Cytracom has launched the Cytracom Trust Center, a portal that enables MPS partners to access information in real time about Cytracom’s own security and compliance posture, as well as the security posture of its products and solutions.
The Trust Center was developed at the request of partners, according to the company, and driven by James Hill, Cytracom’s first CISO who came on board the end of last year with more than 20 years of experience operating at the intersection of business development, cybersecurity, people development, and technical expertise. The portal is intended to fast-track partner trust as well as help speed the sales cycle by eliminating security review friction and quickly providing access to compliance documentation. It also proactively notifies subscribed channel partners in real time of changes to Cytracom’s security and compliance status.
MSP partners are working with customers that have compliance obligations and need to know the vendors they’re working with are trusted, explains Zane Conkle, Cytracom co-founder and CEO. Previously, he notes, “those requests would come to us as a one-off and we wanted to create an environment where partners could easily access that themselves and have visibility into what’s going on with Cytracom.”
With the Trust Center, “all of our audits, all of our reports, are now publicly available, so our partners have access to that. We’re also leveraging this trust portal as a way to provide updates to our partners on how they can best secure their customers, as well as any changes with our security standards.”
The Trust Center is integrated into the partner portal, but prospective MSPs partners who are vetting Cytracom can get limited access to it as well, Conkle says.
Driving the development of the Trust Center was “one of James’ first actions,” Conkle says. “We really believe that security is a shared effort. It really takes all of us to enforce security.”
For Cytracom’s MSP partners, hiring Hill as CISO brings several benefits, Conkle says. “Number one, stronger security. We want to take our security strategies that we are deploying and we want to make sure that they’re aligned to the channel.”
Added expertise is another benefit, he notes. “James has come on board and he’s essentially building on top of our existing security posture that we have in place [and] that we’ve been developing for years. Aa a result, we’ll have even greater protection for both our partners and their clients.”
Asked how the addition of a CISO factors into Cytracom’s roadmap going forward, Conkle says, ‘What I’ll tell you is we are firmly convinced that MSPs can excel in their local markets by emphasizing compliance and by making it a key aspect of the engagements that they have with their clients.”
Cytracom, he adds, is going to “lean in heavy to compliance. We started that with the launch of ControlOne,” an end-to-end secure network connectivity solution for MSPs. “Control One was designed from the ground up as a platform that empowers our partners to meet the compliance obligations that they have within their clients’ networks, whether that’s CMMC, NIST, HIPAA, or other standards. Control One was built to support that.”
Conkles adds the the company has been investing heavily in security. “This [CISO] role is just a key part of that.”
The launch of the Trust Center comes on the heels of appointing Jim Hamilton as the new channel chief in March, and just a few weeks before a major new release of ControlOne platform, says Conkle.
“The launch of ControlOne was huge in that we totally shifted what MSPs thought was possible by allowing them to protect users no matter where they worked and regain control of all the devices under their management. This next release is going to push the boundaries even further and we will be launching some new capabilities that don’t exist in market today … and perfectly aligns to this message of compliance and how do I keep my clients protected no matter where they are.”
