Navigating the Peaks and Valleys of a Changing Threat Landscape

The past twenty years have given us some incredible things.

Smartphones and connected homes. Cloud infrastructure that supports everything from cybersecurity to database hosting. The ability to work from anywhere at any time — as long as there’s an Internet connection.

However, this amazing technological renaissance came with a nasty side effect. It’s made things a great deal easier for threat actors. Not only do they have a bunch of sophisticated new toys to play with, but they also have all the time in the world to attack wherever and whenever they please — usually outside regular business hours.

“Twenty years ago, all you really needed was antivirus software and a firewall, and you were in pretty good shape,” says Robinson, Grimes & Company’s Chief Information Officer Craig Rhinehart. “Today, almost everything you do has inherent risk because everything is connected. All it takes for someone to get onto your network is a single mistake.”

Robinson Grimes is a regional accounting firm in Columbus, Georgia, and its IT department is relatively small. It lacks the manpower needed for round-the-clock security coverage. Given that accounting firms have seen a 300% increase in cyberattacks in 2020, one can see how this might be a problem, particularly for a firm like Robinson Grimes, which has built its reputation based on reliability and trust.

Managed XDR Cybersecurity Services to Bolster Defenses

Knowing full well that the cyber risk facing his organization couldn’t be ignored, Rhinehart began looking into managed cybersecurity service providers to augment his in-house team. His firm was already a BlackBerry customer at the time, having deployed the CylancePROTECT® endpoint protection platform from BlackBerry. With this in mind, it didn’t take him long to make his choice.

Adopting the BlackBerry subscription-based managed XDR platform CylanceGUARD® was, he notes, almost a no-brainer.

“Priority number one for us is maintaining the trust of our clients, and that extends to only working with trusted vendors,” Rhinehart explains. “BlackBerry was known to us, and we trusted its capabilities. And since we were already using several BlackBerry solutions, it was easy and seamless to just expand its use.”

Managed XDR Security Services for 24x7 Coverage

“Once we really started looking for what a managed service provider would bring us, we realized that it wasn’t something we’d really thought about before,” admits Rhinehart. “At that point, we started thinking about what might happen on weekends or hours when we didn’t have internal coverage. The decision from there was almost automatic.”  

It’s been roughly three years since Robinson Grimes deployed CylanceGUARD. Rhinehart and his team have not experienced a single cybersecurity incident in that time. This has allowed them to focus on business enablement, while BlackBerry protects the firm behind the scenes.

“We don’t have a large team, and we don’t have unlimited resources,” Rhinehart concludes. “For an organization like us, a managed security provider is essential. Having someone who handles security 24x7 on your behalf is crucial in today’s world — and I would absolutely recommend taking a good, strong look at BlackBerry in that regard.” 

Read the full case study.