Sheridans is a leading media and technology law firm based in London. Since 1956, Sheridans has represented individuals and organisations across a wide variety of sectors. Its lawyers are specialists in media, entertainment, leisure and technology and provide a bespoke service to its clients. Moving operations and client data to cloud services increased the risk of data breaches and it needed greater visibility within the on-premises and public cloud estates. Its security partner, technology vendor, Arctic Wolf, has provided greater visibility of its IT estate, faster responses to potential threats 24×7 with guided remediation and mitigated hundreds of low-level threats which were not previously visible.
Law firms hold and retain large amounts of sensitive client information that cybercriminals would love to get their hands on for exploitation. From corporate finances to business contracts, employment details, intellectual property and more – critical data is at risk, and the number of breaches is only increasing. Professional services firms accounted for 25% of all cyberattacks in 2022, according to Aon Insurance.
Sheridans specialises in legal services for the media and technology sectors – working with a wide range of commercial organisations from small businesses to household names, in addition to market-leading work with leading media figures and well-known celebrities. Confidential details around earnings, real estate and family disputes can make or break the reputation of these organisations and individuals – as well as that of Sheridans.
Up until recently, this information was stored and retained on-premises on infrastructure and tightly accessed from within the secure perimeter of the office by authorised staff. However, with the rapid shift to digital systems and an increasing need for on-demand access to data 24×7, a significant amount of information is now stored and processed in cloud-based technologies and services. As such law firms are now having to take serious steps to holistically improve their cybersecurity posture or risk having clients’ data exposed by bad actors.
Forward thinking and rapidly growing firms, such as Sheridans, rely on relationships with trusted third-party specialists to provide the knowledge and expertise to support their internal IT operations in managing these increasing risks and security demands. Commenting on these risks, Nilesh Mehta, Partnership Secretary at Sheridans, said: “We have seen how law firms can be attractive targets for criminals. Any data breach on the firm, regardless of the scale of the attack, will ultimately damage our clients’ reputation and their trust in us to protect their privacy and assets.”
Finding a partner that puts people first
Sheridans has been undertaking a rapid shift to adopting the public cloud, driven by the need for greater flexible working capacity and major investment in new technology as the business grows and its working practices evolved. While this places the firm as a leader in adopting legal technology, it needed a cybersecurity solution provider that could protect it from ever-evolving security threats (such as ransomware, business email compromise and other data exfiltration attacks) while also offering real-time insight into their digital infrastructure to spot anomalies and new emerging threats. Through working with Koncise Solutions – a trusted London-based partner – the team narrowed the choice down to Arctic Wolf and two other technology vendors.
Arctic Wolf stood out from the outset due to its named Concierge Security Team (CST) and ability to swiftly respond to security threats and emergencies 24×7. Arctic Wolf offers a highly scalable cloud-native security operations solution to support the firm’s future plans for expansion. Arctic Wolf Managed Detection & Response (MDR) helps the in-house security team spot and respond to potential cyberthreats through a real-time cloud platform and escalation service which utilises evolving threat intelligence and Machine Learning from Arctic Wolf Labs to weed out false positives and focus on what’s most urgent, customised to their environment. By combining the expertise and human element with cutting edge technology, Arctic Wolf creates a comprehensive operation that meets specific security needs without adding noise and clutter.
In particular, Sheridans found that the openness and honesty from the Arctic Wolf team really set it apart.
“Arctic Wolf’s representatives were great at explaining how their cloud-native logging and alerting functionality could help us, without the need for implementing a SIEM ourselves and using the current security tools we use in-house.” said James Barraclough, IT Analyst at Sheridans.
“They were able to give us confidence when responding to the queries we had, and were incredibly enthusiastic about how the Arctic Wolf service could complement our existing systems and the team’s skills.
“With so many security products extolling the benefits of automation, we find the more effective solution is to have the right people to bolster our line of defence. Someone to help us solve the problem in the moment, not create more alerts to add to our workload.”
Creating a team that works as one
Not every new client onboarding is smooth sailing, having to adopt new processes and technology quickly to ensure value is gained from the new service, but Sheridans found confidence and comfort in Arctic Wolf’s ability to be flexible and adapt by making changes that were needed to fit with our agile environment as we migrated to the public cloud, which greatly improved the service we received. They were responsive and adjusted their working practices accordingly, and that was impressive.
Arctic Wolf’s solutions were quickly rolled out to all 320 user end-points and 30 servers, and immediately began providing improved oversight across the IT estate, with Arctic Wolf Managed Risk giving the Sheridans IT team a greater understanding of how the security systems were performing. This involved identifying hundreds of low-level threats and assisted in mitigating larger risks which has helped improve the overall security posture of the firm and helped the team focus on what really matters.
Consistent improvement of security practices
Since the deployment in March 2022, Sheridans’ Concierge Security Team has continued to provide valuable advice in helping to improve the resilience of Sheridans’ IT infrastructure and the transition to the cloud as part of the customised Security Journey. The team has also supported the integration with existing security systems such as Mimecast, Symantec, Varonis and Cisco Duo.
“We have been really impressed with Arctic Wolf on the response times and follow-ups on identified issues,” Barraclough said. “They have also been very good at escalating incidents to the right personnel, to give us the best advice possible for every situation so far. They have helped us build business confidence in our security measures as we continue our migration to the cloud. We are looking forward to working with them to continue our progress on developing our cybersecurity resilience.”
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