Cybersecurity: Is Your Data Safe?

By: Phillips Connect

In today’s ever-evolving society where data is now the world’s most valuable asset, securing information has become a critical component to any business. As telematics continues to shape the future of the trucking industry, companies are left guarding mounds of precious data that hold key information about items like fleet location, load weight, and overall business logistics.

Technological advances are making business operations streamlined, but with this evolution comes many challenges. Firewalls, encryption, and other barriers are completely relied upon to keep data secure. To better understand the importance of this growing issue, Brent Whitney helps to explain the extra measures that Phillips Connect takes to protect its clientele’s private information and digital assets.

Question: What is Phillips Connect doing to specifically address the cybersecurity threats to trucking fleets?

Brent: We integrate security “best practices” in everything we do. That involves protecting data, networks, and desktops. Our customers have high standards across this industry, and we follow and exceed those standards.

Question: Is the data secure from end to end?

Brent: We follow stringent practices because we do develop our own platforms. So it’s very ingrained into how we build the code. That includes standards we adhere to in how we build software. We do code reviews and then test that code. It’s truly an ongoing effort. If you’re secure one day, you may not be tomorrow as things are always changing. There are always new bad guys on the outside trying to get in. I could even print out logs that show people from different servers trying to hack into our networks every day… It’s very active. If you make any internal change, you have people from the outside also changing to break through. Once you achieve a very secure network, you must keep it secure. You can’t introduce things that could create security holes. You stay on top of what’s going on outside to make patches. We take a proactive approach and are always testing to try to expose weaknesses in our system. It’s an ongoing investment we make.

Question: And how soon after a security breach happens is it reported? How do you handle it?

Brent: Well, the good news is we’ve never been breached. But if we were to be breached, we have alerts that begin to go off immediately. The trick is to keep the bad guys out and then detect very early if something’s happening. We’ve never even had to cross that bridge because nobody’s ever made it inside. That’s a good thing.

Question: What technology do you use to secure the data?

Brent: We encrypt the database. Any data that’s sitting in a database is typically encrypted. Anything that we’re moving around and passing between servers, between partners, is encrypted as well. It’s military grade – the highest level of encryption. You’d have to spend years and years to hack it.

Question: How is Phillips Connect going above and beyond the standard protocols to build that extra layer of cybersecurity around its products?

Brent:  I’d like to consider Phillips Connect’s approach as “cradle-to-grave” or “beginning-to-end” encryption and data protection. There’s no stage of it from device to server where it is not protected. We make sure we’re following standards and doing internal auditing. There’s testing, like penetration testing, that we complete quarterly and pay extra for. Where it falls apart for people in the industry is when the data is secure one day, and then three months later they’ve stopped investing. There’s a certain perseverance and diligence you go through that’s very process oriented. And I can say confidently from the inside that Phillips Connect invests heavily into its security.