Trust in Zero Trust

Tell us a bit more about Apex Computing Services and your role?

Apex Computing Services is a well-established computer services business that is 20 years old this year. With offices in Manchester city centre and Salford Quays, Apex offers the full spectrum of IT services including installation and support, repair and maintenance, email and internet and software development. It works in many markets across the North West - hospitality, legal, security and professional services. I work as Head of Cyber Security at Apex tackling many issues including those created by downloading unverified software.

Why did you start to look for a Zero Trust endpoint security solution?

We were facing daily challenges associated with customers downloading unverified software which compromised the security of their devices. A general lack of cyber security awareness was resulting in continuous breaches - downloading free versions of software was a nightmare

- and we were seeing quite significant increases in workload as we had to constantly deal with sorting out the threat.

It is amazing the lack of due diligence schools and others show before installing new applications on the Internet. It became so hard to properly secure a customer’s IT infrastructure without any proper training or understanding at their end.

So we started to look at Zero Trust as a solution. We wanted to carry on providing the best service that we could to our customers without being overly expensive and losing out to cheaper options in the market. We just wanted to do a better job of protecting our customers' environments.

What was the benefit of Zero Trust?

It was easily deployed from a centrally-managed platform and immediately gave us better visibility on all user endpoints. The Zero Trust controls stopped ‘fileless’ malware and limited damage from application exploits straight away, and I am delighted to say we have had no reported breaches since we started using Threatlocker to partner with us in this space. This has resulted in much less fire-fighting across the board.

How do you deliver customer peace of mind?

It was essential for us to create a bundle of services that could enhance our end-user cyber security stack. So, when we were looking for an application whitelisting solution, we went for Threatlocker. That was just over 18 months ago now. The main reason we wanted to partner with ThreatLocker was it allowed us to screen any software that was being run or had been installed on our end customer networks and devices. It was also then possible to create compliance lists for cyber essentials and ISO certifications because you can pull the lists off the approved software. It gives everyone maximum peace of mind.

How do you curtail the damage caused by ‘unaware’ end users?

We have found that implementing zero trust controls to ‘deny by default’ is absolutely the best way to prevent untrusted software from running regardless of customer actions. Being an MSP, I look at how easy it is to deploy and manage a centrally-managed platform with a lot of clients. You can go from one to the other really easily and the support from the Threatlocker team is second to none.

How was the onboarding process at Threatlocker for you?

It was seamless. The Cyber Hero team has provided support from the trial period until now. No issue was too small. So even if we had a tiny problem that was affecting what we were seeing, the Threatlocker team would jump straight on it, help us out, and get results for us as quickly as possible. It was important for us to partner with a company that shared our values and beliefs. When we looked at ThreatLocker’s mission, we felt it was very much in line with ours, so all the focus is on ensuring our customers are the safest and happiest they can be.

How has Threatlocker impacted your business?

By implementing Zero Trust, our business has benefited exponentially. The primary metric that I look at is how often our customers are being breached. Since installing ThreatLocker on our customers - 85 at the last count - we've not had a single customer report a breach or virus, which is astonishing.

They have also significantly reduced our global ticket volume, which was predominantly coming from users making mistakes and then being helpless as the mistakes created issues for them.

The product is great, and it helps protect our customers without being overly expensive and our customers no longer need to worry about their mistakes racking up huge fines.

We have also taken on the Endpoint Network Access Control (NAC) solution from Threatlocker in recent months. This has been especially beneficial for smaller customers who do not have firewalls in place, and better protects remote workers, helping to cut down malicious traffic.

We have now created a cyber security bundle to protect customers across the board with Threatlocker at its heart. The team is super competent, the product performs and we have had no breaches. You cannot argue with that.