Building Business Outcomes According to a Barracuda study, 73 percent of organizations surveyed reported being hit with at least one successful ransomware attack in 2022, and 38 percent said they were hit twice or more. That means that three out of four businesses surveyed were hit. It is cheap and easy for a bad actor to launch a ransomware or phishing attack on any company. With this information, how will you counsel businesses? Truthfully, today, with all the security threats, there is only so much a business can afford to address. Yet as a “trusted advisor,” your job is to initiate the tough business discussions. Are they worried about security – or is that someone else’s problem? Are they hoping the bare minimum will work out for them? The trusted advisor is also the “educator.” Business leaders look to the trusted advisor to educate them about best practices, threats and the latest solutions available, as well as what their competitors are doing. Maybe the business is not aware that they can buy SOC as a service. Maybe DRaaS (or the many other acronyms) is a concept that the business leader needs broken down into digestible parts. Besides security, there are many factors affecting businesses. How are they addressing hybrid work or WFA (work from anywhere)? How are they addressing the talent issue? In what departments are they having difficulty hiring? How can they implement technology to diminish the impact for customers – not just selfservice but analytics and reporting to know when the shortages are worse? It is important to remember that not all business executives are aware of all the technology available, as well as all the use cases for that technology. The pace of technology is speeding up, past the point that many people can stay properly informed. Recently, a business manager with a ShoreTel on-premises PBX wanted help with dial tone. It was not SIP compliant, and the PRI circuit is unavailable now. When the ShoreTel PBX model was brand new, most cloud communications functions were unavailable or unaffordable. Things have changed in that time frame. There was a lot of education needed on functionalities available today that could affordably improve the business. It is the same with networks. If the business is still running MPLS or, unfathomably, frame relay, there By Peter Radizeski CHANNEL MANAGEMENT 60 CHANNELV ISION | MARCH - APRIL 2023
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