The organisation has been in a strong growth phase. Numerous acquisitions and an increased focus on cloud solutions have made the IT architecture complex and confusing. The company’s success has also increased the IT security risk enormously. The internal team could not cope with the increasing need for security monitoring, especially 24×7.

From the beginning, it was clear that a service provider specialised in IT security should take over the ongoing monitoring and response 24×7. The internal team had already started talking to several service providers through existing contacts.

We expanded the search by means of renowned provider references (Gartner, Forrester, IDC) and created a list of 15 potentially interesting service providers from the USA and Europe.

In the RfI process, we narrowed this list down to 4 providers and then requested detailed proposals from them in the RfP process.

The decision-making process was presented transparently to the board and the provider preferred by the team was awarded the contract.

• Long list
• Short list
• Provider selected
• Contract signed
• Start of technical implementation

Contract successfully concluded with experienced quality provider and cost-effective contract.

At the beginning, we discussed the approach with the customer very intensively. Instead of a detailed tender with a catalogue of requirements, we focused on industry benchmarks in order to then identify the best partner from a small group who could deliver the best standardised offer for the customer.

Despite the preference for cloud / SaaS providers, the topic of data protection remains a minefield: US providers are currently among the most capable providers in the field of IT security. However, due to the current difficult legal situation for US providers ( GDPR, Privacy Shield, Schrems II), preference was given to a European provider.