Cipher and Prosegur: Customer Service Past, Present and Future
Delivering exceptional service to customers is what helps business grow. Cipher’s VP of North America shares how Cipher is operating to help customers during these unique times. In 2019, Cipher became the Cybersecurity Division of Prosegur. The benefits for customers as a result of this new arrangement are are also covered. Prosegur provides physical security, remote video monitoring and retail security in the US.
Visit the podcast page for all episodes or listen on the platforms below.
Podcast Episode Transcript
Pete: Welcome everyone, my name is Peter Hackett. I am the Global Program Director for Cipher. For today’s podcast series we are going to discuss our operations in North America. I am joined by my colleague Scott Croskey, the Global Chief Information Security Officer for Cipher. We are pleased to have with us today Troy Wachter who is the Vice President of North America. Troy joins Scott and I today from our New York City metropolitan office… working from home, of course.
Troy, how are you?
Troy: I am doing well…thanks for having me today.
Pete: With COVID-19 and the impacts to the workforce and economy, how does the arrangement between Prosegur and Cipher help businesses?
Troy: With many businesses going remote and unfortunately having to reduce workforce, Cipher has the ability to provide cybersecurity services to monitor all your critical business assets from a digital perspective, while Prosegur can monitor all your business critical facilities and assets from a physical perspective through video surveillance and guarding. Together we are able to provide a complete security solution through 1 company.
Pete: So Troy, as Vice President of North America, could you give us an overview of your job responsibilities?
Troy: I feel the most important part of my job is to build and manage a balanced business. It is easy to get caught up in growth mode and lose sight of your customers. With the support of Prosegur, the Cipher team has been able to remain focused on the customer and continues to be a trusted partner to our customers every single day.
Pete: Cipher is obviously not immune to current pandemic. Troy, can you go over how we have managed to ensure delivery of our security services in today’s environment?
Troy: Our team has done a fantastic job adapting and have gracefully increased our communication and collaboration as team. We have virtual meeting every single day so the team aware & prepared for the days events.
Pete: Thanks Troy. Some of our listeners may or may not know, but Cipher is the Cybersecurity Business Unit of Prosegur. Founded in 1976, Prosegur has a workforce of over 175 thousand employees operating in 26 countries across 5 continents. Last year, Prosegur had done over 5-billion-dollars in global business. As you know, Prosegur specializes in private security services. Prosegur has four business lines: Alarms, Physical Security, Cash Security and Cybersecurity which as you know, is our company. Troy, can you go over the acquisition history of Cipher by Prosegur?
Troy: Cipher was born out of Brazil roughly 20 years ago. About 10 years ago we opened an office in Miami to begin business operations in NA. About 1 year ago, Prosegur purchased Cipher to expand their security offering to include cybersecurity and be a “1 stop shop” for all of your security needs. So today, Cipher has ~400 FT employees with focus on cybersecurity & GRC services with easy access to resources across the risk management spectrum including monitoring, integration and management of data, video security and surveillance (including IOT), Alarm systems, physical security and guarding, etc.
Pete: How does Prosegur support Cipher?
Troy: While Cipher may now be part of a larger corporate entity, Prosegur has done a great job in allowing us to remain solely focused on delivering cybersecurity services. Prosegur has made significant investments into our team, enhancements to business process, and numerous technologies ensuring that Cipher remains a leader in the Cybersecurity space. They are also investing in building out a new world class security operations center. Additionally, we have recently released our new MDR platform, CipherBox. This platform offers a fully managed SIEM, VCM, EDR, Domain Protection and other services for an extremely affordable price.
Pete: Thanks, Troy. Let’s shift now to our Security Operations and how we deliver our cybersecurity services. Scott, can you give an overview of how our cybersecurity professionals operate?
Scott: Absolutely Pete. Cipher is a global cybersecurity company that delivers a wide range of services: Managed Security Services (MSS), Managed Detection and Response (MDR), Cyber Intelligence Services (CIS), Red Team Services (RTS), Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) and Cybersecurity Technology Integration (CTI). These services are supported by the Cipher Labs, an elite threat and cyber intelligence research and development lab, as well as through our six (6) Security Operations Centers (SOC). The quality of service has led Cipher to win many awards and distinctions from industry leading research companies such as Gartner, Frost & Sullivan and Forrester.
In the vast majority of service agreements, each SOC is regionally focused and delivers services to customers in their particular region.
Our SOCs are Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) certified and are capable of exchanging information regarding Information Security Incidents with other official CERTs. These arrangements are based on the regional requirements.
Troy, since you oversee all North America operations, would you like to go over how the North American SOC operates?
Troy: In NA we have a primary Security Operations Center as well as a backup SOC that services our NA customers. One of the great things about Cipher is that we are technology agnostic. We manage & co-manage just about every SIEM platform, endpoint security products, firewall products on the market today. We work with each customer to define, implement, and support the best solution for their business model and budget.
Pete: Troy, how does this help our customers receive a better service? Given that Prosegur is such a large company, one could be led to believe that Cipher may not provide the support they had seen in the past.
Troy: Prosegur was built on customer service as was Cipher…that is what make the acquisition such a great fit. Many organizations would consolidate SOCs to reduce cost…we collectively feel that continuing to offer our regional SOCs is best in providing local support to our customers. We have the ability to provide our US customers local support, while our global customer will also have local support through our regional SOCs around the globe. Additionally, we have been able to leverage expert resources from various cultures globally as well necessary funding for continuous education and training.
Pete: And now that we are a few months into the Coronavirus pandemic, what is Cipher doing to help customers in these times?
Troy: With the workforce being more distributed than ever before, we continue to remain focused on servicing our customers. We have had many new customers take advantage of our CipherBox MDR platform through the free trial program. This has given our customers piece of mind that their corporate assets are being monitored for IOCs on 24×7 basis.
Pete: Scott, can you highlight this MDR service?
Scott: CipherBox is our Managed Detection and Response (MDR) solution that allows organizations to quickly add 24/7 all-inclusive SOC-as-a-Service capabilities. CipherBox provides your organization with cybersecurity experts, highly certified processes and state-of-the-art technology. All this combined with our proprietary intelligence processes is designed to secure your business. This solution has been designed with affordability in mind. After a quick install, our Security Operations Center will immediately begin to peer into the security posture of your network. We can integrate CipherBox into your on-premise environment as well as your cloud environments. By continuously assessing risk in these environments along with conducting vulnerability assessments, we can raise the security posture of any organization in a relatively short timeframe.
Pete: Troy and Scott. Thank you for your time; this has been very informative, and I look forward to our next Podcast. For any of our listeners who are interested in our services to include CipherBox MDR, please reach out to us via our marketing department, which can be reached at: [email protected]. Also, if you liked today’s podcast, please subscribe so that you can be automatically notified when we publish our next episode.
0 Comments