The company
Intelligent Technical Services (ITS) has been helping small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) thrive through managed IT for over 25 years, with custom solutions that fit their clients’ budgets. They have been growing rapidly, operating across 13 cities in the United States, accelerating their presence via organic growth as well as mergers and acquisitions (M&As).
Recognizing that cybersecurity is non-negotiable in today’s digital landscape, ITS provides a baseline level of security in all its service plans through ITS Managed Cybersecurity. Their multi-tiered service offers a wide range of tools and services to reduce client cybersecurity risk and support varying client needs.
The challenge
Before partnering with Field Effect, ITS relied on multiple cybersecurity solutions and vendors to deliver their managed cybersecurity service. As the cybercrime landscape continued to change, this occasionally meant adding additional tools to their tech stack, which would either increase client costs or diminish ITS’s margins.
ITS realized their existing approach to cybersecurity, built with a patchwork of tools, would not be sustainable. While providing visibility into the endpoint and cloud productivity suites, their solution left gaps that made it difficult to achieve holistic visibility into client environments. Managing multiple solutions and portals also created administrative difficulties that hindered scalability, posing a serious challenge to ITS’s future growth.
"We needed a partner who could help us take our cybersecurity business to the next level while also providing our clients with the best support possible,” said Tom Andrulis, Chief Executive Officer at ITS.
For ITS, this meant finding a vendor who not only had the technical capabilities to deliver a robust defense that evolves with the landscape, but is focused on working with MSPs and the SMBs that they protect.
The solution
When ITS discovered Field Effect, they recognized a partner who not only provided comprehensive cybersecurity but also understood the needs of MSPs and their customers.
“Field Effect MDR takes the right approach to cybersecurity,” said Peter Swarowski, Chief Operating Officer at ITS. “It consolidates a lot of separate tools that ITS used to separately maintain, brings them under one platform, and provides a capable security operations center to interpret the threats that we need to address right away.”
Some of the features and services that stood out to ITS included:
- Holistic visibility across endpoint, cloud, and network
- Threat detection and response, powered by the latest security intelligence
- 24/7 security operations center
- Vulnerability detection to proactively improve client security posture
- Host isolation capabilities that neutralize attacks quickly
The value of Field Effect MDR became even clearer during ITS’s internal evaluation.
Within just a few days, they detected a malware threat that had slipped through their previous security measures. Field Effect immediately flagged the threat and took action.
“The host isolation capabilities of Field Effect were able to nip that threat right in the bud, disable the network card on that machine, and keep it from spreading. At the same time, it provided me personally a lot of peace of mind knowing that we had this level of visibility in our ecosystem," said Rob Schenk, Chief Security Officer at ITS.
The impact
ITS was instantly impressed by the transformative impact of Field Effect MDR and the true two-way partnership offered by their team. From the start, it was clear to ITS that Field Effect was deeply invested in their success, providing extensive training, sales, and marketing support.
But what truly elevated the partnership for them was Field Effect’s commitment to collaboration. When ITS shared feedback based on their customers' needs, Field Effect didn’t just acknowledge it—they acted on it. This directly led to the development of MDR Core, a service tier purpose-built and priced for smaller clients with less IT complexity.
With MDR Core and MDR Complete, ITS standardized Field Effect MDR across every tier of ITS Managed Cybersecurity. Field Effect packages ensured seamless protection for clients with complex needs, such as regulatory and cyber insurance requirements or those dealing with highly sensitive data, while also supporting lower-maturity and/or budget conscious clients, without compromising protection or exceeding costs.
“Field Effect has provided a wider breadth of visibility for ITS, reducing gaps that were in our previous patchwork system, dramatically reducing the risk to our clients and providing peace of mind,” said Schenk.
Beyond better visibility, ITS saw the quality of their response drastically increase.
"Field Effect's approach of using AROs (Actions, Recommendations, and Observations) all managed from a single platform and SOC helps us cut through the noise, and understand where we need to focus,” said Swarowski.
ITS no longer has to rely on L3 techs to triage high-priority alerts. Field Effect’s AROs are designed to empower L1 techs to understand and respond to security threats, with jargon-free threat summaries, security context, and step-by-step remediation instructions.
“We’re able to do more with less,” noted Swarowski. “And we don’t have to go to a very scarce resource of expensive cybersecurity analysts that are very hard to hire and maintain within a managed service provider.”
Freed from the challenges of managing multiple systems, ITS was able to focus on driving efficiencies within their own workflows. With AROs flowing directly into their PSA solution, ITS was able to build additional automations and processes to further eliminate manual effort and create a solid foundation for scalable, long-term growth.
Final thoughts
“Field Effect is the best partner we have ever worked with,” says Andrulis. “What differentiates Field Effect from other vendors that we’ve used in the past is how much they care about our success.”
By prioritizing holistic security and a true focus on partnership, Field Effect has empowered ITS to deliver world-class cybersecurity solutions while driving business success.
“The partnership with Field Effect is the true definition of what a partnership should be,” says Swarowski. “They’re willing to work with our clients, help educate them about cybersecurity, train our techs and engineers, provide us with material, and solicit feedback from ITS and then turn around and make those changes in the platform.”
