Name: Rupert Poole
Job Title: IT Director, Capital Law
Rupert Poole leans on experts when he needs support for IT issues that go beyond the day-to-day. Net Consulting’s BlueArmour Advanced Threat Detection (ATD) service gives him a level of visibility unknown to all but the largest security teams. Here we find out why he’d never want to lose the insight that BlueArmour ATD gives him.
What are you responsible for?
Everything technical. From the strategic, to the day to day running of our IT systems.
Do you have big team to support you?
No, our team is relatively small. We only have a few people in-house, then work with third parties. It gives us greater flexibility. A lot of people think if you’ve got a big team you’re more agile, but we disagree – we would rather a good balance between team size, third parties and investments in cutting-edge technologies.
By using third party suppliers to achieve our business goals, we don’t have to worry about having lots of highly specialist technical engineers in-house.
Why did you engage Net Consulting?
We were looking for pen testers in the local area, close to Cardiff, and we found Net Consulting. We could drown in the number of business cards we have received from security providers in London or Bristol, but we wanted to work with a local business which also had a great reputation.
Net Consulting’s cyber team brought skills into the office over the first 4-5 days of engagement that we just don’t have in-house and we were really impressed by the speed of service and their professionalism.
What did that initial engagement show?
It proved to us that the energy we’d put into securing our perimeter was worth it – we were well protected from external threats. These days, however, you only have to open a newspaper to realise that some of the biggest threats come from within an organisation, and that’s where we saw a significant weakness. We wanted to provide a 360-degree view of security but didn’t have much visibility of employee behaviour or network activity within the company.
What does Net Consulting’s BlueArmour Advanced Threat Detection add to your business?
We have plans to expand significantly over the next couple of years and need to ensure our security is tight. We asked Net Consulting to provide a solution that could monitor both external and internal threats
BlueArmour ATD gives us tailored insight into employee behaviours, resulting in prioritised weekly executive reports. It gives IT and the HR team the confidence we need to stop anything suspicious before it causes damage to the company.
If anything out-of-the-ordinary ever occurs, we’ll get notified immediately by the cyber experts monitoring our network at Net Consulting. We see the service as a parachute that we trust would open in an emergency.
“Unless you’re prepared to run a 24/7 security operation in-house, headed up by a team of seriously skilled people, you’re never going to match what BlueArmour ATD offers.”
Why did you look for an AI solution?
AI cuts to the chase in a way that humans can’t. It doesn’t sleep and it’s always learning. Couple this technology with a managed service using human experts to interpret the data and it becomes a massively powerful, cost-efficient solution.
What other technology did you look at?
We’d been looking at DarkTrace, which by comparison was eye-wateringly expensive. It has really impressive graphics, but when we did the proof of concept, we found a few issues with running a solution like that in-house with a small team. For a lean company like ours, DarkTrace didn’t fit the bill.
BlueArmour ATD, running Perception technology, prioritises things for us to investigate. We’re a law firm at the end of the day, not a security company, and it’s fundamental that we don’t get distracted from our core business. This technology combined with the wraparound service works perfectly for us.
What was the risk of not bringing it in?
Removing BlueArmour ATD after the proof of concept period would have been like walking into a room and turning the lights off. It’s only when we really started looking into it that we realised how little visibility we had beforehand. Most IT Directors like visibility so having complete oversight of what’s going on internally and externally is invaluable.
Going back 18 months, we didn’t have the tools or capabilities to manage risk in the same way as we do now. We always try to keep in mind that we have to get it right every single time, but a piece of malware or hacker has to get it right just once.
What would you say to anyone else considering this service?
I’d advise anyone to consider all options, but for us BlueArmour ATD stood out like a beacon. When testing it vs. other tech, it was clear that the majority of other company’s budgets had been spent on marketing rather than on developing a great product. Unless you’re prepared to run a 24/7 security operation in-house, headed up by some seriously skilled people, you’re never going to match what BlueArmour ATD offers.
What it really means for us is that we can get on with our day job while feeling confident that someone’s watching our back. We now know that we have full visibility of everything that’s going on in our network, and there aren’t many businesses who can say that.
Would you recommend Net Consulting?
When working with any third party, trust is earned over time. Our first engagement with Net Consulting was as good as any we’ve had with security firms many times their size. A key factor for us when considering the worth of a supplier is whether they do what they say they’re going to. If we call, will someone pick up immediately? If we a have a problem, will it be resolved as quickly as possible? Since working with Net Consulting, the answer has always been yes.
After all, a security consultancy is only valuable if they’re there when you need them.
“What it really means for us is that we can get on with our day jobs while feeling confident that someone’s watching our back. We now know that we have full visibility of everything that’s going on over our network, and there aren’t many businesses that can say that.”
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