Since 2010, Stratus ip has been “a company made up of people that live and breathe cybersecurity.”
That remains true today, even as it’s grown to include more than 60 employees from the South Jersey/Philadelphia area who are passionate about not only helping clients secure their digital fortresses, but also serving as strategic allies who help those clients understand just how invaluable it is to invest in a strong cybersecurity posture.
“We have a team of people who understand both the technology and business side,” says Michael Dlug, Stratus ip founder and CEO. “Once you sign with our services, we handhold you through the lifecycle, we customize your individual defenses and try to maximize every dollar. We really try to build this security ecosystem that reflects the customer’s mission, culture and their needs—a doctor’s office, for example, is going to be completely different than a logistics company, which will be completely different than a couple [of] banks.”
With rapid evolution being a defining technological characteristic, Dlug knows “cybersecurity tools are really only as powerful as the people and strategy behind them, and that’s where the true value of experience lies.” As a result, Stratus ip’s CIRRUS security stack is highly adaptable and scalable, easily shifting to meet thoroughly modern needs with cutting-edge tools such as automatic patch management, identity access management, data discovery, vulnerability management and comprehensive reporting.
“All businesses today operate in some sort of threat landscape, and it literally changes by the minute,” Dlug begins. “And any one of those breaches can undo years of growth and, just as importantly, erode vendor and customer trust overnight.”
As a longtime IT professional, Dlug has noticed that two especially stubborn misconceptions persist: that cybersecurity infrastructure is a checklist item you can scratch off your to-do list and then never revisit, and malicious hackers only prey on big businesses.
The latter is a major reason why Stratus ip primarily works with small and medium-sized companies, helping them identify vulnerabilities and explaining how bad actors often assume they’re easy targets. It’s also why he notes that a managed security service provider—or MSSP, a third-party entity to whom cybersecurity monitoring and management is outsourced—is such a critical investment for small businesses.
“Small and medium-sized businesses are just as vulnerable as larger ones and … are increasingly the target of cybersecurity crimes,” notes Dlug. “Most of the time, a small business doesn’t have the in-house resources to defend itself effectively, so an MSSP like us can play that role for them. By doing so, we level the playing field, we’re continuously monitoring our enterprise-grade solutions at a cost that makes sense for a small operation.”
As with any specialized niche, though, Dlug knows that “cybersecurity can be a scary word.” That’s why the Stratus ip team doesn’t just comprise experts in their field: They’re masterful communicators too, who know how to speak to decision-makers, ask good questions, and stress the necessity of highly customizable security options.
“We’re not selling, we’re listening,” he explains. “My CTO [Jeff Thomas] and myself have been in this industry a long time … we came up with our own stack… from conversations with business owners and [hearing] what were their concerns, what were they looking for. On the very front of things, they wanted to know where their vulnerabilities were: ‘Where can we be hacked?’ So as part of our stack, we do a deep-dive penetration test and give them a report. In that report, the levels of threats are categorized from ‘critical’ down to ‘low.’ From there, we’ll say, ‘Listen, this is what you have to do in order to protect yourself, this is where the bad actors can get into.’”
While Dlug and the Stratus ip team understand that sometimes cybersecurity means reacting to an unexpected event, they strive to make it as proactive as possible so little hiccups don’t become giant headaches. Because, given their own IT experience, they keenly understand how the heads of small but mighty in-house tech professionals can easily become overwhelmed by trying to be that last line of defense protecting a company’s sensitive data.
“We have never met an IT leader who’s not under tremendous pressure to secure systems, support their users, enable remote workers and drive transformation with AI, all with limited resources,” Dlug notes. “CIRRUS gives the IT team, as well as the leadership team, time back in their lives, because once we set this up and have it going, they don’t have to spend all their time reacting to it, they can be proactive with it. It doesn’t matter who you are, we all have the same amount of one thing: time. With this fully managed service, we try to give them some of that time back so they can focus on what they do best.”
Stratus ip
Moorestown
(888) 396-1236
Stratusip.net
