InTouch with ENTOUCH

ENTOUCH

This is InTouch with ENTOUCH. Join us as we create a path to a healthier planet by delivering sustainability solutions that reduce energy usage, drive profitability, and simplify facility management.

  1. How are Convenience Stores Meeting Energy Efficiency goals?

    11/08/2022

    How are Convenience Stores Meeting Energy Efficiency goals?

    Convenience stores (or C Stores) remain a vital necessity for many consumers. In today’s world, convenience stores are designed to be open everyday at all hours, and they are also expected to have all types of items a shopper might need. But with 24/7 operations throughout the year, this means convenient locations are using up a lot of energy. In turn, that means higher bills and costs to keep them running. Per DSO Electric, over 75 percent of that energy alone is just used for the lighting and refrigeration needs of the store. The rise of the convenience store has skyrocketed with the increase of cars on the road, and this likely won’t change. More cars equals more gas stations, and gas stations are usually accompanied with a convenience store. And that means more energy is being used. How can convenience stores manage to be energy-efficient while still meeting customer demands? On “ENTOUCH” podcast, Tyler Kern interviewed ENTOUCH’s CEO, Jon Bolen and the company’s EVP of Sales and Marketing, Todd Brinegar on what exactly owners of C stores can do to save costs and energy. “The evolution to a C store today is a restaurant, it's a grocery store, it is migrated so much past just walk-in coles that you can get a full sit down meal at a lot of convenience stores today,” said Brinegar. “The marketplace is demanding that convenience stores begin to adapt. The idea of sustainability and energy-savings is really permeating everything we do and everything we buy,” said Bolen.

    14 min
  2. How Robust Network Security Paves the Way to Safeguarding Energy Management

    07/20/2022

    How Robust Network Security Paves the Way to Safeguarding Energy Management

    If networks weren’t vulnerable to breaches, intrusions, viruses, and cyber-attacks, they wouldn’t need to be secure. Robust network security is a must for proper energy management solutions to be effective. Frank Menocal, CTO of ENTOUCH, spoke about the importance of network security for energy management systems and how IT departments can safeguard their networks. Menocal said cybersecurity requires constant vigilance, especially for those preparing to bring a new system online into an existing enterprise network. “The most important thing is to have a level of confidence in the vendor and the products you’re bringing in, that they’ve gone thorough and sound security review process. Because the last thing you want to do for all good intentions of bringing in a great system brings a trojan horse into your organization that opens up vulnerabilities.” Security measures from energy management service providers like ENTOUCH start with edge equipment that resides within the organization. “That’s the single most vulnerable point of any organization once you bring it into your network,” Menocal said. “We make sure our devices are not allowing any traffic destined for them that they don’t expect. So, the first thing we do is, we don’t allow any connections to be established on our devices.” All network traffic gets diverted to the cloud, not the devices. Another layer of protection Menocal said was critical is to ensure anything downloaded to the devices is digitally signed and secured. “All of it must be done through a secured communication channel that is only allowed to communicate with our cloud. There are multiple levels of security, both at a network level and at the application level, and also authentication. We authenticate any communications on that device. So, you’ve got three different levels of security.”

    13 min

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This is InTouch with ENTOUCH. Join us as we create a path to a healthier planet by delivering sustainability solutions that reduce energy usage, drive profitability, and simplify facility management.