Protection 1
Taking the Latest in Cisco Technology to Deliver Greater Security Solutions to its Customers

End-users these days are looking for the latest technologies in security systems for protecting a range of facilities from residential to large scale enterprise locations. However, today’s commercial and industrial companies often face an array of real and costly risks. That is why many organizations today are looking to partner with security solutions providers that hold advanced certifications in a variety of technologies.

Headquartered in Romeoville, IL, Protection 1 is the largest full-service business and home security company in the U.S. and provides installation, maintenance, and monitoring of single-family home, businesses and multi-family security systems.

For the past decade, Protection 1 has been a premier partner of Cisco, holding a number of advanced certifications including the Express Cloud and Managed Services certification. This latest certification is awarded to companies that have attained expertise in the preparation, planning, designing and implementation for selling and supporting cloud-based services based on the Cisco platform. Protection 1 offers a wide range of Cisco solutions ranging from traditional or legacy products such as switches, routers, network storage to the newer cloud-based solutions.

“We use Cisco technology to support our security systems that are geared toward enterprise commercial applications,” says Christopher BenVau, Protection 1’s Senior Vice President of Enterprise Solutions. “With our years of experience with both physical security applications and network security, we are able to help our customers achieve their security objectives, whether they operate a stand-along data center or thousands of geographically dispersed retail locations.”

To help accommodate the growing need for more secure networks, Protection 1 operates a Network Operations Center (NOC) as part of its Integrated Solutions Operations. “Cloud-based solutions have a strong value proposition, especially in scalable scenarios,” explains BenVau. “But in order to properly design and deploy these services, it is crucial to have an experienced technical team behind the technology. This is one of the reasons Protection 1 has made significant investments into not only the technology, but in our team members, who are dedicated individuals with advanced certifications in the latest technologies.”

We use Cisco technology to support our security systems that are geared toward enterprise commercial applications

The NOC is primarily focused on providing real-time monitoring of IT-sensitive systems, including system health, auditing and network performance metrics. In addition to monitoring systems for performance and potential problems, the NOC also designs, installs, and commissions wide and local area networks for companies that either do not have the internal resources to accomplish this task on their own or in many cases, companies that are focusing their internal IT teams on top line growth, especially in the retail sector.

The NOC can help minimize potential data breaches by remotely monitoring the network for suspicious activity. They can also notifying a customer of predictive indicators of performance problems and proactively scheduling a service call to remedy the situation and minimize loss. Cloud-based services managed from the NOC include a web-based dashboard that allows management and reporting of all IT environments including networks, security, and IP telephony along with cloud back-up and disaster recovery services, all based on Cisco platforms.

An example of this is T5, a company that builds, owns, and operates server-ready single and multi-tenant data centers across North America to meet the demands of today’s corporate users. T5 customers are served with proven state-of-the-art data centers in a scalable format to ensure that their mission-critical applications are running and monitored smoothly. To achieve that goal, T5 turned to Protection 1 for an integrated enterprise security solution. Protection 1 spanned a long list of security, networking, AV and telephony products and services to help T5 attain their desired goal.

“With the high level of Cisco certification, Protection 1 is moving forward in becoming a technology service partner with a proven track record of deploying custom, high-end, integrated security, and network and telephony systems,” concludes BenVau.