CASE STUDY
C
Challenge
The IBL Group is the largest conglomerate
in Mauritius. Formed in 2016, IBL Group
was born from the merger of GML and
Ireland Blyth Limited, two of the largest
conglomerates in Mauritius at the time.
Today, it employs more than 26,000 people
in over 280 investment and operational
companies, spanning logistics, banking,
insurance, finance, retail and hospitality.
With so many businesses and users in its
stable, IBL Group wanted an email system
that was easy to manage and saw the value
in shifting its on-premise email solution to
Microsoft Office 365 in the cloud.
“The moment we did that, our attack
surface increased substantially,” said Mevin
Goonmeter, IBL Group Infrastructure
Operations Manager.
“It was a massive wake-up call for us.
We realised we were dangerously under-
protected, and we had to act fast.”
Solution
“At the time we were using the Advanced
Threat Protection (ATP) security feature in
Office 365, but we saw immediately that
it wasn’t enough. As a global enterprise
with interests in nearly every industry,
we get a lot of attention in the media
– which also means a lot of attention
from cybercriminals. We could see via our
monitoring mechanism that our Office 365
accounts were being continuously targeted
with brute force and impersonation attacks
that were especially concerning.
Laurent Fayolle, IBL’s Group IT Executive
and Acting CIO, says the Group wanted
more than an out-of-the-box solution from a
vendor that they’d never see again.
“We were looking for a partner more than
anything else,” he said.
“We didn’t have any cybersecurity
governance in place, and we needed a
provider that could guarantee a certain
level of protection as well as provide a
certain level of comfort to the Audit and
Risk Committee. They needed to guide us
towards the right decisions, configure the
system according to our needs, and be
prepared to assist whenever we needed it.”
IBL Group found that support in Grove, a
Mimecast reseller and partner.
“I met with Chad Bartlett from Grove and
appreciated that he never once tried to sell
me anything,” added Fayolle.
“He asked intelligent questions and tried
to understand the challenges we faced in
the company and the country. This type of
cautious and skilled approach is something
I’ve yet to see from most local IT providers.
Before we even spoke about solutions, Chad
knew that he had to understand our business
and challenges.”
WE DIDN’T HAVE ANY CYBERSECURITY
GOVERNANCE IN PLACE, AND WE NEEDED A
PROVIDER THAT COULD GUARANTEE A
CERTAIN LEVEL OF PROTECTION.
Goonmeter says IBL did due diligence on
a number of solutions and took their time
benchmarking and comparing different
options. After a successful proof-of-concept
covering 200 users, IBL Group signed
a three-year contract for 2,000 users.
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