Safety in the digital age

EXOS IT protects the City of Noblesville and BOOM fans

By STU CLAMPITT
news@readthereporter.com

The home of the Noblesville Boom was recently renamed the Riverview Health Arena at Innovation Mile, Powered by Parkview, but long before the naming rights were sold, EXOS IT was keeping people at the Arena safe behind the scenes. The Reporter spoke with EXOS IT Director of Government Operations Robert Paglia about what it takes to provide cybersecurity in the era of AI and bad actors both foreign and domestic.

“We provide what we call ‘smart hands,’ and we provide an on-site engineer during games,” Paglia told The Reporter. “They serve as the smart hands for the whole technical operation during the games. So, if any issues arise, we’re the first on-site to help towards any resolution.”

According to Paglia, in the IT industry, “smart hands” refers to the engineers, especially on-site during events, who have both the experience and expertise to handle unexpected problems.

In addition to providing smart hands with technical expertise for the Arena and other private-sector clients, EXOS also provides IT services to public-sector clients throughout Indiana.

“We actually provide the IT and cybersecurity support for the city of Noblesville, but we also do it for Lebanon, Greenwood, Mooresville, Cumberland, and a whole bunch of different places throughout the state,” Paglia said. “My role is specifically around our public sector practice and ensuring the delivery of services for anything related to IT or cybersecurity for our public clients.”

Readers of this newspaper have seen numerous articles in the last year about data breaches and other forms of hacking performed by both private criminals and foreign governments. Paglia, who has been working in this industry for decades, said that those incidents are becoming more common.

“I think there’s more, in my opinion,” Paglia said. “The criminals are getting much more sophisticated. I would say it’s a continuum of progression, and it’s something that we ourselves are constantly evolving with. We have to use AI tools in our cybersecurity stack to make sure we’re keeping up with the criminals.”

As technology advances, so does criminality. Individuals with limited expertise can now buy software and resources online to use as tools against citizens, businesses, and government entities.

“Individuals who may have an interest in nefarious behavior can purchase a bot online for a cheap price, where that stuff may not necessarily have existed before,” Paglia said. “I think there’s accessibility to a wider variety of audiences.”

That is why cybersecurity and IT are both important.

“We try to really express this to our clients that cybersecurity is one aspect, but you have to have a really good IT team,” Paglia said. “And those two teams have to work in conjunction with each other, or it doesn’t work. We can have the smartest cybersecurity engineers in the world, but if you don’t have an IT team that knows how to make the corrections because of what’s found by the cybersecurity team, then there’s really little value in it. One of the things we pride ourselves on is we have such a strong collaboration between our IT and cyber [teams]. I always look more at the cyber as they’re monitoring, they’re auditing, and they’re finding the issues, and it’s really up to a strong IT team to be able to figure out how to update that infrastructure and get rid of those weaknesses. It’s continuous learning and education, and that just never can stop. You always have to be on alert.”

EXOS provides services for both the private and public sectors, but because Paglia’s position is focused on the government operations, The Reporter asked him what it is like to work with the City of Noblesville, which he has personally been doing since last year.

“Oh, they’re great,” Paglia said. “They’ve got a really strong leadership team. They’re certainly engaged with IT. You can tell when there’s a real investment in technology, and Noblesville is one of those clients where they realize the power of technology. It’s been so simple to work with them.”

Paglia told The Reporter he is quite pleased with his decision to join the EXOS team and work with Hamilton County clients.

“It’s been a great journey for me and for eight months being here. I’ve really enjoyed it,” Paglia said. “I’ve really enjoyed working with the Boom organization, working with Noblesville, and with many of our other public sector clients.”

If your company would like to explore the possibility of getting the level of technological support both the Boom and the City of Noblesville demand, you can learn more about EXOS IT online at WeAreEXOS.com, or you can call them to discuss cybersecurity and IT options at (317) 743-7339.