In the dynamic cybersecurity industry, even the most seasoned experts agree that maintaining fluency in the latest products and solutions is a boundless task. The industry demands constant adaptability and a keen aptitude for new technologies to keep up with daily changes in cyber threats and best practices. Trending buzzwords and unproven solutions consistently flood the market, leaving enterprise IT leaders to wade through costly and potentially inadequate solutions. This is where WEI steps in.
The story of Todd Humphreys, WEI’s CyberSecurity Go-To-Market (GTM) Leader, demonstrates how a commitment to learning and adaptation can make a cybersecurity career profoundly rewarding in helping enterprise customers gain traction in cybersecurity. Starting in the network diagnostics field three decades ago, Todd’s career has evolved as much as the industry he calls home, leading him to his current role at WEI.
IT leaders recognize that cybersecurity is a never-ending battle where complex threat actors emerge globally every day. For many organizations, the latest unpatched vulnerability, a single click on a phishing email, or the stealthy attacks launched by a nation-state adversary are the common triggers for IT nightmares. A single cyber incident can result in lost revenue, decreased product/service delivery, and irreparable brand reputation damage.
Knowing this, WEI has developed a modern approach to cybersecurity that is designed to help customers effectively navigate and fortify themselves against evolving threats using the latest technology that is tightly integrated and designed to scale using automation, machine learning (ML), and advanced artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities.
For Todd, his longevity in the cybersecurity industry is built on a genuine desire to help businesses better protect themselves against modern cyber threat actors. Joining the WEI team in Fall 2023, Todd has articulated a clear message to enterprise IT leaders – focus on detection and prevention first. Borrowing from a US Military concept, known as “Left of Bang”, this cybersecurity mindset and strategy emphasizes a proactive approach to detecting and mitigating threats before they cause harm.
Pioneered by the US Marine Corp to help soldiers identify the indicators of attack before they happen, this method involves identifying and addressing anomalies early in the threat continuum. By enhancing visibility and understanding normal network behavior, IT teams can recognize potential threats and respond swiftly, reducing the number and impact of cyberattacks. Implementing a left of bang strategy helps organizations strengthen their overall cybersecurity posture and prevent incidents before they occur. Todd’s message about cyber threat prevention resonates with today’s IT security leaders, as many are hungry for meaningful guidance on next-generation cybersecurity solutions – something WEI is ready to assist with.
Under Todd’s GTM guidance, WEI continues to embrace a holistic approach to cybersecurity focused on modernized Security Operations Center (SOC), incident response, cloud security, identity & access management, network security, email security, and asset and vulnerability management. Todd’s vision for a comprehensive cybersecurity practice directly correlates with WEI’s formula to deliver custom-tailored solutions that align with a customer’s existing business objectives, IT personnel, and technology stack. At WEI, Todd is supported by a deep and agnostic technical bench that offers solutions from the industry’s leading security partners.
As Todd first considered joining WEI, major attractions included the company’s quality in workforce culture, investment in customer success, and proven capabilities in developing, deploying, and managing custom-tailored IT services and solutions to clients. Founded in 1989, the award-winning IT solutions provider has experienced year-over-year organic growth as it continues investing in customer success and cultivating a workplace culture that enables progressive innovation. WEI’s expanding portfolio of earned technology certifications, including those within cybersecurity, ensures that its potent engineering team will solve the most complex technology challenges to meet a customer’s desired outcomes.
WEI’s sprawling campus is home to several customer care differentiators including multiple knowledge transfer centers, integration and testing labs, imaging labs, proof of concept labs, a network operations center, and a fully secured warehouse for customer inventory. The sparkling campus allows clients to engage with WEI’s technology capabilities firsthand, enabling proof-of-concept and enhancing the overall customer experience. In essence, a customer’s solution, whether it be for cybersecurity or something else, is fully developed, tested, and implemented with WEI’s white glove service.
For Todd, this exciting opportunity at WEI represents more than just professional growth—it’s a chance to leverage his cyber expertise in a multifaceted role, unbound by the constraints of a single vendor solution. With a focus on innovation and partnership, he is eager to navigate WEI toward new horizons in the complex cybersecurity landscape.
Let’s explore where Todd’s career started and his path taken in growing as a knowledgeable and trusted leader in the cybersecurity landscape.
Todd’s IT journey began at Lotus Development Corporation in 1988, where he worked closely with customers to support their enterprise computing applications. Shortly after, Todd joined Network General – the maker of the highly regarded Sniffer Network Analyzer. Known as The Sniffer, this tool helped pioneer the enablement of network administrators to see a centralized global view of all network activity. This packet analysis and protocol analysis tool served as the foundation for his foray into the cybersecurity arena, where he honed his expertise in intrusion detection and prevention technologies.
Throughout his career, Todd has traversed various roles at prominent companies such as Internet Security Systems, (ISS), Network ICE, and notably Palo Alto Networks, where he spent 11 years contributing to the evolution of next-generation firewall (NGFW) technology. The cyber veteran’s extensive background encompasses a deep understanding of network security solutions, coupled with a keen eye for emerging trends and technologies.
Next-Gen Leadership At WEI
Todd’s arrival to the award-winning value-added reseller comes at a time when enterprise IT leaders are actively seeking IT solution providers capable of providing modern SOC solutions and leveraging advanced analytics, ML, and automation technologies to scale operations. As the adoption of digital operating models collides with more advanced threat actors, the necessity for a modern SOC becomes increasingly evident. SOC analysts can attest to the advantages of incorporating automation and analytics into these systems. Through close collaboration, Todd and the WEI team are effectively guiding companies from legacy SOC environments toward a more integrated and automated strategy that streamlines security operations.
It’s become clear to the GTM leader just how closely WEI keeps a pulse on best practices and solutions stemming from complex networking, data center, and virtualization projects. The company regularly leverages its extensive partner portfolio to deliver custom-tailored solutions. For example, WEI remains one of the largest and highest-certified partners of Fortinet, a global leader in NGFW, endpoint security, and intrusion detection. Other notable cybersecurity partners include Palo Alto Networks, Zscaler, SentinelOne, Infoblox, Axonius, Cribl, and many more. Onboarding additional cyber vendors further enhances WEI’s existing technical capabilities in ransomware protection and remediation, incident response, SOAR, and more.
Todd’s longevity in the industry has allowed him to witness firsthand some of cybersecurity’s most innovative and forward-thinking solutions to date, including Palo Alto’s AI-driven security operations platform, Cortex XSIAM. Introduced in 2022 and a solution WEI experts have believed in since day one, Cortex XSIAM directly aligns with WEI’s identified goals of the modern SOC – improved MTTD and MTTR, consolidation of disparate SOC tools, leveraging native AI and ML models, extended visibility, and real-time threat detection. The automation-first capabilities of this next-gen platform is setting a new standard in the modern SOC, something Todd recognized even before his days at WEI.
Already a proven leader in network security, WEI’s engineering team has also long embraced the concept of Zero Trust as their core guiding principle. In fact, WEI was designing and deploying Zero Trust before the term even existed. Much of the current focus is on robust segmentation and micro-segmentation strategies aimed at minimizing the potential impact of attacks and compromises as well as minimizing the blast radius of attacks. While WEI recognizes that there is no single product that can deliver Zero Trust, their experts have regularly prioritized Zero Trust network access (ZTNA) solutions to ensure clients have secure access to their critical applications.
WEI’s extensive experience in network architecture and application deployment has positioned them as trusted advisors in implementing secure and efficient network environments. From traditional on-premises networking to the data center and cloud deployments, the WEI team regularly demonstrates proficiency in guiding clients toward successful, resilient, and modern environments. Todd and the leadership at WEI emphasize a commitment to staying at the forefront of network security innovation, delivering tailored solutions that address the evolving cybersecurity landscape while leveraging their deep-rooted expertise in network management and security integration.
WEI’s Culture Translates To Premier Customer Care Capabilities
At WEI, nurturing engineering expertise has always been a top priority. The IT solutions provider empowers its 85-person engineering team to specialize in various areas across all major IT solutions. The WEI team demands technical proficiency in the solutions they represent and they incent and encourage the pre-sale and post-sale engineering team to keep their skills and certifications fresh. WEI’s seasoned cybersecurity engineers, many of whom bring experience from diverse backgrounds, including the gray-hat world, remain abreast of underground developments and industry trends. This collective knowledge, combined with long-standing customer relationships, enables WEI to adopt a holistic approach to cybersecurity. With over 450 customers, most of whom have been with WEI for over 20 years, the focus has shifted from merely introducing new products to understanding clients’ evolving needs and challenges.
Rather than pushing trending buzzwords and unproven solutions, WEI prioritizes ongoing discussions centered on problem-solving and risk management. By assessing the effectiveness of clients’ existing security controls and technologies, WEI helps quantify the customer’s investments and identify gaps/areas for improvement. This approach emphasizes the importance of maximizing existing solutions before considering the integration of new technologies, ensuring that clients receive recommendations aligned with their specific environment and objectives.
Securing Tomorrow, Today
As any established IT leader knows, building and maintaining a professional network are crucial ingredients to a successful and worthwhile career. While long term connections offer valuable opportunities and resources for the experienced, it is the young and inexperienced IT professionals who are often left forging their own path forward to a rewarding career in cybersecurity. This can be difficult as even the most entry level position can require a minimal amount of cybersecurity experience that an aspiring professional does not have access to. Through partnerships such as the one shared between WEI and CyberTrust Massachusetts, Todd has a front row seat to building the future of cybersecurity staffing across the commonwealth through hands-on training and education.
CyberTrust, a non-profit organization whose mission is to address the cybersecurity staffing shortage, is cultivating new and diverse talent pools that leverage underutilized human capital. Todd is a firm believer in the significance of empowering young IT professionals and providing the resources necessary to mentor and support the next generation of cybersecurity talent.
