Fortress SRM ensures risks are mitigated using the N‑central platform
Challenge
SMBs need to be able to optimize their IT operations to help mitigate risk and ensure products are used to their best ability. Find out how N‑central helped Fortress solve these challenges for its customers.
Results
Reduction in ticket volume
Patch success rate over all patches deployed
About Fortress SRM
Fortress SRM protects companies from the financial, operational, and emotional ravages of cybercrime by enhancing the performance of their people, processes, and technology.
Offering a robust co-managed solution to enhance an internal IT team’s capability and capacity, Fortress features a full suite of managed security services (SOC, patching, EDR, backups) plus specialized services like Cybersecurity-as-a-Service, incident response including disaster recovery and remediation, M&A cyber due diligence, GRC advisory, identity and access management, threat management, vulnerability assessments, and technical testing. With headquarters in Cleveland, Fortress supports companies with both domestic and international operations.
We’ve seen a patch success rate of 99% over all patches deployed and this speaks volumes about the value we are getting from N‑central.
Jess Walpole Chief Technology Officer, Fortress SRM
Challenge
Many small-to-medium-sized businesses can’t afford to have a large IT staff and may have just one person responsible for running the entire department. This means they need to be everywhere at once. If something breaks on one machine, it’s their job to fix it. When multiple issues arise, this can take a huge toll on operations and lead to revenue loss.
Jess Walpole, Chief Technology Officer at Fortress SRM points out, “These smaller IT teams need to be able to centralize functions and optimize their operations to ensure risks are mitigated and products are used to their best ability. Leveraging N‑central, our team at Fortress helps SMBs overcome these challenges.”
Resultados
Greater Visibility and Convenience
With N‑central, Fortress SRM can easily view their customers’ entire IT infrastructures from a single,central dashboard. If something needs attention, a quick glance at the dashboard helps them quickly note the issue, investigate, and remediate the problem.
“I would state that having these services integrated into a single pane of glass has been really beneficial, and we are looking forward to N‑able’s continued efforts to further integrate,” said Walpole.
The N-Central platform is an essential component to deliver most services from within Fortress SRM’s Security Operations Center (SOC). Leveraging the Take Control feature in N‑central, frontline service desk analysts can effectively support helpdesk customers while cyber analysts are 100% in the platform responding to monitoring alerts, performing patching tasks and remediations, as well as working within the SentinelOne portal for nvestigations/triage of alerts.
Automation
N‑central’s monitoring capabilities and the ability to automate repetitive tasks has been key to reducing Fortress SRM’s ticket volume. Currently they average around 8,500 tickets per month. Walpole estimates that leveraging N‑central’s scripts and automation has enabled them to reduce the ticket volume by approximately 20%. Some custom scripting has also allowed the team to troubleshoot and get to the root cause of issues more efficiently.
“This is a huge benefit for us. Being able to run almost any kind of script and see the status on those tasks in a single pane of glass is a huge time saver and allows us to provide our customers with better service,” Walpole stated.
Patching Efficiency
With companies taking on more IT assets than ever—patch management is crucial. Fortress SRM is responsible for contending with a growing number of IT assets and also deploying patches across different customer networks and varying device types.
“N‑central’s patch management feature allows us to provide improved patching efficacy not only for current Microsoft patches, but also for retro patching, third party patching, feature updates and different Microsoft versions. This enables our customers to have a more stable environment while significantly reducing their vulnerabilities,” Walpole stated. “We’ve seen an overall patch success rate of 99% over all patches deployed and this speaks volumes about the value we are getting from N‑central.”
Fortress SRM also leverages PowerBI to develop standard dashboards with the N‑central data as validation to their patch success. This helps focus their SOC analysts’ efforts on patch remediation, ultimately allowing us to exceed our targeted Service Level Objectives.
Partnership
Walpole strongly believes that N‑able values the input of partners and works to understand the market space and issues their customers are facing. In addition, she finds that the leadership and teams are open to sharing their visions for the platform and take into considerations the opinions shared by partners before making changes.
Walpole concludes, “I have had the opportunity to work with a number of IT Platforms over the years and it is refreshing to see how N‑able is growing and developing user groups, business transformation sessions, and communities for a solution that is desperately needed in a time where IT and Security resources are at a premium and organizations continue to press their teams to be more business oriented.”