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24 n e w h a v e n B I Z | O c t o b e r 2 0 2 2 | n e w h a v e n b i z . c o m F O C U S : C y b e r s e c u r i t y 14 Bobala Road 3rd Floor Holyoke, MA 01040 Tel: 413.536.3970 Headquarters 280 Trumbull St 24th Floor Hartford, CT 06103 Tel: 860.522.3111 One Hamden Center 2319 Whitney Ave, Suite 2A Hamden, CT 06518 Tel: 203.397.2525 Largest Connecticut-Based Accounting Firm For over 60 years, Whittlesey's team of professionals has provided superior service and value-added advice, with specialization in the following areas: Assurance Advisory Tax Technology Learn more at WAdvising.com Continued from page 23 ahead," Grande said. On the service side, the company evolved from IT consulting to becom- ing a managed service provider for small or medium-sized businesses, "es- sentially a fully outsourced technology role," Grande said. e company eventually outgrew its West Haven offices, moving to a former developer's office off Post Road in Mil- ford in 2015. It opened a second office in Glastonbury in 2019 to expand into the Hartford area, and now serves clients in five states across the region and employs 53 people, several remotely. As the company evolved into the 2020s, cybersecurity grew into a more important concern as growing internet access allowed bad actors from across the globe to hack their way into local businesses. First phishing, then ran- somware attacks multiplied and forced companies to look outside for help. "All of these new concerns were arising — mostly based on security," Grande said. "Cy- bersecurity really became at the fore- front of everyone's concerns." Led by Vice Pres- ident for Security Services Jason Pu- fahl, cyber defense became a bigger part of the business. Pufahl, formerly chief information security officer at UCo- nn, developed a suite of cybersecurity services for clients called Our Incident Ready, which has won the company national industry recognition. e company's managed service provider and cybersecurity functions operated as two separate entities until last year, when the management team decided to merge the two into Vancord. "Essentially, it was a merger of two brands," Grande said. "We manage, we defend and we respond. We manage IT networks, and it's something we're very, very good at. We defend because we provide really unique cybersecurity services. And we respond because we have this unique capacity to do incident response." To address cybersecurity threats, Vancord takes a holistic approach, start- ing with a review of the basic building blocks of a secure network. "It's not necessarily one perfect soware tool," Grande said. "It's — how close can we get to making sure the fundamentals are in place?" Talent, competition struggles Russia's war in Ukraine has actually muted some of the cyberattacks coming from Eastern Europe that have targeted small and midsize businesses in recent years. But the sheer volume and sophis- tication of cyberattacks can overwhelm even the largest IT departments. And the Dark Web is full of plug-and-play weapons that can be used against net- works. "e availability of the tools that the bad actors are using has grown exponentially, and they're so powerful and they're so sophisticated," Grande said. "ey can cast a net over thousands of businesses." It only takes one open port or one chink in a firewall to result in lost data and millions in losses. "I don't think organizations in general are doing enough," Grande said. "Security generally stands in the way of business efficiency. So, the more complicated that the security team makes doing a job for an organization, employees aren't happy, customers aren't happy." e talent needed to help fight back against cyberattacks is hard to find, and like many companies in the state, Vancord struggles to recruit and retain talent. e company has been proactive in working with technical and trade schools at both the high school and post-secondary level to train young people in the networking skills needed for the industry. In Vancord's industry, degrees and cre- dentials come second to talent, Grande said. For Vancord, competition in its sector increasingly takes the form of private equity firms, which are buying up small- er IT providers and rolling them into bigger players. Major national players in the space include Presidio and com- panies that specialize in industries like banking and health care that have very specific security needs. Despite the lure of private equity buyouts in the IT and cybersecurity sector, Grande said the Vancord team remains devoted to growing the business in Milford. "From our perspective, we're here ev- ery day, we were working this business," Grande said. "is is our passion. is is our life. What the future holds, we'll see. But for now, we're just focused on our- selves and delivering for our clients." n Michael Grande

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