RH-ISAC Associate Member of the Year 2020

By Mike Smola

At Flashpoint, we truly value the partnerships that we build and maintain across the security industry. In particular, our collaboration with Information Sharing membership communities is a critical component of extending support to the practitioners who face rapidly evolving threats in an increasingly dynamic environment. Intelligence and information sharing is a great equalizer in our ability as a community to ensure we’re being proactive. 

I’m proud to announce that Flashpoint has been named the Associate Company of the Year for 2020 by the Retail & Hospitality ISAC Core Members. It’s an honor to be recognized by the members for the third time in the last four years. This award is representative of the collaboration not just with the RH-ISAC, but also with the members, in what we see as a Win-Win-Win. 

“Through a keen understanding of what intelligence matters the most to the retail, hospitality, and travel sectors, the Flashpoint team has provided invaluable and consistent services to our community”

Muktar Kelati, director of intel operations at RH-ISAC

In March of 2020, as COVID-19 began impacting Retail and Hospitality in an unprecedented way, we connected with the RH-ISAC leadership to determine how we could best support members who were faced with furloughs, closed businesses, shifts to online e-commerce, a rapid move to remote work, and other challenges. In collaboration with the RH-ISAC, we launched an offering to extend 90 days of free access to the Flashpoint Intelligence Platform and worked with members to extend support through their integrations, powering existing workflows, and providing strategic support. 

Over the course of the pandemic, we’ve seen security challenges ranging from Ransomware and Cyber Extortion, to Account Takeover and Fraud loss through Compromised Credentials, privacy and security concerns over Contact Tracing apps, and physical security concerns regarding the violence that has occured. These are challenging times, and our teams remain committed to better understanding, planning for, and mitigating these events.

As we head into the holiday season for Retail and Hospitality, we encourage those within this community who may not be directly involved with RH-ISAC to reach out, connect with your peers, and collaborate with the members to gain better insights, understanding, and partnerships. 

If you’d like to speak further with our team, discuss potential use cases to understand how Flashpoint can help you to support your ROI initiatives, including Information Security, Cyber Threat Intelligence, Fraud, Physical & Corporate Security, Investigations and Insider Threats, please feel free to contact us.

Mike Smola
Director, Risk Intelligence Strategy
Former Senior Director, Data Assurance & Cyber Intelligence Team, Walmart

Mike Smola has spent the last 25+ years within the retail space. He has worked with a variety of retailers including Foot Locker Inc., Starbucks, and most recently Walmart. During his time in the retail industry he has worked in a variety of different verticals including operations, HR, compliance, training and development, corporate compliance and investigations. Mike came to Flashpoint from Walmart where he spent 11 years —  with the last 7 focused in the Information Security division. Mike led the DACI (Data Assurance and Cyber Intelligence) as a Senior Director, and focused on building and maturing Cyber Intelligence, Data Loss Prevention and User-Based Analytics for the Walmart enterprise. Mike has a proven track record of applying technology solutions to real world applications.