OVERVIEW

Since Workplace IT opened in 1997, as a managed service provider (MSP), its mission has been to bring enterprise-level IT service to small businesses. Today, with Trend Micro as its strategic partner since 2008, the company delivers on that mission through the use of Trend Micro™ Worry-Free with Co-Managed XDR. Workplace IT ensures that its customers get the highest level of proactive network monitoring and maintenance, virus protection, and firewall protection services.

CHALLENGES

The majority of Workplace IT’s customers are small-to-medium–sized businesses with small IT security budgets and limited dedicated IT security teams. Those businesses rely on Workplace IT to provide the security they need, while balancing cost and benefits.

“Our customers look to Workplace IT to be the experts. They rely on us as their MSP to give them a road map for what to do to protect themselves from the cybersecurity threats they hear about,” says Brad Bell, lead network services delivery engineer at Workplace IT.

“Technology is changing so quickly and expertise is needed. It is too hard to build it yourself, so we looked at the various SOC service providers. Our goal was to partner with people who have the expertise to give us the backbone of security, and allow us to work with the customers,” says Bell.

WHY TREND

Workplace IT leaders examined several security vendors before partnering with Trend Micro in 2008. “The vendor partnership is about more than just product and economics. We’re all in this together. For us, it was about closing our security gaps and having a partner we could openly communicate with. We look at partnerships as a long journey and focus on their people,” says Bell.

Workplace IT leadership was also looking for a vendor willing to offer modular services so they could provide pay-as-you-go options to their financially vigilant customers. Finally, they wanted a product that could easily integrate with their existing systems and processes. Trend Micro fit the bill in all areas.

SOLUTION

Workplace IT implemented Trend Micro™ Worry-Free Services in 2008. Worry-Free Services is a cloud-based threat protection designed specifically for small and medium-sized businesses. With Trend Micro™ Worry-Free XDR, protection extends beyond the endpoint to offer correlation between endpoint and email, broader visibility and analytics, and more detections and earlier, faster responses.

A solution that would enable Workplace IT personnel to see and block threats across its entire customer base was another key objective. “Before, we couldn’t see what was going on across our networks. Worry-Free XDR is constantly monitoring. We get alerts through one central dashboard so we can quickly see threats across our entire customer base and take action,” says Bell.

Workplace IT added Worry-Free with Co-Managed XDR in 2020, which allowed the company to augment its services without adding resources to its team. It includes 24/7 alert monitoring by Trend Micro security experts, incident response, root cause analysis, and monthly reporting. “We didn’t want to build another department to focus on security. We wanted to partner with experts so we could spend more time focused on our customers,” says Bell. “Our goal was to partner with someone, not build it. Trend Micro was building out the SOC and we had the opportunity to influence it and decided to go with the Worry-Free with Co-Managed XDR services.”

Workplace IT played a pivotal role in helping to develop the offering. They provided valuable feedback to Trend Micro’s product and executive teams to help build the Worry-Free with Co-Managed XDR offering. “It was amazing to talk with Trend Micro’s leadership about our needs and gaps. They truly listened and asked a lot of questions. The Trend Micro team learned a lot about MSPs and are interested in investing in the market. As a result, the new offering brings enterprise-level security to small businesses,” says Bell.

RESULTS

Worry-Free with Co-Managed XDR saves Workplace IT time, as the company no longer needs to single-handedly conduct investigations into security incidents. “If something strange happens at the workstation level, our staff aren’t trained to handle it. With Trend Micro’s security team behind us, we know they’ve got our back. We get expertise and reports that show a clear resolution we can share with our customers,” says Bell.

Bell and his team now get a full view of any security incidents. “Before, we knew there were security gaps, and we looked for a way to minimize those gaps. We weren’t sure we were seeing everything. Worry-Free with Co-Managed XDR closed those gaps and allow us to see all information flowing between the cloud and end users.”

The biggest benefit is the cross-customer view that Worry-Free with Co-Managed XDR enables. “We can now easily see if a security incident happening with one customer is also happening with another. It gives us the ability to quickly mitigate those threats before they cause a problem for all our customers,” says Bell.

“There were a few instances where Trend Micro took action across our customer base. For example, after a malicious email that started at one customer was sent out broadly, Trend Micro quarantined it for all users across our customer base immediately,” says Mike Lenz, network services engineer at Workplace IT. “Worry-Free XDR gives us the ability to manage security across all of our customers to offer better protection and allows all events to be viewed together.”

Bell says upgrading to Worry-Free with Co-Managed XDR has improved Workplace IT’s security posture and consequently increased its monthly recurring revenue. “Worry- Free with Co-Managed XDR has improved our business, but most importantly, we sleep better at night knowing that XDR is looking at more things, that gaps are being mitigated, and that Trend Micro is watching out for us.”