Port53 Teams Up With America’s SBDC to Deliver Enterprise-Grade Cybersecurity Readiness to Nation’s Entrepreneurs

Port53 Technologies, an industry leader in customer-centric cloud security, announced its support as a sponsor of America’s SBDC North Star CMM effort to illuminate U.S.-based small businesses about the importance of maintaining a robust cybersecurity posture to protect confidential information.

America’s SBDC acts as an umbrella representative for Small Business Development Centers (SBDCs) operating within the United States and its territories. America’s SBDC, located in universities, colleges, and the premises of state economic development agencies across the nation, is funded in part by the United States Congress, through a partnership with the nation’s Small Business Administration (SBA). Some 1,000 local centers provide free consulting and low-cost training to fledgling businesses.

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Port53 will help interested businesses upskilling their leadership teams on how CMMC (Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification) – a standard originally created for Department of Defense contractors – can be easily adapted for use by SMEs in protecting themselves against an increasingly devious threat landscape.

“Many small businesses that are attacked never recover,” said Charlie Tupitza, Cybersecurity, and Data Protection Lead, America’s SBDC. “Our purpose in the cyber and data protection arena is to make sure that entrepreneurs and business owners know what their obligations are and how they can meet them in the most comprehensive and cost-effective way. Port53 is the ideal sponsor in this regard because they have worked with thousands of small businesses across the nation in deploying enterprise-grade cybersecurity solutions, making these technologies accessible to all by delivering the solutions in a subscription-based model.”

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“Cybersecurity is no longer just an IT and technology issue, but rather an Executive and Board-level concern. Therefore, it is absolutely critical for organizations to move away from an ad-hoc, point solution approach to their implementation of their cybersecurity posture, and move towards a holistic, risk-based management approach,” states Omar Zarabi, President and CEO of Port53. “For too long, SMB organizations have relied on a best of breed approach to implementing security checks. This has led to cybersecurity stacks that are incongruent and siloed, leaving an organization vulnerable to advanced attacks that are targeting SMB organizations at a much higher rate than ever before.”

Small businesses have more frequently found themselves in the crosshairs of bad actors since the proliferation of online data and the emergence of attacks such as ransomware. America’s SBDC has observed incidents that include data-breach attacks by nation-states and criminals “stealing intellectual capital, personal and business information, and creating havoc in business environments.”

“If you are a small business that falls prey to cyber-criminals, your brand is tarnished before you ever get a chance to prove yourself in the market,” Tupitza said.

The emergence of COVID-19 and the subsequent need for remote workforces have accelerated cloud adoption, propelling feasibility studies to become production environments in mere weeks. The protection of identities and connections has now become more urgent.

“A more rigorous and more integrated security stack is essential to guarantee your business continuity,” Zarabi added. “By leveraging the cloud as a delivery mechanism, assessing your security posture, understanding the individual needs of businesses of all scales, and determining your security stack, we allow businesses to operate and thrive without cyber worries.”