COVER STORY
While SentinelOne’s solution was an
immediate contender, it was only when
it caught 28 out of 29 ransomware
attacks during a simulated proof of
concept trial that the Racing Post was
completely won over.
Once deployed, SentinelOne’s cloud
solution gave the Racing Post the
ability to manage and oversee its entire
security across all platforms via a
central dashboard.
“After installation my team ran a
simulation to test the new system,
unbeknown to me,” said Pieterse.
“Moments later my inbox began flooding
with emails saying which machines
had viruses and how SentinelOne was
quarantining the problem in real time.
“My initial fright turned to confidence
that we really were safe in SentinelOne’s
hands as I got continuous messages
assuring me the problem was being
dealt with. We haven’t had that luxury
with previous vendors and have usually
only become aware of a problem as we
discovered it, not via the anti-virus.”
“Our goals were to totally automate
our processes, ideally working with a
partner that truly felt like an extension
of our team. We found that partner in
SentinelOne,” added Pieterse.
Intelligent CISO spoke to Pieterse to
find out more about the implementation.
What digitalisation processes has
the organisation undergone and
what security challenges have
these created?
Going from a traditional print title into
digital, we had to complete the journey
of moving from on premise data centres
to the cloud.
The natural concern is always security
– we were moving from an on-prem
data centre service which we installed,
managed and controlled, into the ether
where we have no idea what's actually
happening. We embraced that process
and reviewed what we wanted to do,
how we wanted to do it, how we could
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Issue 19
I now have the
confidence that my
estate is protected
whereas I didn’t
have the confidence
in the past.
improve things, how we could be more
cost effective and efficient, and then
we took it step by step, making sure we
were secured by design at heart.
Are there any particular threats
facing organisations like yourself?
I think generally you have malicious
actors on a daily basis who try to see if
they can find vulnerabilities with the aim
of attacking your site.
SentinelOne it was actually a very nice
streamlined process.
Immediately we started seeing a
reduction of incidents reported to the
helpdesk. Previously there would have
been a number of incidents that the
helpdesk had to go and service due to
anti-virus causing problems or conflicts
etc. Since SentinelOne, that’s stopped.
The other thing I like about SentinelOne
is that, during this period, we had
some mergers and acquisitions and it
was a very nice, easy process to go
and roll the product out to other group
companies. It made my life much easier
with acquisitions, where in the past with
previous anti-virus, it would have been a
real pain to get that rolled out.
How far would you say the
system has future-proofed
the organisation?
I don’t think there is anything specific to
us – it’s about asking whether you have
a good security hygiene and ensuring all
the bases are covered. The beauty of SentinelOne is that it
just sits in the background and does
its job without hard maintenance. I now
have the confidence that my estate is
protected whereas I didn’t have the
confidence in the past.
You are never going to be 100%
protected but it’s about staying on top
of that and using your resources as
effectively and efficiently as you can. What best practice approach
should other CISOs take to
find the right endpoint security
solution for them?
And if something does happen and
you’re aware it’s happening then you can
do something about it. Don’t just look at the cost, look at the
full benefit package. Don’t just go for
the cheapest anti-virus to tick the box
because it's not as simple as that. Cheap
might be very expensive later. u
Why did you select SentinelOne?
We came up for renewal with our existing
anti-virus vendor and I wanted to do a
proof of concept with SentinelOne.
But the thing we couldn't test properly
initially was ransomware, until my team
found a site which allows you to simulate
29 different ransomware vector attacks.
The existing vendor only picked
up one out of 29. The SentinelOne
product picked up 28 of 29. I was also
concerned about installation as we
hadn’t had a very good experience with
the previous one. But with the help of
Don’t just go for
the cheapest anti-
virus to tick the box
because it’s not
as simple as that.
Cheap might be very
expensive later.
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