Singaporean cloud communications provider makes security a team sport with Microsoft Defender

Toku started out in Singapore as a born-in-the-cloud company and now is a leading cloud communications provider in the APAC region. Headquartered in Singapore, it helps companies of all sizes move to the cloud for their business communications. “We work closely with businesses and equip them with the engagement tools that enable them to communicate through our software quickly,” explains Eddie Vanderloot, the VP of Cyber Security at Toku.

Overhauling the company culture

When Vanderloot first joined Toku, he noticed a lack of cross-team communication and security integration. “There was the silo approach, the reluctance to share information with employees of different divisions,” he explains. “There was also the challenge of creating users. Identity management relied on manual processes to enable new employees access to files when they join the organization. So the biggest challenge for the company was to secure things through automation.”

Aside from having to manage onboarding, Toku also needed a less complicated way to manage database and asset inventory access when employees leave. Then there was managing human-related risks. “Even adopting the multi-factor authentication (MFA) to mitigate the risk for stolen passwords was a challenge,” Vanderloot adds.

“Implementing a company-wide zero trust strategy was very difficult from the IT perspective,” admits Vanderloot. “We’re fast-growing company. We needed to be cost-efficient and rely on Artificial Intelligence (AI) to handle incidents through automations, to implement the zero trust strategy, and to fulfill the ISO 27 001 requirements.” What the company needed was an easy-to-adopt endpoint security solution for its quickly growing organization of 60 people.  

Security, simplified

“We looked for an implementation that would simplify the way we approach employees, to even change the culture and how our employees collaborate,” Vanderloot shares. “After all our research, we realized that Microsoft was the most cost-effective solution on the market.”  

To make sure that Toku identified and tackled the business challenges efficiently and with the right solutions, the team turned to the Microsoft Digital Sales team for support and guidance. “We reached out and had long conversations about our business needs and Microsoft solutions that would be the right fit,” says Vanderloot. “We expressed our requirements and the Sales team took all of that and started working with other resellers to help us tailor our security roadmap and strategy. The Sales team arranged meetings with the resellers to talk about the challenges, the timeframes, the technicalities and the costs. Our Microsoft representative was a true business enabler rather than a salesperson. They gave us the privilege of showing us what we really required.”

“Not many people know this but Microsoft Defender is the only antivirus software that knows products inside Windows 10 and Windows 11,” he continues “We even tested Microsoft Defender and did a Proof of Concept from the attackers’ perspective. We realized that Microsoft is the most cost effective on the market, especially after Gartner's report reviewed Microsoft has one of the highest solution providers for the next gen antivirus. Microsoft Defender provided us with additional benefits that didn’t come with additional costs like the antivirus, the threat reports or the cloud storage.”

The Toku team moved to Microsoft Defender for protection and cloud monitoring. It then educated its staff with documentation, guidelines, and an educational security awareness program, ensuring widespread adoption and acceptance.

The shift has made it easier for the team to uphold industry standards. “The compliance manager shows us certain controls that need to be implemented,” explains Bruce Koh, the Information Security Officer at Toku. “We are given clear instructions on how to rectify certain issues in accordance with industry standards like ISO 27001 and PCI DSS. Microsoft has all the security tools in one management platform and it gives us better visibility.”  

Standing stronger

The transition brought everything the team hoped for. “When it comes to IT security, we used to score below the average compliance score. Immediately after adopting Microsoft 365 with Defender, we scored above average,” shares Vanderloot.

Of course, the Toku team had bigger ambitions. “We aimed for a very high score in IT security and compliance and we achieved it in a very short time,” Vanderloot adds proudly. With Microsoft Defender, phishing and spam incidents are also recorded and resolved automatically. And thanks to Microsoft Intune—the extension of the active directory that provides controls—Toku employees can work from anywhere in the world without compromising the new zero trust framework.  

But for Vanderloot, the best thing about the change is having an expert team available to help. “I admire the Microsoft engineering team. We’ve been working hand in hand with them and they have demonstrated an incredible amount of dedication to the project,” he says.  

Unsurprisingly, the Toku team is determined to continue working with Microsoft to cement trust and security. “For the next stage of our journey, we will continue to automate security efforts and achieve the ISO 27 001 certification and the CSA Cyber Trust Mark. We want to strengthen our company’s reputation and foster trust among our customers,” Vanderloot concludes.