Non-Profit Organization

The Challenge

Globally headquartered in Arkansas, this organization is a non-profit, evangelistic organization which outreaches primarily, but not exclusively, to the motorcycling community. Like most organizations and companies across the world today, this non-profit organization keeps all of its critical information in the cyber world, through its network and computer systems. This includes confidential and restricted information like global and regional memberships, donation records, accounts receivable and payable, and additional confidential information.

The members and leadership of this company are continuously using email, web portals and social media across landline, Ethernet and WiFi hotspots. All of this key information is utilized and leveraged by the leadership and IT team across its networks where it can be shared, collaborated on, and maximized by the teams, in the spirit of the non-profit organization’s mission. However, in an age of cyber criminals where social security numbers, financial records, and personal and business information all need to be protected and secured – companies and organizations are looking at new cyber security alternatives that focus on the prevention of attack, not just the detection when a virus or malware attack has happened. Fears of unknown malware attacks, such as zero-day and advanced persistent threats, have become some of the real world challenges for the System IT Administrators at this non-profit organization.

“Like any organization or business today, we are conducting all forms of business in the online world,” said the IT Manager. “Our members, affiliates and leadership team members are staying in constant contact, sharing information across hundreds of endpoints about new donations or finances, organizational business, tax information and contracts – and they need to be assured that information that is supposed to stay in-house does just that.”

The non-profit organization’s main data center, which houses its critical information and business applications, was using a mixture of multiple antivirus and IT security detection solutions from various companies, but was still experiencing frequent infections and viruses. The IT team was encountering rogue malware, Trojans, and viruses across its network, and clearing an average of three major IT security infections per week. On top of what the IT team was finding, they lived with the reality that an unknown rogue piece of malware might be lurking in their network, one they had yet to find, one which no antivirus or security system they had in place could find – until it might be too late.

The Solution

With various endpoints and disparate IT security systems in place, the non-profit organization researched alternative cybersecurity companies that could deliver on two core needs: manageability of endpoints from a single console and the ability to protect endpoints from infection – both from known and new, unidentified threats.

Against these criteria, this organization evaluated Symantec, Kaspersky, McAfee, Bitdefender, Trend Micro, Avast, and Xcitium based on their own internal research to try and understand what would be the best option for their needs. In the end, Xcitium Advanced was selected as the choice. Xcitium Advanced provides total protection against zero-day and advanced persistent threats while having no impact on the end-user experience or any of their workflows. Any untrusted or unknown applications that are started by users are automatically contained in a secure environment, allowing all safe applications the freedom to run while denying all malware access to the system which they require to deliver their payloads, and attack an IT environment.

The Xcitium Advanced solution is built upon a next generation, ZeroDwell Containment technology which blocks and isolates unknown, zero day attacks of malware, spyware, Trojans and other harmful executables – and renders those attacks useless against endpoints and networks. Xcitium has unified its endpoint security solution and enterprise class device management – including Xcitium Endpoint Manager and Xcitium Device Manager – into Xcitium Advanced.

The foundation of Xcitium Advanced is Xcitium Client, which includes antivirus, firewall, web URL filtering, host intrusion prevention, ZeroDwell Containment and file reputation, and Xcitium ITSM, which allows for the configuration of the security policies and visibility into the security infrastructure of enterprise endpoints through solutions such as mobile device management and remote monitoring and management.

The Xcitium ITSM dashboard is used by the IT team for panoramic insight and to control all aspects of endpoint protection and management. Its streamlined interface displays 14 critical metrics from all of the endpoints, facilitating rapid alerting and remediation of issues. The non-profit organization’s IT System Administrators can also terminate endpoint processes, stop or start services, uninstall applications and delete unwanted files – all without causing any interference to the end user.

Xcitium Advanced brings multiple layers of defense, including antivirus, firewall, web URL filtering, host intrusion prevention, ZeroDwell Containment, and file reputation together under a single offering for customers of all sizes, to protect them from both known and unknown threats. The non-profit organization has been running Xcitium Advanced since early 2015 and has not experienced a single IT security issue to date.

“Compared to its competitor’s offerings, Xcitium did require some slight additional implementation configuration to identify and grant our business-need applications permission to run. But that relatively small time investment up front has paid off in huge man-hour savings since going live,” said the Systems Administrator.

“We have been thrilled with how Xcitium Advanced solution fits into our IT environment. The central dashboard and monitoring allows us to save a tremendous amount of time identifying and containing any possible unknown risk – without threat or interruption to our users,” said the IT Manager. “Before Xcitium, we were going through what seemed to be daily malware fixes and problems. Since Xcitium, we’ve had zero malware or spyware issues. We don’t fear that unknown, zero day threat because we know the Xcitium Advanced suite can handle anything the cyber criminals try and throw at it.”

ABOUT XCITIUM

Xcitium, formerly known as Comodo Security Solutions, is used by more than 3,000 organizational customers & partners around the globe. Founded with one simple goal – to put an end to cyber breaches. Xcitium’s patented ‘ZeroDwell Containment’ technology uses Kernel API Virtualization to isolate and remove threats like zero-day malware & ransomware before they cause any damage. ZeroDwell Containment is the cornerstone of Xcitium’s endpoint suite which includes Xcitium Essentials, Xcitium Advanced, endpoint detection & response (EDR), Xcitium Managed MDR and Xcitium Complete M(X)DR. Since inception, Xcitium has a zero breach track record when fully configured.