Sean van Deventer (Black Box)
Credit: Supplied
Black Box NZ is building out from its base in customer experience, contact centre, digital workplace and unified communications to target cyber security.
Formerly known as AGC Networks, Black Box created a fully-owned cyber security company called Cybalt last year after hiring several key staff including the company’s new CEO, Khiro Mishra, from NTT.
Black Box NZ Country manager Sean van Deventer said the Cybalt brand was created to differentiate the unit’s services from those delivered by Black Box.
Cybalt is now one of the world’s largest cyber security practices, he said, with security operations centres in the US, India and Australia and more coming in the Middle East, Singapore and the UK.
Black Box created Cybalt as a security pure play to meet rising demand for full security lifecycle services including cybersecurity advisory, security system integration, and end-to-end managed security solutions.
The New Zealand launch strategy is to “think globally and act locally”, building out cyber security services under the Black Box brand around existing areas of strength.
“Our security offering will be wrapped into our cloud contact centre offer and we’ll offer the cyber security as a wrap-around or add on service to that and also for unified communications and the digital workspace,” van Deventer told Reseller News.
“A lot of lour customers are moving from on-prem to cloud, specifically in contact centre. To have that cyber security wrap around the cloud journey is a nice add-on and its probably something all companies need to have in the future.”
Van Deventer described the strength and depth at Cybalt was “massive”. For instance, Black Box was now the largest global managed services partner of Intel Security, offering live feeds on global threat intelligence.
“The credibility is there now,” van Deventer said. “It’s about translating that into real world experience in New Zealand.”
The initial go-to-market would focus on building awareness around Black Box and its cyber security capability. The new unit was already signing contracts with big global banks and suppliers of critical infrastructure.
The offer includes penetration testing and reporting and advanced services for zero day threat defense, active response, and integration with intel security partners.
Black Box makes its cyber security play after a period of investment, spurred by changing work patterns during the pandemic. The key to gaining traction would be to make it easy for customers by offering a package that complemented their existing services and made it easier to transact, van Deventer said.
A free cyber security assessment will be offered to existing customers, for instance. That would engagement proceed to remediation to address gaps and vulnerabilities and then into a managed service or MSSP model.
The February buy-out of Australian cyber security specialist Dragonfly Technologies would also strengthen Black Box’s presence in the trans-Tasman region and provide a further opportunity to cross-sell between current Black Box and Dragonfly customers.
Black Box’s key local vendor relationships included contact centre and customer experience system developers Genesys and Nice, as well as Juniper and Palo Alto while building on AWS, Azure and others, van Deventer said.
“Black Box is always looking for ways to add impactful and leading-edge technology solutions to our portfolio,” he said.
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