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Avnet Introduces New Security Assessments at HIMSS17

AVT | February 20, 2017

Avnet Introduces New Security Assessments at HIMSS17

Allows partners to offer specialized cybersecurity threat analyses for their healthcare and retail customers in 40+ key areas

Avnet (NYSE: AVT) today unveiled two new security assessment services tailored to the unique needs of the healthcare and retail industries. Partners in the U.S. and Canada can leverage these services to quickly determine the strength of their customers’ security postures and measure customers’ security approaches compared to the overall healthcare or retail industry. The assessment services also provide partners with the critical information needed to create an action plan to improve their healthcare and retail customers’ security, reduce risks and determine the security technology solutions most beneficial to protecting their customers.

“It’s no surprise that avoiding breaches tops the privacy and security concerns of both healthcare organizations and retailers,” said Alex Ryals, vice president of security and networking solutions, Avnet Technology Solutions, Americas. “The first step to helping these customers strengthen their security is understanding their current environments. Our new security assessments give our partners a proven model to rapidly analyze their customers’ level of maturity and any gaps. This will ultimately give our partners the knowledge needed to make technology recommendations that will take their customers’ security postures to the next level.”

The breach security assessments leverage Intel Corporation’s “Security Readiness Program” and require a one-hour workshop with a security assessor to measure security safeguards in a healthcare or retail organization against the related industry security maturity model. After the assessment, a partner will be able to provide the organization with a report summarizing the findings, including the customer’s maturity level, how they compare with the rest of the industry, any gaps, and a multi-year plan to incrementally reinforce their breach security. Partners will also be able to share quarterly update reports for up to one year after the assessment with their customers, showing where they stand relative to their industry. The security assessments also offer visibility into compliance with privacy and security regulations, data protection laws, and standards, such as HIPAA, PCI/DSS and NIST.

“We are thrilled to see these new security assessment services emerge from Avnet to help healthcare organizations measure and improve their security maturity,” said Jennifer Esposito, general manager of Global Health and Life Sciences at Intel Corporation. “Avnet is in a great position to help their reseller partners and customers evaluate and adopt new security solutions that can substantially reduce their risk.”

The new healthcare and retail security assessments are part of a collaboration and program with Intel to enhance companies’ security abilities. These supplier-agnostic assessments are designed to help partners determine their customers’ risks across a wide range of top breach concerns, such as ransomware, cybercrime hacks, loss or theft of mobile devices or media, malicious insiders, fraud or snooping. This will enable partners to prioritize security initiatives for their customers. As a result, partners can identify needs that often lead to deeper subsequent engagements including policy creation or updates, risk assessment, penetration testing, vulnerability scanning, audit, user training, or implementation of various breach security safeguards.

“At Lumenate, we see great value in the use of Avnet’s breach assessment tool, as it provides customers immediate insight into their security environments,” said Drew Robinson, chief security officer, Lumenate, a technical consulting firm focused on enabling and securing the virtualized enterprise, and an Avnet partner. “The results of the assessment allow us to reinforce the importance of governance as it relates to federal guidelines mandating protections around confidentially, integrity and availability in the handling, transmission, use and storage of electronic-protected health-related information. Thus, we are able to work with our customers to architect strong cybersecurity frameworks by identifying gaps in tools, applications, processes and procedures needed to effectively govern and protect their environments and open the doors to other opportunities that may not have been visible otherwise.”

The new security assessments are part of Avnet’s growing security services portfolio, which includes its recently launch managed security service program – Recon^™ – that allows partners to easily offer their customers 24x7x365 security monitoring and management. It also builds upon Avnet’s solutions specialist approach to accelerate the channel’s abilities to capitalize on the next-generation technologies that are rapidly growing and defining the future of computing and the data center. Partners will be able to engage Avnet’s dedicated solutions specialists to develop complete security solutions. Avnet also provides the channel with in-depth expertise and education services in complementary technology market segments, including: cognitive computing, data analytics, the data center, the internet of things (IoT), mobility, security and enterprise networking, and training and education.

For additional information, please visit the Avnet Security Assessment Program webpage and the Avnet Security and Networking solutions information page.

Avnet at HIMSS17

At this year’s Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) conference and exhibition, Avnet’s contingent will be located at booth #5550. Avnet will feature live demonstrations and discussions of how its latest healthcare-related offerings are helping partners excel while capitalizing on next-generation technologies that are redefining the future of healthcare IT. Avnet is a HIMSS Platinum Corporate Member for this year’s event, which is being held at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Fla., Feb. 19-23, 2017.

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