CUSTOMER CASE STUDY SOFTCAT PLC

Softcat chooses Sophos tokeep systems secure andrecommends Sophos tocustomers
Softcat PLC is an IT solutions and services provider with an extensive partnership network of over 200 vendors across the globe. Softcat provides advice,procurement and services to its customers across four key areas – hybrid
infrastructure, digital workspace, cyber security and IT intelligence. Softcat’s
headquarters are in Marlow, Buckinghamshire. It employs over 2,000 people,and has offices around the UK and in Dublin. Softcat is both a customer and apartner of Sophos.

CUSTOMER-AT-A-GLANCE
Industry
IT solutions andservices
Number of Users
300
Sophos customer
15 years+Sophos Solutions
Sophos Central
Intercept X Endpoint ProtectionCUSTOMER CASE STUDY SOFTCAT PLC‘Sophos can provide all the endpoint protection
you need so you don’t have to go looking forother vendors, it’s all in the Sophos product.’Mark Overton, Head of Information Security, Softcat

Softcat, a Sophos Partner and customer,
formed a new Internal Security team in 2016.
As part of this process, it undertook a review
and evaluation of its security solutions, which
included Sophos. Here we find out why Softcat
decided that Sophos was still the best option
for them and why the company upgraded its
level of protection from Sophos. This move has
further strengthened the relationship between
the two companies, and is testament to Softcat’s
unwavering belief and trust in the Sophos
products it uses and continues to recommend toits customers.

Business challenges
Softcat is a longstanding Sophos Partnerand customer, and has been using andrecommending Sophos technologies for over 15years. Over time, Softcat has grown and in 2016
it became a PLC. As it did so, the company began
a review process of all its internal systems andan Internal Security team was formed, separate
from the IT team.
The new Internal Security team reviewed
the security solutions they had in place andresearched ways for the business to stay
secure for many years to come. They needed astraightforward solution for endpoint and server
protection that would have a minimal footprint
on the technologies and team.

After evaluating the many options available at thetime and based on their experience with Sophos
products as a Sophos Partner, they decided tocontinue using Sophos for their own in-houserequirements.

The technical solution
Softcat implemented Sophos Central andIntercept X for Server. With a server populationof 250 across eight offices, they needed a single
technical solution that would provide reliable
protection across the entire estate of servers
and endpoints. According to Mark Overton, Headof Information Security at Softcat: “We need aproduct that protects against all threats and we
didn’t want to rely on multiple vendors to achievethat protection. Sophos was therefore the idealsolution.”

CUSTOMER CASE STUDY SOFTCAT PLC‘The Sophos product was easy to integrate
into our security intelligence and Security
Information and Event Management(SIEM) platform. The team find it verystraightforward to get the information
they need to triage alerts from there.’Mark Overton, Head of Information Security, Softcat

Installing the product was very straightforward.
“We found it really easy to migrate the productthat was managed on-premise over to Sophos
Central,” says Mark. “We deployed the product via
our Active Directory and it immediately started
talking back to the cloud management console,
so there was very little configuration to do. The
product also has the ability to automaticallydetect and understand the workload runningon the servers. It configures itself to have theappropriate allow lists in place and doesn’tinterfere with the applications we’re running.”Mark’s team needed no training to get to grips
with the new Sophos products. They wereeasily able to transfer their skills to use the new
products by using the online Knowledgebase
and by speaking to Sophos when they needed to.
“That’s where Sophos is really good,” says Mark.

“They engage with the customer and also makeresources available online. We always know thatwe (and our customers) will get a great level of
support from them.”

Business benefits
In addition to the requirement for a single vendor
solution for Softcat, a top priority for Mark waslimiting the impact on resource within his team,and he believes Sophos achieves this. With 20
different controls and 20 different technologies
to manage, Mark added: “a big thing for me washaving a trusted product that the team could use
easily and optimise, without needing a team ofspecialists dedicated to that product.”

A further benefit Mark noted was that Sophos isefficient with the alerts it sends. “It doesn’t flood
the team with alerts so we have a lot of trust in
those it does raise,” he says.
Sophos also feeds information into Softcat’s
Security Information and Event Management(SIEM) system, such as regular securitylogs, analytics and patterns, and shares key
information to keep the system secure. It also
supports ISO 27001 and addresses GDPRrequirements.
When asked about the future, Markacknowledges that like many companies, Softcat
is increasingly looking to move resources intoAWS and Azure. Mark knows that Sophos is avendor that will be capable of supporting that
migration and Softcat’s digital transformation
goals.

CUSTOMER CASE STUDY SOFTCAT PLC

Softcat is also a longstanding Sophos Partnerand according to Mark: “The UK-based team
we work with has always been excellent
and we are keen to ensure our partnership
continues to be strong for us and to benefit
our customers.”
With Softcat being a Sophos Partner andcustomer, the relationship between the twocompanies is going from strength to strength,
according to Mark. “We continue to experience
really strong support from Sophos for its
partners and solutions and we are keen that
this partnership continues for many years.”‘One of the things
that has always been
attractive about Sophos
is that it’s a complete
solution. There’s a lotof functionality within
the product that we
don’t currently use,
but I know that when
the time comes toswitch that on, withSophos, it’s possible.’Mark Overton, Head of Information Security, Softcat

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Sophos solutions, call(0)8447 671131 or email
sales@sophos.com
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