COVID Shows Ericom It Can Be Successful with Cyber Security Focus and Remote Workforce
Ericom Software (Closter), a company that has been in business in New Jersey for some 26 years, is progressing to a new phase, both in its business and how it is managing its workforce and real estate.
In the business sense, Ericom, which was formerly involved in connectivity for enterprise-level companies, is all in on its cyber security options, which are selling well. The company is now focused on making its robust security offerings available to the middle market.
Going All Remote in the U.S.
In the United States, Ericom is now mostly remote. “We have a presence in New Jersey, but the majority of employees across the USA work remotely from home offices or flexible coworking locations,” said Chase Cunningham, chief strategy officer at Ericom.
“We don’t have any substantial real estate investments here because we basically figured out that this model that COVID showed us works, and now we’ve just moved to make remote work flexibility a permanent thing,” he said.
“We keep satellite offices in certain places — New Jersey and Tel Aviv — and we have one in California, as well. But a lot of these businesses that made massive investments in real estate are telling people, ‘You’ve got to come back to work, come hell or high water.’ That’s not how we want to operate,” Cunningham continued, adding that he lives outside of Washington, D.C.
Remote Browser Isolation
As far as business goes, Ericom has found a sweet spot in the cyber security area. “The ransomware epidemic that we are seeing right now is proof positive that we are swimming into the right side of the market.” Big enterprise has the tools to combat this, but the small and middle business marketplace needs these tools, he added.
Ericom has won numerous awards for its security software in 2021, including a People’s Choice Stevie Award for Favorite New Products, in the Network Security Solution category. The company’s Remote Browser Isolation (RBI) Zero Trust cloud security solution prevents phishing attacks, ransomware, zero-day malware and other advanced web threats from reaching endpoints. It does this by executing active web content in a remote, isolated container in the Ericom Global Cloud.
When users end up on a malicious website, whether independently or by clicking a URL embedded in a phishing email, they remain safe because no web content is ever executed directly on their devices. An interactive media stream representing the website is sent to a device’s browser, providing a safe, fully interactive, seamless user experience, the company said.
For additional phishing protection, websites launched from URLs in emails can be rendered in read-only mode to prevent users from entering credentials. Attached files are sanitized before being transmitted to endpoints, ensuring that the malware within downloads cannot compromise users’ devices.
Isolating Virtual Meetings
During the pandemic, Ericom introduced Virtual Meeting Isolation, a solution that brings the security benefits of RBI to virtual meetings attended by participants using web browsers, without affecting their user experience, the company said. According to the company, Virtual Meeting Isolation overcomes traditional RBI limitations that make the technology unusable for Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and similar applications. Specifically, during typical RBI-isolated sessions, local device resources such as cameras and microphones cannot be accessed, and local applications like Microsoft PowerPoint cannot be shared.
“With this breakthrough, organizations using the Ericom RBI cloud service to protect their users from web-based threats can extend those protections to the web portals of team collaboration tools, enabling full, high-performance meeting functionality while protecting their organizations from cyber threats. This innovative, patent-pending technology makes Ericom the only vendor able to deliver virtual meeting capabilities using RBI,” the company claimed.
Robust Security Aimed at an ‘Underserved’ Market
Cunningham added, “What we’re doing is opening a new market for us, and also delivering what we see as the future state of security technology specifically for an underserved market. That’s where the opportunity is. We are not constantly combating with the companies selling into the Fortune 2000. There are more solid midsize businesses out there.
“I think it’s worth noting, too, that the service that we’re delivering is the full capability stack, and because of the way we’ve architected this, we can offer it at less than half the price of the competition.,” he said. “That sounds like a car salesman, but the point I’m making here is that there are small and midsize businesses that look at this technology stack, and realize the capabilities are as good as you would get with those expensive solutions. Our solution, however, is vectored for them at their price points.”
