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April 07, 2023

Nordic Pet Care Group takes care of pets while Microsoft Defender for Business handles security

Regardless of an organization’s size, cybersecurity should be a prerequisite for success in today’s connected world, and Nordic Pet Care Group is a perfect example. The company is big enough to enjoy a strong market share in Northern Europe and continuing expansion, but at 220 employees, it’s too small to sustain a large IT team. It solved this quandary by engaging with multitalented infrastructure solution provider Atea Danmark and implementing Microsoft Defender for Business. The result: a reimagined security posture that provides enterprise-level protection at a small or medium-sized business price tag. With its Microsoft 365 productivity solutions, Azure, and Power Apps, Nordic Pet Care Group is ready to keep flourishing.

Nordic Pet Care Group

“Microsoft Defender for Business is the piece we needed to complete the cybersecurity puzzle. Now I can design a small or medium-sized business environment with the same security as an enterprise customer.”

Palle Hedegaard, Technology Architect, Atea Danmark

Taking care of humans’ best friends—and business

Pet owners and animal lovers throughout Northern Europe trust Nordic Pet Care Group for everything from seed for wild birds to clothing and food for pampered pets. While 40 percent of its sales are concentrated in Denmark, most of the remaining 60 percent occur in the rest of Northern Europe, with a small number of sales going to North American markets. That international marketplace and an increasing attack surface challenge medium-sized companies like Nordic Pet Care Group (NPCG), which has 220 employees and a three-person team to handle all IT-related tasks, including operations and cybersecurity. 

The company isn’t alone. According to Statista, there are about 333 million small or medium-sized businesses across the globe. Expanding rapidly into new markets, NPCG worried about potential cyberattacks in fresh territory. The company found its answer to the security challenge when it engaged with leading Northern European IT infrastructure solution provider Atea Danmark and deployed Microsoft Defender for Business, adding endpoint device management and security with Microsoft Intune

Starting from square one

Companies are organic entities, growing through mergers and acquisitions, and they change with the times, consumer demand, and fluctuating supply chains. When Best Friend Group and Vital Petfood Group merged the IT infrastructure for all the companies in the Group in 2019, their combined infrastructure was entirely on-premises, including a new datacenter. The IT team also managed several virtual machines, and the entire infrastructure was protected by a firewall and Panda Antivirus software. Although the company had deployed a security information and event management (SIEM) system, it didn’t interoperate with all of NPCG’s systems. 

Hardy Vesterbæk, IT Specialist at Nordic Pet Care Group, was concerned about NPCG’s security given its 150 endpoints and the effects of change on the company’s operational technology (OT) function. “No company can exist without highly secure OT today,” he says. “Cyberattacks increased during COVID-19, and the war between Russia and Ukraine has worsened the situation, with more hacking attempts originating in Russia than ever before, making our entrance into foreign markets even more worrisome.” Threat investigation wasn’t possible in that siloed environment, and complexity stemming from the company’s growth also affected his team’s efficiency. With three instantiations of on-premises Active Directory, each controlling access for multiple endpoints, access control was a challenge. 

The pandemic hastened the company’s planned Microsoft 365 rollout. “Microsoft 365 is a complete solution, and no other solution set offers this degree of interoperability,” says Vesterbæk. “The consistency and compatibility inherent to Microsoft solutions adds value, especially the ability to control everything from a single management system.” 

With so much going on, the small NPCG IT team engaged with Atea in 2020 for help supporting its Microsoft applications. A year later, NPCG commissioned a red team test that confirmed the need for a consolidated cybersecurity makeover and submitted a three-year plan. In keeping with its Chief Financial Officer’s strict adherence to using separate firms for cybersecurity testing and implementing security solutions, NPCG entrusted the task to Atea. 

Achieving advanced cybersecurity with multidirectional collaboration

Atea was an easy choice for Vesterbæk. “We’ve worked with various partners for IT services, but they tend to specialize in only a few areas,” he says. “Atea offers a large palette of services, and it excels at them.” Atea was equally happy to take Nordic Pet Care Group as a client. “Many companies confide that they’d like to use our services but worry that they aren’t large enough,” says Joachim Engelbrecht, Key Account Manager at Atea Danmark. “But we’re a one-stop shop for all of our customers’ needs, no matter how big or small they are.” 

That focus on small or medium-sized business cybersecurity needs also made Atea an ideal design partner for Microsoft as it developed Defender for Business. Atea suggested improvements to the Defender for Business dashboard and security recommendations, lightening the lift for these busy customers. “Like enterprise customers, small or medium-sized business customers work from anywhere, and they need enterprise-level security,” insists Palle Hedegaard, Technology Architect at Atea Danmark. He fully appreciates these businesses’ need to focus on the mission rather than cybersecurity—keeping a security expert on staff and immersed in the portal simply isn’t feasible. That means quick guidance when security events occur and fast remediation. “Microsoft Defender for Business is the piece we needed to complete the cybersecurity puzzle. Now I can design a small or medium-sized business environment with the same security as an enterprise customer.” 

NPCG extended its security controls by collaborating with an Intune specialist at Atea who worked with Vesterbæk to implement optimal configuration protocols. “A general understanding of Defender for Business and Intune is all we need to be effective with the tools,” says Vesterbæk. “It’s easy to test different configurations to build up security.” Monthly syncs with Atea keep the NPCG modernization journey on track. Vesterbæk was gratified at the fast improvement, especially when it came to visibility into content users were storing in outdated formats. “Reducing the attack surface can test our users,” he explains. “Our use of Intune revealed several Excel documents in outdated versions, which inspired an educational campaign to teach our people how to convert their content to the newest and safest formats.” Adds Hedegaard, “Naturally, few of our small or medium-sized business customers work in Intune as much as Nordic Pet Care Group does, but the dashboards are so simple and streamlined that it’s easy for them to be effective.” 

Buying time with heightened cybersecurity

Nordic Pet Care Group’s efforts in finding the right cybersecurity partner and configuring its new solutions quickly has paid dividends. With its Defender for Business rollout, NPCG reimagined the way its hardworking IT team functions. “The difference since moving from Panda Antivirus to Defender for Business is night and day,” says Vesterbæk. “We’re no longer managing endpoint by endpoint, and we can manage everything centrally from a single portal for the first time.” Hedegaard values the connectedness of the solutions. “Defender for Business provides unified reporting that helps our small or medium-sized businesses easily stay on top of security events,” he says. 

And the team doesn’t need to focus on a security portal all day long. “It alerts us to events, so we don’t need to manually check our status,” says Vesterbæk. His team also enjoys the flexibility it gains with Power Apps. “I use Microsoft Power Platform a lot,” he continues. “It’s a way for us to add customized functionality wherever we need it.” He looks forward to continuing NPCG’s modernization journey with Azure and Azure Virtual Desktop. “Having features that work with Azure Virtual Desktop capabilities like Universal Print is going to make life easier for everyone,” he says. 

The centralized management possible with unified Microsoft systems is worth a great deal to a small IT team that’s supporting a growing company, and the proof is in NPCG’s improved Microsoft Secure Score, which is now up to 82. “I believe in the Microsoft solution set,” concludes Vesterbæk. “Everything works so seamlessly. That’s enormously valuable to our team and our users.” 

Find out more about Nordic Pet Care Group on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

“The difference since moving from Panda Antivirus to Defender for Business is night and day. We’re no longer managing endpoint by endpoint, and we can manage everything centrally from a single portal for the first time.”

Hardy Vesterbæk, IT Specialist, Nordic Pet Care Group

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