The Future of Security – Cyber Guards Joins the NextSec Team

Warren Buffett once famously said “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”

If Mr. Buffett decided to update this quote today based on our security environment, it might sound like this “Every 39 seconds, someone is trying to enter your company and potentially ruin the reputation you took 20 years to build. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”

We are. And this is why we are pleased to announce that Erik Holmes and his Cyber Guards team, based in Memphis, Tennessee, are joining NextSec to build and expand our security offering. 

The world of security is rapidly developing due to technology advance and an increasing sophistication of bad actors. It is up to all of us to think of new models, while we stay centered on the fundamentals, no different than any great team. You get the basics right and then you bring in the unique attributes that go above and beyond.  

Bad actors build their business models (yes, they have business models) centered on their ability to enter the private systems of our professional and personal lives to exploit what they find. Whether we are thinking about phishing, malware, ransomware, denial of service attacks or just general hacking, we have a threat that is only growing due to their ability to monetize their efforts.

A strong cybersecurity approach starts with the fundamentals. It is important to have a continual service that is constantly identifying threats, potential breaches and runs tests to find holes in our system before bad actors do the same. 

What many of us who do not spend every day thinking about cybersecurity don’t realize is that hackers are often inside our systems for more than half a year before we find them. An IBM study said it is closer to 280 days, on average, to identify and contain a data breach. 

That’s a powerful way of reinforcing the need for continual and intense vigilance to protect one’s assets. 

It is our belief at The Next Security Group (NextSec) and our parent company, The Next Practice Collective, that future solutions for cybersecurity will combine innovation from the public and private sector. We will examine how physical and cybersecurity work as one model. We will think of the reputation of a company or brand or an individual as a driver of how we innovate in this space. 

We have been clients and continue to think like one. We know it is important to secure our agency network when we are leading a major brand initiative. When you develop unique data sets to create advantage in your market, we think of digital brand security, whether this information resides inside or outside our company, it can be critical to your success. 

We imagine all of the ways a “normal” protection approach may fall short and create what’s next. It’s why we believe this industry is just getting started in how we innovate. 

This is why NextSec’s Michael Harley will join with Erik and his team at Cyber Guards to strengthen the fundamentals, while expanding our offering to protect companies from breaches, improve how we protect the reputation of companies, brands, and individuals, analyze and thwart anti-counterfeiting throughout its supply chain and other techniques best left for bad actors to wonder about. 

It’s a time of urgency and innovation in this field. 

Here are a few examples of what is ahead for us.

A new control center is being built in Memphis. More on its progress this fall. 

A new curriculum is being created, titled “The Future of Security”, that will be available in early 2022. The curriculum will be designed to inform the non-technical leader or pivot and geek out with the experts inside your organization. 

A new security offering that combines physical and cybersecurity offering is in progress, so that we can protect our clients from the “ground to the cloud” via one team. More on that in the fall, as well. 

And more. 

We are pleased to join with Erik and his team, and we’re committed to improving what we provide to our clients every day in this continual battle to secure and protect that which we care about. 

By Bob Pearson, CEO

bpearson@theblissgrp.com