At a Glance
Company
Arctiq is a managed security services and solutions provider that serves a diverse North American customer base: from enterprises to SMBs across multiple industries. Their services include security assessments, SOC defense services, XDR managed services, penetration testing and vCISO services.
Challenge
- Difficulties expanding their services portfolio
- Lack of a vCISO process
- Manual and lengthy risk assessment processes
- Inefficient client communication through emails and spreadsheets
- Hindered growth and scalability
Solution
- Transition to streamlined and standardized risk assessment and security planning
- Add vCISO services to their offering with Cynomi’s vCISO platform
- Upsell managed services with Cynomi’s security insights
- Upsell service hours by onboarding clients to Cynomi
Impact
- Significantly accelerated time-to-value for end customers – reaching 80% within weeks rather than months
- 60% reduction in risk assessment time
- Upsold vCISO services to existing clients
- Upsold of ongoing managed services to existing clients
- Provided more comprehensive security and compliance services
- Boosted employee expertise
- Increased efficiency
Background
Arctiq provides managed cybersecurity services and solutions, protecting more than 100,000 systems for dozens of companies of all sizes across North America. Their services include security assessments, Security Operations Center services, XDR managed services, attacking services via penetration testing and vCISO services. After growing to 55 employees, Arctiq was acquired by Gallant Capital Partners in August 2023 and merged with DynTek, to enhance their security portfolio.
The Challenge
Arctiq was looking to enhance their service offering and add a new line of business to their offering: vCISO services. To achieve this goal, they were actively looking for a vCISO solution that would help them provide these services. Such a solution was required to support establishing and streamlining processes, implementing security policies, managing security and compliance, tracking plan execution and generating reports.
In addition, Arctiq was facing a challenge with their existing professional services. Arctiq was using manual solutions, like emails and spreadsheets, to conduct risk assessments, track security tasks, monitor their clients’ security posture, map compliance requirements, and share results and progress with their clients. These manual processes created overhead, inefficiencies and frustration and as a result, Arctiq was looking for a platform that could act as a single pane of glass, to help streamline the process and provide clarity.
The Solution
After evaluating a number of platforms, Arctiq chose Cynomi’s vCISO platform.
“I compared solutions and found that Cynomi would best fit my needs.” Cliff Janzen, VP Cybersecurity Services, Arctiq
Cynomi was chosen due to its ability to:
- Provide a user-friendly and manageable interface
- Structure and standardize processes
- Support multiple users and enable project management and teamwork
Arctiq uses Cynomi for three different use cases:
- Risk assessment – Arctiq replaced their manually-driven interviews with Cynomi’s structured questionnaires and automated scanning capabilities. These capabilities are used for assessing their clients’ security posture and their implementation of regulations and security frameworks. For example, helping clients ensure they meet ISO or NIST guidelines.
- vCISO services – Arctiq leveraged Cynomi’s vCISO capabilities to provide clients with a new service: vCISO services. They use Cynomi to create security policies, manage ongoing security projects and generate reports. With Cynomi, Arctiq can assign tasks and deadlines to stakeholders and track progress while staying organized and transparent and encouraging ownership among their clients.
- Upsell managed services – Arctiq uses Cynomi tp upsell their services. They onboard clients that have their own in-house security team to Cynomi and offer service hours for consultation and checkups.
“Cynomi is helping large organizations implement and track their own security program at a very efficient cost.”
Cliff Janzen, VP Cybersecurity Services, Arctiq
In addition, Cynomi’s assessment and report capabilities help Arctiq provide their clients security insights, which builds trust in Arctiq and encourages clients to subscribe to Arctiq’ wide variety of portfolio services.
The Impact
With Cynomi, Arctiq’ management was able to achieve:
Security & Compliance Plan Implementation on Steroids – Security framework from 0 to 80% in Weeks
Cynomi enables Arctiq to hit the ground running with their clients and accelerate the implementation of a security and compliance plan. This reduces the time it takes to see significant impact and meet compliance requirements, achieving 80% of their progress in merely weeks instead of months.
“Our clients can jumpstart their security program in a matter of weeks, rather than having a months, or sometimes even years-long program.”
Cliff Janzen, VP Cybersecurity Services, Arctiq
Reduced Risk Assessment Times by 60%
Arctiq uses Cynomi’s standardized questionnaires and processes when conducting assessments of their clients’ security and compliance posture. Instead of taking weeks, now the entire process takes days. Since these assessments are conducted for every new vCISO engagement as well as a one-off service, the savings are significantly compounded across Arctiq’ portfolio.
Enhanced Recurring Revenue with New vCISO Line of Business
With Cynomi, Arctiq can now offer clients vCISO services, enabling them to convert one-off clients into subscription clients, enhancing revenue and expanding their business.
“We now have a workable, usable and efficient vCISO platform, which we didn’t have before.”
Cliff Janzen, VP Cybersecurity Services, Arctiq
Boosted Employee Expertise
Cynomi provides guided and easy-to-use vCISO services, reducing the need to hire highly experienced CISO professionals when offering vCISO services. Arctiq were able to leverage seasoned security experts to help provide vCISO services, with senior executives providing guidance and support when needed. This saved them hiring time and resources, allowing Arctiq to scale people and processes.
Increased Efficiency
Cynomi’s SaaS platform and automation has enabled Arctiq to better organize their processes and allocate their resources more efficiently. Cynomi replaced manual spreadsheets and the time spent on back and forth messages with a single platform that is easy to use, provides visibility and enhances collaboration.
“Cynomi has done to vCISO services what virtualization and the cloud have done to servers. We’ve made utilization of our resources better by providing clients with access to experienced professionals when they need it without the expense of a fulltime CISO.”
Cliff Janzen, VP Cybersecurity Services, Arctiq
Enhanced Clients’ Security and Compliance Posture
“We offer a service that I’m proud of that helps our clients reach their security goals.”
Cliff Janzen, VP Cybersecurity Services, Arctiq
Arctiq keeps their clients’ security and compliance posture top of mind. With Cynomi, they’ve been able to help their clients improve their security and reduce risk at record speed.
“Cynomi is a great product that I highly recommend.”
Cliff Janzen, VP Cybersecurity Services, Arctiq