Xuba Operations With Advantage

Hamilton-headquartered managed services provider Xuba knows all about the smartest way of delivering key support services: you partner with a specialist. With so much resting on security, particularly in the delivery of remote services, the smart people at Xuba have outsourced their managed detection and response requirements to Advantage. As a result, Xuba itself and its clients are assured of heighted security with the AdvantageProtect XDR service enabled by a combination of Netskope and SentinelOne technology, coupled with Advantage’s seasoned security expertise.

Conceived from a shared vision for faster, smarter IT technology coupled with bright spark, cut above the rest IT support service, Xuba believes in ‘quick’ and ‘quality. Passionately committed to doing IT things better, Xuba prides itself on helping its clients sleep at night. That comes down to a clever team with over 20 years in the industry and IT in the blood, the team creates lasting bonds by learning their client’s business and delivering trouble-free enabling services and technologies.

Situation

Xuba managing director Jarrod Dowd says that while his company takes a cheerful approach to the delivery of services for its customers, data security is deadly serious. “We have multiple key customers for which the security requirements are strict and must be maintained to the highest level. Our payoff line is that our clients should sleep well at night and that means having trust in us, in everything we provide. Outsourcing some aspects of the security, quite frankly, means better security and a lower overhead in terms of the specialist people required for the unimpeachable level of data protection we’re after.”

It is, Dowd agrees, the classic outsource model which is the value proposition of a managed services provider like Xuba itself. “Security is a specialised area. Success rests on the right assets and the right people, with the right products and the right technology. When we access that from Advantage, we can focus on what we do best, knowing our customers are protected.”

Advantage | Xuba | MDR - Case Study

Solution

Among the aspects of service provision Dowd and Xuba recognise as highly specialised is Managed Detection and Response. The AdvantageProtect division incorporates NetSkope technology which delivers a Secure Services Edge (SSE), funnelling all remote traffic through a secure gateway, scrutinising it and detecting and preventing threats. The second technological component is SentinelOne Singularity, providing unified prevention, detection, and response. Combined with Advantage’s security professionals, the result is an advanced Managed Detection and Response service, further bolstered by Malware Free Networks provided by the National Cyber Security Centre for enhanced threat intelligence feeds.

The cloud hosted solution is managed out of Advantage’s Palmerston North-based security operations centre (SOC) and is capable of ingesting additional logs from firewalls and other security apparatus, and in so doing moving towards an Extended Detection and Response (XDR) platform as a next phase. This streamlines security infrastructure with centralised detection and response, integrating with SSE, and automating incident detection, triage, and investigation.

For Xuba and its clients, all that boils down to one crucial fact: improved protection and faster response to a wider range of threats.

Results

From Dowd’s perspective, ‘it just works, and that’s also the experience his managed services clients enjoy by extension. “Since we’ve moved on to AdvantageProtect, there’s been little need to engage with Advantage itself as they handle everything. That’s great. We’ve seen it keeping viruses and other malware out, and that means the services we’re delivering are secure without any performance degradation.”

He does add that discussions with Advantage prior to and during the rollout of the service established the limitations, advantages, benefits and drawbacks of various vendors and technologies. “Deciding on SentinelOne for endpoint technology was a conscious decision based on extensive research; it delivers better response times and better service for the end customer. And on Netskope, there’s a real and obvious benefit in moving from Virtual Private Network access to a Zero Trust Network Access. It’s fast and seamless, and makes a VPN look outdated, clunky and a bit of a pain.”

In short, Dowd says the partnership with Advantage has given Xuba something of…an advantage. “We’ve got the security we want, based on the market’s leading technologies. This has made a massive difference to workflow for our team, and with a trusted partner and a specialist in security, it’s an awesome relationship which makes our own service delivery better.”

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