Market-leading company invests in long-term cyber security partnership

Cyber security is a huge challenge for all organisations, with a greater number of threats and more sophisticated cyber-attacks happening now, more than ever before. As such, organisations need to be on guard to protect their IT systems, data, business and reputation from harm at all times. To meet this increased demand, managed cyber security services have evolved in the last few years.

Prior to becoming a Quorum Cyber customer, and before the digital world became more inhospitable and unpredictable, a well-known organisation in the UK used an external provider’s third-party legacy system information and event management (SIEM) service that only ran from 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday. It was designed, very optimistically, around the assumption that cybercriminals only worked during these hours and didn’t attempt to breach systems in the evenings or at weekends.

Unsurprisingly, the organisation decided to upgrade its defences. They wanted to transform to a modern SIEM, monitor the latest signals and adopt an identity-centric approach. After reviewing their options, they chose a Microsoft strategy because it was holistically integrated and connected, which could provide efficiencies for their small team. This strategy was centred around bringing in technologies that were commonly understood by IT professionals, making it easier to recruit talented people, instead of searching for people with niche and rare skills.

The best cultural fit

Choosing Quorum Cyber, a Microsoft Solutions Partner for Security, and its Managed Detection and Response (MDR) service in a multi-year contract, was straightforward for this customer. They liked the cyber security company’s modern principles and culture, which is set top-down from CEO Federico Charosky, and especially liked its mantra and vision: “We fight bullies”.

Many other benefits stood out too. Quorum Cyber monitors the whole IT estate 24×7, 365 days a year, with a UK-based team. Its investment in the future workforce, by hiring graduate talent to help fill the enormous skills gap in the sector, resonated with the customer as they had realised that experienced professionals were in hot demand. It was becoming increasingly expensive, and more difficult, to recruit, train and retain them.

“This has become a proven model over the last two years – seeing internal recruitment and promotion within Quorum Cyber has led us to maintaining relationships and continuity throughout our journey,” the customer commented.

Stronger in a cyber security community 

A broader appeal in favour of working with Quorum Cyber was the community thinking proposition. “I never feel like we’re a customer, it’s a true partnership approach. Furthermore, they have top-notch people in incident response and ex-Microsoft employees to add to the value we get from them. It’s more than ‘just’ a Managed Detection and Response service, or only a consultancy – we never feel alone.”

The partnership between the customer and Quorum Cyber has deepened over time. “We have taken a risk-based approach and have worked together to increase our cyber security maturity – detection is now our highest maturity on the NIST framework. People in our organisation can sleep better at night.”

The organisation trusts Quorum Cyber to act on its behalf if they experience a cyber-attack in the dead of night. Automation and Delegated Authority is in place to take containment action quickly. This is very important now that cybercriminal dwell times have reduced so significantly in recent years.

This partnership also gives the organisation’s security team opportunities to meet more like-minded people and customers who face similar challenges while trying to protect themselves. In an age where security professionals can often feel alone and isolated, Quorum Cyber believes that it’s really important to create a cyber security community so that people can share lessons, ideas and successes with each other as the industry evolves over time.