Switching to a Sophos cybersecurity system enables organizations to reduce their overheads and ultimately lower their Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).
This case study explores how a customer in South America has increased efficiency and improved protection by switching to a Sophos system.
Cybersecurity: a company priority
The customer is a leading provider of advanced software services, including web development, mobile app development, software testing, DevOps, digital marketing, and business intelligence.
With a head office in Costa Rica, their 920 staff are spread across Latin America: primarily Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Peru. Within the IT team, five people have some responsibility for cybersecurity.
The customer considers good cybersecurity as fundamental to their success. As their Chief Technology Officer (CTO), says:
“Who would want to do business with a company that is affected by a cyberattack or suffers a data breach?
While it’s very difficult to completely eliminate the possibility of a security event, it’s important that we can give our clients the guarantee that we are making every effort to prevent them, and that if an event does occur the impact will be minimal.”
Common challenges
Like many other organizations, the company faces challenges with cybersecurity resourcing: IT team members have multiple responsibilities, and no one is 100% dedicated to cybersecurity.
Another challenge is budget and justifying investments in cybersecurity, as the benefit is not very visible to other areas of the company.
With cyberattacks on the increase, the company is clear that putting in place security tools that automate most of the processes is essential for their success and will transform the company in general.
A cybersecurity evolution
The customer has been through a cybersecurity evolution: first they moved from a traditional firewall to a simple next-generation appliance, and then they moved to a full Sophos next-generation cybersecurity system.
They now use Sophos XG Firewall at the gateway, Sophos Intercept X endpoint protection, Sophos Email, Sophos Device Encryption, Sophos Wireless Access Points, and Sophos Phish Threat for user education.
The Sophos products share real-time threat, health, and security information, and work together to respond automatically to incidents. All protection is managed through the Sophos Central cloud-based management platform.
Transformation through automation
Prior to Sophos, there was no communication between their firewall and endpoint protection. As their CTO says:
“We have gained a lot from the ability of the Sophos products to work together, in particular their ability to automatically isolate compromised computers if an event is detected.
The ability to manage all the Sophos products through a single central platform is also crucial for us, along with the roadmap with further integrations.
Having tools that automatically detect and correct most security events enables our small IT team to manage the company’s security and prevent it being compromised.”
Fifty percent reduction in time spent on security admin
Switching to a Sophos next-gen cybersecurity has reduced by 50% the amount of time the IT team spends on security admin.
Before Sophos, they spent over 20 hours a week. Now, thanks to the ability of the Sophos system to automatically respond to events, security admin takes less than 10 hours a week.
Rather than dealing with all the events themselves, the team now just reviews the alerts provided by the Sophos tools and analyzes how they are being addressed (remediation of events).
The team also greatly appreciates the ability to now manage all their cybersecurity in one place, thanks to the centralized management in Sophos’ cloud-based platform.
Security events are dealt with in seconds
While the company experiences security incidents every day – they get many malicious emails and regular attempts to breach their website – they have a very high level of containment.
In fact, their CTO says that the biggest impact of moving to the Sophos next-gen cybersecurity system is the speed with which security events are now dealt with, reducing their exposure to attacks.
Thanks to the integration between the Sophos firewall and Sophos endpoint protection, most of the events are dealt with in seconds by the system, with compromised devices automatically isolated.
The switch to the Sophos system has also enabled the team to get – for the first time – visibility of all security events, further elevating their ability to secure the organization against attackers.
Cybersecurity: a business enabler
The IT team is very aware of the role of cybersecurity in building trust with their customers and that good cyber defenses are a business differentiator.
As a result of the move to Sophos, their clients now have much greater confidence in their cybersecurity, facilitating business relationships.
See it in action
Watch this demo video to see just how easy day-to-day security management is with a Sophos system.
To try the system for yourself, the easiest way is to start a free trial of one of our products.
And for anything else, or to discuss your own challenges, the Sophos team is here to help.
