Partner Newsletter February 2023

Dear

It seems like artificial intelligence (AI) took the world by storm these past few weeks. The Guardian360 team played around with ChatGPT and Bard while we were amazed by its capability; it also raised some concerns. It is evident AI will support people to come up with solutions and source code faster. However, the quality of code and proposed solutions is far from perfect. This will eventually sort itself out, the privacy and security concerns remain. AI can be used for the good, bad actors will benefit from it to. We’ll keep on testing this new technology to implement it in our platform, while keeping a close eye on the privacy and security aspects.

This partner newsletter covers a wide variety of topics. Of course, we give you a Lighthouse update, introduce the BSI standard for the German market, we introduce the risk letter to you, remind you about the trainings, and much more!

Kind regards,
On behalf of the Guardian360 team,

Jan Martijn Broekhof

Managing Director

Lighthouse update

Martin spent most of the month implementing HTML on various pages on the new font-end including Hacker Alert Appliances, Exclusions, San Objects and Scan Schedules.

Modifications to tables have been introduced to make navigation easier. An example of this is using a side drawer instead of a landing page in order to keep context and flip through additional data contained in table rows.

Much of the work this past month took place under the hood. Dick did some stellar work on connecting the new front-end to the Database using PKCE tokens. It is a clean implementation and very efficient. He also implemented a layered approach of processing the collected GAPI data and has implemented Pinia to handle state management.

In March the HTML will be finalized and tables will be connected to the database. Dick will be working on some additional “under the hood” requirements to get us closer to being able to put up an MVP for internal testing.

In addition to all innovations and the future dashboard, we worked on our scanner arsenal, resulting in additional SSL insights. We also increased resources for our central scanning platform to allow it to finish scans more quickly.

For the German market we added a beta version of the BSI standard to Lighthouse. We’re looking forward to the feedback of our (potential) partners and clients in Germany!

Because the increase of issues we’re able to detect as well as networks of our clients becoming bigger, we introduced new probe requirements which can be found via the probe menu.

Partner Portal Update - Risk Letter

IT and managed services providers are increasingly asking themselves how far their responsibility reaches when advising customers regarding information security. On the one hand, we are happy to see that most partners do have the basics in good order. On the other hand, several court rulings show that service providers are held (partly) liable for damages after, for instance, a ransomware incident.

In order to support our partners in this regard, we have appointed Stimmt attorneys to draw up a risk letter template. This document can be used whenever a partner has advised the client to purchase Guardian360 services and the client declined. By both signing the document, it is established the partner has advised the client, but also the client cannot hold the partner liable for damages that could have been prevented with Guardian360 services.

If you would like to make use of this document then log in to our partner portal to view the document under the heading 'Legal'.

In January, we organized our training programme and the response was fantastic! Around 100 salespeople and engineers have already signed up.

The first sales training session is behind us, and we are pleased that it was well received. The first exams have also been successfully completed and we will award the certificates shortly.

Every other month training regimes will be held online or at the Guardian360 office in Utrecht. On conclusion of these programmes participating sales representatives will obtain the Guardian360 Sales Expert certificate, and engineers will obtain the Guardian360 Technical Expert certificate.

Training is mandatory for Partners to obtain and maintain the new Partner levels Certified, Advanced or Premium. The certificates will be valid for 1 year.

Partners currently having the Authorised status will be granted the Sales status as of July 1, 2023, unless they meet the Certified status requirements. In that case they will be granted the Certified status.

After obtaining the Certified, Advanced or Premium Partner status Partners, are allowed to implement Guardian360 services for their own IT-environment and Web applications free of charge. Partner statuses will be re-evaluated by Guardian360 annually in the month of December.

If you want to sign up for a training with more than 5 staff, please contact us to discuss the inhouse options.

Events

Jan Martijn will be present at Cloudfest in Rust, Germany from 20-24 March. Please drop him a message if you’d like to catch up.

Together with a few other Dutch information security firms we’ll organize a Kingsday networking event in Munich, Germany on 26 April. This is part of the partners in business Germany program we enrolled for in 2022.

Jeff will be present at Cybersec Europe 2023 on 19 and 20 April at Brussels Expo. Please drop him a message if you’d like to catch up.

SRE Vacancy

Guardian360 is looking for an SRE with passion for automation and software engineering to join our team. We are not looking for just anyone. The new colleague must fit seamlessly into our team and culture. We place high demands on the knowledge, experience, and motivation of this new colleague. The search for this jack of all trades may take a little longer, but we are happy to take that time to find the perfect colleague!

If you know someone who fits the profile, would you point them to our vacancy?

Significant updates to the NIST cybersecurity framework

In his latest newsletter, Bruce Schneier mentioned NIST is planning a significant update of its Cybersecurity Framework. Nist is currently requesting the following feedback and comments to its concept paper:
Do the proposed changes reflect the current cybersecurity landscape (standards, risks, and technologies)?
Are the proposed changes sufficient and appropriate? Are there other elements that should be considered under each area?
Do the proposed changes support different use cases in various sectors, types, and sizes of organizations (and with varied capabilities, resources, and technologies)?
Are there additional changes not covered here that should be considered?
For those using CSF 1.1, would the proposed changes affect continued adoption of the Framework, and how so?
For those not using the Framework, would the proposed changes affect the potential use of the Framework?

The NIST Cybersecurity Framework has turned out to be an excellent resource. If you use it at all, please help with version 2.0.