Laura Hyde |
According to Microsoft’s Digital Defense Report 2024, its customers are confronted with over 600 million cyberattacks each day. This alarming statistic underscores the critical need for organisations to take decisive action against these attacks. They need the right expertise, tools, policies, processes and robust user training to effectively and efficiently combat these threats.
Cybersecurity experts like Chris Drake, founder and CEO of Armor Defense, are essential allies in this fight. “Armor was founded in 2009 after a hard lesson: a customer at my previous company was hacked; it wasn’t just business – it was personal,” says Drake. “That breach became the spark that created Armor, which has one mission: to ensure no company suffers like that again.”
Drake and his team of experts now protect over 1,500 companies across 40 countries, outmanoeuvring threats in the cybersecurity battleground. “We are trusted by Fortune 500 companies, fast-growing startups, and everything in between,” says Drake. “Between you and the threat is our promise to shield our customers from cyberthreat actors looking to cause them harm.”
Armor works continuously to adapt its services to stay ahead of sophisticated actors. “We gather intelligence from a wide array of sources and follow up with enrichment, research, investigation and correlation to ensure accuracy and relevance,” says Drake. “Upon synthesising the data, we tune controls and rules to enhance detections without increasing the number of false positives. This tuning is an essential part of our promise to our customers. We show them meaningful and actionable alerts without creating alert fatigue.”
Armor customers get peace of mind with this comprehensive approach. “Our goal was to find a managed detection and response partner we could trust to safeguard our organisation and show us the actions taken to protect our unique environment,” says Keith Buck, chief innovation officer at ViTel Net, a telehealth provider. “Armor provides this security intelligence and optimises the tools we already have, eliminating redundancy, which helps us save money. Its security operations centre (SOC) gathers the insights without moving our data, so there is no vendor lock-in. We can now focus on growing our company.”
In 2022, Armor formed a strategic partnership with Microsoft. Armor holds a Microsoft Specialist Designation in Cloud Security and Threat Protection and is a member of the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association (MISA). “As a MISA member, we provide Microsoft with input on the threat intelligence we are gathering and we benefit from its continuous investment in cybersecurity research and development, ensuring our clients receive world-class solutions,” says Drake.
Read more: We explore how Microsoft is helping to deliver a secure future in our Spring 2025 cover story
In early 2025, Armor released its Nexus portal, designed to give customers a window into the heart of Armor’s SOC, allowing organisations to view every action taken to neutralise threats in real time. The portal also shows detailed threat hunter findings and tailored recommendations.
“Nexus helps organisations with global operations or multiple subsidiaries to see what’s happening across their organisation,” concludes Drake. “Our holistic approach ensures we address every threat. We guarantee that a customer will be notified of a critical security incident within minutes of Armor’s identification of a security incident. With Nexus, cybersecurity is no longer a reactive measure but a proactive and adaptive strategy that grows with our clients.”
Discover more insights like this in the Spring 2025 issue of Technology Record. Don’t miss out – subscribe for free today and get future issues delivered straight to your inbox.