Office Protect stops email hacker in less than 12 minutes

Less than 12 minutes. That’s how long it took CrucialLogics to prevent a hacker from stealing data from one of its client’s email accounts.

Company Partner Nim Nadarajah said staff was alerted to the attack by Office Protect, Sherweb’s own security management solution for Office 365. He said his client, a Toronto-based diamond reseller, was being hacked by someone in Africa.

“It was ten o’clock at night and I got an alert saying, ‘Sign-In from Unauthorized Country.’ I called one of my other business partners who manages the customer. I asked him, ‘is the client in Africa?’ He said absolutely not…So we got the customer on the phone and confirmed that he was in Toronto and that somebody was in fact hacking his mail. We were able to reset all the passwords and change the global admin within minutes so we could contain the degree of exposure that might have happened.”

Office 365 customers can get this kind of protection for only $1 per seat per month.

CrucialLogics, which has been a Sherweb partner for three years, serves more than 100 clients across North America. The Toronto-based company, which is also a Gold Microsoft Partner, specializes in Advisory Consulting, Microsoft and Security Solutions.

Simple and affordable solution

Nadarajah said CrucialLogics could have created its own security offering for its small business clients, but it preferred the simplicity and cost of Sherweb’s in-house solution.

“Office Protect is really easy. You get a small customer. You don’t want to charge them a lot of money for security, but you want them to be safe. This makes an affordable security platform. We can say to every single customer, ‘ Look, just buy it. It just costs a dollar. The value is amazing!’ And they say yes.”

Office Protect offers threat protection, monitoring, alerts and reporting services, all from one single portal. It is designed for small businesses that don’t have compliance requirements.

Nadarajah said while Office Protect is a good fit for his company’s small business market, he wouldn’t consider offering it to his enterprise clients. He said larger clients are better served by CrucialLogics’s Azure Sentinel deployment as part of their Office 365 cloud security offering. This deployment includes Microsoft’s Security Information and Event Management solution (SIEM).

“We’d try to bring them (enterprise clients) into our own security ecosystem through Azure Sentinel and offer managed security services and managed security support. But Office Protect for small business clients? Absolutely. In a heartbeat.”

Consulting with a conscience

CrucialLogics feels so strongly about providing good security that it has its own trademark phrase, Consulting With A Conscience.™ The company believes in honesty, integrity, trust and transparency at all times. Nadarajah said they don’t make excuses. They own their designs, they believe in the solutions and as a consulting firm, they own up and admit when they are wrong.

The company is also proud to admit that it has never lost money by being honest with its clients.

“Money comes and goes. We’ve always focused on building credibility and trust. We have an amazing team. We’ve migrated over a million objects and never impacted a user. We call it ‘zero-impact-migration’ and we’ve never had a user down. But that warranty only applies if the client follows our methodology 100 percent. If they go in the environment and they change stuff without telling us, then there will be risks being managed.”

Great collaboration

Nadarajah said the company had the option to become a Tier 1 provider with Microsoft, but decided that it just wasn’t necessary.

“We have about 7 Microsoft certifications. We can go out and buy premier support and be a Tier 1 provider right away. But we thought, ‘why reinvent the wheel?’ We get great collaboration and accessibility from Sherweb. We can get somebody on the phone within one minute. That’s perfect. Together we’re stronger. That’s the partnership we have with Sherweb!”

Would he suggest any ways to improve Office Protect?

“It’s bang-on. It does exactly what it’s supposed to do. This is a real SMB product and it’s perfect. I wouldn’t change anything about it.”