Cybermedia Technologies (CTEC): Spearheading the Cybersecurity Space in the Post-pandemic Era

Cybermedia Technologies

Kay Ramesh, President and CEO, Cybermedia TechnologiesKay Ramesh, President and CEO
Amidst the Covid-19 outbreak, 2020 has also witnessed a digital pandemic in the form of an array of data breaches that proved to be insidious and difficult to stop. Such incidents exposed the weaknesses of our IT infrastructure and lack of preparedness to espouse a change in the cyber landscape. Hackers took advantage of these weaknesses to infiltrate into critical business ecosystems and gain access to sensitive data. One such incident that literally shook the entire world is the SolarWinds hack. The IT giant was subjected to a massive cybersecurity attack in 2020 that spread to their clients, including top government agencies. With several such incidents enfeebling the entire business environment, cybersecurity has become more crucial for organizations and even government agencies than ever before.

Virginia-based Cybermedia Technologies (CTEC) is a leading information technology and services firm that specializes in providing exceptional cybersecurity solutions to clients. The company combines personnel expertise, technological knowledge, and processes to deliver best-in-class services to government agencies, businesses, and communities.

While conversing with the CIO Applications’ editorial team, Kay Ramesh, President, and CEO of CTEC, and its EVP, Raj Ramesh, share their insights on how the company leverages its expertise and experience to provide unrivaled cybersecurity services to its clients.

Could you give us a brief overview of CTEC and its efforts to align with the trends in the cybersecurity landscape?

CTEC was founded in 1996 with a mission to help clients achieve the maximum return on their IT and human capital investments. We have a dedicated team of designers, consultants, artists, and managers that excel in developing enterprise application and infrastructure modernization, cybersecurity, and human capital management and training solutions that exceed client expectations. We provide a wide range of unrivaled services when it comes to cybersecurity by leveraging our prioritized, flexible, repeatable, and cost-effective approach aligned closely with the NIST Cybersecurity Framework.

Once limited to FISMA, audit, identity access management, and penetration testing, cybersecurity has now evolved more into how cyber and cloud operations are being secured. To align with this shift, CTEC has introduced ‘iCYCLOPS™’ (innovations in cyber and cloud operation)with an aim tobuild reliable and fit-for-purpose solutions for securing IT operations, cloud migrations, and other related digital operations. More importantly, cybersecurity can’t be considered as an afterthought anymore; it has to be linked with all operations in the digital landscape. Our expertise goes beyond just providing legacy sustainment services to guide clients’ cloud migration. We can help them obtain cloud environments, such as AWS and Azure.

Today,we are entering a new era of cybersecurity— generally referred to as Cybersecurity 2.0—where organizations are integrating cybersecurity tools as a core part of their network. Celebrating its 25th anniversary, CTEC is proud to be at the forefront in helping organizations to secure their critical infrastructure with its unrivaled suite of services.

We provide a wide range of unrivaled services when it comes to cybersecurity by leveraging our prioritized, flexible, repeatable, and cost-effective approach aligned closely with the NIST Cybersecurity Framework

Could you elaborate on CTEC’s service portfolio?

As a leader in the cybersecurity landscape, CTEC covers every aspect of clients’ needs when it comes to securing their critical infrastructure. One among them is identity management. We worked with Los Alamos National Laboratories in New Mexico to build industry-best identity management solutions. As they deal with some of the most crucial data within the country, we integrated cybersecurity into the solutions’ core to ensure that the right people get access to the right network.

CTEC excels in providing high-quality hackathon support, where its dedicated team of experts identifies and rectifies the gaps within the network. We provided exceptional hackathon support to Sandia National Laboratory. Additionally, we collaborated with the Office of Personnel Management to deliver a new comprehensive Platform-as-a-Service to help themwith the Authority to Operate (ATO) and FISMA compliance process.

Modernization of mission-critical applications and change management are other important areas that CTEC excels at. We find ourselves ahead of the competition with our unique approach—ingrain cybersecurity into the modernization initiative—while delivering services to clients.

Could you elaborate on some of the key factors that steer CTEC ahead of the competition?

In addition to our unique service model, what makes CTEC different from the competition is its ability to serve as a reliable, trusted partner for their clients by leveraging our longstanding partnerships with multiple vendors. By working hand-in-hand with clients, we can assess their environment, analyze their existing capabilities, and identify their needs to come up with a fit-for-purpose solution for their business imperatives instead of adopting a cookie-cutter approach. Unlike our competitors, who generally airdrop their solutions, CTEC handholds clients through the whole process—from plan to implementation. Additionally, with our agile DevSecOps methodology, we can help our clients attain incremental advancements in the process as opposed to a big-bang approach.

From a technology standpoint, CTEC has designed cybersecurity services in-sync with the risk management framework. By doing this, we cover all aspects of endpoint security and incident management and categorize vulnerabilities. We also have in-depth expertise and experience in handling several vulnerability-scanning tools such as Nessus and Splunk Enterprise.

In a nutshell, CTEC adopts an integrated approach to providing cybersecurity services—making us the partner of choice when it comes to IT and cybersecurity needs. Furthermore, we can help clients with forensics and intrusion detection systems, malware prevention solutions, security alerts, zone mapping, blacklisting, data scans, and more.

How did the pandemic impact CTEC? What were the initiatives taken by the company to adapt and respond?

Much like other businesses, the advent of Covid-19 and subsequent lockdowns have created havoc and disrupted our business operations. Dedicated to mitigate the impacts of the pandemic and provide uninterrupted services to clients, CTEC leveraged its internal agility to redefine its business model for aligning well with the new normal. One such effort was the sudden switch toward virtual platforms while ensuring security around collaboration tools—be it Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, or Zoom. We have also redirected our focus to collaborate with vendors that comply with all regulations by FedRAMP. Most importantly, we ensured that our solutions are also designed by complying with FedRAMP policies and procedures. Additionally, we use our ISO/IEC 20000 and ISO/IEC 27000 procedures for securing our environment.

How does the future look for CTEC?

With a whole array of cyber attacks in 2020 and subsequent business downfalls, concerns over cybersecurity is snowballing into a headache for the federal government. As such, we witness an increased pressure on cybersecurity providers across the globe to equip themselves with cutting-edge technologies for staying one step ahead of bad actors and prevent cyber incidents. It is no more a choice for organizations to embed cybersecurity into modernization initiatives—be it is an application or platform. This unlatches a massive opportunity for CTEC to move ahead and leverage its technical expertise for augmenting its capabilities, helping clients to secure their critical ecosystem and sensitive data from bad actors.

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