By Craig Lusher, Principal Solutions Architect, Continent 8 Technologies. Part of our Cybersecurity Awareness Month series exploring today’s most important cybersecurity challenges and opportunities.
Most technology teams have a mental list of security improvements they would like to make: a penetration test, a phishing exercise, a vulnerability assessment, or simply an independent view of where they stand.
The challenge is rarely identifying what needs to be done. More often, it’s finding the budget and time to do it. Security initiatives can easily fall behind more immediate business priorities, especially when everything appears to be running smoothly.
The problem is that security gaps rarely announce themselves in advance. Small investments can uncover weaknesses long before they become incidents, but many organisations delay taking that first step because they assume it requires a significant new budget.
For Cybersecurity Awareness Month, there’s a simple question worth asking: are you making the most of the security resources you already have available?
That’s the thinking behind Loyalty+, Continent 8 Technologies’ customer rewards programme.
Every dollar a customer spends across Continent 8’s portfolio, whether for cloud, infrastructure, connectivity, managed services, security or intelligence, automatically earns credits. There is no separate sign-up process, and each credit is worth one dollar (or local currency equivalent) that can be redeemed against security services.
For contracts of 12 months or longer, credits for the full contract term are granted upfront once the service is delivered, giving customers immediate access to funds that can be used to strengthen their security posture from day one.
Those credits can be applied to a wide range of services, including vulnerability assessments, penetration testing, phishing simulation campaigns, cyber maturity assessments and security audits. They can also be used towards ongoing solutions such as managed detection and response, web application firewall services, dark web monitoring and managed security operations.
We designed Loyalty+ around a simple principle: customers should be able to direct value where it matters most to their business. Rather than treating security as an additional cost to justify later, the programme helps organisations invest in reducing risk using benefits they may already have available.
The broader lesson extends beyond Continent 8. Before deciding the next security step is out of reach, take a closer look at the programmes, services and resources that already exist within your supplier ecosystem. You may be closer to improving your security posture than you think.
And if you’re a Continent 8 customer, it’s worth checking whether you have Loyalty+ credits available. Unused credits expire after 12 months, turning a potential security improvement into a missed opportunity.
Not sure what your Loyalty+ balance is or how it can be used? Contact your Continent 8 account manager to learn more and explore the security services available through the programme.