The company
Once you understand the mission at Terra Firma Capital Partners Limited, it’s clear that not all private equity firms are alike. The London, UK based entrepreneurial leader has an impressive track record—€17 billion invested in 34 businesses, representing an aggregate enterprise value of over €48 billion.
Explains Lee Colvin, Head of IT and Infrastructure, who has led Terra Firma’s IT and information security strategy and operations for more than 20 years, “we are very unique in terms of how we look at deals. We don’t just buy and sell companies—we build better businesses.”
This attention to high quality also extends to cybersecurity—and Terra Firma doesn’t settle for second best. “My team and I are tasked with supporting the IT and security needs of a financial services firm, 24/7, in one of the most targeted industries,” says Lee. “Our security defense must be spot on."
The challenge
Lee has experienced a lot of change managing IT and infosec at Terra Firma—especially with the adoption of remote working due to COVID-19 restrictions.
Prior to the pandemic, Terra Firma’s 70 employees worked onsite. Now everyone was working remotely from home offices.
His biggest challenge was ensuring he had the technology and support to stay well ahead of new threats and risks across the firm’s modern, growing IT infrastructure. It was time for Lee to re-evaluate security strategies to strengthen his protection and maximize visibility across all aspects of the new work environment.
Says Lee, “I wouldn’t say the network perimeter has died, but it has certainly shifted and we need to consider security for where and how work is now taking place.”
Without resources to build skills or tools in-house, he needed a managed security service that would meet his needs for complete end-to-end protection and 24/7 monitoring capabilities across Terra Firma’s endpoints, cloud services, and network.
The solution
Lee researched a range of security monitoring solutions, including managed detection and response, and endpoint detection and response. He also looked at options for working with managed security service providers.
It took time for Lee to navigate through the vendor noise. “The security market is really broken. Everyone is selling next-generation boxes and touting artificial intelligence and other promises. Adding to the challenge, some products only looked at endpoints while others monitored just networks or clouds. The pricing models also differed widely.”
After a nine-month evaluation of vendor offerings, he chose Field Effect MDR.
“I really liked that Field Effect MDR wasn’t masked in buzz words and sales language,” Lee explains. “It was very easy to understand the value of Field Effect MDR's capabilities.”
For Lee, the fact Field Effect MDR offered a complete security solution with full coverage across his IT environment was a major benefit. “The trend for many vendors in this space is focusing only on the endpoint. Field Effect MDR offers an all-in-one solution from one platform that covers all aspects of our traffic—endpoints, cloud services, and network.”
Pricing was another convincing factor. “When I looked at pricing models, there were huge discrepancies across the board. Some charge by endpoint, or cloud instance, and these can become
complicated. As a buyer, this becomes an entry market hurdle for me,” says Lee.
“In contrast, Field Effect MDR offers a simple approach by user and its price point enables any company large or small to implement a fully managed security service.”
Another unique differentiator for Lee is Field Effect MDR’s proprietary threat alerting and reporting. Through Field Effect MDR's ARO process, security events are consolidated into clear and actionable reporting, providing three types of alerts—a required Action, Recommendation, and Observation. This results in focused alerting with reports that provide clear, practical information with specific remediation steps. Each ARO is checked by Field Effect’s cyber analysts and guides priority, response time, and activities needed to better protect networks.
Says Lee, “In information security, it is all about minimizing the attack surface, and that’s where the AROs are extremely helpful. The alerts are in plain English and provide the detail we need to quickly action events, remediate potential issues, and put measures in place to continually improve our security.”
He adds, “In the past, isolating a machine to investigate a potential compromise could take a whole day, requiring time to sort and interpret the alerts. With Field Effect MDR and its AROs, it literally takes a few minutes to understand the issue and the action needed.
The results
Through its end-to-end coverage, intelligent features, capabilities, and price point, Lee says Field Effect MDR has significantly reduced his total cost of ownership.
“Using Field Effect MDR, I’m saving time and money every day,” he says. “I’ve gained one of the most advanced threat monitoring, detection, and response platforms in the market with features that make it incredibly easy to understand and respond to threats and risks—at an approachable cost.”
“As a small team supporting modern work and defending against new attack vectors, that’s huge for us.”
Through Field Effect MDR’s holistic approach to security and innovative AROs, Lee has realized a 75% time savings across the board and improved threat detection and remediation—in some cases, going
from one day to mere minutes.
He explains, “I’m able to identify and action potential threats much more quickly, saving time to focus on other aspects of our IT operations.”
Field Effect’s dedicated support also raises the bar. “It’s obvious the Field Effect team sincerely cares about customers and their security,” Lee shares.
“We do a monthly call with the Field Effect security analysts and discuss our AROs, security posture, and future product features,” he adds. “This is really helpful in terms of visibility to potential issues, but I’m also gaining continual knowledge about changes in the threat landscape and ways I can advance our protection.”
“It’s much more of a partnership than a vendor relationship.”
