Morgan Sindall: Building a security architecture to meet the needs of the construction industry
About Morgan Sindall
Morgan Sindall is a construction and regeneration group, comprising eight businesses with one unified culture. It employs 6,900 people working to create long-term, sustainable value in the built environment.
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Contact usAbout Secrutiny
Secrutiny is a managed security services provider that identifies cybersecurity risks, determines effective processes, and builds security solutions.
Morgan Sindall uses Chronicle to ensure that it is able to secure its data and its customers’ data from increasingly sophisticated attacks by cybercriminals.
Google Cloud results
- Enables ingestion and analysis of vast amounts of data, and has parsed 150 billion events (which is 0.5 petabytes of data)
- Empowers a SIEM approach to security in partnership with a third-party SOC
- Provides cost certainty in a business working to tight margins
- Improves detection accuracy
- Reduces time to incident resolution
Equips group with a 360° security overview
Information security is a field that’s always changing. As businesses and other organizations steadily increase their digital presence and pivot to new ways of working, security executives are having to evolve to counter new threats. With the growing sophistication of cybercrime attacks, information security professionals across all industries are having to work smarter and harder to tackle these threats.
Focusing on urban regeneration, creating affordable housing and delivering public, commercial and social infrastructure across the UK, Morgan Sindall holds a vast amount of sensitive data. With almost 7,000 staff working across its eight complementary businesses to create long-term, sustainable value in the built environment, it knew it faced a challenge to safely optimize and secure this data. To achieve this, Morgan Sindall recognized that it needed to update its information security infrastructure to give the business its best chance of protecting valuable customer data, so it turned to Chronicle and Google Cloud to achieve this ambition.
"What we were looking for was a supportive security solution," says Neil Binnie, Head of Information Security and Compliance at Morgan Sindall. "Information security is a dynamic environment, so we were looking for someone that we could grow with. For us, that was Chronicle and Google Cloud. They’re investing heavily in security and pushing the boundaries of their offering. That gives us confidence that our security platform is going to remain fit for purpose well into the future."
"What we were looking for was a supportive security solution. Information security is a dynamic environment, so we were looking for someone that we could grow with. For us, that was Chronicle and Google Cloud."
—Neil Binnie, Head Of Information Security and Compliance, Morgan SindallSelecting Chronicle to bolster security
Price, scalability, and functionality were among the main attractions for Morgan Sindall in using Chronicle as the key tool in this new setup. Morgan Sindall generates a vast amount of data, but was limited in the amount of information it could store and process under its previous setup, which charged based on data ingestion rate. This restricted the company’s ability to analyze information over a longer period of time to detect potential signs of suspicious activity.
"With Chronicle, we don’t have to worry about whether we can afford to monitor and ingest data. For me, that’s the most transformative part of the product. As a business, we’re working to tight margins, so the value of the cost certainty Chronicle offers was something upper management could really get behind," says Binnie. "If there’s a new source of data that I think could be interesting to explore, it's not going to cost us more to work with it. Add to that the scalability and functionality of the platform, and you’ve got a really great piece of technology."
Sustainability was another key factor in this decision. Morgan Sindall is taking great strides in this area, including setting a goal of Net Zero carbon emissions by 2030, as well as planting more than a quarter of a million trees in the UK as part of an ambitious 25-year investment plan that aims to revitalize areas of the country’s woodlands. Google has similar commitments to sustainability, which align well with Morgan Sindall’s ambitions. "We always look to partner with companies that have a good environmental record and a sustainable ethos," Binnie adds. "Particularly when it comes to a Net Zero climate commitment. It’s fair to say that we are aligned with Google on our ambitions, and this was certainly a factor in our decision to partner with them."
"With Chronicle, we don’t have to worry about whether we can afford to monitor and ingest data. For me, that’s the most transformative part of the product."
—Neil Binnie, Head Of Information Security and Compliance, Morgan SindallOvercoming existing limitations
Part of Binnie’s remit at Morgan Sindall is to ensure that the organization uses best practices across its information security landscape. "I’m interested in problem-solving," he adds. "And the challenge for Morgan Sindall was that we needed to ensure we had appropriate protections in place to respond to the threat landscape and the risks that we face. Previously there was no centralized security event monitoring. There was lots of monitoring going on and the company was very security capable, but we weren't getting the joined-up view we wanted."
To connect these dots, Binnie and his team made the decision to start using a security information and event management (SIEM) approach. To achieve this, it works with Secrutiny, a specialist security partner, which provides Morgan Sindall with a managed security operations center (SOC) service, powered by Google Cloud and its security infrastructure, most notably Chronicle.
"Our customers choose our security operations suite for its disruptive approach to building a modern threat detection, investigation, and response program," says Ian Morris, Founder, Secrutiny. "Chronicle is the turnkey partner enabling us to connect the dots faster with answers from multiple data sources and quickly and accurately mitigate possible threats our customers face."
"Our customers trust us to look after their data, so our reputation is important to us. But the bad guys are out there and they’re not going away. We feel that Chronicle is the best tool available to us in countering potential attacks."
—Neil Binnie, Head Of Information Security and Compliance, Morgan SindallLooking to the future
Morgan Sindall is one of the earlier adopters of Chronicle in the UK, and Binnie believes the partnership will continue well into the future. "Data protection and data encryption is the hot topic at the moment among our clients," he explains. "When a company experiences a data breach, it has a big impact. We need to reassure people that we're doing everything in our power to protect them."
"We process large volumes of personal or commercially sensitive data. Our customers trust us to look after their data and our reputation is important to us. But the bad actors are out there and they’re not going away. We feel that Chronicle is the best tool available to us in countering potential attacks."
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact us
About Morgan Sindall
Morgan Sindall is a construction and regeneration group, comprising eight businesses with one unified culture. It employs 6,900 people working to create long-term, sustainable value in the built environment.
About Secrutiny
Secrutiny is a managed security services provider that identifies cybersecurity risks, determines effective processes, and builds security solutions.