Integrity360, Ireland’s largest cyber security specialist – and the UK’s fastest growing – is set to accelerate its growth thanks to strategic investment from UK private equity firm August Equity.
The move will support major international expansion plans at the company at a time when market need for its services has never been greater. During 2020 Integrity360 saw revenue growth of 15%, as organisations moved to protect remote working environments. The company is also seeing a surge in demand for incident response services, as companies struggle to keep up with the advancement of threats.
“When there is a high-profile breach in the media, cyber security comes into the spotlight and businesses rightly put a focus on the highlighted threat, even if only temporarily,” explain Integrity360 Founder and Group President Eoin Goulding.
“This can only be a good thing for proactively preventing against it but it’s important that organisations are testing and enhancing their environments constantly, not just when another company is compromised.” The pandemic also increased the speed at which enterprises moved to the cloud. “The necessity to secure remote working in 2020 has brought organisations further along on this journey, which is welcome but not at the cost of security,” he adds. “We’re seeing many companies prioritise protecting their cloud environments and building their resilience in the cloud as they move more of their information and business functions into it.”
Increased demand
Integrity360 has seen a huge increase in demand for its Managed Security Services. “It’s no secret that there is a shortage of resources in cyber security and organisations are trying to do more with the constraints that they have,” he explains.
Taking on an MSS provider gives them access to the 24x7x365 cyber security expertise they need without the cost and complexity of having to provision and manage it in-house. “Managed Detection and Response (MDR) in particular goes beyond traditional security monitoring and threat detection, providing rapid response and containment of threats that have bypassed preventative controls across networks, endpoints and cloud, hence delivering improved security outcomes for clients,” he says.
End to end security
Securing the recent investment supports Integrity360’s ambition to become Europe’s leading end-to-end cyber security specialist. It will both accelerate its organic growth and allow it embark on an extensive acquisition programme across Europe.
Since its foundation in 2005, the industry-leading company has become a trusted security advisor to over 300 clients, including some of the largest businesses in Ireland. It supports customers across multiple sectors including financial services, retail, utilities, telecoms and insurance. In all cases its ‘security first’ approach enables and empowers its clients to do business securely.
The company has won a series of industry accolades, including Managed Security Service Provider of the year and Best Place to work in IT. The company was recognised by Gartner as a Pure-play provider in its 2020 Market Guide for Managed Security Services.
Industry leader
Being an industry leader enables it to attract and retain top talent. It currently employs 200 people across the UK and Ireland, a figure now set to double. “Our Security First approach positions security as an enabler and empowers our clients to do business securely. While other companies may have a cyber security arm, cyber security is the only thing we do,” explains Goulding.
“Our knowledge and capabilities are as deep as they are broad, spanning the whole security environment.” It has helped drive cyber security out of IT departments and into the boardroom too. “We have holistic, consultative conversations at a senior level. We help CISOs and CIOs create security strategies that mitigate business risk and deliver business outcomes,” he adds.
European growth
Many of its clients are listed on major stock exchanges and operate within highly regulated industries, conforming to strict compliance and regulation standards. “They protect billions of assets and transactions every day and secure millions of clients and employees. We work closely with them to understand their challenges and provide expert advice relevant to their unique business requirement,” says Goulding.
No matter the industry, size or geography, all face similar cyber security challenges. These include keeping up with the increasing sophistication of attacks, developing security strategy and securing their digitalisation journey.
It also includes managing limited skilled resource capacity, meeting their audit and compliance requirements, and advancing their Cloud strategy.
Integrity360 works with clients across all these areas, helping to enhance visibility within their environment and continuously evolving its products and services to future-proof client security. The company has identified a number of immediate growth areas including SOAR (Security Orchestration, Automation and Response), MDR (Managed Detection and Response), and EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response).
The recent investment will facilitate this. “It supports our strategic plans of investing in our people and our services – to grow our capabilities further,” says Goulding.
