REDARX provides cybersecurity and IT services for Saskatoon and area

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Businesses and non-profit organizations regularly open and move in Saskatoon. Today the StarPhoenix talks to Stephen M. Davies, who acquired and founded several IT companies over the past 18 years, and recently rebranded them all under the name REDARX, in its Sutherland offices.

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REDARX provides comprehensive cybersecurity for businesses of any size and sees a growing need for its services in a world where anybody connected to the internet can be at risk of being cyber-attacked and having data or other valuable information stolen.

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REDARX also offers a variety of IT managed services and cloud hosting by staff who are all based in Saskatchewan, with an owner who grew up in Saskatoon.

Q: Why does REDARX focus on cybersecurity?

A: Cybersecurity is extremely important into the future. By 2027, studies have determined that every business will be compromised in some way with ransom or cybersecurity threats. That’s a big number.

And there’s a lot of managed service providers already in Saskatoon, but not a lot of them focus on cybersecurity aspects. So we wanted to take more of a proactive approach where cybersecurity is our first priority and managed service provider is second.

Being a business owner, I understand the fear that comes into an owner’s mind when you walk in in the morning and you find out that you can’t get any of your clients’ information or you won’t be able to work and you’ve got a bunch of staff members wondering what’s going to happen.

My focus is to make sure that businesses can take on one incident, if it were to happen, and to best protect it to prevent it from happening.

Q: Are most business owners aware of the risk of cyber threats?

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A: The mindset in Saskatchewan is different than the mindset in Alberta and British Colombia. In Saskatchewan I think everybody still has a mentality of ‘It can’t happen to me, I’m too small, it’s not a big deal, what are they going to do with my data?’ And I think there is a lack of understanding of the legal consequence of that.

If you think you’re protected, get a second opinion. Fifty-one per cent of small businesses have no security measures in place at all, underestimating the risks; 59 per cent of small business owners without cybersecurity measures believe the business is too small to be attacked.

But if you connect anything to the internet, it can be attacked. It doesn’t matter the size. They will come after you for $5,000 if that’s in your bank account. Only 14 per cent of small businesses are prepared to defend themselves against cyber attack. Forty-three per cent of small businesses are being targeted. (Note: Statistics cited are from StrongDM and Astra.)

Q: What are some cybersecurity services you provide?

A: We use a method called left of boom, right of boom. Left of boom is everything that protects you from having a boom, from having an explosion. The right of boom is everything to mediate what has happened.

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Antivirus is not a protection anymore. It’s an after the fact. Antivirus is one of those things that if antivirus is coming into play, the infection is already on your computer. And how long was it on the computer until your antivirus detected it? So it’s not something that protects you.

But nowadays it’s not even a virus that’s the problem. People click on a link and have something running in the background, giving somebody full access, that is allowed and permitted and doesn’t show up as a virus or malware or ransom. So then somebody could be in another country monitoring everything you’re doing. And at night when you go home, they start taking data off your computer and you have no idea.

Monitoring threat detection is something that we install onto your computer and we call it threat hunting. It’s constantly looking for things in your computer that don’t look normal. Our product looks for changes and looks for anything that’s weird or not normal. And then it will bring a report back to us. That allows our security team to identify something that’s not right and we will investigate it.

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Q: You also provide cybersecurity evaluations?

A: Our cybersecurity evaluation really gets down to the meat and potatoes. For customers, every quarter we evaluate where things are at — here are the struggles they’ve been having and here are your vulnerabilities and your risks.

We do evaluations to make sure that clients are legally protected based on whatever authority they may be held to. We will offer that for free to any potential customer, and any existing customer is covered in their plan. Every quarter we do this. It not only helps them but it makes sure that we’re not missing something as well.

Q: What other services do you provide?

A: Pretty much if you have a technology problem, we’ll help you fix it or figure it out. It’s almost easier to say what we don’t do. The only thing we don’t do is programming and we don’t do web design. Otherwise, everything IT is in our wheelhouse, even weird wireless projects.

We do a lot of networking — anything from somebody building a new office and they need their whole internet and network connected. We will design all of that. We will design the wireless network. We will do desktop support and manage your entire companies’ IT infrastructure.

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Or we will be a Level 3 for your IT department. Maybe you have in-house IT but they don’t have the skill set to manage every aspect. We’ll act as a Level 3 technician for them and we will help them determine what the gaps are or make recommendations as a supplement to that company.

Q: How do you ensure your services are effective?

A: We actually hired what’s called a client solution manager. His job is to literally advocate for the client. His job is to make sure that every single client is being taken care of and he will come to us and say, ‘This client hasn’t had this in a while. Why hasn’t the team done it?’ He makes sure that he holds us accountable to make sure that that customer sees higher success. He is one of our employees, but his job is to scrutinize what we’re doing.

Q: What sets you apart from other cybersecurity and IT service providers?

A: When you call an organization, you always like to know who you’re going to talk to or at least have access to people. For us it’s always been important that when you call the office, there’s not a hold button, there’s not a ‘press 1 for support, press 2 for sales.’ We’ve got a human being and surprisingly, we’ve actually won contracts just because of the fact that we’ve answered the phone.

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I think just the fact that we’re focusing on a cybersecurity mindset and cybersecurity focus where everyone else is providing a managed service focus, and then cybersecurity becomes the last factor of the project.

We’re going into it before we even tell you how we’re going to manage your data; we talk about what we’re going to do to make sure your data is protected. And then make sure that your working platform operates efficiently for your business with a security focus forward.

Q: Are your Saskatoon services based in Saskatchewan?

A: We don’t outsource anything. We are 100 per cent local. All our 100 technicians, even our tech support is all in Saskatchewan. We do have people who do physical work in other cities, but our data center is here, our equipment is here. Everything about our business is local. We don’t outsource our staff. All the staff are Saskatchewan-based and Saskatchewan employed.

There is a big industry right now where people are outsourcing their Level 1 tech support to other countries. I don’t care how cheap that is, I don’t care how much better it is for their business, it’s not better for our clients. Our clients want to know who they’re talking to.

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Q: How did you decide on the name REDARX?

A: As a team, we all came together and came up with this name. In the cybersecurity world, there are two types of teams. There’s a blue team and a red team. The red team is the attackers. They try to infiltrate your business. And the Arx is actually Greek for fortress. So we thought how cool is that, that a fortress will block the red team.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

REDARX Cyber Group

Owner: Stephen M. Davies
Address: 810 Central Avenue
Hours: Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.; after hours services 24/7.
Phone: 888-898-8864
Email: support@redarx.com
Website: www.redarx.com
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