Journey from ITIL, COBIT to NIST Cybersecurity Framework and IT Service Management Go-to-Market™

Grateful for the opportunity to serve and contribute to the human progress. Thirteen years ago, the founding concept of InXero was democratizing tech go-to-market opportunity to empower partners such as IT Solution providers, MSSPs, MSPs, VARs advance human progress, productivity and prosperity on a global scale. Technology drives human progress. Technology unlocks the human potential, productivity and prosperity. Now technology has become the center of gravity of the new digital world. With industrialization, modern business and technology innovations, the world has made impressive progress in terms of the GDP growth, healthcare, education and prosperity. But now, the market dynamics and customer needs are changing fast. The pace of change has accelerated. We all know, there is so much more we can do and we must do to continue to harness the power of emerging technologies and standards and unlock the full human potential. With the vast amount of data at our fingertips, 5G networks, AI, virtual teams collaborating together across the world, the progress can be much faster as we go into the future. The world is work in progress and we are just getting started.

We cherish the tech go-to-market channel and I shared our future of digital channel 2025 vision here.

In this post, I want to highlight the importance of the standards in accelerating the diffusion and iteration of technology to bring the desired business outcomes of technology. Standards defines the mandatory actions or rule sets on how to comply with policies and create a common language for multiple companies to collaborate and work together seamlessly. When ITIL standard came, we embraced it and industry embraced it. I was excited to get certified in ITIL and eventually completing the IT Service Managers certification. Many of you who have taken the IT Service Managers certification, you know how rigorous and challenging that certification was. To make it easier for my peers and share my knowledge with IT community, I developed the ITIL training material which was published as a book titled Manager’s Certificate in IT Service Management, published by SAS Institute. Our customers responded wholeheartedly and we created a good consulting and training business around ITIL and COBIT. We achieved the accreditation from EXIN, a leading independent exam- and certification institute.

While running the services business, I realized how difficult the IT Service Management Marketing was for us and many of our peers in the industry. That realization led me to start InXero to tackle the go-to-market problem for partners. Working closely with our customers and partners, we have been making great progress.

When the COVID-19 pandemic began, every business had to respond and adapt quickly to the new business order. Working closely with our customers, I saw first-hand, how our customers were making positive impact and deploying technologies to launch innovative solutions to address the new demands including cybersecurity, remote work capabilities, virtual classrooms, digital experiences and much more.

Especially in the cybersecurity space, attack surface has increased and new threats are emerging every day. Businesses need improved defenses to protect remote workers. As an example, ransomware attack on a County’s IT systems disrupted the citizen online services and their day-to-day operation was completely disrupted.

Today’s cybersecurity threats and conditions will have changed before you finish reading this article.

Cybersecurity is complex. Cybersecurity risks involve all aspects of the business. Therefore, customers are looking for a holistic approach to cybersecurity. This is where the standards like NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) comes in.

NIST CSF is designed to help organizations describe their current cybersecurity posture, define the target state, find the areas of improvement and communicate the risks with all internal and external stakeholders.

At its core, the framework consists of 5 functions to manage the overall cybersecurity risk for the business.

Identity: What processes and assets need protection?

Protect: What safeguards are available?

Detect: What techniques can identify incidents?

Respond: What techniques can contain impacts of incidents?

Recover: What techniques can restores capabilities?

In each of these phases, there are hundreds of products and services in the marketplace today. At InXero, we are simplifying the Cybersecurity Go-to-Market and making it easier for Cybersecurity Vendors, MSSPs, MSPs and Solution Providers to go-to-market faster and partner together to address the evolving needs of the end customers in a timely manner. For IT Solution Providers, there are tremendous opportunities to serve and scale their businesses by attaching their services and cross-sell solutions across all 5 function areas of the CSF. Successful IT Solution Providers are offering a holistic cybersecurity offering to the end customers. More on this in our future post.

Talk to our Cybersecurity Go-to-Market Strategy Expert

Please feel free to contact our Cybersecurity Go-to-Market Strategy Expert.

Time dimension now is more critical than ever before. In this new digital and virtual era, it’s the survival of the fastest. As we look to the next 10 years, I am optimistic and excited about the opportunity to work with our customers and partners to harness the power of technology innovation to bring the world into a new era of human progress, productivity and prosperity. Let’s see what we can do together.

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