Niche software developer maintains focus on core business with SOC-as-a-Service

I’ve said it before: One of the best things about my job is getting to know a wide range of Barracuda customers, some of whom are in very specialized businesses that I otherwise would never have even known existed.

Geoactive Limited is a great example. This Scottish software developer creates products that enable “collaborative exploration and monitoring of subsurface terrain.” They cater to an enthusiastic user base of geologists, stratigraphers, petro-physicists, engineers, and the data managers who work with them. 

Pure cloud infrastructure

In 2022, Geoactive was spun off from its previous owners, and needed to set up an IT infrastructure from scratch. Global Security Officer and IT Manager Malcolm Brown, solely responsible for IT security, made the decision to go with a purely cloud-based infrastructure, built on zero-trust principles and strategies. Barracuda CloudGen Access, a key element of Barracuda Network Protection, provided the zero-trust architecture he wanted.

“In a modern world, nearly all software development companies have home working. So your defense is no longer where your firewall is. Zero trust networking has played a huge part in providing the security level we’ve got. It’s much better than VPN technology; it’s more granular and focused. Being able to say ‘only this user group can see that asset’ is fantastic. It’s limiting the opportunity for the threat actor to get anywhere." — Malcolm Brown, Global Security Officer and IT Manager, Geoactive Limited 

Malcolm chose Azure and Microsoft 365 as his core platforms and used Barracuda CloudGen Firewall and Barracuda Email Protection respectively to secure them. 

SOC-as-a-Service and managed XDR

Geoactive is laser-focused on devoting as much of its resources as possible to pursuing its core business and supporting its customers. So one of Malcolm’s top priorities was simplicity, ease of use, and single-pane-of-glass visibility across his entire infrastructure. 

That’s why he chose Barracuda Managed XDR to ensure a unified, highly responsive security platform to ensure complete visibility and rapid response to incidents. Moreover, the 24/7 dedicated security team—SOC-as-a-Service—that is at the core of Managed XDR made it easy for him to secure his network completely without needing a large in-house security team.

“The console is very simple and easy to understand. It gives you the information you need on a daily basis and is backed up by a 24/7 SOC, which is the important piece. They’re doing all the heavy lifting — the triage and everything. It means I’m not getting bombarded with alerts. In the first quarter, the service was triaging 150 million events for a company of just 60 people.” — Malcolm Brown

Stellar support

Every single Barracuda customer I speak to makes a point of praising our extraordinary support teams—some even cite them as the number-one reason why they continue doing business with Barracuda over years and decades. Malcolm is no exception. 

“We onboarded everything within a couple of months and learned the toolset. It’s been very easy to use and the service from the XDR support desk is great.”

And again:

“The group of people we’ve got working with us now is very, very good. The Barracuda CloudGen Access and XDR teams are great at doing deep dives and showing me the product roadmap. I feel it’s more of a partnership than a vendor-client relationship in that respect.” — Malcolm Brown

Among software developers, Geoactive Limited is uniquely qualified to provide a very specialized set of products and services. And in a way, Barracuda is too, delivering products and support that stand out for making our customers’ lives easier and more secure.

Get the complete case study and find out more details about why Malcolm and Geoactive chose Barracuda and what their journey has been like.