When a major housing association sought a more robust and responsive SOC partner to support upcoming system upgrades and transitions, Transparity was selected to lead the transformation. Leveraging Microsoft’s FastTrack Service, Transparity expertly accelerated the migration to new technologies while providing ongoing SOC support and in-house team training.
Our efforts delivered measurable security improvements, including a 40% boost in Defender for Cloud secure score, a 71% reduction in overall security incidents, and a 46% decline in high-priority attacks. With most threats now detected and resolved within 50 minutes, the housing association enjoys enhanced protection and peace of mind, backed by Transparity’s flawless SLA performance.
Operating on a large scale, and with direct links to the public sector, this housing association has a unique combination of cyber security requirements. For example, the organisation's cyber insurance partners mandate there can be no gaps in digital defences.
All these factors — a private-public organisational structure, a large client and supplier base, and tight compliance requirements — came into play when it was time for the organisation to forge a new cyber security partnership with a new Security Operations Centre (SOC) partner.
The housing association’s IT team began their search for a new SOC partner in advance of important system upgrades and transitions. As the business began to outgrow its current partner organisation's service, the housing authority launched a search for a new vendor.
The organisation planned to transition to Microsoft Defender antivirus software and Intune endpoint protection. These changes helped reduce duplication of functions and cost. By moving to a Microsoft environment instead of using multiple vendors, the organisation could also cut its system complexity and thereby lower risk. The processes would have to be seamless, not leaving any gaps in SOC uptime.
The IT team needed to find a cyber security partner that could not only handle these implementations in a quick and smooth way but also handle its varied SOC needs going forward. The chosen vendor would have to show knowledge and professionalism to prove it was capable of shouldering these responsibilities.
Following meetings with numerous vendors, the housing association settled on Transparity, which came with a strong recommendation from a previous engagement overseen by the organisation's senior security engineer.
Having secured the cyber security partnership, Transparity signed on to assist with the two tech transitions, and then provide ongoing SOC support and training for the in-house team. The goal was to help the organisation thrive with its new streamlined and hardened SOC.
To minimise disruption and avoid gaps in coverage, Transparity began the engagement by providing FastTrack Service. Only a small number of Microsoft partners are approved to use the FastTrack initiative, which is designed to accelerate moves to Microsoft service offerings.
As part of the FastTrack process, Transparity's experts assisted the housing association’s security professionals in putting their existing knowledge and skills to effective use. The internal team members had received recent training and were already conversant in cyber security best practices. This meant the most effective approach was to train the team on specific features of Microsoft Defender that would help them use the system at an enterprise level from day one.
Through the new technology deployment and learning period, collaboration between the housing association and Transparity has remained smooth and productive. Following previous attempts to provision FastTrack services with other partners, the team are struck by the positive difference offered by Transparity.
"It's been a great experience so far, and we keep hoping this honeymoon period is never going to end. Previously, we struggled for months on end to procure the FastTrack services. However, since we teamed up with Transparity, I can confidently state we have not been let down." — a senior security engineer with the housing association.
In terms of direct impact on security, the results have included a 40% increase in the organisation's Defender for Cloud secure score. The overall number of security incidents has fallen 71% due to the hardening efforts implemented by Transparity, with high-priority attacks falling 46%. With the new SOC in place, most incidents are detected and fully resolved within 50 minutes, start to finish. Furthermore, Transparity has upheld its Service Level Agreement (SLA) 100% of the time.
Since the beginning of the project, the Transparity and the housing association’s teams have become highly collaborative, and are entering ambitious new phases of their work together. Periodic meetings that initially served as debriefs for the technology transitions have now shifted to address new projects, while also providing ongoing transparency into the progress of the deployments that began the collaboration.
A century-old public-private housing association that works with more than 50 local authorities to provide affordable housing for families and individuals. Almost 100,000 tenants are using the housing association’s services today, living in tens of thousands of houses.
We’ve kept this case study anonymous to respect our customer’s privacy and security, something that’s always our top priority. With the increasing sophistication of cyber attackers, even seemingly harmless business information shared publicly can be pieced together and used to target organisations. That’s why we take extra care to minimise exposure and protect our customers from potential risks, while sharing the cyber security partnerships we’re so proud of.
