“Safeguarding Companies with Fool-proof Technology”

Today, the companies see two primary data challenges; first, data security and privacy have emerged as significant business risks over the last decade. The ransomware scourge of the previous three years, combined with an increasing rate of other types of cyberattacks and the growing severity of attacks, have put businesses of all sizes on edge. An estimated 40-50% of attacks are against small businesses, which often do not have the resources or knowledge to deal with them. And data privacy will continue to escalate as a concern as more and more nations (and US states) follow Europe’s lead into strict data privacy regulations. Yet, despite the escalating risks, many small and medium businesses have no significant cybersecurity protection. Those who do mainly concentrate their efforts on perimeter-based cybersecurity such as firewalls, intrusion detection (IDS), and endpoint detection and response (EDR). This approach is proving inadequate to prevent the large-scale data breaches that are making the news so frequently. Kingfisher Technologies offers cybersecurity services focused on the data itself, complementing a company’s existing cybersecurity investment by securing the data first and working outward toward the perimeter. They believe that only a data-focused strategy will begin to slow the rate of data breaches. Coincidentally, this approach also lends itself well to preparing a company to address data privacy regulations when they start to affect how companies do business.

Second, the growth rate of businesses’ stored data is at an all-time high and increasing rapidly. Globally, through the end of 2020, people have collectively accumulated over 59 zettabytes (ZB) of data (approximately 59,000,000,000 terabytes (TB); a standard personal computer disk drive stores 0.5-1 TB) (IDC). In the next three years, experts estimate that we will have stored as much data as in the previous 30 years, with a global total of over 175 ZB by the end of 2025 (IDC). Annually, they are now accumulating more data in one year than in all of human history before the year 2000. Large companies now routinely have individual databases more significant than 1 petabyte (PB; 1 PB = 1000 TB) in size, and even a small business may have to deal with several terabytes of data. This can quickly become overwhelming, and it usually requires people with expertise in data management to store the data efficiently and keep the systems that use this data running at optimal levels. However, these resources are expensive to hire, and small and medium businesses often cannot afford them. Kingfisher Technologies offer database administration as a service to allow businesses of all sizes to reap the benefits that data management provides.

“Large companies now routinely have individual databases more significant than 1 petabyte (PB; 1 PB = 1000 TB) in size, and even a small business may have to deal with several terabytes of data.”

Under the aegis of Ed Leighton-Dick, Founder, Kingfisher Technologies, the company has witnessed great heights. His 30+ year career in information technology has included many of the primary disciplines in the field – initially development (a passion he discovered in his childhood in the early 1980s), and later system administration, web development, and database administration. However, a common thread through all of this has been working with data in one form or another – first on mainframe systems, then client-server and web architectures, and now modern hybrid and cloud architectures. Cybersecurity has been a long-term interest, and in recent years, he has combined the two disciplines to create Kingfisher’s current focus. This diversity has also led to Kingfisher’s holistic approach to data management and cybersecurity.

“Maintaining relevance in a rapidly-changing field like database management, regardless of the role, depends on continuing education and flexibility in the face of changing conditions. We have embraced both,” says Ed. “We also believe that we can best serve our clients by understanding their entire IT infrastructure, not just the databases themselves – IT is a complex, interconnected system, and any change to one part of that system inevitably affects all parts of the system (not always in a good way). We therefore approach our consulting holistically whenever possible, both to achieve the maximum benefit for the client and to avoid negative impacts to other systems.” IE