Distinctive Americas strengthens cyber security with CloudClevr
Distinctive Americas, founded in 2007, offers specialist holiday services in Latin America and Antarctica. They aim to provide truly memorable holidays tailored exactly to suit each customer’s needs.
The challenge
Distinctive Americas had been working with CloudClevr for basic IT support, and to manage their Microsoft 365 set up. IT wasn’t always a top priority for them but it became a crucial aspect for the business since shifting to remote operations during the pandemic.
In 2022, CloudClevr proactively approached the company with some recommendations to improve its IT operations and cyber security posture.
Daniel Benians, Managing Director of Distinctive Americas realising the growing importance of IT for everyone decided that it was time for a change.
“We knew it was important to be proactive with security. We didn’t want to wait for something bad to happen before we improved our cyber resilience.”, explains Daniel.
“We were fairly reactive with IT before”, Daniel admitted.
“One of our main pain points was having a single OneDrive login for everyone in the company. Everyone could see everything that was added on OneDrive and role-based access control was not possible. It was hard to lock down the sensitive information we had, which wasn’t great from a security and privacy point of view.”
“We knew this wasn’t the right way to do it, but thought it took a huge amount of effort to fix it”, says Daniel.
The solution
CloudClevr set up a SharePoint site that made the lives of everyone at Distinctive Americas much easier. Now they have role-based access control that allows them to restrict sensitive information access to only the right people within the company.
In addition to this, CloudClevr implemented Bitdefender to proactively monitor, manage and respond to cyber security issues and Microsoft Intune for endpoint device management.
“Before, we were just using a standard antivirus solution. Now with Bitdefender, we’ve got a solid base level of security. It’s also great to know that all our individual devices are compliant with company policy,” said Daniel.
The results
Since implementing CloudClevr’s recommendations, Distinctive Americas has seen a huge reduction in security alerts, going from hundreds each month to just one or two.
“It’s reassuring to know we’ve done what we could to protect ourselves to a good level,” Daniel reflected. “Before, we had unprotected personal devices, and we work remotely, often abroad, connecting to open Wi-Fi networks. Now, we feel much more secure.”
The improvements to their SharePoint system have also resulted in faster access to data, increased flexibility, and a seamless transition.
The operational impact of this switch was minimal, which came as a pleasant surprise to the team.
“I was a bit concerned that everything would change after we switched over. But actually, nothing got harder—it all works as it used to, if not better. Search is quicker, and everything’s more organised and more secure.”
“CloudClevr was always on hand to give us friendly and professional advice and the whole team was pleasantly surprised by how little actually changed in reality. Your efforts in completing this migration so painlessly and with virtually no impact on our day-to-day business is much appreciated!”, says Daniel.
Looking ahead
Now that Distinctive Americas has improved its IT infrastructure, they’re eager to explore additional services from CloudClevr. One key area of interest is Clevr360, a tool designed to provide a holistic view of their entire IT estate by connecting to different services such as Microsoft, RingCentral, Avaya and more.
“We’re now using more of CloudClevr’s services than before,” Daniel said. “I’m definitely interested in Clevr360, especially since logging into multiple portals to manage everything can be annoying. Having more oversight of our Microsoft products and licenses in one place would be really helpful.”, Daniel concluded.
