Face to Face: Eminent Architect reflects with Vishal Shah

With popular demand, I start this series of interviews with leading enterprise owners. Of course, it is more demanding than just writing at leisure on Sundays. Traveling and meeting busy entrepreneurs without any distraction is surely what I enjoy. Documenting that candid interaction is even more satisfying.

This time, I met an accomplished architect who is India’s pride for his work across the world, who is one of the most down to earth person I have ever met, and who is a BLACKbox customer. I was hosted at a century old classic club in Mumbai and I had a memorable 45 minutes reflection on why his enterprise depends on BLACKbox as a mission critical device and what value it has contributed to his enterprise.

I thank him for allowing me to share this conversation without disclosing his name, which is a brand in his field. I will address him as Sir in my flow of conversation. In the interest of time, I am summarizing the conversation.

Vishal:
Sir, what has triggered adoption of BLACKbox in your company? You have access to world class talent and can afford any level of investment?

Sir:
I employ world class talent which comes at an extraordinary cost. They create intellectual assets like original designs, drawings, concepts, and research reports. I am the man of old times when these intellectual assets were in physical form and we used to preserve ammonia prints, hand sketches, and paper notes. I always felt nervous when these physicals assets were disappearing as digital assets. I worried what if my digital assets are deleted or are left unusable by ransom-ware or are destroyed due to loss of hardware to a disaster.

Until I came across BLACKbox, I was always advised to procure certain IT components which can store my digital assets. I invested in File Server of very high quality and spent huge money on Microsoft Licensing. One fine day, we lost very critical drawings which could never be recovered. We defaulted on deadline and rework cost was significant. I was given the reason that though I purchased a file server, user saved data on his desktop only. That desktop crashed and we lost data despite investment in file server which was never used by the user.

I was so angry at the user and called him to give explanation on such negligence. I was stunned and speechless when I heard the explanation. User explained that our files are very large and our file server was not good enough to facilitate data storage on network in real-time manner. He could not concentrate on his work as every time he hit save, he had to wait and many a times his files got corrupt while being saved on network. He had a point. I was so disappointed with fact that after spending a lot of money, I was still dependent on user’s discretion to use the device and due to certain genuine limitations, users were not using the hardware.

When your sales representative met me, I was impressed with the feature of BLACKbox which you call forced centralization. This could solve my one problem by forcing user to save data on central location. The next question I fired on your sales guy was, we have large files and difficult to store over network. Your sales guy calmly informed that BLACKbox is empowered by SSD caching and link aggregation which enhances user’s experience while working on network greatly.

I was almost game. I could see a reliable, sensible and sincere approach towards Data Loss Prevention. Then he explained active recycle bin which can instantly recover deleted data. He also explained vault and workspace which answered my concern over ransom-ware situation. He also explained data center disaster response solution which answered my concern over disaster induced Data Loss.

Vishal:
I am glad you recognized the relevance and connect to what we do. What was your experience after it was implemented?

Sir:
At any stage I never felt like I bough a product. It was treated like a project by your team. They understood all my requirements and configured it. I noticed some pleasant surprises to highlight today. I was told that BLACKbox can effectively de-duplicate my data, we can set up users permissions as we want till the file level and we get report on backup health and integrity. This assured me of safety of my invaluable digital assets or say, intellectual property. My primary concern was Data Loss Prevention. Your Technology Adviser updated me about Data Leakage or Data Theft which can affect us competitively. It sensitized me towards Non Disclosure Agreements I was signing almost blindly with my customers without providing for any Data Leakage or Data Theft Prevention.

Vishal:
That’s interesting. How confident are you now while signing Non-Disclosure Agreement or largely about your digital assets with a view to possibility of leakage or theft?

Sir:
Honestly, I did not give much importance to some unique features of BLACKbox. I was under impression that because I had invested in expensive firewall, I was protected. I was so naive and misguided. Expensive firewall never protected my data against possible theft or leakage by my internal employees. They could easily attach my digital assets over email, could take it on USB drive or could simply upload on cloud storage. Your team implemented tight controls on USB, vigilance on Emails and Internet session of users which has made it almost impossible to leak or steal data. Also, I am so impressed by it evidence creation capability like screen capture, file operations logs, email despatch reports, BCC controls and Happy Hours data isolation. I am very confident and assured now.

Vishal:
That’s so encouraging to learn. I am going to share this with my readers. What message would you like to give to them?

Sir:
In my opinion, times have changed and Data Loss Prevention and Data Theft Prevention can decide your enterprise’s survival index and competitive robustness. Buying IT components in bits and pieces won’t really help to achieve these larger objective of Data Loss and Theft Prevention. BLACKbox is a solution which achieves it for you and you are relieved of IT worries and can focus on your business. It works.

Signing of now, next time, I am meeting an eminent charter accountant and will have such interesting interaction.