Articles by Matt Pillar

1. Fake News In Cybersecurity 7/1/2019

   Ever since news spread that an HVAC contractor was the alleged vector in the massive Target breach of 2013, IT security consultants have been ringing out a common refrain: thoroughly vet your third-party contractors, especially the small ones. Restrict and monitor their access to your network and applications. Maybe even think about moving away from small business partners in favor of contracting with larger, well-heeled partners who are, presumably better equipped to thwart cyber threats.

2. Life Sciences: A Target-Rich Environment For Tech 6/25/2019

   A bit earlier this month, I had a unique opportunity to travel with a few of my colleagues to the BIO International Convention in Philadelphia. It’s a large conference and exposition, attended by some 17,000 life sciences professionals from 67 different countries. The event focuses largely on the pharma industry. Exhibitors and attendees span the gamut from biopharmaceutical manufacturing equipment builders to therapeutic research scientists to contract pharmaceutical manufacturers. It was a strange new place for a 20-year IT writer. What in the world was I doing there?

3. Client Security Training: Partnership Drives The Opportunity 12/19/2018

   In a sweeping interview for Channel Executive Magazine, seasoned IT executive and SRC Technologies President and CEO BJ Havlik shared the wisdom behind his new-solution onboarding philosophy. In doing so, he zeroed in directly on the relatively new client IT security training opportunity.

4. Growth Doesn't Happen In Your Comfort Zone 11/1/2018

   Retail tech VARs: Here’s your chance to steal a page from a titan’s playbook. MSPs: Here’s your chance to go after some business that 99.9 percent of the retail tech VARs who read this will ignore.

5. How Fluid Designs Stays Very Vertical 11/1/2018

   While his story serves as an instructive case study in vertical specialization, Fluid Designs’ service to the legal vertical wasn’t the result of some grand plan hatched 19 years ago when a teenage Louissaint discovered he could make money using his IT skills. 

6. Sorensen Named RSPA W2W Leader Of The Year 8/8/2018

   The work my friend and colleague Abby Sorensen put into the IT Channel is paying dividends even after she shifted her focus to the greater software business community. Last week at its RetailNOW event, the Retail Solutions Providers Association’s Women-to-Women (W2W) Committee named her its 2018 Leader Of The Year. Committee Chair and business owner Kelli Stewart, owner/operations manager at Advanced Data Systems, bestowed the honors from the mainstage.

7. Men: Let's Get Past The Discomfort Of Sexism In IT 7/13/2018

   Men outnumber women in this industry by something on the order of 8 to 2, and the margin is even wider in the c-suite. By and large, we’re the ones approving salaries, greenlighting recruits, and setting the cultural tones of our companies. That requires us to be involved in solving the pay gap, recruiting more women into the field, and most importantly, driving cultures that demand equal respect across gender lines. None of that will happen if we’re not talking about it.

8. Automation And The Fate Of The IT Professional 4/30/2018

   There’s been no shortage of press about the IT labor situation in India. In case you haven’t been following, here’s a quick summation. The country’s outsourced IT shops are like our brick-and-mortar stores. There are too many of them. They’re occupied by too many employees for the times. They both face threats posed by automation and Amazon, respectively, nemeses whose names are nearly synonymous.

9. Leaving User Experience To Vendors? Big Mistake. 4/17/2018

   As VAR and MSP sales and marketing organizations catch the buyer persona buzz, are client personas and user experiences being overlooked?

10. Is Payment Security A Commodity Now? 4/9/2018

    The PCI Security Standards Council’s announcement of plans to strategically drive its QIR (Qualified Integrators and Resellers) program deeper into the SMB retail market is by most counts a positive thing for the industry. For the greater good of data security, it’s hard to muster a qualm about moves like these. It’s a little easier to be annoyed by these changes if you’ve been going out of your way to differentiate your business via a payment security consultancy.