Palindrome Consulting: Serving Angus Energy’s IT Needs Since 2015

Palindrome Consulting: Serving Angus Energy’s IT Needs Since 2015

Key Points:

• Angus Energy turned to Palindrome Consulting to help them meet the heavy regulations in the financial sector.
• The government ruthlessly regulates the finance industry to protect citizens’ money and sensitive information from landing in cybercriminals’ hands.
• All financial service businesses must comply with government regulations set by organizations such as SEC and FINRA to operate legally in the U.S.
• Palindrome Consulting helped Angus Energy remain compliant — offering the best infrastructure to help the company meet the demands of customers, staff, and regulatory bodies.

The government ruthlessly regulates the financial sector to protect people’s money and sensitive data from landing in cybercriminals’ hands. For the government, cyber threat isn’t only a challenge but a big obstacle to the long-awaited digital transformation.

As a result, the government requires all financial service businesses to comply with regulations to operate legally in the U.S. The regulations aim at protecting investors and ensuring the market’s integrity.

Apart from remaining compliant, financial institutions must protect themselves from cyber-attacks because hacking can imperil a company’s name and the public trust. Angus Energy turned to Palindrome Consulting to help them remain compliant and protect the business from cyber attacks, and Stephen Kurtz shared their experience.

The Background

Steve Kurtz has been in Angus Energy and a client of Palindrome Consulting since 2015. The company has been offering hedging solutions and has oversight through ISSP for over three decades.

The company helps make energy marketers more profitable by offering services such as:

• Operational analytics
• Finance and budgeting
• Business intelligence
• Hedging and trading

For over 30 years, Angus Energy has guided energy businesses in an ever-evolving realm of heating oil prices.

The Problem

Like any other financial institution, their core aim of outsourcing their IT services was to remain compliant. Stephen says they wanted to keep their certification, which meant getting a partner they could trust with their security.

The Angus Energy director insists that they operate under several regulatory bodies that execute annual audits to check if the company meets the challenge of cybersecurity risk. The audits measure every aspect of the company’s cybersecurity programs and those lacking.

In the audits, the regulatory bodies examine how the company’s technologies, policies, and people work to lower the risk of cyber attacks. Stephen says the audits ask for the following:

• Documentation of data protection measures they’ve taken
• Data they have shared with employees
• The company’s cyber training for employees
• The technology used by the company

The company wanted a partner to help them remain compliant, provide cybersecurity training, and offer a high level of confidence to the company’s senior staff and management that their security is well taken care of.

Stephen insists that the compliance requirement is almost like a security blanket at night, and they needed peace of mind leaving it in the right hands.

The Company Didn’t Have an All-Rounded IT Department

Stephen says their company didn’t have an IT staff when Angus Energy started partnering with Palindrome Consulting. The only technology professionals they had were software developers, QA analysts, and product managers. The professionals had different skills that couldn’t secure the business from cyber attacks.

In case of a breach or any other technical issue, the company didn’t have the right tech skills to lean on. The company then sought a partnership with Palindrome Consulting to close the skill gap.

As Stephen puts it, any company needs to have all IT services in this day and age because every business is a technology company. In today’s interconnected world — it’s a dangerous world out there. Having a partner like Palindrome gives the company a strong sense of satisfaction and comfort that they’re protected and moving forward.

The Solution?

After partnering in 2015, Palindrome’s huge task was to ensure Angus Energy remained compliant in the heavily regulated financial industry. Palindrome Consulting focused on compliance issues and other risks to better understand cybersecurity.

Focusing on reducing risks of attacks positioned Angus Energy better to achieve the ever-changing compliance requirement. Palindrome executed the following to ensure the company’s security:

• Evaluated overall data security
• Determined if the company’s software and hardware are functioning as they should
• Helped to meet compliance with legal and industry regulations
• Discovered unknown vulnerabilities
• Uncovered inefficiency in the company’s software and hardware
• Helped to create the company cybersecurity policies and training
• Gauged the employee compliance

The cybersecurity services were necessary because Angus Energy handles sensitive information, and poor security would bring dire consequences.

The cybersecurity services Palindrome Consulting offered helped Angus Energy retain its certification and remain compliant. More importantly, the company could focus on other important tasks, confident that they’ve taken measures against cybersecurity lapses that could cause immeasurable damage to their company.

Palindrome fixed the company’s lack of IT staff, helping it address all its technical issues.

What Steve Kurtz Can Tell Some Businesses Considering Palindrome

According to Stephen, trust, professionalism, and honesty are rare qualities in many IT service providers. The director of Angus Energy insists that there are a lot of smoke and mirrors — a lot of snake oil salesmen that are out there. However, when the company started working with Palindrome Consulting, Steve noted trust, honesty, and professionalism.

Steve emphasizes that there are a lot of pushbacks between IT service providers and their clients. An organization may get many people making suggestions or recognitions, but their IT partners might say it isn’t a great idea. The IT company tells you not to do that with much negativity.

However, with Palindrome, Steve says that the company tries its best to help in most situations. Kurtz insists that their response is not only positive but honest — which no one should confuse with phoniness.

Palindrome Consulting Can Close the Technological Gap In Your Business

Your business deserves no technological troubles ever again. You should get maximum return on your technology investment and cyber protection to prevent criminals from using your technology against you.

Since 2015, we’ve helped Angus Energy remain compliant and handle nearly all of its IT services. We can help your business too. Contact us today for a partnership to help solve nearly all IT challenges your business faces.