesn't matter where you are, you almost either geographically, having this in place is kind of, going to make the CEO sleep better at night knowing that Difenda and Charter are there to help them work through this process. 

Maybe share some of your thoughts around the go-to-market strategy for Difenda; how you guys fit; where you like to compete, especially in the world? And at the end of the day, maybe even comment on some of the things that Ronnie just outlined for our listeners.

[15:56] Derek Nugent, Difenda, Vice President Revenue & Business Strategy

Yeah, it's a perfect segway. 

One of the things that Ronnie said is “You have to build a plan to be successful.” I live and breathe by a quote that Zig Ziglar, kind of, sent out a long while ago, and that was “You were born to win, but to be a winner you must plan to win, prepare to win, and expect to win.” And the same thing in security, no matter what you do in life, it’s one of those things, is that the only way that you can actually be prepared to win is you have to actually put preparation into that. And a key component into how Difenda, kind of, approaches the market (and I joke around with the group; I’ve joked around with a lot of my internal colleagues), and that is in the past, security was very heavy into different industries specifically forced with regulation. (i.e., financial institutions, privacy-specific institutions, and manufacturing-specific institutions), where there was a guiding light or regulation that everyone needed to follow, not wanted to follow. Things have changed drastically over the last five years, 10 years. 

It’s no longer a want, it’s definitely need. And everyone is taking that into account. So, the risk to the business is much higher. It’s actually being discussed at a board-level now, where it used to be discussed more on a security level. 

And things are just drastically changing. So, at Difenda, what we did, was we were founded in 2008. We’ve always been focused on cybersecurity, specifically around services. And as we evolved, when 2019 hit, Sentinel, Microsoft Sentinel specifically, was coming to market. So, we were working heavily with the Microsoft folks to drive feedback and expertise on what that product could look like, as they came to market. And the reason why we started to get involved with that was because we saw the larger picture, which was platform; consolidation; transformation; visibility. Like you said from the beginning, that’s where we saw everyone going. 

And the other key component, too, which was something that everyone talks to, in every walk of like, and that’s budgets, right. “How do I maximize a budget or a plan to be able to get the best output?” And, quite frankly, when you look at Microsoft and the amount of billions of dollars (upwards of 10 Billion dollars, now, putting it into their platform; their technologies; and the things that they’re bringing to market, it made sense for Difenda, saying “Let’s go all in.” And be able to provide our customers subject-matter expertise, not only knowing cybersecurity and the fundamentals, there, but to leverage the people, process, technology (in this case, the technology piece) to be able to close those gaps; maximize maturity; gain visibility; and drive consolidation with their budgets. [4]

So no longer are we talking about, “Hey, by the way, these best-of-breed technologies, or these top-level-quadrant technologies, you should buy fourteen of these.” We’re saying, “Microsoft has a driving force to a platform that organizations should maximize their investment in; close those gaps; get better with maturity; and, more importantly, drive visibility to its highest level, [so] that the organization can be secure. [5]

So, long story, is that we’re not really seeing a specific industry. As you said, it’s a big component of many industries. But more and more people are saying, “I don’t have the time, money, and people to be able to maximize my investments in multiple different products; I want to consolidate; and I want someone there to help me be able to power my output with the investments I am making.”

Starting Small with Discovery Sessions

[19:38] Mark George, Charter, Vice President, Business Transformation & Prairies Market Leader, Moderator

So, Krisann, let’s drill down on that a little bit more. One of the ongoing topics in all of Charter’s podcast series is “Think big, start small, don’t be afraid to fail.” [6] In fact, fail quickly. Pivot so that you can scale faster. In the cybersecurity world, one of the things that we’re seeing when people say “Ok, I don’t even know what I have today.” I know, as you and I work together in the market, we suggest a Cybersecurity Readiness Assessment. [7] Is that a good place to start, from your perspective? Is it, kind of, answering the question “Start small”? Because, to Derek’s point, what we need to understand is where the gaps are, and then how do we work together in the market to fill some of those gaps.

[20:33] Krisann McDonnell, Charter, Security Practice Lead

Ah, yes. So “Discovery Sessions” are very important. As we all know, security is no longer just an anti-virus and a firewall, anymore. It’s very complex. And doing discovery sessions and recommending solutions with the gaps, and roadmaps, and the business cases around that. Like, not only what those gaps are, but an order, and what it would cost to be able to mitigate those gaps. So, it gives organizations a direction to follow and understand why they are following it. So, it really helps non-technical decision makers make technical decisions. And it bridges the gaps between business and IT. 

And one of the things that many organizations with the Microsoft solution don’t necessarily understand, on the surface, is that as they are moving into E5 licensing [8] and eliminating gaps, overlaps, complexity, and costs, they are also mitigating more controls for the money. And many organizations don’t necessarily know that. 

And part of the discovery sessions is explaining the value for the dollar in consolidation. And when Microsoft did the rethink with consolidation – and it was done because the best of breed scenario, the bad actors were still winning. Huh, bottom line. 

Derek, I don’t know if you have anything to add. Ronnie, or anything to add to that. But yes, that’s why we do discovery sessions at Charter.

[22:03] Derek Nugent, Difenda, Vice President Revenue & Business Strategy

I think it’s a key component to discovering, and again, with leveraging both organizations in the mind, and the tenure of resources that we bring to the table, we’re able to help, together and collectively, provide organizations a different way. Right? And those assessments are very key to the success of being prepared so that you can execute accordingly. There’s nothing worse than saying “Hey Mrs/ Mr CFO, I need some money to be able to go in and help mature my organization. But don’t worry, I have no plan.” That makes no sense, either.

And again, collectively, as two organizations coming together into one, we’re now able to help organizations be prepared. And those assessments are key to the success, so that again, you’re taking that one proactive approach to mitigating that potential threat.

Finding Gaps

[22:52] Ronnie Scott, Charter, Chief Technology Officer

And if I just add, in our organization, the one thing we all have to always remember is “we don’t know what we don’t know, and we can be blind to our own blindness.” And it’s critical, sometimes, to get someone to come outside and work through you and say, “what are the gaps you aren’t aware of?” And that can be so enlightening and so enabling to have someone say “These are the gaps, and these are the places we need to fill in.” And that will give you so much more confidence, as an organization. It’s not just you. It’s not all on your shoulders. You now can share that burden with others. 

[23:38] Mark George, Charter, Vice President, Business Transformation & Prairies Market Leader, Moderator

Well, Ronnie, I know Krisann and I have been working together on a particular client here in Calgary. And what became evident to us when we did that discovery session, or that assessment where the gaps are, is that they hadn’t even thought about their awareness training for their employees. They hadn’t even thought about the broader governance, risk, and compliance policies and procedures – at all. Like, it wasn’t even on their radar screen. Or even, I think, Krisann, the whole idea of a business continuity plan. You’ve got this thriving oilfield service business and at the end of the day you have this gap. And they hadn’t even thought about it. 

And, again, I’m delighted because I think this podcast is timely. Because in thinking about what we do together with Difenda in the market, and how the set of products and services that we are offering can hopefully start to, obviously, fill some of those gaps or, maybe, help our clients address them in a collaborative way. Do you guys have an opinion on that?

[24:34] Ronnie Scott, Charter, Chief Technology Officer

So, I will just add that let’s say we know this idea that you shouldn’t be letting people access your organization from remote locations, and so on. So it’s quite easy for us to come up with rules. “We’re not going to let people from embargoed or high-risk countries into the organization.” But who is looking at your logs to see if we’re seeing 10, 20 different logins from 10 trusted countries? Because the hackers know that we’re blocking them from untrusted places. They’re just as capable of using a VPN as we are. And they are able to go and find ways to foil that. But who’s looking for that? And likewise, if people are exfiltrating data out of your organization, there’s lots of telltale signs that they’re exporting emails, or they’re forwarding emails to odd places. Who is looking at your logs to just see if bad behaviour is happening? And this is where these discovery sessions highlight these gaps that no one is thinking about. And then, we can apply the control and the tool to help you deal with it. 

Cybersecurity Best Practices

[25:37] Mark George, Charter, Vice President, Business Transformation & Prairies Market Leader, Moderator

Krisann, you know, one of the trends, obviously, in the marketplace today is that a cybersecurity plan has to cover both the IT and OT environments. And cybersecurity is clearly a 24 by 7, by 365-day job. At the end of the day, as you’re working with clients in the marketplace, what are some of the best practices that you’re seeing? Are you seeing this, kind of, enterprise view? Because historically, the IT world and the OT world were very, kind of – there’s a big wall between the two. What are you kind of seeing from the market perspective as you look across the country and work with customers?

[26:16] Krisann McDonnell, Charter, Security Practice Lead

Well, the IT and OT world are really starting to come to the surface with breaches because a lot of IT and OT environments are still on the network, mainly because organizations are starting to want analytics from those environments - and then they expose them to the threat actors by doing that, especially when they don’t do it safely.

The reality, in Canada, is that the odds of a breach, no matter the business I’m in, is 1 out of 12. [9] And that’s the reality. And if my posture isn’t very good, obviously, those odds are higher. 

So, what I’m seeing, for example, is Derek will be able to talk to this a little bit more because they have an expertise in securing IT and OT environments with Difenda for OT and Difenda for IoT, and I’m going to pass that to him to talk about in a second. But one of the things that I see a lot of, which really surprises me, is how organizations today don’t have an IR plan, an Incident Response plan in place with a vendor. [10] I was shocked, actually, to see how many don’t have that in place. 

And the reality of that is when a catastrophic breach happens, and again, it’s not if it’s when, breaches like a “zero-day” attack where it hits multiple organizations at the same time. And I don’t think many organizations realize that if you don’t have an incident response plan, and you’re not working with a vendor with an incident response plan, is that all of a sudden if you come in, let’s say on a Monday morning, and you’re locked down, and you’re inoperable, and if you were to call someone, like Derek, or Difenda, and say, “Hey, you know my organization is locked down, we can’t operate.” And the first question out of our mouths is “are you a customer?” “No, I’m not a customer.” “Well, I have 10 organizations, just like you, that are before you. And that’s great, but we have time for you on Friday morning. We’ll send you a retainer SOW and, you know, please give us $20,000 up front, and we’ll get back to you Friday morning.” “But we’re losing a $100,000.00 a day.” “Yes, but you’re not a customer and this has hit everybody.”

And so, not having an organization, not having a plan in Incident Response is a really big thing. And number one, it provides an SLA (Service Level Agreement) with a vendor, such as Difenda, and it also gives you a pre-negotiated rate. Because if you just come up off the street, SOC vendors are going to say, you know “Hey, that will be $500 an hour,” because you’re not a customer. And so, I see this a lot.

And then, just talking specifically about IoT and OT security, I’d like to pass the baton to Derek.

Security is Business Centric

[28:58] Derek Nugent, Difenda, Vice President Revenue & Business Strategy

I would agree with you wholeheartedly. It’s funny, I always say, “When’s the last time you walked into a school to ask someone in grade 1, or younger, what do you do when the fire drill goes?” And everyone, no matter what, can explain exactly what they need to do every single time. If you were to get caught on fire, what do you do? “Stop, drop, and roll.” You’re good to go. But yet, when something happens from a cybersecurity incident perspective, everyone looks at the Security Director, Security Information Officer and says, “Figure it out.” That can’t happen. That’s just not acceptable, quite frankly. And people need to wake up real quick to making sure that everyone [knows], this is not a, you know, an individual security, this is not just a security thing, this is a business thing now. And people need to really understand that.

IT/OT Cybersecurity Services

The other key, and thanks for bringing up the IT/OT side, is let’s be honest, a majority of incidents that happen on a large scale, on the OT side, now that they’re coming online, in the Internet, happens at IT first. They’re coming from something on the IT front and [they’re] moving laterally, or moving horizontally, into the OT environments. This is why, when we went to market a couple of years ago, specifically around our OT environment service, it was to really help organizations understand, through visibility, what’s happening in IT and OT. But, I can tell you, if you went to anyone that has any OT environments that they operate today and ask the simple question of “How many assets do you currently have on the OT environment?” the next statement will be “I do not know,” or “I think I know,” or “funny enough, I hade someone come in an help me through  that.” And that’s the key component, is that you can’t have visibility into your environment and understand it, and prepare for anything, if you really don’t have the basics in place. 

And so, that’s what we’re here to help organizations to do. And that is a key component, is that you’re not only monitoring and managing, or helping organizations through services on the IT front, or the information corporate side, you’re also helping organizations in a very heavily regulated place like OT, and putting them together to provide highly visible ways to not only make decisions quicker, faster, more effective, but also to help organizations deal better, mature their organizations, and consolidate those technologies into Microsoft. And that’s a key component. And we see organizations in Canada that have leveraged our services for professional services; to Gap Assessments on the OT front; even Managed Security Services, if they’re interested. 

And again, the key component is we don’t do everything. We’re very heavily regulated when it comes to the Microsoft subject-matter expertise, hence why Charter has been a partner of choice specifically around organizations that fall outside of Microsoft, but still have to protect the environments. There’s so many different things that you have to protect, and that Charter and Difenda relationship is extremely important and, again, it gives customers piece of mind and, more importantly, a partner of choice – which is great to see.

[32:23] Ronnie Scott, Charter, Chief Technology Officer

So, I’m just going to jump in there because one of the obvious things that can come out of this last couple of comments that we’ve heard from you both, is that the easiest way is just to not connect the IT and the OT worlds together. And then we don’t have any problems. And I think that one of the things we’ve talked a lot about in our business transformation discussions is there’s actually value in bringing these worlds together. And what I think is really important, and what I hope you just heard, is we can actually do it well, and we can do it securely. It’s not a case of, “Just don’t connect the worlds together,” it’s much more important that we look and say, “How can we improve your business, but do it well and securely?” And that’s why, again, we look for these partners that allow us to achieve the objective without compromising your business.

Threat Prevention Innovation

[33:07] Mark George, Charter, Vice President, Business Transformation & Prairies Market Leader, Moderator

So, Derek, the final question of the day, because you’ve been an amazing guest on our podcast today, goes to you. 

Threat prevention appears to be the next step in cybersecurity innovation. What is Difenda doing to leverage innovation (perhaps with the aid of AI tools or some of the other things that you're seeing in the market) to help customers improve visibility, (Ronnie talked about it earlier); observability; and get to prevention, (which Krisann and I talk about every day in the market)? So, what is Difenda doing to leverage some of the innovation that's coming in and, ultimately, helping your customers more effectively going forward?

[33:44] Derek Nugent, Difenda, Vice President Revenue & Business Strategy

Yeah, great question. And so, I think it's key to say this, “If you haven’t heard AI, or at least those two letters within the last year, I think you’ve got to crawl out from under your rock.” It is something that is going to be the way the future. People are diving in hard. There’s going to be a lot of organizations that come up through – multiple different equity firms and new businesses spinning out. You will see a ton of this. 

Microsoft has announced the Copilot for security effective April 1st. [11] It’s huge. We’ve been on the early access program going on three and a half months with them, working with them, providing feedback, working with customers. So, we’re also whetting our appetite to really drive that. 

The detection key is very important. And the detection for us, on the threat detect side, is always going to be there. It’s really aligning to Mitre ATT&CK Framework, [12] its aligning to as many capabilities as possible to detect what is important to an organization. (This is the other key component, is that not all organizations detect or need detection in the same way. There are different crown jewels in organizations that are just as important, and we have to figure those out, right? And that's something that we work through in our threat profiling exercise. 

But the other key component to this Threat Detection key piece is, “What happens when we do detect something? What are we going to do with it?” And response Capabilities through automation, AI, machine learning, and things like that, that is where things are moving towards. It's no longer, “Can you detect fast enough?” Well, that’s easy. It’s about putting those in place and letting it detect. 

There’s another key component, that is, when you do have all this information, “How do you collect that information quick enough? How do you lay it up to someone so that they can make sense of it?” And then also because you’ve make sense of it, and based on the crown jewels in the assets that we have under management, “How do you then respond on behalf of a customer if they require you to do so?” so that you can eliminate or mitigate the threat within the organization faster, quicker, more effective – always, right.

At the end of the day, like Krisann was saying, “It's no longer if, it’s about when.” It’s the same concept. At the end of the day, you know, you're going to have some type of a hit. “How can you mitigate that fast,” right? “How do you kick someone off the network? How do you put something Into a box so that you don't let it flow over that box as fast as humanly possible?” It’s response capabilities. 

And then, the other piece to that is the Copilot. “How can I lay up information for people to make better decisions quicker?” One of the first things we, kind of, brought into this conversation was about data security. A lot of that is, kind of, “How do you find out all the data that you have in your organization? How do you actually lay that up,” right? And it’s a lot of those, fundamentals within AI – to be able to command prompt; train it; educate your users on it; make sure that it’s well established so that you can make decisions on it. This is something that is going to be going on for decades. It’s going to be the future of where we're going. Again, Difenda has been working very close with Microsoft and our customers to make sure they’re prepared for it. And these are all offerings. And these are all things we want to have conversations with our customers and our prospects, so they understand how we can help them. And then, collectively as a unit with Charter, “How do we look at that ecosystem? How do we look at a solution together so that, from end to end, they have the right partner; the right ecosystem; the right trust, so that they can help mature their organization better?”

[37:14] Mark George, Charter, Vice President, Business Transformation & Prairies Market Leader, Moderator

Well, Derek. I can’t thing of a better way to end today’s podcast. Because you’ve summarized it magnificently. 

Were very proud that we’ve got Difenda as part of our solution portfolio in the market. And, from my perspective as a host today, I want to thank Derek, Krisann, and Ronnie for the insight you’ve provided to our audience. 

Having the right security team in place is one of the key elements in your ability to recover from a cyberattack. I’m going to repeat it again. An Incident Recovery plan is critical portion of an overall cybersecurity strategy. 

We hope our session today showed you why Charter and Difenda are the best security team to provide a comprehensive portfolio from cybersecurity services, including: readiness assessments; creating cybersecurity plans across the IT and OT environments (we call that the Enterprise environment); and the delivery of security project implementation and managed services. 

Thank you for investing the time to tune into our podcast series, Charter Engage: Know IT, and we wish you a very productive day.

Presenter Information - (in order of Appearance)

 | Mark George Charter, Vice President, Business Transformation & Prairies Market Leader, Moderator | Mark George is a proven business leader with global experience across multiple industries. He currently serves as the Vice President, Business Transformation & Prairies Market Leader for Charter. Prior to that, he worked for five years as Managing Partner and Founder of EdgeMark Capital and Advisory Services Inc., a capital markets and financial advisory services firm.  Mark’s in-depth energy markets experience developed through leadership roles with Environmental Refueling Systems Inc. and with PricewaterhouseCoopers. From 2000 to 2010, he served as the Founder and President of the Cielo group of companies, a fully integrated residential and commercial construction and real estate development company in Arizona. Mark has an intense interest in emerging technologies, having spent 15 years with Nortel, Bay Networks, DEC, and Honeywell in progressive sales, management, and executive roles throughout the Americas and Asia Pacific. Mark proudly serves on the boards of several privately held companies and not-for-profit organizations. [ bit.ly/40T7GrH ]   

| Krisann McDonnell Charter, Security Practice Lead & vCISO   | Krisann is Charter's Cyber Security Practice Lead & vCISO and is an ISACA Certified Information Security Manager (CISM), TOGAF Certified Business Architect, and passionate, ethical entrepreneur. As a seasoned executive salesperson turned cybersecurity practice lead, she recognized the importance of cybersecurity in the well-being of companies a decade ago. Since then, she learned that cybersecurity isn't just technology, but people and culture as well. Krisann brings that perspective to every Charter engagement with great success. [linkedin.com/in/krisann-mcdonnell-togaf-cism-17595a49 ]

| Derek Nugent Difenda, Vice President Revenue & Business Strategy | Derek Nugent, Vice President, Revenue and Business Strategy lives by the motto “Be early, be better.” Derek leads Difenda's Revenue team and is responsible for the customer’s journey with Difenda. His high energy level and creativity have built high-performing teams, at the Herjavec Group, CDW and now, Difenda.  After initially attending the University of Guelph for computer architecture, and then earning a Bachelor of Administration and Management degree from the Academy of Learning, Derek started in the information technology industry in 2004 and transitioned to the cybersecurity industry in 2014. With so much experience in a wide variety of roles, he is poised to take the team at Difenda to the next level.  He excels at leading revenue strategies, new market entry, partnership engagement, and customer acquisition and retention. His work ethic and interest in rising to the top motivate his sales teams, who respond well to his passion and zeal. Under his tutelage, they can achieve attractive lead generation, YOY growth, and sizable deals. Derek works tirelessly to build a better team, and his constituents follow his road to success, which ultimately leads to a rewarding experience for the customer. [ https://www.linkedin.com/in/dereknugent  ] www.difenda.com

| Ronnie Scott, Charter, Chief Technology Officer | Ronnie Scott has over 35 years of broad IT experience, including programming, network architecture, as well as senior consultative roles for Financial Services, Internet Service Providers, ILEC Carrier Networks, and large enterprise customers across New Zealand, Australia, and Canada. Ronnie is currently the CTO at Charter Telecom Inc, a Value-Added Reseller specializing in IT service delivery. As CTO, Ronnie brings his extensive technological background with a strong Business and Service Delivery lens to Enterprise IT Infrastructure solutions. [ bit.ly/3E9QdBk ]  

About Charter

Charter is an award-winning technology solutions integrator established in 1997 in Victoria, BC, Canada. Our mission is to align people, process, and technologies to build better organizations, enhance communication, boost operational performance, and modernize businesses. Leveraging a design thinking methodology and a human-centered approach, our team of experts drives successful business transformation for clients. Charter offers a comprehensive range of IT, OT, and IoT products and professional services, including advisory and consulting, project management, and managed services, providing end-to-end solutions from planning and design to ongoing support and implementation. We extend knowledge and support beyond our clients’ businesses, empowering them to focus on core operations. Charter helps organizations generate new value, drive growth, and unlock opportunities, enabling faster and more effective market entry. Forward, Together with Charter, achieving your potential.

For more information on this podcast or on Charter, please contact:

Dawn van Galen

Marketing Manager

250-412-2517

mailto:DVANGALEN@CHARTER.CA

www.charter.ca

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