One of the most valuable assets of a company is information. And today, ‘digital data is the new black’. The wave of digitization has revolutionized every profession in every sector. Like every good, it also comes with a challenge; challenge of security. As digitization comes bearing countless advantages and now has become inevitable, information security is one of the greatest threats to any organization today.
ITSourceTEK is an IT security solutions company that guides its customers to protect their data from cybercrimes. It is an award-winning leader in the Information Security industry. The company provides strategic business and technology based cyber security solutions that leverage enterprise investments and improve efficiency to meet stringent compliance standards. The team of ITSourceTEK has extensive real world experience in leading and supporting organizations spanning across many industries.
ITSourceTEK is driven by the mission to exceed its clients’ expectations with exceptional service while using success to give back to charities and the community. Honesty and transparency, with no sales pressure or pushing a specific solution, are the key traits behind its success. The firm is strategic with access to the best solutions, and deep relationships across industries and technologies.
The Journey of Growth and Development
In its journey of more than a decade, ITSourceTEK has overcome many challenges and evolved to thwart newly emerging threats for the industry’s leading clients’ environments. At the beginning of this journey, it supported executives on critical projects at Northrop Grumman, Wells Fargo, and BD Biosciences. ITSourceTEK grew from those initial clients into many other high-profile large and complex environments in both the public and the private sectors. The technology, then, started moving away rapidly from a controlled perimeter, due to the proliferation of smart mobile devices, IOT, and Cloud/SaaS providers. In this, the team of ITSourceTEK saw an opportunity to impact their clients’ security by helping them move from only a perimeter-based security approach to a data centric security approach. Since then, they have helped many of their Fortune 500 clients in protecting their data by embracing the company’s data centric approach to security.
Safeguarding Healthcare from the Very Start
Towards the beginning of its journey to protect data, ITSourceTEK helped provide McKesson with consulting services to securely architect and develop its databases in support of some of its more critical applications. Another one of the company’s contributions was to protect Patient Healthcare Information (PHI). In this, it secured more than 100 Million Electronic Medical Records (EMR) on a project supporting EDS/HPE for the California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation. The organization provided architecture, development, and security of BD’s medical device firmware and desktop based applications used to analyze blood work down to the genomic level for AIDS, Cancer, and other diseases. In addition, it has provided complete assessments, IT support, and security of ambulatory and surgery centers for industry leaders like Amsurg. Now, it is helping some of these and other healthcare giants look at new and exciting innovations around the automation of Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) and securing data in more modernized environments, including Cloud and SaaS.
Prominent Solutions
At its nucleus, ITSourceTEK is a data security company. Then, as it expands outward in its offerings to protect data, the cellular membrane of the firm includes the following capabilities:
Data Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) Support & Solutions– It provides assessments, requirements, and gap analysis for security standards (such as HIPAA, SOX, PCI-DSS, and GDPR), and other regulatory requirements. It creates policies and provides solutions to fill any gaps and achieve compliance, ensuring that the companies meet stringent security standards for how their data is used, managed, and stored.
Data Encryption, Masking, and Tokenization– It helps to protect sensitive structured and unstructured data while at rest and in motion. This can start at the user interface, on the web or internal application, and extend through the back-end systems or data lakes, including Cloud/SaaS providers. Regardless of the storage location or file type, it helps to transparently encrypt the unstructured data to exceed compliance requirements.
Threat Detection and Policy Enforcement– With the advanced data science and machine learning, it helps to develop analytics and create inline protection to enforce security policies for the protection of sensitive data in real-time. Its solutions help to detect anomalies before data and IT, IoT, and OT systems are compromised. They also analyze, protect, and report threats from malicious insiders, ransomware, and other policy violations using Application and Database Security Platforms, autonomous threat intelligence, NAC, and/or combination of these solutions.
DNS and WAF Protection– DNS ports are becoming a common path for stealing data, as DLPs and other solutions can’t detect the theft. It addresses these vulnerabilities and provides protection against threats such as data exfiltration through the ports in the DNS. Its recommended DNS and WAF solutions prevent or mitigate impact from DDoS and other mission critical attacks.
Cloud Security Strategies and Solutions– It helps to develop automated security functions to extend protection as the data and applications move to Cloud and SaaS platforms. This also includes automation of policies and configurations for provisioning and data management functions.
Guided by the Diverse and Resilient Leadership Team
Brian Arellanes, CEO and Founder, is an accomplished professional with 20+ years of award-winning leadership in the technology and security space. He collaborates with and advises some of the top C-level executives and Security professionals in the world, while also finding time to feed his passion of giving back to the community.
The COO, Nina Do, has been with ITSourceTEK for 11+ years leading the operational aspects of the company, which includes Marketing, Advertising, Process Design and Governance, HR, Payroll, and A/P functions. Nina’s past experience as an Advertising Executive with a creative focus for some of the largest global firms has helped her to streamline messaging and operational efficiencies that better meet the needs of ITSourceTEK’s employees and clients, while reducing costs with automation.
Walter Jones, CIO, is a technology mogul with 40+ years of experience, many of which were at a C-level, leading thousands of employees at Fortune 50 organizations like Wells Fargo. Walter’s passion to accomplish business objectives while bringing up the next generation of thought leaders is second to none.
Matt Whitmarsh is the EVP and a trusted and experienced leader having more than 25 years of technology and security experience. He has led large public and private sector projects responsible for P&L, internal and 3rd party resources, and deliver of complex systems.
The Director of Operations, Jean Dubois, is a seasoned leader with 25+ years of experience that is well versed in financials and streamlining processes. Her entrepreneurial spirit brings a creative and people oriented approach to running operations.
Idiosyncratic tactics
A key differentiator for ITSourceTEK is its unique approach. It is not a sales-based organization, rather a trusted advisory practice for its clients to draw upon. As thought leaders in the data security and compliance space, the company invests heavily in understanding the best practices and solutions available. Its client relationships are all managed by trusted executives that have been executives in similar roles as its clients; this is advantageous to immediately provide insights based on the real world experience.
Furthermore, it is product agnostic and is constantly evaluating proven and emerging technologies. ITSourceTEK helps its clients to look at the solutions that have been thoroughly vetted, to help them avoid costly investigative efforts and/or delays associated with the vetting process. As it relates to product-based solutions, the firm’s value is further added by bringing strong partner relationships to its clients at the executive level and high partner status with deep discounts above the regular buying power. Along with this, it constantly looks for ways to automate its internal processes; advising similarly to its clients. This ensures that its employees have the best tools and methods to accomplish their tasks. ITSourceTEK also invests in conferences, seminars, and training courses to help its employees stay ahead in this competitive industry.
Accolades and Reverence
ITSourceTEK has earned many awards since 2006. Some of their top honors by some prominent sources from a past few years include Minority Cyber Security Company of the Year 2017, Top 10 Healthcare Compliance Solution Providers 2011-2014 and 2016, HP Supplier of the Year 2015, and 100 Fastest Growing Hispanic Business in the USA 2012-2014, amongst many others.
The greatest achievement for any company is the acknowledgement from its clients. ITSourceTEK has been praised for always being highly responsive to its client’s requests to help them fully achieve their goals with a strong return on investment. Its clients have also appreciated the company’s technical and strategic depth to help steer them in the right direction and for finding creative ways to ensure that they don’t exceed budgetary thresholds.
Arm-in-Arm with the Developments in Security Industry
With the continual pressure to increase security and regulations to match, ITSourceTEK’s viewpoint is simple; protect the data by building a proper governance program with policies and the technology to enforce them. As every organization is at a different level of maturity and has a different level of commitment (or budget) to do everything required; it creates customized solutions for each client. Addressing the public outcry to increase the level of protection used for their data, the firm is constantly evaluating new ways to do so efficiently.
Future Plans
ITSourceTEK looks to continue building its reputation as a thought leader in the data security and GRC space to help drive wider adoption of its data centric security and risk-based approaches.