Mark Smith
Our MISSION is to strive in customer service and deliver remarkable new technologies and services that allow companies to protect themselves, and with advanced monitoring, from network and cybersecurity threats along with corporate network connectivity both effective and robust at the same time. Innovative in technical support and customer service implementation processes, with efficient and secure solutions. Focused purely on advising with the needs for each organization, seeking to optimize budget, without neglecting the latest technology and security.
Representative of brands and leaders in Gartner, for their effectiveness of research on new technologies and trends in market requirements.
Our test standards for production environments are high enough to meet the expectations of the most complex networks, optimizing their performance and security. We take care of this process, to offer the best option for each client who relies on our “know how” and experience in the market.
Focused 100% on providing the best advice towards the demanding networks environments of today, maintaining the “uptime” of the organizations, without precedent.
Tell us about yourself?
I’m the co-founder of the company which was initially founded with technical guidance, towards customer service and highly trained engineers for assessments and implementations of our offered products and services.
Network Architect with technical expertise in almost every IT area, thrilled to deliver what our company offers.
I got into the cybersecurity and IT industry, since it was my daytime hobby when I was young (my first format c: of my computer was done by me at 10 years old, on my family home owned computer) and nowadays I research along with my technical and sales team the best and arrow-head technologies to protect customers all throughout the Americas region.
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
Invest more on advertising, that’s the top priority to get noticed in any line of business.
What problem does your business solve?
We solve almost every cybersecurity request and protection from our leads and customers, since we have a broad range of products and services, that complement each other.
From the first line of defense, which is the network edge known as the Firewall, to the core of the business with the EndPoint and Server Protection.
All this can have the best monitoring and guidance for better security and best practices, with Managed Threat Response (MDR) Services along any type of network.
Today is not a question if I’m going to be attacked by a cyber-criminal, is when. Is better to be ready with contingency and monitoring plans and services, to be able to restore in case of necessary, or take actions ahead of the threat.
What is the inspiration behind your business?
I’m inspired by quality and coherence. By this I mean that is gratifying to have a commercial team that’s highly trained to deliver with quality and with the right expectations, what technically each brand we represent, can deliver. When a company delivers more than what they commercially offer, is a win win situation every time.
We’ve been able to serve up ’till this date, governments that have trusted us with each type of technology or service we represent, what drives us is that we have offered quality services, that surpass our customers expectations, and since it’s a renewal service (subscription based) our renewal rate is one of the highest on our line of work (IT and Cybersecurity Advisors).
We solve our customers cybersecurity requests and protection against malware and threats through their networks (by this I mean logical/data networks).
We get contacted by our reputation and our high visible brands that have been proven and tested throughout the globe, to work when used and implemented right, with best practices and knowledge.
What is your magic sauce?
Offering top notch products and services, with top quality and customer service guided philosophy, our motto is “customer protection first, no matter what”.
What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?
We want to increase our sales participation within our own shared market, and deliver mostly everything as a service, and with subscription model. Become the technological ally of each company that seeks our products and services, offering exactly what each client needs, without neglecting the quality and growth of each network and technological environment. To be the strategic partner for constant growth.
Investigate new tends and technologies that allow us to offer the best line of defense in cybersecurity, connectivity and monitoring and control to our business partners.
Continuous growth in the Americas region with the support of each manufacturer we represent and clients and allies who have trusted in our technical and commercial expertise.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
When we started the company (back in 2006) we started with a brand called Hauri (from South Korea) which supplied really nice monitoring and inventory services, as well as EndPoint and Server Protection for companies. In 2008 the world was delivered with one of the most damaging malware (before ransomware appeared) called Conficker.
This malware interrupted and halted almost every network in the world, since it left with the “blue screen of death” almost every Windows Based System, and the solution was to repair the boot sequence of each device… manually, if affected.
If the malware was detected BEFORE it hit the boot area of the system, then you can avoid the blue screen, but if the anti-malware solution didn’t recognized it, then you’re left only with the option of manual repair of the boot section of each affected device.
Hauri didn’t recognized the malware for several days (even after successful samples we sent to the manufacturer), so their technical response was: patch the Windows systems that have been affected. Imagine this as a startup, within almost 2 years of building confidence among our customers, we had approximately 20K licenses deployed so far, and no apparent solution.
Our change of course, was to change vendor overnight, to one that did recognized the malware, and start offering that solution free of charge to our actual customers, and help them deploy overnight.
Phew! Didn’t sleep that well back then, nevertheless 6 months after that we changed almost all of our customers (we only lost 1 of them) and stick with our actual still cybersecurity vendor that is always a leader on new technologies and they’ve been with us since, throughout the Americas.
How do people get involved/buy into your vision?
We want to serve every company that understands whats at stake in terms of being unprotected against a cyber-threat. We guide and assess wireless (WiFi) networks to enhance WiFi productivity and connection, along with best practices and deployment settings.
We offer reliable and recognized products and services, with comprehensive budgets and deployment options. Visit us online at acgofamericas.com
