August 21, 2020

Last Updated on January 15, 2024

Cost-cutting is a fact of life for many companies today. But how do you strategically reduce expenses without slicing into productivity or hampering your ability to bounce back along with the economy?

To get some outside-the-box insight on this critical issue, we invited Jose Ciriaco to be our guest on The Virtual CISO Podcast. Jose is Director of Sales and Marketing at Tekscape, a top IT MSP based in Manhattan. He’s working closely with clients every day finding ways to cut expenses now and improve competitiveness going forward.
Episode host John Verry, Pivot Point Security’s CISO and Managing Partner, is also hard at work on a daily basis helping Pivot Point and its SMB clients to “pivot with the pandemic.” These two experts have a wealth of innovative guidance to share.
A theme that emerges multiple times in Jose and John’s conversation is the idea of vendor consolidation. Putting too many eggs in one vendor’s basket remains a risk to be avoided, but the times call for “win-win” partnerships, and the best vendors know it.

These days, “win-win” can mean finding new financing ideas or figuring out how to amortize project spend over a longer timeframe, for example. As Jose advises, “Think OpEx all the way! … Find a partner who can work with you to stretch those dollars as best you can.” If a current vendor won’t have that conversation, find a new one.


Companies can also save costs by strategically consolidating services with vendors that are willing to help them cut expenses right now. Consolidating vendors also offers “soft cost” savings like simplifying vendor risk management and eliminating effort on everyday interactions.
Further, in some cases a single vendor (e.g., an MSP) can represent—and manage—multiple upstream vendors (like Microsoft and Dell or Cisco and Juniper) enabling their clients to deploy best-in-class, end-to-end solutions while retaining that “single throat to choke” advantage.
As John puts it, “the best vendors are building ecosystems that benefit their clients.”
If your business seeks to cut IT/cybersecurity expenses, you find some fresh approaches in this episode of The Virtual CISO Podcast with special guest Jose Ciriaco.
To hear the episode with Jose all the way through, and take your pick among the numerous other episodes in The Virtual CISO Podcast series, click here.
If you don’t use Apple Podcasts, you can access all our episodes here.