CyberTech Top Voice Interview Karen Pakes, VP Marketing and Business Development at Salvador Tech

Hello, CyberTech community. Welcome to part #26 of the CyberTech Top Voice interview series with Karen Pakes, VP Marketing and Business Development at Salvador Tech.

In this latest edition of the CyberTech Top Voice Interview Series, we’re joined by Karen Pakes, VP of Marketing and Business Development at Salvador Technologies. With a background in journalism and over a decade of experience in international reporting, Karen now leads the marketing efforts at Salvador Tech, a company offering innovative solutions in cyber resilience and recovery. In this interview, she shares insights into her role, her journey to success, and how Salvador Technologies is addressing the growing need for fast, effective recovery in the cybersecurity space. Karen also discusses the company’s unique value proposition and their recent strategic partnerships, shedding light on the future of cyber resilience.

Join Karen Pakes, VP of Marketing and Business Development at Salvador Tech, as she shares her insights into the world of cyber resilience and innovation.

Hi Karen, Welcome to the CyberTech Top Voice interview series. Please tell us about your role in Salvador Tech and how you started here.

Thank you for this opportunity. I believe it is crucial for all of us to share our experiences and expertise and to learn from one another. I started working at Salvador just four months ago. In my role, I am responsible for seeking and creating new business opportunities and channels, whether through producing events, creating partnerships or utilizing innovative marketing channels to attract relevant customers.

Being part of a unique start-up that offers a market-first solution for recovery and cyber resilience in a way no other company does, means that alongside “traditional” marketing channels, you also need to spread your product message far and wide. The goal is to reach as many Operational Technology (OT) and Critical Infrastructure organizations as possible, especially in today’s rapidly evolving threat landscape.

This is why I joined the company. I knew this challenge would require significant creativity and strategic thinking in an ever-growing cyber market.

You are among the top marketing leaders in the cybersecurity industry. Could you tell us about your career journey that has led you to success?

Sure.

My professional journey didn’t begin as one in the tech industry would expect; I got my start in journalism, specifically as a foreign correspondent, which, at that time meant covering lots of political conflicts, wars, large-scale disasters, and more across the globe. I believe this background helped me develop skills that are highly beneficial in the tech industry today. Whether it’s the ability to process vast amounts of information and make quick or immediate decisions, navigate rapidly evolving situations, or truly understand a target audience, these skills have been invaluable.

My almost 14 years as an international journalist, primarily at the BBC, sharpened my ability to tell compelling stories and take pioneering steps that may seem risky at first but ultimately pay off. These are the key ingredients for success in marketing, particularly in the high-tech and cybersecurity sectors, which are flooded with innovative solutions.

Before joining Salvador, I worked at a data company, where I had to navigate complex questions, including ethical ones. Being able to clearly communicate your company’s story – so that even your family and friends understand it – is the foundation of marketing success. You must also be brave enough to adapt the story and messaging as frequently as the market shifts, continuously monitoring, testing and adjusting to stay relevant to your target audience.

What does your “Ideal Customer Profile” or ICP look like?

Salvador offers its resilience-focused platform to businesses, companies, and organizations in the ICS and OT landscape, including maritime, manufacturing, and energy sectors, among others. Our solution provides the critical assurance that in the event of a cyber attack or a massive system failure, no matter how severe the incident or crisis, recovery will take just 30 seconds.

What currently may take hours or sometimes even days can now be reduced to mere seconds.

In my view, this is the true meaning of resilience: how fast can you recover from any attack or disaster?

How does Salvador Technologies fit into a modern cybersecurity technology stack? What are your core offerings?

Salvador Tech provides a comprehensive resilience platform that integrates into the OT cybersecurity stack. This stack includes protection and detection technologies, complemented by Salvador’s focus on the response and recovery components of the stack.

In the event of a cyber attack, Salvador contributes to the incident response process by offering tools and expertise to manage the fallout of a breach. This includes incident detection, root cause analysis, breach remediation, and, most importantly, recovery and operational continuity.

Downtime is a major factor in financial and reputational losses for organizations, especially in the OT industry. Therefore, Salvador focuses on providing fast and easy recovery solutions for its customers, reducing downtime from days or hours to minutes, and preventing significant damage in the event of a cyber incident.

You recently partnered with Armis to strengthen cyber resilience infrastructure. Could you tell us more about this integration and how it benefits the security teams?

The partnership will integrate the Armis Centrix™ platform for device and asset inventory with a rapid recovery solution, offering customers a comprehensive view of their entire device ecosystem, optimizing operations, and bolstering cyber resilience.

By joining forces, Salvador Tech and Armis enhance customer decision-making by seamlessly incorporating device management into existing processes, boosting visibility and response effectiveness, and fortifying resilience across the organization.

With this combined solution, customers will benefit from an advanced, all-in-one cyber management platform that safeguards their entire attack surface, reduces organizational cyber risk, and ensures immediate response and fast recovery during incidents, minimizing potential damage.

The collaboration will leverage the Armis Centrix™ platform for device and asset inventory and provide a rapid recovery solution to give customers a consolidated view of their entire device network, streamline operations, and deliver comprehensive cyber resilience.

Salvador Tech and Armis’ partnership empowers customer decision-making by integrating device management into existing workflows, increasing awareness and response capabilities, and strengthening resilience across the entire organization workflows, increasing awareness and response capabilities, and strengthening resilience across the entire organization

Customers using the joint solution will gain an integrated cyber management platform that comprehensively secures the entire attack surface, manages organizational cyber risk exposure, and ensures real-time active response and rapid recovery when an incident occurs, effectively avoiding multiple possible damages.

Marketing and Data Intelligence

Please tell us about your marketing communications strategy for your customers. What are your core offerings?

I use a combination of strategies to reach my target audience. The cybersecurity market is flooded with solutions focused on defense – whereas our solution is centered on resilience. That’s why partnerships play a key role in differentiating our offering.

When it comes to events, I believe in approaching them as part of a full 360-marketing campaign to generate customer interest. Additionally, hosting mini-events with potential partners helps attract new customers. I also believe that focusing on content marketing is also a vital part of our strategy, publishing case studies, research, and surveys to establish thought leadership reflects our level of expertise. This is important in a market where trust is key.

What type of content performs the best in your marketing campaigns? Why do webinars and podcasts on cybersecurity solutions tend to have higher performance compared to any other form of digital content?

In our domain, case studies and in-depth research and surveys are the types of content that resonate most. Webinars and podcasts have also been proven to be highly effective, as they provide deep insights and comprehensive knowledge that address “burning issues.” If you “hit” the right topic, engagement levels will be significantly higher than in other sectors. As I mentioned earlier, organizations today need to know where to invest and how to refine their cyber resilience strategy. They need to be able to choose the right solution to implement to reach the highest ROI. These decisions can mean the difference between suffering a massive financial loss during a cyber attack or experiencing minimal loss with zero downtime.

For this reason, we invest a significant amount of time explaining our solution and its many benefits to security professionals. The assurance of continuous operational and business continuity is a key differentiator that sets us apart.

Tag a leader in the industry you would like to recommend for the “CyberTech Top Voice Interview Series”

Arik Roztal from Nvidia arikr@nvidia.com

Thank you, Karen, for speaking to us. We look forward to speaking to you again.

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