“We couldn’t put together a security team in house that does what Alert Logic does for anywhere near the cost of the MDR offering. From a business perspective, it made sense to go with Alert Logic to protect our AWS environments — they’re a leader in the field and they’re always thinking about how to make us more secure.”

Jarrod Ruez, President, Vertére

Vertére is a leader in lab inventory management software, specializing in chemical, biological, and laboratory equipment management. With a 30- year history, the company assists the scientific community with cataloging chemicals and managing lab equipment. The firm’s software assists governments, universities, and private labs with meeting regulatory guidelines and minimizing their risk of lost inventory.

Several years ago, Vertére decided to create a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering, freeing its customers from software installation, implementation, and updates. Without a dedicated security team in house, Vertére needed to secure its SaaS application and keep its customers’ data safe in the cloud. Fortra’s Alert Logic Managed Detection and Response® (MDR) on Amazon Web Services (AWS) delivered the solution.

The Challenge

Vertére is one of the first chemical inventory software companies and attributes its ongoing success to its future proofed culture and business practices. Offering SaaS on AWS was one way it future-proofed the organization. “Our AWS-hosted SaaS has been a very popular and beneficial service for our customers,” said Vertére President Jarrod Ruez. “By offering our SaaS application on AWS, we’ve alleviated a huge burden for organizations because they didn’t have the resources to manage software on their own.” Choosing a cloud provider to host its SaaS solution was easy. The Vertére team found AWS was the easiest provider to work with and its vast ecosystem of partners was also appealing.

As Vertére transitioned to a SaaS model on AWS, cybersecurity became an urgent requirement. As a small company with a development team focused on its software, building its own cybersecurity team was not feasible. Additionally, many of its clients began requiring their software partners complete security assessments and demonstrate strong security hygiene. “We needed an expert that could help us with threat hunting, intrusion management, and keeping our clients’ data safe,” said Ruez.

“Alert Logic feels like an extension of my company — I don’t believe you will find a better solution. Their white-glove service goes above and beyond expectation.”

Jarrod Ruez, President, Vertére

The Solution

AWS partner Alert Logic equipped Vertére with an MDR platform plus a team dedicated to monitoring the company’s Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances and network traffic. The MDR platform is a fully managed suite of security and compliance solutions that provide continuous monitoring, intrusion detection, log management, and vulnerability scanning. Alert Logic not only keeps Vertére’s security protocols up to date but also alerts the company to any concerns. “Alert Logic feels like an extension of my company — I don’t believe you will find a better solution,” Ruez said. “Their white-glove service goes above and beyond expectation.”

Even when Ruez was alerted to a potential security issue on a weekend, he was able to speak with Alert Logic’s security team and quickly solve the problem. “They were able to tell me exactly what was happening and why I was alerted,” he said. “Ultimately, we were able to determine if the issue was a concern or not and close it quickly.”

A significant benefit of Alert Logic MDR is that Vertére can leverage the expertise of Alert Logic’s security team and avoid hiring the full-time employees it would take to handle cybersecurity internally. “We couldn’t put together a security team in house that does what Alert Logic does for anywhere near the cost of their MDR solution,” said Ruez. “From a business perspective, it made sense to go with Alert Logic to protect our AWS environments. They’re a leader in the field and they’re always thinking about how to make us more secure.” Alert Logic also educates the Vertére team about emerging threats and is available 24/7 with on-call experts to answer any questions.

Summary

Vertére anticipates more of its customers will move to the SaaS model to keep their inventory systems current and lessen the burden on their internal IT teams. Because of this, security will become even more integral to Vertere’s business moving forward — making Fortra’s Alert Logic a key partner in the years ahead. “I plan to stay with Alert Logic because I don’t see anyone else out there that could offer what they’re offering in the way that they’re offering it. I’m comforted knowing that I have them watching over my environment to alert me if things come up and to help me mitigate, if needed,” Ruez concluded.

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