CarbonHelix

Business challenge

CarbonHelix’s founders sought to develop a security operations center (SOC) that provides affordable, scalable, expert security information and event management (SIEM) solutions to businesses of all sizes.

Transformation

The founders selected QRadar software as their preferred SIEM solution, choosing to host the solution for the majority of their customers on a bare metal infrastructure delivered through IBM Cloud.

Results

Business challenge story

Offering expertise to a wide audience

When CarbonHelix was established in 2015, its founders envisioned a SOC that would provide top-notch security solutions to customers of all sizes and from a variety of industries. Their vision went further, to include affordability and an extraordinary level of expertise.

However, as co-founder Mark Precious, Principal of CarbonHelix, explains, developing that expertise also meant selecting a preferred SIEM solution. “We really feel that in cybersecurity, we need experts, not generalists. And you just simply can’t be an expert if you’re supporting lots of different security technologies.”

Precious continues: “We want to identify any type of threat, but we must be able to do that as quickly and as early as possible, because the damage that can be done by not discovering and responding to those threats quickly can be catastrophic.” Selecting a SIEM solution that could meet these stringent requirements was fundamental to the new company’s success.

The founders also had to identify the best infrastructure for their SOC offerings. Delivering market-leading security capabilities to customers ranging from small businesses to large enterprises would require a scalable infrastructure that would give CarbonHelix complete control over event management.

Transformation story

Accuracy, control and performance

CarbonHelix selected the QRadar security intelligence platform as its preferred SIEM solution. “QRadar stands out as a market leader,” explains Precious. “And at CarbonHelix, we add our own detection capabilities and we have our own data acquisition capabilities as well. Together, QRadar and CarbonHelix can deliver highly accurate results showing security incidents that need action.”

CarbonHelix prefers to provide its solutions through IBM Cloud rather than other cloud providers. Precious explains: “In security, one of the things we’re looking for is complete visibility and control. With a bare metal infrastructure provided through IBM Cloud, we have full control.”

And the combination of QRadar technology and IBM Cloud further bolsters CarbonHelix’s offerings and capabilities. “QRadar is constantly evolving its detection capabilities,” continues Precious. “With IBM Cloud and a complete bare metal infrastructure, we’re able to migrate customers to the latest infrastructure to keep their QRadar system performing its best. This year, for example, we’re moving our hosting customers to 2019 Intel processors, which will give them another performance boost at no additional cost.”

Results story

Continued growth and development

Selecting QRadar as its preferred SIEM solution has helped CarbonHelix distinguish itself as a leader in the SOC space, thanks to the solution’s affordability and scalability. Precious states: “We can deliver a more expert service at a lower cost. We can scale QRadar with organizations as they mature, as they start to acquire new facilities, or even as they just grow their security visibility.”

With IBM Cloud, CarbonHelix can offer enhanced services that are either expensive or unavailable on other cloud platforms. For example, some of CarbonHelix’s customers require several years of data archival to meet their compliance mandates. That can be expensive on cloud storage, but with IBM Cloud, CarbonHelix can offer its customers native access to low-cost cold storage.

As with most technology companies — and with security companies in particular — CarbonHelix works hard to stay a step ahead of the competition, and Precious credits his relationship with IBM as a major contributor to that. Not only does IBM’s commitment to research and development help CarbonHelix stay ahead of the latest security threats, but the expansiveness of the IBM product line helps the company continuously expand its offerings. Most recently, CarbonHelix added QRadar disaster recovery, data archival and endpoint monitoring services to its portfolio.  

“The investment that IBM is making into its products and services helps organizations like ours avoid stagnation. That’s especially important in the security industry, because what was important even a year ago is less important today. IBM keeps us ahead of that curve,” Precious concludes.

CarbonHelix

Established in 2015 by two seasoned security professionals, CarbonHelix is a security operations center (SOC) service provider based in Cheyenne, Wyoming. As part of its commitment to building expertise in a single security information and event management (SIEM) offering, CarbonHelix offers IBM QRadar solutions to customers of all sizes and in a wide range of industries.

Solution components

• 69XX-SFU IBM Cloud Platform (SQ)
• QRadar Security Info and Event Management

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