13 – Ransomware & Recovery with Jody Guffey of OpenText

This week Jody Guffey, Vice President of Channel Sales SMB & Consumer at OpenText joins The Holtz Story to discuss ransomware, supply chain attacks, and the need for backups, disaster recovery, and business continuity planning.

 In this episode, Jody and Tracy open the podcast discussing how the latest ransomware attacks have increased awareness with customers and partners in cybersecurity, and particularly disaster recovery. Everyone wants to know what it takes to recover from a ransomware attack. Jody points out a good disaster recovery plan can get a company back up and running, sometimes faster than paying the ransom. 

The conversation then shifts to best practices for backups and continuity plans. Jody points out that there is a lot of employee turnover, and companies need to update their recovery policies constantly. Partners can play a crucial role here in helping customers achieve this. Tracy adds ongoing education, training, and assessments are essential. 

This leads to a discussion about how often companies are doing data protection and disaster recovery tests and who is involved in the testing. Tracy mentions that Tech Data has customers doing simulation exercises and how this sometimes puts them in uncomfortable decision-making positions. 

The conversation leads to the skill shortage gap, particularly in smaller businesses. Jody offers hope as he sees younger people getting more interested in cyber as a career opportunity. As he puts it, there is always something new, and you’re fighting bad guys, which makes it cool. 

What are vendors doing to help partners and customers combat cybercrime? Jody adds that no single product provides complete protection, but the market is moving in this direction. Right now, you have to build a stack of complementary technologies, which is what OpenText is doing, combining Webroot and Carbonite. 

This fast-moving conversation covers a lot of important ground. We hope you enjoy the show. If you do, please share it with colleagues and remember to subscribe using your favorite podcast platform (I.e., iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, etc.).