The Alliance for Audited Media

The Alliance for Audited Media powers transparency and collaboration between North America’s leading media professionals. The Alliance is committed to setting universal benchmarks for media transparency, helping develop industry accountability standards and promoting excellence that elevates the entire industry.

“We’re a trade association comprised of a couple-thousand print and digital media companies throughout the United States and Canada,” said Alan Dattel, Vice President of IT at Audited Media. “As media organizations are prime targets for cyber-attacks, our members demand that we protect the information that they provide, which is core to the value they expect from us.”

As part of its mission to protect their members’ data, the Alliance adopted an endpoint protection platform from one of the “big names” in the industry.

“We had this solution for three years and over that time it became pretty obvious that they were not equipped, or at least had no inclination, to help smaller and medium-sized organizations like us,” Dattel added. “For our 150 or so endpoints, we felt they were nickel-and-diming us right out of being one of their customers. Many of the necessary capabilities were extra charges, and the company was very unresponsive in helping us evaluate and adopt these necessary features.”

When it came time to renew, Dattel and his team decided to look for a solution that was a better match for their needs. “In particular we wanted a solution from a vendor that really cared about us and smaller organizations like us,” said Dattel.

“The impact of implementing Xcitium was pretty quick and really impressive. Xcitium didn’t just show us what the solution could do, they showed us what it could do within our systems and processes. Our CIS reports came back with a 30 percent score improvement. In addition, now we could have the solution ingest all our logs to create a full-fledged NOC- type of procedure – something that would have cost us much more as an add-on with our previous solution. And the Xcitium team has been extremely helpful always ready to jump in and help in whatever way they could – even after we became a customer – that was a breath of fresh air for us.”Jim Flynn
Director of IT
The Alliance for Audited Media

“We had a few criteria in our evaluation,” he continued. “Of course, price was important, but really we needed a full-blown solution, with everything we had in the incumbent solution, but without the a la carte pricing that just moved it out of the realm of reality for us. In addition to EDR and XDR capabilities, we also needed the ability to ingest and analyze logs along with whatever other benefits we could get.”

The Alliance engaged its MSP to recommend solutions that fulfilled the needs but also would be inclined to be invested in the smaller organization’s success. The MSP recommended three solutions and Dattel and his team chose two to evaluate – ultimately selecting Xcitium.

“Choosing Xcitium was a pretty easy choice,” said Jim Flynn, Director of IT at the Alliance. “Not only does the Xcitium solution do the things that we needed, the fact that we’re a small company and that Xcitium embraced that was a major factor. We want to work within security frameworks and the Xcitium solution is perfect and designed for that. We’re not cybersecurity experts – Xcitium is.”

“The whole time we were talking with Xcitium, they were gearing every conversation, demo, and the POC specifically to our needs,” said Dattel. “They proved to us that they want to provide the best cybersecurity. It didn’t matter what size company we are. They presented a cybersecurity solution that contained all the components we would need – in one package for one price.”

The Xcitium Unified Zero Trust Platform is a comprehensive collection of natively architected components that deliver the highest levels of protection possible. The platform includes EDR, XDR, ITSM capabilities, a SIEM, and a revolutionary technology called ZeroDwell that moves protection well beyond that available from legacy EPP vendors.

“The ZeroDwell technology is big for us,” said Dattel.

“I would say it’s huge,” Flynn added. “The ability to scale up security and reduce the risk that you kind of have to accept with our previous solution is a game changer.”

The platform includes natively architected antivirus, HIPS, firewall, and ZeroDwell capabilities, designed to prevent breaches entirely.

Patented kernel-level API virtualization isolates and neutralizes unknown threats by securely executing them in a virtual environment that mimics critical system components. This proactive protection eliminates disruptions to business operations.

Unmatched visibility across endpoints, networks, and cloud, empowering organizations with a unified view of their security posture.

Natively architected SIEM provides advanced log ingestion, correlation, and real-time threat analysis without relying on third-party tools. This ensures seamless operations, enriched insights, and faster response times.

Remote Monitoring and Management tools enable seamless management of endpoints, remote access, and live remediation.

Unlike legacy endpoint protection solutions that rely on blocking known malicious executables and implicitly trusting the remaining, Xcitium's ZeroDwell technology applies dynamic detection to verify all binaries and processes – malicious, safe, or unverified. Everything categorized as unverified is immediately executed within the patented ZeroDwell technology, which virtualizes their operations in an isolated manner without disrupting business processes. This proactive approach neutralizes potential threats by isolating and analyzing their behavior before they can access or impact the host system.

“The impact of implementing Xcitium was pretty quick and really impressive,” said Flynn. “Xcitium didn’t just show us what the solution could do, they showed us what it could do within our systems and processes. Our CIS reports came back with a 30 percent score improvement. In addition, now we could have the solution ingest all our logs to create a full-fledged NOC type of procedure – something that would have cost us much more as an add-on with our previous solution. And the Xcitium team has been extremely helpful always ready to jump in and help in whatever way they could – even after we became a customer – that was a breath of fresh air for us.”

Flynn continued, “And we keep finding new features in the solution. For example, the platform includes device management and patch management capabilities. We’re like, ‘oh hey, we can do this now too!’ Every time it’s been just piling benefits on top of benefits. I was impressed with the way Xcitium builds the solution. It’s not just some loosely integrated components, it’s all purpose-built to protect companies like ours. It’s an ever-expanding value proposition.”

“Xcitium proactively makes sure that we have everything protected. Thanks to Xcitium, Alan and I sleep way better at night.”

The onboarding process was amazing,” said Dattel. “Xcitium’s attention to detail, the responsive and friendly people, and the fact that everyone was proactive and focused on our success was great -- definitely something we didn’t experience with our previous solution.”

“Xcitium proactively makes sure that we have everything protected,” said Flynn. “They provide reports and threat intelligence and ensure that we can meet our security compliance objectives. It’s not an exaggeration to say that Xcitium has changed the security posture within the company. Thanks to Xcitium Alan and I sleep way better at night.”

If your business manages critical infrastructure or demands the highest levels of security and efficiency, partner with Xcitium. Contact Us today to learn more about how we can transform your operations.