A Year of Milestones: C3’s CEO Reflections

What a year! In the past twelve months, we have witnessed challenges, changes, and the emergence of new opportunities. Let’s take a quick look back on what we have learned and how we can best leverage that experience for success in the future.

When it comes to challenges in 2024, none were bigger than those in the cybersecurity space. Organizations faced brute force attacks, zero-day exploits, social engineering, and more. Ransomware payment demands continued to rise and, to incentivize payment by the victim, were increasingly paired with threats of sensitive data exfiltration. Social engineering attacks became more frequent, more sophisticated, and more often were enhanced by the use of AI. Speaking of social engineering, security researchers now estimate that as many as 3 of 4 cyber attacks begin with the compromise of a human rather than a system. This certainly gives us something to think about as 2025 approaches.

How C3 Grew in 2024

The changes we experienced in 2024, with due apologies to the movie franchise, were Fast and Furious. 

In response to the cybersecurity-related challenges mentioned above, on January 4th, C3 acquired the Information Security business unit of Compliance Solutions, Inc. This bolstered our existing team and allowed us to better prepare and defend our clients. 

C3 also expanded geographically, opening offices in Orlando in April and Puerto Rico in July. We were not done yet, however! In August, C3 completed the acquisition of TRACI.net, which added new staff, products, and services. 

One thing that did not change for C3, however, was our status as a Best Place to Work! We are proud to share that, for the 10th consecutive year, C3 was named as one of the Best Places to Work by the South Florida Business Journal. Happy employees lead to happy customers!

Our industry also saw a number of significant changes.

In April, Broadcom abruptly terminated more than 85% of its VMware-based Cloud Service providers, sending shockwaves through the market. Instead of supporting 4000+ partners worldwide, they opted to focus on their highest-performing and most capable partners. This, of course, included C3 Complete. Since that time, we have doubled down on our commitment to providing the most secure, performant, and flexible alternative cloud offerings. Significantly, we were also able to mitigate most of the price increases that plagued many other providers.

AI in 2024 and Beyond

It would be doing 2024 an injustice not to mention the rise of AI. 

 The increasing capabilities of AI and its integration into legacy workflows have caused revolutions in areas such as marketing, document generation, and customer service, just to name a few. AI also emerged as both an offensive and defensive tool in cybersecurity. White hats are using the technology to enhance detection and provide deeper and faster event correlation, while black hats are leveraging it to develop and conduct attacks with techniques previously unseen. AI’s weaknesses were also on display, with issues including hallucinations, ethical bias, political bias, and spiraling energy demands each garnering headlines. While many unknowns remain, we can be sure that AI will garner a lot of attention from CIOs, CTOs, and CISOs in 2025.

Politics and (de)Regulation

2024 also featured one of the most contentious and closely watched Presidential Elections of our time. With the votes counted and the dust settled, President-Elect Donald Trump quickly moved to eliminate any questions about what his next term in office might look like. Since the election, he has been vocal about topics such as deregulation, government cost-cutting and efficiency, and countering the growing monopolies in big tech. It is the focus on deregulation that we believe could impact organizations the most, particularly where the FTC and FCC are involved. The issue the new administration must confront is the delicate balance between incentivizing innovation and the introduction of consequential new risks. 

Looking Ahead to 2025

With significant challenges ahead, and an industry in a constant state of evolution, what can an organization do to seize the opportunities that will inevitably rise out of the chaos? Quite simply, the single greatest step any organization can take is to tightly and strategically partner with a reputable and capable services firm such as C3 Complete. 

When problems arise, our diverse support and engineering teams will work tirelessly to find solutions. When business or logistical challenges present, our subject matter experts can leverage their cross-industry exposure to bring fresh perspectives and generate new ideas. If (when?) the cyber criminals come knocking, our 24×7 observation platforms will detect them and our experienced information security experts will eject them. 

As an extension of your organization, C3 Complete will provide the necessary coverage in technology, telecommunications, and information security thus freeing your team to focus on the initiatives required to take your organization to new heights.

Let’s work together to make 2025 your most successful year yet!