WWT and Dell Technologies: partners in financial security
World Wide Technology (WWT) is one of the world’s premier technology solution providers. “Revenues right now are approaching $13bn in 2020, encompassing our digital strategy, innovative technology, as well as supply chain solutions to a variety of different customers in the public and private sectors around the globe,” explains Chris Konrad, Director of Security for WWT’s global business. “We're hyper-focused on providing secure business outcomes for our global clients,” adds Matt Berry, Principal Security Advisor, Global Financials. “We deliver solutions in the area of data governance and strategy, security platforms and tool operationalisation. We also address AI and ML model security and enterprise security architecture. Regardless of what the challenge is, our goal is to bring together business acumen with a full stack of technical know how to develop solutions that address our customers’ most complex cyber needs.”
Security in the financial services space has been made only more necessary by the ongoing challenges around the pandemic and the transition to remote working. “Financial institutions are being forced to deal with their technical debt as non-digital processes are being digitised,” says Berry. “Often these workloads are being moved into cloud environments, for instance.” That shift in technology comes alongside a rise in cyber attacks. “Threat actors are getting smarter, they're getting more organised and they’re becoming increasingly innovative in their tactics and technologies.” With those challenges in mind, WWT tailors its solutions for customers. “We architect our solutions and services around these business outcomes and offer strong consultancy combined with the technical competency.”
WWT’s reputation has led to a strong partnership with Dell Technologies. WWT is a $1bn partner of Dell Technologies’ and their first ever Titanium Black partner. “We've leveraged about 25 years of partnership expertise to do everything from designing to testing and delivering best-in-class integrated solutions that really help accelerate digital and security transformation journeys,” says Konrad. “Working with Dell Technologies ensures that as we speak to our financial services customers, we're going to have the right technical solutions to offer, regardless of whatever business outcome we're solving,” adds Berry.
The partnership extends to the wider Dell Technologies ecosystem, with WWT having recently secured its largest managed services deal in partnership with Secureworks, a leading Cybersecurity Managed Services provider that is a strategically aligned business within the Dell Technologies portfolio of capabilities. “It’s a three-year programme broken out across 10 different key work streams, with the goal of working with this financial services customer to accelerate their security maturity by the end of next year,” says Berry. WWT also has invested $500mn in an advanced technology centre for clients to try technology before buying, as Konrad explains. “They can do proofs of concept, testing, and validation with the entire Dell technologies portfolio of capabilities. And then we also have a digital Dell desk that we're able to offer our customers.”
Going forward, Berry sees the partnership evolving to continue addressing current trends. “The digital landscape is at war and the commodity that is being fought over is data. Bank accounts are stored in ones and zeros, and proprietary algorithms and financial projections are all digitised and accessible from anywhere on earth - organisations need to know where their data is, at speed and at scale across a very complex ecosystem.” The answer is a focus on data discovery, classification and protection, as well as cloud everywhere security competencies. “Going into the cloud creates additional challenges,” says Berry. “Organisations need flexible security solutions that can adopt a cloud-agnostic approach to security. If you have sensitive data, wherever it is, however it's stored, it needs to be easy to protect with simplified policies that are applied as code.”
