Cybersec Consulting

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the Chief Solutions Architect for a cybersecurity company. We’re headquartered in Dubai and have offices in many other countries. I cover the Middle East and Africa region.

What challenge were you trying to address with Cybersec Consulting?

We did not have the expertise, manpower, and resources to back some of the niche cybersecurity solutions that we offer. We needed a reliable partner with strong consulting skills, so we reached out to Cybersec Consulting.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Cybersec Consulting provides a range of services including governance risk and compliance (GRC) services and specialized product-based expertise on how to deploy certain technology.

For our clients that are based in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and other Middle Eastern and North African countries, their team imparts CyberArk consulting and implementation services. We don’t have the skillset or manpower for these long-term projects so we rely on Cybersec Consulting to dedicate the necessary number of resources. 

They also provide training for certain cybersecurity products. For this, several trainers and training coordinators are always available on-demand and could cater to various training requirements in the cybersecurity space. Cybersec Consulting accommodates remote training, but they also sometimes either fly out to the client or have the client come over to where we conduct classroom-based training.

What is the team composition?

I work with their training head and several members of their executive management team. I’m also in touch with 7–8 senior and junior consultants.

How did you come to work with Cybersec Consulting?

We’ve come to know each other through the many events and conferences within the cybersecurity industry. We decided to work with Cybersec Consulting specifically because their leadership is trustworthy and because they’re well-known in the region when it comes to building service capabilities. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We first engaged Cybersec Consulting over a year ago, during the first quarter of 2020. We’re still working together.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We’ve definitely seen Cybersec Consulting measure up to our KPIs, which are milestones met, on-time delivery, and responsiveness towards the client, among others. They’ve also been able to uphold the quality of their services despite the constraints presented by the pandemic. 

Overall, their team has helped our clients build a strong set of internal skills through training and consultations. Stakeholders now have an improved business resiliency against cybersecurity attacks. 

How did Cybersec Consulting perform from a project management standpoint?

Because of the pandemic, some of our clients sometimes miss a day of training. Cybersec Consulting, however, has been very accommodating and flexible with scheduling. 

We communicate with the team through Microsoft Teams, emails, and phone calls.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their management is very trustworthy and they deliver what they promise.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Effectiveness can always be improved, but there’s nothing major to point out with Cybersec Consulting. If there’s anything we think needs improvement, we can count on the team to fix it once we’ve informed them. 

It would be nice to meet them in person as well. I believe that collaboration and communication improve when dealing with each other in person. However, we haven’t really been able to because of the travel restrictions.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you need a reliable services partner, go with Cybersec Consulting. Leaving the deployment work to them will definitely allow you to focus more on your business.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m in sales at Infrassist Technology Pvt Ltd. We work with a lot of MSPs globally and service them. We try to work as an extended arm or an extension of the MSPs that are based outside of India.

What challenge were you trying to address with Cybersec Consulting?

We needed a company to do the IT consulting side of our projects.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Cybersec Consulting provides all of our IT consulting needs. From firewall projects to server project, or even cloud projects, they are a resource for our clients.

They interface directly with our customers, working to understand their requirements and suggest a solution that is right for them. We are on the backend doing the implementation part with them.

What is the team composition?

Depending on the project, we work with 3-4 members of their team.

How did you come to work with Cybersec Consulting?

The owner and I used to work for the same company.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing engagement with Cybersec Consulting began in June 2019.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

The experience with them has been very good. Cybersec Consulting is really clear with what the customer expectation is and are very clear with our customers. They also give us a very clear scope of what we need to do, at what time, and when it needs to be done. We work very closely with them and have become good friends with their team.

We don’t interact with the end customer. We’re more like an extension to Cybersec Consulting’s team. They do the customer-facing part and we work on the background. One of my junior engineers is mostly involved with their project. When a project comes from them, they directly call my engineers. That’s the kind of engagement we’re used to.

How did Cybersec Consulting perform from a project management standpoint?

Communication between our teams is good and they're very honest and transparent. Additionally, they consistently meet deadlines. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They suggest the right solution for the customer and give great advice. They’re honest about what they can and cannot do.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Their core team has great value. Their consulting, approach, and strategy are great. It would be good if they could expand to other countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, in the Middle East Region, but I believe they have plans to do so in the works.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Talk to them about your pain areas. You can openly discuss it with them and they’ll give you the right advice. They’ll be honest if they don’t know and will recommend you to someone else. 

Please describe your company and your position there.

With more than 30 years of experience, 7 offices and over 1500 employees across the region - we're a leading end-to-end digital solutions provider, offering the region’s broadest portfolio, including industry-leading digital infrastructure, digital business solutions, security and services.

My role is Practice Head for Application and Data Security Practice in the Security department which is part of Digital Infrastructure Solution Business Unit

For what projects/services did your company hire Cybersec Consulting?

We had received a turnkey project for our customer for Identity and Access Management software and services wherein we wanted a cybersecurity trusted services partner whom we could work to deliver quality services to our customer...

What were your goals for this project?

This project was on Identity , Access and Privileged Management where the project key objective was to monitor and audit all activities of the privileged users from security perspective.. The goal of this project is quality delivery of the project so that we can expand it to other entities of the company.

How did you select this vendor?

We have a dedicated practice for this area which is Identity and Access Management. This kind of project requires niece skills and qualified consultants.

We shortlisted Cybersec Consulting company and took interviews of the implementation consultant and also checked their experience in this areas and very satisfied with this process...

There were 2 other partners shortlisted but they could not qualify the round of interview.

Describe the project in detail.

This project was to implement Privilege Access Management Solution and the product was Beyond Trust.

The key requirement of this project was to implement the solution so that privileged users like database administrators, network admin and all super users use this solution to access their tools. For e.g database admin instead of login to their SQL editor they were given the PAM solution with the credentials and this used to change every time.

All admins were using this solution to login and then access their work and all the activities which was done by them were recorded for auditing perspectives... The partner Cybersec Consulting was fully responsible to end to end implementation of this project..

What was the team composition?

There was a project manager from our side and 1 Project Managet and 1 technical lead and 1 implementation engineer was involved from CyberSec partners perspective.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

These kind of project are very challenging as it is more of culture change and the users who are involved are not very co-operative so cybersec consulting team members were very patient during the implementation time.

The Project Manager from cybersec was bridging the gap of managing the users and the associated politics which helped the technical implementation engineer to successful implement the solution.

This was phase1 and there is another phase which we are expecting because of the successful implementation.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The project manager and the technical implementation engineer combination was very good and their communication was as per the expectations. They were part of the end to end implementation journey of this project.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Although this company is a startup, they're very passionate and focused, have good skill resources and want to be keen on building skills in few areas which will differentiate them and with this project I would agree that they are on the right track.

They have dedicated team for training which is good as the quality of overall project experience becomes good.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Cybersec consulting is a startup and they are growing so I believe they can start focusing on additional cyber security domains and also start investing in marketing activities.