Summary
Joseph Scimeca, Virtual CISO at Liberty Technology, is all too familiar with vendor promises that don’t pan out. He shares how Blackpoint Cyber’s Managed Detection and Response (MDR) solution demonstrates its value through real results. Blackpoint’s swift response times and the ability to proactively remediate threats 24/7 save his team time and frustration. With enterprise-grade capabilities at a price that’s accessible to his small- and medium-size business (SMB) clients, Blackpoint enables the Managed Service Provider (MSP) to scale seamlessly as clients grow. Scimeca praises Blackpoint’s proven expertise and simple deployment that made his engineers’ lives easy. With results that deliver, Blackpoint is who Scimeca counts to protect his high-risk clients.
Transcript
My name is Joseph Scimeca. I’m the virtual chief information security officer for Liberty Technology. We’re based out of Griffin, Georgia. We’ve been in business for 15 years.
We’re a managed service provider focusing on bringing an all-inclusive stack to our clients, small and medium businesses, all the way to municipalities. So making sure that we understand that every stack doesn’t work for every client, you know, every environment’s different. So we specialize in being able to match certain products and services to those clients.
One of the biggest things that we noticed, and when I came in—talking about more of a risk management point of view—complexity is the number one enemy to a cybersecurity posture. And we had way too many vendors. They were 60-70% the way set up. They weren’t set up completely.
We were using SaaS Alerts as well, just a lot of detection stuff, and a follow-up, and this is how you fix it. Well, we don’t have time to fix it in 24 to 48 hours, when we can get to it. We have to have it fixed now.
And when we were looking at Blackpoint Cyber, I felt that, yeah, I mean, the data’s there on how fast they’re able to implement, and then just seeing the solution, how it worked, it was fantastic.
How did Blackpoint earn your business?
A lot of the vendors, they use acronyms, you know, it’s going to cook you dinner, give you all these great things for you. And then you get the tool, and it just doesn’t do that.
Blackpoint Cyber focused more on, show me. Proof in the pudding, right? And being able to see their expertise, how the platform worked, and just showing some of the vectors of attack, it was incredibly impressive. And I remember going back to my company and saying, we have to we have to look at this product and really sit down and take it serious.
And you know, when we look at products, we look at what’s the reputation in the space, is the biggest thing, right? And where are they trying to sell their product? And it was more on this is what the product actually does, and not what we’re going to tell you it does.
What makes Blackpoint unique?
Speaking from the product side, I would say that it is a solution that you can bring to small- and medium-sized businesses that is enterprise-level quality. And that’s what happens a lot with certain products we look at. Like, man, this product is amazing, but how are we going to sell this to a small- to medium-sized business at the prices they’re at?
Blackpoint Cyber is able to offer, like I say, that enterprise-grade solution at a small- and medium-size price that as our clients are small and they scale, we can easily scale with Blackpoint Cyber. It’s not an issue to where we have to just rip, you know, we have to do all these different moving parts to do it. It’s just easy to implement. And as they grow, we grow with them.
Which Blackpoint solutions do you currently use?
The main thing that we use right now is the MDR solution, the 24/7, making sure that we have someone’s eyes in the skies at all times, especially far more high-risk clients like municipalities or, you know, infrastructure, K-12, things like that. That’s the main thing we’re using now with Blackpoint Cyber.
What do you think Blackpoint does best?
I would say the response time is fantastic. To get a phone call at 2:00 in the morning for an actual issue is amazing as well. But also to see that it has been remediated is fantastic. Their ability too, to kind of show CIS Controls and how things are benchmarked to different vulnerabilities is fantastic, too. Even when it comes to, you know, deploying the actual solution, it was easy.
I mean, it wasn’t this crazy pulling out our hair thing. And then, the engineers, they love new products, but the last thing they want to hear is, “Hey, guys, we’re getting a new solution and we have this amount of days to get it implemented.” It’s like, why did why did you do this to me?
They didn’t have that with Blackpoint Cyber. It was a very different experience. They implemented it and loved it and talked more about it as they were doing it.
What challenges led you to seek a partner like Blackpoint?
I think the biggest challenge is the way cybersecurity is moving, risk is moving, is everything’s changed. Attacks are way up, and we have to have the ability to pivot. You know, criminals, people who are going to do harm to your company or to your clients, they don’t sleep. My guys like to sleep, of course, my engineers.
So I had to find a company like Blackpoint Cyber to offer me that 24/7 solution that I can maybe not go to bed every night feeling amazing, but feel a lot better than I was a few years ago. And that’s where Blackpoint Cyber came in.