Strengthening cybersecurity in construction
Chris Gillen, CEO, Total Support.
Matthew Poppe, director of operations.
Tamara Charleyboy, Helpdesk technician.
When most people think of cybersecu-
in Victoria, B.C., but their employees are
ware. If an organization comes up to us
rity, they picture hooded figures typing
located all throughout B.C. According to
and wants to roll out X, Y or Z, we’ll as-
rapidly on keyboards, breaching in-
Chris Gillen, chief executive officer for
semble the team to make that happen
ternal servers and hacking into main-
Total Support Solutions, they operate
for them.”
frames. Unfortunately, that is a stereo-
predominantly in B.C., with some clients
type and not at all the reality that most
in Alberta and Ontario.
Total Support Solutions’ third service is procurement. Mr. Gillen says they
businesses are up against in the world of
“Our services come down to a few
maintain relationships with major ven-
advanced technology. Total Support So-
key categories. Our first category is in
dors and wholesalers operating within
lutions aims to help their clients in B.C.
our main offerings called Helpdesk,”
Canada, from whom they source most
navigate and adopt ways to strengthen
Mr. Gillen says. Helpdesk is a remote
their cybersecurity to protect themselves
service providing day-to-day support to
and their businesses.
staff and employees within organiza-
Total Support Solutions is a full-ser-
tions with IT problems they may be fac-
vice IT company that offers on-demand
ing. “Our second department is projects,
support (both remote on and on-site), as
tasked with handling and maintaining
well as fully outsourced IT department
changes within organizations, such as
solutions including CIO services and cy-
large-scale deployment upgrades and
bersecurity services. Their head office is
installations of new software or hard-
parts that clients ask for. Lastly, they also have a training department; Total Support Solutions has certified trainers on staff and they run a training academy out of Vancouver to make sure their employees are CompTIA certified. Cybersecurity has become an important part of keeping your business safe. At its core, cybersecurity is protecting businesses against attacks that happen via modern technology, such as someone trying to hack into a person’s network or system with the intention of gathering information about staff members or the business as a whole. “Cybersecurity is the process of hard-
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ening your business against those attacks, and we do that by following a set of best practices and principles that are well-established and understood. We also do fairly specific analyses of each individual business’s case and try to
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Northern Regional Construction Association
