Interview with Andrea Babbs, Head of Sales UK and Ireland at VIPRE

We caught up with Andrea Babbs, Head of Sales UK and Ireland at IT security vendor VIPRE, to talk all things from a shift to cloud services during home working, to the importance of investing in customer support…

Tell us about VIPRE

VIPRE is an IT security vendor working across email, endpoint, web, user and data protection. We are a member of the J2 Global Cloud Services Division that offers security, backup and privacy services to thousands of customers and partners around the world.

As VIPRE, we develop services that promote a layered approach to security, locking down our customers’ networks from external threats. With a portfolio of protection which includes user and data protection, we offer security awareness training and VIPRE SafeSend, a tool which prompts users to check their email recipient list before they are able to send an external email. We cover all IT security angles!

Vipre logo

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

VIPRE is a member of J2 Global and I started here over eight years ago under iCritical that was bought by J2 and rolled into the wider VIPRE Security organisation. During my time here I have worked to set up a Partner Programme for the UK and Irish markets and now head up the UK and Irish Sales Team as well as run our UK operation, based out of our Keele office in Staffordshire.

How has the need for security evolved during the pandemic?

We have seen a big shift to cloud services during the pandemic with the user now placed front and centre of the security perimeter – as it should be. With people working from home, security had to move with them and this is where the power of the cloud really came into its own. It is protection that moves with the user – giving the same level of defence no matter where users are based.

As to which services we saw a surge in demand for, I would say SafeSend became very important – it gives that critical second check to email recipients and attachments, reducing accidental data loss. Our Security Awareness Training was launched in June and we saw huge interest in that because with people out of the office, IT Admins and senior management teams need to ensure that their users don’t get taken advantage of or caught unawares in the event of phishing attacks and other user-based exploits. Finally, our web security service has probably seen the biggest growth over the past five months. With people going through home routers directly to the internet, creating a secure gateway is crucial in providing secure access to business-critical cloud applications.

What can we hope to see from VIPRE in the future?

We invest very heavily in the ongoing development of our products and services to ensure that we can continue to meet market needs and stay ahead of the threat landscape. Continuing this ongoing development and providing best of breed services and expanding that portfolio will be a priority in the coming months.

Our support team will continue to be one of our most valuable assets – they achieved a 100% customer satisfaction rate last month in the UK and we are very proud of that fact and are working hard to continue to provide this superior level of support.

AI and machine learning are really key in this industry as threats and exploits evolve and VIPRE has one of the most mature threat intelligence clouds in the marketplace. We will continue to look at new ways to integrate this into our services to give customers the benefit of our experience and knowledge in this area.

We also have some other exciting things coming in the next few months, but we aren’t quite ready to share just yet! We never sit still at VIPRE, there is always something new and exciting just around the corner.