120- I will take a look

My laugh is nervous and awkward. “There’s no need for that Mr. Allen, I’ll be just fine.” He doesn’t even acknowledge me. “So, what do you say?” He stares at Grady.
“Well it’s your account,” Grady says. “And I don’t have jurisdiction over it. All I demand is good results, so you can assign it to whomever you please.”
Allen turns to me. “You heard him. So, are you ready to take on the challenge?”
My lips part but the only word that can sound from it is a dumb and contemplative, “Uh.”
“Wow,” Allen mouths. “I can’t believe that I just boasted to my boss that you could potentially be my Trojan horse.”
My mouth immediately snaps shut in embarrassment but I'm surprised however to see that when I turn towards Grady, his lips are slightly curved in amusement.
I eventually manage to work up a response, “I uh…I’ll take a look at it to see if I’ll be able to handle it.”
“Good enough.” Allen says and picks up the folder to hand it over to me.

I walk over to pick it up and immediately turn on my heels to exit the cramped office.


know that I shouldn’t be too concerned about this but she has her first meeting with the ABAX clients in twenty minutes and I’m worried that she might not be able to handle it.
Since Allen’s departure, the lead position on the account handed over to her along with a limited time of three hours to get ready for the initial pitch meeting, I have watched her through the surveillance utility on my computer as she has tried to make the needed preparations.
Soon, 2 PM arrives and she rises to her feet. A brief knock later and she comes into my office to inform me of her departure. “I’m on my way to the meeting with ABAX, sir,” she says. “So if you need me, please send a message and I will find a way to promptly respond.”
I watch her, hoping she will be bold enough to request my assistance but she doesn’t. Instead, she turns around and walks away. She is ordinarily not meant to handle a first sale alone and it’s not very impressive that she has chosen to most probably blow it rather than admit her incapability. Or perhaps, she is overestimating herself?
I try to push it out of my mind but then a few minutes later, I can’t help but tune in. A short call to the security department and in no time, I’m able to listen in on the dynamics of their meeting down in the eighth floor’s conference room. She starts strong with a healthy knowledge of the company.
Then it doesn’t take long before the thorough clients begin to reveal the chinks in her armor. “We receive forty thousand emails a day and at any time an employee could misclick on something and cause a devastating breach to the entire system. 1,300 employees and 13,000 customers spread across three countries… this threat is real and it eats away at my peace of mind on a daily basis.”
His companion is the next to speak up, “We can even to an extent, relax on the threat from outside sources but what concerns us the most is the threat from our third party contacts. They could suffer a phishing attack which will automatically give the bastards access to us and then an unsuspecting employee could fall victim to that. We heard about the recent breach at Telkcom and we’re no longer able to take this lightly.”

“Um,” she says. “I understand these concerns and this is what we’re especially able to—” He cuts her off, “What personalized service can you give to our sales staff?”
“Uh…” There’s a ruffling of papers. “We will ensure that they, along with all the other employees will get the in-depth training that—”
“No that’s not what I mean. The sales staff works within a restricted environment, so their administrative access is not as expansive. I’m fucking worried that they’ll be overburdened with the exhaustive training.”
“T-then we can speak to them in order to figure out what depth of training will be most appropriate for them.”
“It doesn’t need to be conventional right? It just needs to be relative to their sphere of access.” Silence.
Blair releases a shaky sigh.
At this, I rise to my feet. In minutes, I'm riding the elevator down to the eighth floor and I soon arrive at the conference room. I go in and see her shuffling through the stack of papers on her lap.
The moment I introduce myself both men’s eyes widen with delight. “Grady Abbott? We’ve heard so much about you from Allen.”
“Same here,” I say and take my seat by Blair’s side. She hasn’t turned to me.
I can see that she is becoming increasingly nervous, so when yet another sheet of her papers floats to the floor, I bend along with her to retrieve it. My hand closes around hers as I try my best to whisper as rapidly and discreetly as I can, “Calm down,” I tell her. “I’ll support you. You’re doing great.”
Her gaze is on me as she straightens, and it doesn’t feel like she believes me, but I do notice the rise and fall of her chest becomes comparatively easier.
She begins to speak again and her tone is also more stable, “I understand that what you are pushing for is a seamless implementation that will become more of a culture than a hassle to the employees, so we will ensure to customize the service to meet all your employee’s needs.”
They don’t seem convinced of her statement and so both men turn to share a look at each other.
They are both bulky with one in a tan suit and a slightly protruding belly, while the other is in a simple black shirt, jeans, boots and a shaved head.

“What are the departments you currently operate through?” I ask.
The bald one turns to give me his response, “We have finance and IT.” “And they face greater risks than for instance sales right?”
“Yes,” he concurs. “And that is why we don’t want a one size fits all service.”
“I understand that,” I say. “For instance, shorter training videos that have the key messages should be fashioned for sales while others with more administrative involvement should have a more in depth training, but at the same time none of this should be a burden that everyone is constantly more than willing to skip?”
The room goes silent for a few seconds.
Then his partner in the suit responds, “Exactly.”
I turn to Blair and wave a hand, giving her the signal to go ahead.
“Our training content comes with customizable features,” she says. “For one, frequent reminders can be sent for the employees to go through these brief spurts of training, and that will be followed with constant phishing campaigns that will be able to monitor their progress and reduced susceptibility to these attacks. For example, we have our popcorn training which takes about three minutes to complete, and regular surveys for your employees so that they can give the necessary feedback on the efficiency of the service. The only thing set in stone is our quality but as to the approach we will continue to tweak things until your employees’ engagement is earned. We even have a gamified tutorial that can teach them essential cyber security awareness in ten minutes and our phish alert buttons that can tune them into actual threats. Basically we won’t stop until they become human firewalls.”