Sophos MDR ‘A Natural Choice’ to Support Customers and Grow Business for MSP Partner Arc Systems

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Relying on leading experts and rapid response times of 34/35 minutes.

May 17 2024 By

“We initially looked into creating an in-house solution to support our clients but it cost a lot of money, and needed people, time and expertise to ensure round-the-clock protection and support. Sophos MDR was therefore a natural choice for us. It enables us to provide a user-per month solution as an MSP, and we get full security coverage to give our team and clients complete peace of mind.”

Craig Faiers, Commercial Director, Arc Systems

Arc Systems is a Sophos Managed Service Provider (MSP) delivering IT support, security, managed backup, and disaster recovery for a client base of around 400 small businesses in London and Essex. Before becoming a Sophos MSP, Arc Systems worked on a term licensing basis, but since the company transitioned to become an MSP, it now encourages all its clients to follow the Sophos MDR route.

Business Challenges

Previously, the services Arc Systems provided were typically on a 12, 24 or 36 month license agreement. This restricted flexibility in terms of scaling and adding or removing new users, and the company had to access multiple interfaces and applications, which was time-consuming and disjointed. Arc Systems first began onboarding Sophos with Intercept X in 2015, subsequently followed by Sophos XDR. As cybersecurity and ransomware threats increased, the team identified the need for round-the-clock threat management and response and evaluated the cost of delivering this for its customers in-house. After reviewing various options, they concluded that having the required applications and expertise would prove difficult, too costly, and untenable. At this point, Arc Systems started to explore the benefits of Sophos MDR.

The Technical Solution

As a Sophos MSP, Arc Systems is able to access and sell the complete range of Sophos solutions including Sophos MDR. The company receives full support from the Sophos team of experts, to manage and protect both its own IT infrastructure, and that of its clients. Arc Systems moved all of its IT infrastructure over to Sophos including firewalls and servers. Plus, with Sophos Central, the team has complete oversight of its own IT systems and that of its clients, and can monitor security and any issues with just a single login. Sophos MDR provides Arc Systems with complete flexibility when they onboard new clients. They encourage a Sophos MDR-first approach, but if a client has another security stack in place, Arc Systems can also bolt on Sophos MDR if required. If clients wish to add or remove users, the monthly fixed fee makes it very easy to do so.

“With Sophos MDR, we have a leading team of experts on hand and ready should an incident occur. That’s something we don’t have the capacity to do in-house, but with Sophos we know they’re ready to act in the event of a threat or attack at any time,“ relates Craig Faiers, Commercial Director, Arc Systems.

Business Benefits

Arc Systems experiences significant benefits from the MSP partnership and Sophos MDR, both for its own business growth and operations, but also for the security and peace of mind it provides to its clients. In addition to knowing that the Sophos team is ready 24/7 to respond to any threats, the partnership also enables Arc Systems to cross-sell and upsell security solutions, which has enabled the business to grow and expand.

Arc Systems Commercial Director Craig Faiers highlights another key benefit as being the speed with which Sophos acts in the event of an incident. According to Craig: “If you look at the stats you can see that Sophos responds within 34/35 minutes and that’s rapid. If we were to do this in-house it would take a lot longer. With Sophos MDR, you’ve got that expertise working quickly right alongside you the whole time.”

Craig lists additional benefits of working with Sophos as being:

  • An easy-to-use and intuitive platform
  • The ability to manage everything through Sophos Central with just one login
  • The functionality to easily change or upgrade a solution for clients
  • Full support and consulting from the Sophos team as and when needed
  • Training and learning from Sophos on emerging threats and evolving solutions
  • A comprehensive service that supports business growth

“I would say, if you’re considering going down the MSP route then don’t hesitate to contact Sophos. Working with the Sophos team is great and we’re looking forward to seeing how their technology and services continue to evolve in the future,“ recommends Craig Faiers, Commercial Director, Arc Systems.

About the Author

Sophos is a global leader and innovator of advanced security solutions for defeating cyberattacks, including Managed Detection and Response (MDR) and incident response services and a broad portfolio of endpoint, network, email, and cloud security technologies. As one of the largest pure-play cybersecurity providers, Sophos defends more than 600,000 organizations and more than 100 million users worldwide from active adversaries, ransomware, phishing, malware, and more. Sophos’ services and products connect through the Sophos Central management console and are powered by Sophos X-Ops, the company’s cross-domain threat intelligence unit. Sophos X-Ops intelligence optimizes the entire Sophos Adaptive Cybersecurity Ecosystem, which includes a centralized data lake that leverages a rich set of open APIs available to customers, partners, developers, and other cybersecurity and information technology vendors. Sophos provides cybersecurity-as-a-service to organizations needing fully managed security solutions. Customers can also manage their cybersecurity directly with Sophos’ security operations platform or use a hybrid approach by supplementing their in-house teams with Sophos’ services, including threat hunting and remediation. Sophos sells through reseller partners and managed service providers (MSPs) worldwide. Sophos is headquartered in Oxford, U.K. More information is available at www.sophos.com.