Anand Ramakrishnan, CEO, Qtek Systems : ‘Most of the cyber security challenges in 2018 will remain the same as those from 2017’

The Qtek team helps you to run your IT platform seamlessly by integrating cognitive solutions, analytics and automation with best-in-class IT service. To add on, here we have Anand Ramakrishnan, CEO Qtek Systems, Division of Quess Corp to discuss more on data centres and cyber security challenges and how they work on these areas.

How are you helping traditional and virtualized data centers?

In the IT infrastructure world today, the Data Center is where the maximum changes are taking place and these changes are not just restricted to technology anymore. These changes encompass the physical infrastructure, the IT infrastructure, the ownership models as well as the operating models that are setting the standards. Today’s Data Centers are a mix of the old and the new. Hence, their complications have increased, both from an architecture standpoint as well as from the aspect of manageability.

Most organizations require trained professionals to manage these changes and complexities. This is where Qtek Systems comes into the picture. Our TekDC offering covers all the aspects mentioned above and more. Qtek helps customers in:

• Understanding the technology roadmap of various solutions and their ultimate benefits considering the customer’s specific needs
• Enabling seamless, risk-mitigated migration and the coexistence of traditional as well as cloud-based Data Center technologies
• Managing all these seamlessly through automation solutions that not only help monitor but also manage various complexities across cloud-based and traditional Data centers

What sort of monitoring solutions you have and how they are benefiting?

Today’s Data Center monitoring and management solutions need to cover two different facets with different objectives:

• Traditional monitoring of the availability and performance to ensure real-time alerts are generated, patterns are analyzed, and incidents are resolved in time before they lead to large-scale failures
• Cloud-based monitoring and management that provides a single window into various clouds. These solutions need to monitor usage of the cloud to help reduce TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) by identifying unused cloud infrastructure that is being paid for. They must also incorporate the best practices for shutdowns and restarts of cloud based VMs, in addition to the monitoring and management of all these VMs on the cloud for availability and performance.

At Qtek, we have world-class solutions that cover both these facets and we use extensive automation to manage our clients’ unique environments.

According to you what are major cyber security challenges in 2018?
I think most of the cyber security challenges in 2018 will remain the same as those from 2017; however, the scale, intensity and scope of breaches could be far higher. For example, in the past it was universally felt that the BFSI and e-Commerce sectors were most susceptible to cyber breaches. However, in the past few months, we have seen breaches across all sectors and hence no industry sector can be considered immune or safe now.

Similarly, the number of security incidents, whether small or big, are on the rise every day. This ranges from a single mailbox getting hacked to an entire enterprise network getting compromised. Technology solutions are available to resolve most issues, but the cost of these resolutions is prohibitive and hence, their adoption is low.

It is important for every company, big or small, to review its security landscape completely and make sure it is robust and foolproof. At the same time, it is important for solution providers like Qtek Systems to ensure they provide affordable solutions for security management.

As we see various breaches and attacks on a regular basis, how you helping your clients to be safe?

Qtek Systems has a security offering called QSecure that looks at cyber security from two levels.

At the Foundation Level, organizations need to keep a watch on their IT estate around the clock and make sure that any irregular or unauthorized activity is immediately flagged so that remedial action can be taken. Qtek Systems does this effectively through its Infrastructure Security Management and SOC services, and its best-in-class SIEM solution which helps it monitor diverse environments on a 24x7 basis.

It ensures that real-time alerts are sent out to customers in a synchronized manner so that remediation can be undertaken quickly. This helps customers save millions of dollars that may have otherwise been lost cybercrime.

Once the foundation is in place, companies can look at Advanced Level solutions that cover specific threats. For example, increased security solutions for the senior management or for critical positions of an organization can be solidified through multi-factor authentication and other methods.