Hardly a day goes by without new information being shared about how AI and machine learning have automated something new. From smart speakers in the home to autonomous driving on the road, these technologies are revolutionizing the world in a way we could never have dreamed possible. It’s no different in IT security.
“AI-enabled response to cyber threats is the new frontier in cybersecurity,” says a recent Capgemini Research Institute report based on a survey of IT security executives. Some 69 percent of respondents worldwide think AI will be necessary to respond to cyberattacks; among U.S. respondents, the percentage shoots up to 83.
It’s worth noting that CapGemini surveyed only the largest enterprises. The 850 executives polled (in seven different industries across 10 countries) came from companies with revenues ranging from $1 billion to over $50 billion. That doesn’t mean small and medium sized organizations can’t leverage these technologies. However, there is a limit to what AI can do and SMBs may get more benefits by using a managed IT security service that incorporates AI and machine learning.
Netrix’s RADAR does that. It is a complete end-to-end threat detection and response platform and service that was designed from the bottom up. It grew directly out of Netrix’s experience with SMB customers.
The service is based on three key pillars:
It seems obvious that you must be able to see what’s going on across your network and all of your systems in order to have good security. But many companies have acquired a collection of point solutions – products or programs that monitor only particular systems or that are designed for the security needs of a particular vertical industry. The problem is, even with best-of-breed products, these solutions usually do not work together to provide a comprehensive view of your organization. What’s more, point solutions can be expensive, and many include features you either don’t need or that duplicate what you already have.
Other managed service providers have a limit to the information they collect and the systems they monitor. They ignore massive amounts of data produced by your network, systems and apps. RADAR uses all of that data. “We’ll process everything we can get our hands on,” says Ron Schlecht Jr., founder and managing partner of Netrix Global. “Visibility and correlation are paramount to our service mission.”
Netrix’s experienced team works with you to make sure RADAR covers 100 percent of your data sources. They will even develop custom scripts to connect specific, custom or proprietary systems or apps to the platform.
As RADAR processes your data, the system establishes a baseline of “normal” activity for your organization. Even at the beginning, however, RADAR proves its mettle. “No matter what security tools a client has been using, we typically find the first incident on the first day of deployment,” says Schlecht.
A typical RADAR implementation takes six weeks (to cover everything) and ingests data from 500 different sources on average. After establishing what’s normal for your company, it continues to update and refine the baseline on an ongoing basis. The machine is constantly learning from the data and refining how it detects anomalies.
The human element and reasoning matter
The capabilities of RADAR range from applying simple logic rules – if it detects five failed log-in attempts over a time span of two minute or less, for example, then it sends an alert – to more complex machine learning and AI. But the “intelligence” in the latter is still rudimentary. The program can flag things but cannot put it into context in order to gauge its importance.
That’s where human beings play a critical role. RADAR’s team of cybersecurity experts examine these alerts and determine which indicate real and present dangers.
The combination of machine and human intelligence and reasoning is particularly valuable for SMBs. First, these organizations typically are very lean. Their IT staffs have their hands full without having to field hundreds of alerts a day. In fact, IT probably ignores log data it already has simply because there’s no time to deal with it. Remember all those point solutions? Each one is different and takes time to manage, not to mention trying to correlate data among them. Plus, IT and cybersecurity are different disciplines. IT professionals have an “availability-first” mindset. They are trained to keep everything up and running. Cyber analysts consider security first.
Second, even if a company has the budget to hire cybersecurity professionals, a severe talent shortage makes qualified people hard to find. (ISC)2 – the world’s largest nonprofit association of certified cybersecurity specialists — says there is a gap of almost 3 million cybersecurity professionals across the world. In a survey by the Enterprise Strategy Group and the Information Systems Security Association (ISSA), two-thirds of respondents said the cyber skills shortage has increased the workload of their existing IT staff. Some 47 percent of respondents said that increases in workload left them little or no time to learn and use security technologies to their full potential.
Even the largest companies have trouble finding talent; and they recognize that they need to use the specialists that they do have more wisely and strategically. These companies say that their cyber analysts are being overwhelmed by alerts, according to the Capgemini report, spending too much time doing grunt work like going through data logs and incident time sheets. “They are counting on AI to help these overwhelmed staff,” says the report.
The (ISC)2 report also hits on this theme. Security professionals want to do less security administration, incident response and endpoint security management. “They’d rather be spending time on more high value cybersecurity tasks such as threat intelligence analysis, penetration testing and forensics,” says the report.
RADAR combines the capabilities of machine learning and human reasoning, creating a funnel that results in an efficient and effective security system. And both the machine and the humans are always learning.
Because RADAR is constantly analyzing data and feedback from human analysts, it learns more about the patterns of your organization and fine tunes rules. Here’s an example of how that works:
RADAR might start with a rule designed to catch spoofed emails. Consequently, it may block traffic that has the attributes of spoofed email – such as Constant Contact newsletters from your vendors or other people you want to hear from such as customers. But you may not want that information to be blocked. As it detects how analysts handle these “alerts,” i.e. they have cleared them as acceptable, the system will “learn” and accept those emails as normal activity.
Over time, this reduces the number of false positives and increases the time human analysts can spend on real and significant threats. “By collecting, analyzing and learning from all that data, the machine part of RADAR is doing the heavy lifting. Machines are really good at repetition – executing things over and over again in the same way,” says Wilson. “Humans are good at intuition. So, we task the machine with something that’s easily repeatable, so you don’t have the human do the dumb work. You have the humans do the smart work.”
The human analysts then further narrow the funnel by bringing intuition, human reasoning and intelligence, an understanding of context, and plain old common sense to address the issue at hand.
Envision your staff returning to work after a long holiday weekend, for example. An employee is logging into the system but mistypes his password a few times. The strict rules by which RADAR operates would flag these “unauthorized access attempts” as a possible threat. But the cyber analyst considers the context. First, it’s the first day after a long weekend. Second, the employee is trying to access email, not a mission-critical system accessible by only a few privileged accounts. Thus, the analyst can intuit that this is not a threat. On the other hand, if there are 50 such attempts, not just five, or if there were 50 different employees repeatedly attempting wrong passwords, the analyst might suspect a brute force attack on your network, investigate further and sound the alarm if appropriate.
As they work together, the machine and human “winnowing” means that some 350 alerts a day are ultimately reduced to only a few potential threats deserving attention. “A RADAR customer is notified only about 20 times a month, and only with a thoroughly vetted security threat, along with recommendations on how to mitigate it,” says Wilson.
In summary, while the latest advances in AI can supplement cybersecurity, well trained cybersecurity professionals are still your best defense. Technology alone is not the answer today or for the foreseeable future.
With no end in sight to the shortage of cybersecurity talent, it makes sense to use technology to help make the most of the cyber talent you have. Some 63 percent of the large companies Capgemini surveyed said they plan to use AI by 2020, mostly to improve the accuracy and efficiency of their cybersecurity specialists. Small and medium sized organizations can similarly benefit by engaging a managed service provider that uses a combination of technology and human intelligence to secure their organizations.
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Ashish has been part of the organization since 2000, starting with Structure Technologies which merged with Netrix in 2012. During the 20+ years, Ashish has worked in various areas of the organization, from Engineering, Project Management, Sales Engineering, and Technical Architect and Team Management to Product Management and Product Development. Ashish has expertise in Unified Communications and Contact Center and started the development of TetraVX Products at Netrix. As a Technical Fellow,
Ashish brings deep technical expertise, an understanding of business operations, and a customer perspective to help Netrix implement new systems, products, and services. Currently, Ashish leads the Product Development organization to develop secure, scalable and easy-to-use products.
Ashish has a Computer Science degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago and has Product Manager, Product Leader, and Product Executive certificates from The Product School.
Ashish lives in the Dallas, TX area with his wife and two children. He and his family enjoy vacations involving nature, learning about different cultures, watching movies, and going to the Dallas Mavs games.
Don is the SVP, Global Professional Services (Delivery) at Netrix Global. He has more than 20 years of experience building, managing, and growing professional and managed services businesses.
Don joined Netrix Global in 2013 as a Partner, driving significant growth in the Microsoft Alliance nationally and professional services delivery business. In 2020, Don led the M&A growth strategy and execution, which included the acquisition of five businesses and one divesture. In 2022, Don was asked by the board to take a leadership position over the global professional services business and lead growth, transformation and development of the teams and services while completing the integrations and value delivery of all acquired companies into one global organization.
Don’s earlier career included working as a technical consultant with specializations in infrastructure, collaboration, and messaging platforms. In 2001, Don joined Project Leadership Associates as a consultant and over twelve years focused on growing the Microsoft Strategic Alliance and professional services organization. While growing and leading in his various roles at Netrix, Don returned to school as an avid continuous learner to complete his bachelor’s degree in data Analytics in 2018 from Rasmussen University.
Creativity and focused action drive results.
Sarah has over 25 years of experience in marketing and strategy consulting, primarily in the B2B SaaS data protection and cybersecurity domains. Her experience ranges from working with companies as small as 4 employees to large enterprises. She specializes in building and scaling marketing and channel teams for growth and integrating acquired companies for rapid impact.
Prior to Netrix, Sarah derived success from her expertise with multichannel go-to-market strategies across complex global markets for companies including Sungard Availability Services, RSA, FireMon, and Dell EMC. Through leadership roles in product marketing, channel marketing, demand generation, market intelligence, and strategic communications, Sarah has honed a multidisciplinary marketing approach that enables her to consistently exceed KPI objectives and growth targets.
Sarah has also established an industry-focused perspective through consulting work in the areas of healthcare tech, database services, and career assessment tools. Sarah holds a Master of Science in Marketing with a concentration in Market Analytics, an MBA, and a Bachelor of Science in Marketing from Bentley University. She is an ICCS® certified career consultant, guest lecturer, and certified personal trainer.
Take care of your employees and they will take care of your customers.
Jay brings more than 25 years of client-facing consulting experience to Netrix. Jay started in information technology with two manufacturing companies before moving into consulting in 1997. Jay began consulting as a delivery engineer covering all aspects of integration and design around desktop operating systems starting with Windows 95 to Windows 10. Jay also focuses on working with law firms to help them with their digital transformation.
Jay joined Netrix in 2015 to start the End User Compute practice as Windows 10 was about to be released. Within two years of starting that practice, Netrix became Microsoft’s Windows 10 Partner of the Year. Jay now has moved from engineering to a sales leadership role overseeing all aspects of the Microsoft relationship. Jay holds a Bachelor of Computer Information Systems Degree from Devry University. He is happy to be a proud parent of a young son and has married his wife, Manali, for over 20 years. Jay and his family like to travel, cook, and watch basketball and movies.
The best way to attract top talent is to learn how to retain top talent.
Michael has over 20 years of experience in talent acquisition working with both start-up companies and Fortune 500 corporations. Throughout his career, Michael has demonstrated a strong commitment to finding and attracting top talent and has a proven track record of delivering outstanding results in a variety of roles and industries.
Michael started his career in Talent Acquisition as a headhunter with an external recruiting agency. He brought those skills to the corporate side working with IBM, HP/HPE, Nutanix and OVH US. He is known for his ability to create and maintain strong relationships with hiring managers, HR teams, and other key stakeholders, and is committed to delivering a seamless and positive candidate experience.
Michael has a B.S. in Finance and Business Administration from the University of South Florida. He is a devoted Washington Capitals’ fan. He loves entertaining guests on his patio with his craft cocktails, wine, charcuterie, and cheese boards.
Jim joins Netrix Global with over 20 years of experience in B2B technology marketing. Jim’s success in delivering revenue growth and measurable outcomes through strategic development, customer journey orchestration, brand management, and revenue marketing is credited to his fervor for ensuring both his customers and his team’s success.
Before joining Netrix, Jim held various marketing and strategy positions at start-ups and global 500 companies, most recently leading marketing and strategy initiatives at Entrust and Thales. He is a strong advocate of using cybersecurity and cloud computing technologies to create a competitive edge and enhance business outcomes. His goal is to help clients maximize the benefits of these technologies. Jim is often invited to speak at industry events where he shares his expertise and insights.
Jim has a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Engineering from the University of California and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Southern California.
Vladimir Gotsev has over 25 years of experience in Information Technology, serving in various roles since joining the team in 2005. As a leader he championed several professional services practices throughout the years. He led the managed services practice and security practice from the ground up and launched many service offerings and partnerships at Netrix.
Vlad led the transition to the Netrix Professional Services practice in 2021. Throughout his career Vlad’s passion and focus has been to help customers define and execute their digital transformation strategy while maximizing business value.
Vlad currently leads the professional services delivery organization focusing on Security, Cloud, Applications, Data and AI/ML, Collaboration, and everything in between.
Vlad holds a Masters’s degree in telecommunications and holds several expert-level IT certifications. He is a proud father of two boys. In his spare time, he is enthusiastic about traveling the world.
Grow people to grow revenue, not the other way around.
Joshua Hoffman joins Netrix as Chief Revenue Officer, where he is focused on growth, sales, partner channels and customer experience in order to further extend Netrix Global as a trusted technical partner. Josh brings a wealth of global experiences from various revenue-focused executive leadership positions at companies that include Dell, Avaya, Palo Alto Networks, Poly, and Datto. Josh has been widely recognized for delivering exceptional growth in results, company culture and professional development.
Josh holds a BBA magna cum laude from St. Edward’s University and has participated as a mentor and program leader in the MBA program at the University of Texas McCombs School of Business. He has had multiple engagements with the state and federal government, as well as charitable organizations, as a presenter and influencer for key legislative initiatives and has served with distinction as a volunteer First Responder across the state of Texas.
Work hard, play hard, enjoy the journey.
Russ’ 28 year background in technology spans from early-stage startups to Fortune 500 giants such as Oracle. He has a wealth of experience leading teams, delivering value to shareholders, driving technological advancement, and scaling organizations—and he has been invited to speak on these topics by major news media outlets and at leading industry conferences.
Prior to being appointed CEO at Netrix Global, Russ was a member of the company’s Board of Directors in conjunction with a successful run as CEO of Infrascale, a cloud-based data protection, backup, and disaster recovery solution provider. Russ served as President and CEO of the U.S. business of OVHcloud, a cloud computing company based in France, where he oversaw the acquisition and integration of vCloud Air from VMware in 2017. Before OVHcloud, Russ was a member of the Executive Leadership Team at GoDaddy, following the company’s 2013 acquisition of Media Temple , where he had served as President and COO. He is currently on the Board of Directors of the Children’s Science Center of Northern Virginia and the Advisory Board at Virtru.
Russ graduated with a B.S. in Computer Information Systems from James Madison University, where he remains an active alumnus and Chairman of the Advisory Council for the Madison Center for Civic Engagement.
Embrace change, new ideas, and reward performance.
Dean Gels brings over 20 years of corporate finance and leadership experience as CFO to Netrix Global. He joins the team from his most recent role as CFO for LRN. His work history extends to several high-growth tech companies, including MSA Security, OVHcloud, Borderfree, and RBC Capital Markets.
Earlier in his career, Dean was the VP of Corporate Development at Borderfree (NASDAQ: BRDR) managing the sale of the business to Pitney Bowes for $489 million. Prior to that, he was a Technology Investment Banker at RBC Capital Markets completed more than 40 deals, amounting to $17 billion in aggregate transaction value.
Dean proudly served as an infantry officer in the United States Army in the Pacific theater during his 5-year commitment. Dean holds an MBA from Boston University and a BS from the United States Military Academy at West Point.
Lindsay Haun has over 18 years of proven achievements providing big picture leadership and strategic planning and innovation in customer support and operations within global, customer-focused technology organizations. As a support focused professional with hands-on experience, she brings strong leadership and business process improvements.
Prior to joining Netrix, Lindsay was a key player, holding various roles, at technical companies including MySpace, Media Temple, Uber, OVHCloud US, and Infrascale. Lindsay specializes in, and has had proven success with, improving the experience for customers and those that work directly with customers. At Netrix, Lindsay is responsible for spearheading support operations within our MSP organization to ensure our processes are streamlined, customer-centric, and scalable.
Lindsay is a proud Mom to a spirited toddler, a pop culture trivia enthusiast, and a self-described Star Wars nerd.
Greg Price is an executive with 25 years of experience serving the healthcare and information technology spaces. He has in-depth expertise in Executive Leadership, IT strategy, solution assessment, enterprise integration, application development, business intelligence, revenue cycle management, and electronic medical records in behavioral health, pain management and addiction settings. Greg has extensive knowledge in US and International business operations, with a specific focus on the India and the Philippines markets. In these specific regions, he has managed entities from inception to operations with more than 200 people.
Prior to leading the Healthcare Practice at Netrix, Greg was the CEO of Price Consulting, Inc., the creator of the Substance Abuse and Medication Management System (SAMMS). SAMMS is an EMR for behavioral health, pain management and addiction clinics. SAMMS is in use in 250+ clinics in 37 states and serves over 60,000 patients each day. SAMMS clients include clinics, hospitals, county health departments, correctional facilities, large clinic groups, and both state and federal government agencies.
Eric has over 20 years of experience in IT operations and managed support industry. He provides operational leadership over all Netrix Managed IT Services businesses. Eric is ITIL Foundation certified and focuses on delivering an industry-leading customer support experience, driving process improvement, and implementing best practices. His most meaningful accomplishment has been the ability to foster an environment of continuous improvement, learning, and career growth for the employees he leads at Netrix.
Before joining Netrix, Eric managed an internal IT service desk and NOC support operation for a large Fortune 500 company headquartered in Philadelphia. He oversaw the daily operations of a high-performing support team that managed over 75,000 contacts per month.
Eric attended Kutztown University, where he studied Business Administration and Management. He holds certifications in ITIL Version 3 Foundation Certification (EXIN), Management & Leadership (Dale Carnegie), and Gartner Customer Relationship Management (Gartner). Eric resides outside of Philadelphia, PA, with his wife, Maren, two children, Will and Sam, and Dublin, the family dog. He comes from a large family, and they all make it a point to unite always to celebrate their birthdays and major holidays together.
James has been a part of Netrix since 2006. During that time James has worked in different facets of the organization that includes, Direct selling, Sales leadership, Channel and Strategic Partnerships. James has been part of the Operating Committee for the Netrix Collaboration group known as TetraVX. James is a graduate of Arizona State University.
James is the proud father of two sons. In his downtime, he enjoys adventure traveling, golf, and fishing.
Ryan brings over 20 years in the professional and managed services field focused on Microsoft solution selling. Ryan joined Netrix in 2013 from Project Leadership Associates. Today he leads a team of sales engineers working with customers so they understand how transforming to the cloud can be effective in helping them meet business goals and resolve pain points.
Ryan holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science from Purdue University.
Ryan and his wife Lee are proud parents of three children, a Great Dane dog named Moose and are avid boaters.
Mike has 25 plus years of client-facing IT consulting experience with Netrix. Mike has been with Netrix for ten years in multiple sales leadership roles and leverages his knowledge in developing, deploying, and executing sales models and Go-to-Market for Mid-Market and Enterprise segments. Mike has extensive experience working with clients to understand their current state, future state, hurdles to success, and ultimately how to bridge the divide to exceed their goals. Mike leads the Account Management Mid-Market team working with existing clients to execute their digital transformation.
Mike holds a degree in Political Science and Business Communications from the University of Kansas. Mike is a proud father of two. He is actively involved with endurance racing, from 17 Ironman total distance finishes to summiting Mt. Kilimanjaro.
Justin Rapacz has over 25 years of experience in Information Technology, with many of those years spent at Netrix serving in various roles since joining the team in 1998. Leading several professional services practices throughout the years, Justin made the transition to leading the Netrix Managed Services practice in 2016.
With a deep technical foundation, Justin’s focus in managed services has been on delivering both technical and business value to his customers. Today Justin leads the recurring services delivery organization servicing the end-user to the hybrid data center and everything in between.
Justin has a Bachelor of Science in Computer Information Systems from DeVry Institute of Technology and a Master of Business Administration from Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He is the father of two boys and enjoys travel, technology, pinball, and cooking.
Adam brings over 17 years of experience in IT operations, cloud infrastructure, security, and compliance management to Netrix. As a leader, he has established, scaled, and run global IT teams that excel in providing world-class service to the organizations they serve. Experienced in both startups and established companies, Adam has a demonstrated track record for transforming IT teams to deliver and exceed mission-critical business objectives.
Prior to Netrix, Adam managed global IT operations organizations at VMWare, OVHcloud US, and AWS.
Adam is a proud husband and father of two boys. In his downtime, he enjoys personal fitness, cooking, and fishing.
Brian joins Netrix with 27 years of experience in strategy, vision-setting, planning, and execution. He has built brand experiences for millions of users and managed critical Fortune 100 customer relationships by scaling product, marketing, and operational organizations that put customers first. Before Netrix, Brian served as the COO at Infrascale, Head of R&D for Virtru, and General Manager for OVHcloud US.
Brian’s success stems from working for technology industry giants, including HP, Palm, eBay, AT&T, YP, and GoDaddy – as well as startups. As the Chief Operating Officer at Netrix, he strives to meet customer needs and achieve company goals. He manages both the customer-product interaction functions — including product management, product development, infrastructure operations – as well as internal functions of enterprise systems and IT. Brian is an advocate for efficient processes, effective use of resources, delighted customers, happy employees, exceptional results, and unrestrained creativity.
Brian holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Michigan and a Master of Business Administration from the Anderson School of Management at UCLA. He is a proud pug owner, a Peloton enthusiast, a home-improvement junkie, and sings with the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington.
Carolyn has over 20 years of experience driving employee engagement and aligning talent strategies to meet business objectives. Her collaborative approach has built cultures of initiative, ownership, and results for organizations undergoing rapid change and growth.
Before joining Netrix, Carolyn led people strategy at technology companies such as Infrascale and OVH US. She also spent several years with CGI, a global technology and services provider, leading a team of 20 HR professionals supporting 6,500 employees worldwide, responsible for talent strategies, workforce development, and employee engagement.
Carolyn has a BA in Psychology from the University of Western Ontario and holds her SHRM-SCP and SPHR certifications. She is an avid hockey fan and loves anything chocolate!