According to a recent Symantec Corp. (NASDAQ: SYMC)-sponsored survey, SMB customers are “getting more serious about their information protection” and therefore, channel partners need to be ready for the “huge opportunities” that will present themselves in this space, said one Symantec executive.
Monica Girolami, a senior product marketing manager at Symantec, said one of the key findings from the 2010 Information Protection Survey was that “SMBs are really getting serious now about their information protection. This is exciting for us because this shows that the awareness that we’ve in addition to other vendors and partners, have been trying to drive, is finally starting to pay off. But we still have a ways to go.”
When asked to rank their top five business risks, survey participants rated data loss and cyber-attacks as their top one and two respective risks, followed by traditional criminal activity, natural disasters and terrorism.
In addition, Girolami said survey respondents noted that their top IT improvement areas were solutions involving backup and recovery, disaster recovery and security. Likely due in large part to the consumerization of IT and more workers now bringing their own devices into the workplace, security and policies around them are becoming more important, Girolami said.
“People are sharing information more freely now, whether that’s through things like laptops or PDAs,” Girolami explained. “It becomes more of a question of ‘Where does the critical information reside and what can be done to protect it?’ While all organizations face these same types of challenges, SMBs don’t have the dollars to put towards these (efforts), or the necessary education in the areas they’re challenged in.”
While 31 per cent of survey participants said they back up their data on a daily basis, 47 per cent said they don’t. When asked why they don’t back up their data, 39 per cent of businesses said it “never occurred to (them) to do so.”
For the channel, this becomes an opportunity to get out and talk to both new and existing customers, Girolami said. Partners should help their customers better understand the importance of having Internet security guidelines and policies and make sure that customers are aware of the latest security risks and threats. Partners can also help customers with disaster recovery plans and testing them to make sure everything’s in working order.
“Partners should ask their customers questions like, ‘What are you doing today to ensure you can recover your systems in the event of a disaster?’” Girolami advises. “Partners can then start looking at disaster recovery plans with their customers to provide them with more of a value-add.”
On the technology side, customers should implement a data loss prevention (DLP) solution, in addition to having backup and recovery protection to better secure critical business information from cyber-attack, human error or natural disasters, she added.
Channel partners can offer their customers Symantec’s Protection Suite Advanced Business Edition, which Girolami said is an all-in-one, comprehensive security solution suite which includes capabilities such as endpoint security, messaging security and backup and recovery protection.
“Partners can now have an overall discussion around information protection and bring a comprehensive solution to the table instead of just talking about point products,” Girolami said.
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