Category Archives for "Managed Services News"

Jul 26

Equity Index from Mathison Helps Businesses Accelerate DE&I Progress

By | Managed Services News

The hiring and retention platform is an all-in-one tool for developing and tracking DE&I strategies.

Mathison, an all-in-one diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) platform, today announced the launch of its new Equity Index. The index allows employers to build action plans, mobilize employees and measure the ongoing impact of their DE&I initiatives.

The Equity Index provides a framework for auditing the entire talent life cycle. It identifies changes that will advance diversity, recruiting and training. Employers can build and manage their DE&I road maps on an ongoing basis in the way they set goals, benchmark and report progress. The index is based on more than three years of comprehensive research. Hundreds of DE&I experts and HR professionals across more than 25 industries participated in the research.

Mathison was co-founded in 2019 by Dave Walsh and Arthur Woods. The company name honors Alan Mathison Turing. Highly influential in the development of theoretical computer science, Turing helped crack the German Enigma Code during World War II. Despite this, he never received the recognition he deserved and instead was persecuted for being gay. The company says that Turing “represents brilliance of mind, true innovation, genuine inspiration and triumph over adversity — core values that we strive to embody at our company today.”

Diagnostics and Direction

As Mathison explains on their website, “Wherever you are in the [DE&I] process, we meet you there and help accelerate your progress.” The Equity Index diagnoses organizations’ operations, policies and practices to gauge DE&I gaps and strengths. The system recommends personalized and prioritized DE&I goals that are mapped to an extensive knowledge base of DE&I guides, case studies and training. Teams are guided across every step of their DE&I journey. Progress is visible on an intuitive, downloadable dashboard, so the sharing of DEI progress and metrics is easy and powerful.

Beyond its being the right thing to do, data shows that companies who value diversity and inclusion outperform other companies by as much as 400% according to Great Places to Work.

Mathison's Dave Walsh

Mathison’s Dave Walsh

“Despite the best intentions, we’ve seen countless organizations struggle to identify DE&I gaps, get buy-in and make ongoing progress,” said Walsh, who also serves as Mathison’s CEO. “We’re excited to roll out the new Equity Index to enable organizations to accelerate, manage and measure their DE&I impact and affect real change.”

 

Jul 26

Fortinet Unveils New Cloud-Native Offering on AWS for Improved Security Operations

By | Managed Services News

Fortinet’s latest cloud security offering is available on AWS.

AWS RE:INFORCE — Fortinet has unveiled a new built-in-the-cloud offering on Amazon Web Services (AWS). It correlates security findings from across an organization’s cloud footprint to facilitate friction-free cloud security operations.

Fortinet announced its new FortiCNP offering at Tuesday’s AWS re:Inforce conference in Boston. The vendor is now an AWS Security Competency Partner.

In addition, Fortinet is a launch partner for Amazon GuardDuty Malware Protection. It provides agentless malware detection capabilities across AWS data stores, disk volumes and workload images.

FortiCNP includes resource risk insights technology. Its insights help teams prioritize remediation and mitigation of risks with the highest potential impact on cloud workload security.

A defining feature of the Fortinet cloud offering is integration with AWS security products and services, and the Fortinet Security Fabric. It helps organizations more effectively secure their cloud environments and maximize their cloud security investments.

Increasing Need for Cloud-Native Support

Vince Hwang is Fortinet’s senior director of adaptive cloud security.

Fortinet's Vince Hwang

Fortinet’s Vince Hwang

“As organizations are shifting more and more to cloud, there will be a greater, increasing need for cloud-native support,” he said. “They’re going to deliver more applications in the cloud and they’re going to use AWS, Google and Azure. And so our goal there is to help enable that by reducing friction.”

For MSSPs, the value of FortCNP is “immeasurable,” Hwang said.

“If I have a security operations center (SOC) team at the MSSP that’s managing on behalf of a set of customers, and every customer has their own choice of deployments or their own needs, rather than having to figure each one individually, I now only have this one platform approach, this one focused point of view that I just need to learn and work in. Everything becomes much more efficient. And so there’s much more ROI and margins behind the service offering therefore from an MSSP and partner perspective.”

Leveraging AWS Services

AWS sees the value of what FortiCNP can do, Hwang said. And the Fortinet cloud offering increases customer confidence in using AWS as a cloud platform.

“Over the next few months you’ll see us do deep integrations with with the other cloud providers as well,” he said. “And it’s not only about the cloud platforms. It’s also about the tools that customers might need to operate within those cloud platforms.”

Fortinet will continuously expand FortiCNP to ingest more types of cloud security findings. Moreover, it will provide broader context across more cloud workloads.

“Cloud is always going to evolve and change,” Hwang said. “So what we’re going to do is stay on top of that evolution and then work with customers and partners to identify what are the next things, what are their top concerns or the tool of choice for the day, and then bring that into the fold. And that’s how we’re going to continue to add value. So a single platform and continue to grow that underneath.”

Scott Plamondon is co-founder and vice president of architecture at Observian, a Fortinet MSSP partner.

“FortiCNP allows customers to easily integrate, more quickly operationalize, and immediately benefit from AWS’s native cloud security services with more targeted and actionable alerts tuned to their needs and less noise,” he said. “Our customers that rely on Observian’s security operations team will benefit from our ability to even better triage and report on those alerts 24/7.”

Jul 26

Verizon, Reseller Partners Talk Channel Integration, Fixed Wireless Sales

By | Managed Services News

Partners say Verizon is working harder than ever to align its direct sales teams with the channel.

Verizon reseller partners say collaboration between them and the carrier’s direct sales teams is growing.

The carrier recently concluded the Boston portion of its nationwide National Elite VAR Roadshow. The events, which will be in Utah, California and North Carolina later this year, bring Verizon personnel from global enterprise, public sector, midmarket and SMB sales teams from the Verizon Business Group to meet top resellers.

The partners attending the roadshow included Connected Solutions Group, CTS Mobility, Industrial Networking Solutions, Mobility CG, and Source Inc.

Sara Marsh is Verizon’s director of channel strategy and sales enablement. She said the events allow the Verizon sales team to understand the unique strengths of different partners.

Verizon Business Group's Sarah Marsh

Verizon Business Group’s Sarah Marsh

“I think this is something that really makes Verizon Partner Network so unique, because we really drive collaboration between our direct sellers and our partners,” Marsh told Channel Futures.

In many cases, the resellers bring additional services and products into the fold that Verizon sales teams find useful. On the other hand, Verizon brings much needed leads and sales muscle.

Verizon Reseller-Direct Sales Partnerships

“Most of these VARs don’t have huge sales organization on their own,” Marsh said. “So to be able to leverage the Verizon sales team, pitching their solutions to customers across the country, is a tremendous value-add. It’s really a force multiplier partners.”

Douglas Kerl, president and CEO of Masters Telecom, said Verizon maintains a close tight relationship between its sales people and its exclusive resellers.

“Every year it’s getting better and better with the teams there,” Kerl told Channel Futures. “Especially, a lot more of the traditional wireline folks are able to work with us very closely. And then for the wireless teams, they really encourage the relationships because the wireless folks have several products, and they need help in areas to help facilitate sales as well as add-on products and services outside the Verizon umbrella.”

Scroll through the 14 images above to learn more about the roadshow and Verizon’s channel integration strategy. 

You can also read about Verizon’s Q2 earnings.

Event photos courtesy Verizon

Jul 26

Amazon Previews AWS Marketplace Vendor Insights for Risk Management

By | Managed Services News

The new tool will standardize and automate how ISVs provide security information to GRC professionals.

AWS RE:INFORCE — Amazon has introduced a new tool called AWS Marketplace Vendor Insights. It aims to simplify risk assessment of partners’ SaaS applications. The cloud provider previewed the marketplace feature on Tuesday as it kicked off its AWS re:Inforce security conference in Boston.

Vendor Insights provides a web dashboard that lets governance, risk and compliance (GRC) professionals assess software in the AWS Marketplace. The dashboard provides security and compliance information, which includes data privacy, application security and access control. AWS developed Vendor Insights to give sellers a standard approach for rendering compliance information via the AWS Marketplace.

AWS chief information security officer C.J. Moses (pictured above) introduced the preview release of Vendor Insights during the re:Inforce opening keynote.

“What we’ve done is collected common security controls, including third-party audits like SOC 2 and ISO 27,001, along with vendor attestations,” Moses said. “Our goal is to cut eight to 10 weeks out of the procurement life cycle, decreasing the time used for capability, for actually being able to use the capabilities that are there.”

Continuous Updates

Mona Chadha, AWS director of category management, added that Vendor Insights will make it easier for ISV partners to provide more transparency when customers perform risk assessments.

AWS' Mona Chadha

AWS’ Mona Chadha

“Today they have that ability, but they don’t have it continuously,” Chadha told Channel Futures. “What we’re providing is our dashboard views for customers to see their third-party software security posture.”

ISVs can self-report controls in their solutions based on 140 security and compliance features, according to Chadha. Vendor Insights is integrated with and run atop AWS Audit Manager and AWS Config.

“The key thing is that customers have everything now in one spot where they’re actually transacting, which is all through the marketplace,” she said. “This is the first time that you have a cloud marketplace that’s providing all of that documentation, all of those controls in one spot for the customer.”

AWS Vendor Insights Preview Dashboard

Customers must sign a non-disclosure agreement before they can view the full security profile of an ISV’s offering. After signing the NDA, a customer can access the profiles on-demand.

Laura Roantree, global head of marketplaces go-to-market at security platform provider Trend Micro, agreed with that claim. Roantree anticipates other cloud providers will follow AWS’ lead.

“AWS has truly been the leader in evolving and modernizing procurement, and other marketplaces tend to follow suit,” Roantree said. “We know not all customers can buy through the AWS Marketplace. For those who need to do it elsewhere, we’d love them to have that functionality.”

Vendor Insights and ISVs

Trend Micro is one of roughly 20 ISVs that have participated in a private preview of Vendor Insights, according to Chandha. Other ISVs testing Vendor Insights include JFrog, Palo Alto Networks and Teradata. Ultimately, AWS anticipates thousands of ISVs that distribute their offerings via the AWS Marketplace will use the tool. While officials didn’t give an exact general availability date, they indicated that they hope to release it later this year.

For Trend Micro, Roantree believes by automating the risk assessment process, Vendor Insights will meet its aim of expediting procurement. By continuously providing updates in Trend Micro’s attestations, it validates them in real time, she said.

“If a customer or a prospect gets our kind of report or view into our compliance insights today, and that evolves in the next week, they’ll automatically get that. Or if the requirements change, we’ll be able to provide more information to attest to that, again, simpler, automated, not back and forth emailing five guys in the cybersecurity architecture, to validate something.”

 

Jul 26

Nokia Sparks PE Interest, Sets Sights on Potential Sale of Managed Services Business

By | Managed Services News

The telecommunications company is reportedly working to determine a potential deal.

Nokia might sell its managed services business. The telecommunications/5G company is working with advisers to gauge interest, according to Bloomberg, which recently reported that private equity firms may have interest in a potential deal. 

Nokia’s managed services business nests in its cloud and network services division. The business offers network maintenance and data management services to communication service providers (CSPs). This generates about $510 million in annual revenue. 

Shares in Nokia rose as much as 2.3% on Friday, and followed that on Monday, up a fraction of a percentage point.

Nokia's Pekka Lundmark

Nokia’s Pekka Lundmark

Pekka Lundmark, Nokia’s chief executive officer, has been working to boost the company since mid-2020. His focus? Restructuring and adding resources to product development. He recently stated that Nokia has moved into the “accelerate phase” of this strategy, all with the goal of bolstering growth and margin expansion.

While there is no guarantee that the managed services business unit will be sold, the company recently reported better than-expected earnings. It also said that it’s on pace to meet full-year guidance amid strong demand for 5G gear, Bloomberg reported.

Jul 26

Westcoast’s Alex Tatham Departs for New Role at Reseller

By | Managed Services News

Distribution stalwart leaves Westcoast after 14 years for NSG Global.

In a surprising announcement, Westcoast managing director Alex Tatham will leave the distributor for a role at a U.K. channel partner.

In a LinkedIn post, Tatham prefaced the announcement with “Shock news!”

NSC Global's Alex Tatham

NSC Global’s Alex Tatham

He said he will leave Westcoast to start as the new global head of clients and marketing at NSC Global. Tatham described feeling “proud, emotional and a host of other emotions.”

He wrote: “After 25 years in distribution, there are too many people to say thank you to — but clearly the last 14 years at Westcoast has been extraordinary.

“Developing the UK’s leading distributor and shouting about its success has been a phenomenal ride and I leave the business with a superb team and giant reputation. Thank you to all the vendors that have and continue to help, and customers that have trusted us with their business, and particularly those that have supported me personally. It’s a wonderful channel and one that I can shout about from a different (reseller!) direction in the future.”

Tatham went on to thank his team.

“It’s a team effort for sure and it always has been and will be in my new role too,” he wrote.

The exec finishes at Westcoast on July 31 and will start at NSC Global on Sept. 26.

Advocate for Distribution

Alex Tatham is seen by many as the face of Westcoast, and a vocal advocate for distribution. He joined Westcoast in 2009 as sales and marketing director before becoming managing director in 2014.

Westcoast became the UK’s largest privately owned IT business and technology distributor during Tatham’s tenure at the company It most recently posted £3.7 billion in revenue.

At last month’s Channel Partners Europe event, Tatham was bullish about the future of distribution. He said the headwinds distribution faces are nothing new, and the industry has always been able to adapt and thrive.

“I’ve been in distribution for 25 years and that has been said to me for 25 years,” he said. “The fastest growing business in the U.K. is distributors who [are] doing more and more. Somehow, they seem to be adapting to those challenges. I think you’ll find the distributors are extremely adaptable to whatever situation is required.

 

Jul 26

The 7 Golden Rules for Choosing Ecosystem Partners

By | Managed Services News

Channel winners will be those who create partner ecosystem founded on advocacy, not traditional IT solutions.

eSentire's Bob Layton

Bob Layton

The channel is in a historic market inflection as it evolves into “the ecosystem.” Multiple converging developments are driving this inflection, from transient supply-chain woes to a permanent, generational shift in buyers and companies demanding different kinds of value be delivered in new ways. The pandemic accelerated the inflection. Now it’s being driven faster and deeper as the SaaS software industry enters the dreaded Valley of Uncertainty.

That’s the good news: We are in a crisis . . . of opportunity.

Four years ago, 76% of global business leaders told Accenture their then-current business model would be unrecognizable in five years. The pandemic and its aftermath made 2018’s prophecy come true early. The channel business model of 2018 is certainly unrecognizable.

The visual metaphor of “channels” — inflexible, geometric lines connecting a company to a few other companies that resell its products — has been replaced by a sprawling, brawling, open-air souk where companies combine opportunistically with ecosystem partners to imbue each other’s products and services with greater business value, creating stronger solutions, consistent value and deeper satisfaction for customers, and more revenue for themselves.

As long ago as his channel predictions for 2021 (written in 2020), the former Forrester analyst Jay McBain (now of Canalys) reported such market giants as Microsoft/Azure, Google Cloud, and Salesforce were luring ecosystem partners by stressing the potential additive value – $4.65 to $9 – available to partners for every $1 of cloud project spend. Ecosystem partners would realize this revenue by wrapping additional hardware, software and services around those central cloud dollars.

The 7 Golden Rules of Choosing Ecosystem Partners

With the inflection’s evolution from channel to ecosystem accelerating, the core question becomes: with so many companies seeking partnerships to build optimal ecosystems, how should a smart organization choose winning partners?

Somewhat counterintuitively in this free-wheeling, open-air marketplace, strategic discipline plays a central role.

Here are seven rules to evaluate partners for a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company:

  • We are living in a subscription world where we’ve got to keep the customer buying every 30 days until the end of time. So, in addition to solutions delivering continuous value, partners’ must in parallel drive such strong adoption, integration, and stickiness that customers will never want to unplug.
  • In partnership, trust is everything. Once any element of the ecosystem loses customer trust, game over. In choosing partners, consider not only the quality of their services and solutions, but also of their values. Every partner should be one we are delighted to introduce to our most-valued clients. We must hold ourselves to the same standard.
  • Whether the months ahead bring a recession, correction or just a momentary stutter-step, customer satisfaction will become increasingly important compared to customer acquisition. The best partners, then, are ones that deliver the highest and most consistent levels of customer satisfaction.
  • In the immediate future, customers will probably spend less on new licenses and more on making sure everything they have already bought works well together to solve their business problems. Which partners can we combine with to help our customers achieve that goal?
  • Increasingly, SaaS solutions aren’t IT buys, they’re business buys. Which partners can make us more attractive to business buyers as SaaS climbs the organizational chart?
  • In real estate, it’s location, location, location. In the SaaS world it’s scale, scale, scale. Which potential partners are ready to scale up with your business and your customers? Sure, it’s great to find and attract partners, but not simply for the sake of gathering partners. Make extremely careful choices: Don’t go for all the Easter eggs. Just the solid gold ones.
  • The current inflection point will reward complete top-to-bottom rebuilds of companies’ go-to-market architectures. The winners will be those who move away from selling traditional IT solutions and create a partner ecosystem founded on advocacy, advisory services, brokerage, and consulting. Ecosystems built to ask customers, “What are you trying to do right now?” and having all the resources to make it happen.

As we enter uncertain times, I encourage my team — and every team in the marketplace — to take advantage of this crisis of opportunity and go on the offensive. Disrupt yourself radically, all at once. Rip off the Band-Aid. What better time than now for a bold new direction?

Bob Layton is chief channel officer at eSentire. His 20-plus years of channel experience includes stints at Digital Defense, Centre Technologies and Alert Logic. You may follow him on LinkedIn or @eSentire on Twitter.

Jul 25

Nokia Perks PE Interest, Sets Sights on Potential Sale of Managed Services Business

By | Managed Services News

The telecommunications company is reportedly working to determine a potential deal.

Nokia might sell its managed services business. The telecommunications/5G company is working with advisers to gauge interest, according to Bloomberg, which recently reported that private equity firms may have interest in a potential deal. 

Nokia’s managed services business nests in its cloud and network services division. The business offers network maintenance and data management services to communication service providers (CSPs). This generates about $510 million in annual revenue. 

Shares in Nokia rose as much as 2.3% on Friday, and followed that on Monday, up a fraction of a percentage point.

Nokia's Pekka Lundmark

Nokia’s Pekka Lundmark

Pekka Lundmark, Nokia’s chief executive officer, has been working to boost the company since mid-2020. His focus? Restructuring and adding resources to product development. He recently stated that Nokia has moved into the “accelerate phase” of this strategy, all with the goal of bolstering growth and margin expansion.

While there is no guarantee that the managed services business unit will be sold, the company recently reported better than-expected earnings. It also said that it’s on pace to meet full-year guidance amid strong demand for 5G gear, Bloomberg reported.

Jul 25

RingCentral Harnesses New Hardware Partnerships to Improve Conference Rooms

By | Managed Services News

Strong relationships help meet complex challenges for a modern hybrid work environment, the company said.

Unified communications giant RingCentral has expanded RingCentral Rooms with new hardware offerings and feature enhancements. The upgrades comes as more people return to the office.

RingCentral Rooms extends RingCentral Video. It allows customers to have the same video experience in a conference room that they already have in a home office or on the go. Now they can select among several new hardware partners to enhance their conference rooms. The technology includes high-quality, intelligent audio, and video and whiteboard.

RingCentral’s Kira Makagon

Kira Makagon is chief innovation officer at RingCentral.

“Strong relationships with strategic hardware partners are important as we strive to address the complex challenges around fostering collaboration in modern hybrid work environments.” Makagon said. “When paired with our partners’ advanced hardware offerings, RingCentral Rooms can unlock the full potential of today’s hybrid workforce and enable equitable collaboration for workers wherever they are.”

The company offers several new features. For one, users can share content from a user’s mobile device among meeting participants in a room. And Whiteboard for RingCentral Rooms allows users to co-create and collaborate with other participants. This is regardless of whether they are in a room or home office.

New Hardware Partners

RingCentral has partnered with three additional hardware vendors to create the most advanced rooms solutions, the company said. First, there’s Avocor, a global provider of touch-enabled interactive displays. This will bring RingCentral Rooms For Touch to market. Customers will be able to join and end meetings with a simple touch. Through a new series of Avocor Collab Touch hardware displays with RingCentral Rooms for Touch software built in, customers can access digital whiteboarding and on-screen annotation. RingCentral Rooms for Touch will be compatible with Whiteboard, a virtual collaborative canvas. It is now available to customers in beta.

Audio brand EPOS recently announced a new line of meeting room solutions using EPOS BrainAdapt. A group of technologies were designed to support the brain’s natural way of processing sound. It enables users to easily adapt to a hybrid meeting sound environment, the company said. It also reduces cognitive load through a video bar device. With support for RingCentral Rooms on EPOS Expand Vision 5, customers will be able to leverage EPOS audio and the latest collaboration features for meeting rooms.

Finally, by partnering with Jabra, the provider of personal sound and office solutions, RingCentral Rooms can harness advanced on-board AI. Jabra’s PanaCast 50 intelligent video bar is certified for RingCentral Rooms. PanaCast 50 can automatically detect who’s speaking and adjust the picture to focus on them. This puts the most important content front and center.

Meetings for Creativity and Inclusivity

RingCentral’s longstanding hardware solution providers, LogitechPoly and Yealink, still give users RingCentral Rooms-enabled, all-in-one video conferencing solutions.

Frost & Sullivan's Roopam Jain

Frost & Sullivan’s Roopam Jain

Roopam Jain is VP of research at Frost & Sullivan’s Connected Work Practice.

“As businesses adapt to the hybrid work model, one thing is clear – investments in office meeting spaces will continue to grow,” Jain said. “RingCentral’s new features, including Whiteboard, are designed to enhance team creativity and inclusivity with the goal of narrowing the effectiveness gaps found in most hybrid collaboration environments and better connect today’s dispersed workforce.”

Jul 25

T-Mobile to Pay $350 Million Settlement in Data Breach Class-Action Lawsuit

By | Managed Services News

T-Mobile also will spend $150 million on data security and related technology.

T-Mobile has agreed to pay $350 million to customers in a class-action lawsuit related to personal information stolen in a 2021 cyberattack.

T-Mobile disclosed the proposed settlement in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing. The lawsuit is pending in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri. The proposed settlement remains subject to preliminary and final court approval.

If approved by the court, under the terms of the proposed settlement, T-Mobile would pay $350 million to fund claims submitted by class members, the legal fees of plaintiffs’ counsel and the costs of administering the settlement. It also would commit to spending $150 million for data security and related technology in 2022 and 2023.

The court could approve the settlement in December. However, appeals or other proceedings could delay it. T-Mobile can terminate the agreement under certain conditions.

Multiple T-Mobile Data Breaches

T-Mobile has disclosed numerous data breaches since 2018. Most recently, T-Mobile confirmed a data breach by the Lapsus$ extortion gang. It used stolen credentials and gained access to internal systems.

T-Mobile sent us the following statement regarding the class-action lawsuit settlement:

“Customers are first in everything we do and protecting their information is a top priority. Like every company, we are not immune to these criminal attacks. Our efforts to guard against them continue, and over the past year we have doubled down on our extensive cybersecurity program to enhance existing programs.”

Program enhancements include:

  • Creating a cybersecurity transformation office that reports directly to T-Mobile‘s CEO, and adding more talent with decades of cyber strategy experience and leadership.
  • Engaging in long-term collaborations with Mandiant, Accenture and KPMG to design strategies and execute plans to further transform its cybersecurity program.
  • Committing to investing hundreds of millions of dollars to enhance T-Mobile’s cybersecurity tools and capabilities.
  • Conducting nearly 900,000 training courses for employees and partners across the company to understand their role in these efforts.

“As we continue to invest time, energy and resources in addressing this challenge, we are pleased to have resolved this consumer class action filing,” T-Mobile said.

No Admission of Wrongdoing

If approved, the settlement will resolve all claims brought by current, former and prospective customers impacted by the 2021 cyberattack. It contains no admission of liability, wrongdoing or responsibility.

Casey Ellis is founder and CTO of Bugcrowd.

Bugcrowd's Casey Ellis

Bugcrowd’s Casey Ellis

“On one hand, $350 million is a lot of money, and is a clear signal of the kinds of recovery and punitive costs which can be involved when a breach like this takes place,” he said. “On the other hand, 40 million records were involved in this breach overall. And a per-record penalty of $8.75 for losing something as impactful and difficult to protect and replace as a Social Security number seems like T-Mobile managed to get off fairly lightly here. Given this isn’t the only security issue affecting T-Mobile user data over the past few years, I’m pleased to see that the pain of staying the same has exceeded the pain of change, and that they’ll be investing in improving user data security in a focused and proactive way in response to this.”

T-Mobile ‘Repeatedly Lax’ with Controls

John Bambenek is principal threat hunter at Netenrich. He said the settlement represents less than half of 1% of T-Mobile’s annual revenue.

Netenrich's John Bambenek

Netenrich’s John Bambenek

“Their stock price is up 2% today, at the present time,” he said. “Certainly T-Mobile needs to do better. But with those numbers, I wouldn’t be expecting any major culture shifts anytime soon.”

Oliver Tavakoli is CTO at Vectra.

“T-Mobile has repeatedly been lax in applying minimally acceptable controls to prevent these violations of end user’s privacy and is now paying a fine the size of which should make other organizations take notice,” he said.

Some of the data leaked was private information T-Mobile collected from individuals whose applications for phones it rejected, Tavakoli said. It collected that information several years prior to the breaches.

“[That’s] information which they had no rationale to even keep,” he said.

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