- Don DaRe, President & CEO
The Challenge: Customers Needed Affordable Encryption & Key Management to Meet Security & Insurance Requirements
For Concensus Technologies, an MSP who offers complete cybersecurity, managed IT services, and IAM solutions for businesses, encryption and key management are paramount to keeping their customers’ data secure. Before partnering with Townsend Security, encryption key management was a facet of security that was beyond the budget of their SMB customers who needed to meet regulatory compliance like PCI DSS, HIPAA, etc., as well as purchase cybersecurity insurance.
Don DaRe, President and CEO, helps guide his customers through the process of securing their data, a differentiator for him as an MSP. “If you are an MSP, you need to think about security first, not after there has been a breach. Encryption and key management will help keep your customer’s data safe,” said DaRe.
Whether he is helping them through a cyber-risk insurance audit or meeting compliance requirements, Concensus Technologies partners with their customers to securely meet their technology initiatives. If there is sensitive data on the VM, DaRe helps customers understand the best way to protect it is with encryption and key management.
“Because of stricter data security compliance and cyber- risk insurance requirements, customers began asking for encryption. We quickly realized that a secure data center in the cloud wasn’t enough,” said DaRe.
To ensure data is truly secure, and have predictable costs, Concensus Technologies decided it was best to run their own VMware infrastructure, and partner with a key management vendor. The only problem - finding a key management vendor who would match an MSP’s usage- based business model.
After talking with a few key management vendors who offered solutions for prices that only large enterprises could afford, Don DaRe, President and CEO, found Townsend Security.
“As an MSP, we charge our customers for usage. Having encryption key management that has been through a NIST validation, with usage-based licensing, is key for us - which removes price as a barrier to good security,” continued DaRe.
The Solution
Alliance Key Manager for VMware
Unhappy with the cost and performance of the major cloud service providers (CSPs), Concensus Technologies decided to build their own VMware infrastructure. When moving from the cloud to their own, meeting data security compliance was a top concern.
By deploying Alliance Key Manager for VMware in their VMware vCloud infrastructure, the company was able to meet customer requirements for encryption and key management, as well as create a new revenue stream.
Usage-Based Licensing
Businesses are moving away from paying for perpetual licensing. “Everything is moving towards a subscription/pay for what you use model,” said DaRe. “For most companies we work with, they would rather have the operational expenditure than the capital expenditure.”
“As an MSP, we are always looking for solutions and services that are easy to track and easy to use - and don’t require much maintenance,” said DaRae. “Townsend Security checks all those boxes.”
Plug & Play Security
“Because Alliance Key Manager snaps right in to vCenter, we just make a ‘Click’ and customer data is encrypted. It doesn’t take a lot of engineer time to implement. Between Townsend Security’s support and one of our engineers, we had it up and running in less than an hour,” said DaRe.
By lowering the cost and difficulty barriers of encryption, Concensus Technologies is seeing their customers have a tremendously improved security posture, and realizing new revenue.
“We were able to deploy Alliance Key Manager and offer encryption to our customers all in the same day. It is now a part of all of our quotes.”