Dotmatics scales security across portfolio

Dotmatics is on the cutting edge of scientific technology. Their portfolio of R&D software helps scientists transform data into insights that accelerate discoveries that can have broad-reaching implications on the health and wellness of people around the globe. The urgent work that’s powered by Dotmatics’ solutions demands the highest degree of security for company information.

Wanted: nimble security across a portfolio of companies

When Daniel Ayala joined Dotmatics as their Chief Security and Trust Officer, he saw an opportunity to update their security operations. Dotmatics relied on an inline solution to detect and prevent risky emails from hitting inboxes. Daniel wanted to move from a support model that required both the IT and Security & Trust teams to be experts in mail routing and flow to one where Security & Trust could focus on the security of the collaboration suite, and IT could focus on keeping the data moving..

Adding to the complexity, Dotmatics has a portfolio of brands, which means that mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are a regular part of business. Each new organization that enters the Dotmatics portfolio has its own technology, its own way of working, and its own approach to security. This meant that different companies were on different cloud office products–Google Workspace and Microsoft 365–and had their own security solutions. This led to a double whammy of issues: aligning around a single cloud office product would burden these companies with the friction and overhead of change plus dealing with multiple solutions for security made it impossible to get an accurate picture of each company’s true exposure to risk.

“Before Material, we were spending weeks getting access to the environment and then digging through settings to get an understanding of the security posture,” remembers Daniel. “Weeks later, we finally had a decent understanding and then and only then could we set about actually starting to fix it.” 

Fresh insights at record speed, without slowing down business

Daniel needed a solution that would allow Dotmatics’ portfolio of companies to work in a way that didn’t slow down their M&A processes, while managing their security at a level that maximized visibility without maxing out his team’s bandwidth. As he set out to evaluate solutions, he came across Material and was immediately struck by two things: 

1. Material worked seamlessly with both Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 and 
2. Material’s API-based approach opened up immediate insights beyond inbound threat detection. 

“The reality for those of us working with portfolio companies is that we can't always bring them together onto a single [cloud workspace] platform immediately. Sometimes those [cloud workspace] platforms are inextricably linked to business processes that would take huge amounts of time and money to redesign,” explains Daniel.

“When looking at Material, it was immediately apparent that we could collect all of these companies together, regardless of whether they were using Google or Microsoft, and get the benefit of a single approach to messaging security. We also got the benefit of identity and data protection very quickly and uniformly across a very bespoke set of collaboration platforms.”

Today, the M&A integration process moves much more quickly thanks to insights from Material. The security posture of every new company that comes into the Dotmatics portfolio is rapidly analyzed and understood. A process that used to take weeks now takes less than a day in Material, reducing the task load for the security team and removing friction for portfolio companies. “The signals that Material gave us were very clear, instant, and actionable, easily translating into actions that we could take to reduce the risk when we integrated a new platform,” says Daniel.

Doing more with less in the SOC

Adding Material hasn’t just accelerated the M&A process, it’s also reduced the day-to-day workload of the Security Operations Center (SOC). In an environment where the SOC is tasked with doing more without expanding headcount or bringing on a complex set of point solutions, Material has been a vital part of their ability to keep up.

“We've been able to avoid investment in other tools related to the messaging and collaboration infrastructure,” says Daniel. “With Material, we don’t have to layer a malware tool plus a DLP tool or more on top of the messaging platform. We love having one primary interface with Material.”

The breadth of data collected in the platform alongside the ability to automate workflows gives the SOC valuable time back. They can act quickly and move on to the next task without spending time manually digging for the information they need to determine whether a threat is real or not. This has significantly reduced time to respond, which is a key metric for the SOC.  “We've been able to take a relatively small security operations center and deploy messaging security and collaboration security to our entire organization without having to increase the size of that team,” says Daniel. “That's no small feat when you consider the diversity of our implementations and the global nature of our organization and our footprint. 

Material functions as an extension of the team. The platform scales the amount of work that can be done by the SOC while Material’s support ensures no question goes unanswered. Dotmatics has direct contact with the Material team and can easily reach them via Slack. And it’s not limited to the support team. Members of the product team see and respond to feedback directly, giving Dotmatics a direct view into how the Material platform is evolving.

Material secures data across the business

With Material, companies across the Dotmatics portfolio have a level of security that ensures the right information is seen by the right eyes. And that security is afforded to every employee–even Daniel. “I was looking up an old contract from a year ago to compare pricing,” recalls Daniel. “I got presented with a Material prompt because it was a document that I hadn't looked at in a while. It had sensitive information in it and before letting me read it, I was able to quickly verify my identity to make sure that I was a legitimate user.” Knowing that his information is also handled with care gives Daniel much-needed peace of mind.

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