Security Sales & Integration May 2021 - 29

the IT space has gone the last decade or so.
The manufacturers need to focus on producing
good, secure products, enabling features in them
and ensuring they're cybersecure and capable,
and driving down the cost. They shouldn't be
out there growing their sales footprint and they
definitely shouldn't be having an installation
workforce. We see some startups trying to go
past the integrator channel and direct market.
You've got to be focused on your products first
before you focus on going to market.

testing in one of our facilities to ensure that
client's system is fully ready to go. It may not
have all the devices connected yet but at least
it shows all the integrations are solid and network traffic is working as advertised. Then it's
about coordinating with the clients regarding
adaptations and an overlay of whatever cybersecurity program they want to apply. We make
sure we're aware of their requirements, but also
know where our responsibilities begin and end
on any given deployment.

Picking up on IT and cyber, how would
you categorize Paladin's expertise in
network solutions? What's in-house
and what's outsourced? What role does
cybersecurity play?
Sime: We founded the business on the prem-

Let's talk a little bit more about
technology. What areas are you excited
about and why?
Sime: With the evolution of the circuit-based

ise that IT infrastructure was going to enable us
to deploy services out in the environments and
that everything was going to be on a common
IT backbone. Networking is a core component
and security of that network is part of that core.
We do all that design and implementation inhouse. From a network server and storage perspective, we've invested heavily in our people to
either bring them from enterprise IT environments, telecom environments and then develop
them to ensure they're on the leading edge of
the technology.
From a security perspective, we're designing
it securely and vetting the supply chain, because that's another vector of attack that has
been pretty common in the big breaches recently. In many cases they're dropping technologies
in or packaging technologies in that inevitably
leave the vector or breach factor open. We look
at it completely from all the different aspects.
Then once it gets complex enough or we need
third-party validation or we want to see ongoing monitoring, we have partners in the cybersecurity industry. All they do is secure systems,
monitor for threats and remediate them.

on-premises, air-gapped systems to offerings
that are more flexible and enable access, the big
thing is how the underlying engine is shifting
to a point where it's much easier to get functionality in front of the end user. That is due
to more modern capable software feature-wise.
There's machine learning sitting behind the
curtain there, picking some of the load off the
operators and getting real events into the hands
of the end user, making the systems more usable and flexible.
There's a few different places that's coming
from, one being the whole AI conversation. AI
has been overpromised and underdelivered for
a very long time. But I think machine learning
specifically is going to bring some solutions to
narrowly defined problems that will take the
load off people and make their work lives better by not having to worry about monitoring
very basic things. Mobile access and biometrics
are going to be a key pivot point for new infrastructure, especially to enable touchless access
environments as an outcome of the pandemic.

We remain
prudent in what
we do. That's
allowed us to
cautiously but
assertively move
quickly into an
adjacency.
- Iain Morton, EVP,
Paladin Technologies

One of Paladin's specialties
is delivering design-build
solutions, such as datacenters
(pictured below) within public
infrastructure.

As a security integrator, what's key to
making a customer's IT department feel
good about what's going to happen?
Morton: We focus on the initial hardening of

a deployment and really establishing the cost
of the engagement, compliancy with that hardening, that setup, before it goes out. The larger
types of jobs we do go through a very extensive
predeployment process. They typically culminate just before deployment with penetration

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Security Sales & Integration May 2021

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