The customer | Facq
Founded in 1880 as a family business, Facq sells and distributes a complete range of bathroom, plumbing and heating products.
The challenge | An opportunity to modernize the workplace
Facq is one of those remarkable Belgian organizations that knows how to turn challenges into opportunities. Their 140 years (!) of experience must have something to do with it. As far as collaboration and communication between colleagues was concerned, Facq used to rely on open source digital tools like Open Office and Mozilla Thunderbird. But then came COVID-19.
Facq immediately deployed Microsoft Teams for direct communication between colleagues, all working from home during lockdown. Since they were open to exploring other applications, we were more than happy to guide them on their Microsoft 365 journey.
It wasn’t hard to convince Facq’s management of the benefits of Microsoft 365. However, there were two aspects that they were very keen on to get right: security and user adoption.
The process | 100% secure with MFA, zero-trust and Intune
How multi-factor authentication disarms hackers
With cybercrime on the rise worldwide, we set up Microsoft Exchange and Outlook as the new Facq email service and added a layer of security with multi-factor authentication (MFA). If a hacker somehow managed to steal credentials and log into one of the nearly 900 employee email accounts, MFA would stop them in their tracks.
Once a login attempt is made from outside the Facq network, the employee receives an automated phone call to confirm or deny that he or she is indeed the person trying to log in.
Xylos’ zero-trust security approach proves its value immediately
Another security component of the solution detects and alerts Facq’s IT staff as soon as a successful login attempt is made from outside of the expected geographical zone. This was an early success, even before the MFA was implemented.
In one case, IT received an alert about an employee who was supposedly logging in from Croatia. It sounded plausible since he was on vacation. Nevertheless, the staff followed the zero-trust principles and immediately blocked any further access. This turned out to be the right decision. Their colleague was not in Croatia and had indeed been hacked. Facq was able to immediately set things right and educate the employee on what had happened, how such an incident could be successfully avoided in the future, and how he could play an active role in doing so.
Secure and effective endpoint management with Intune
Empowering Facq’s IT staff with effective tools was reflected in our adoption of the cloud-based Microsoft Intune solution as the latest endpoint deployment and management tool.
Previously, setting up and deploying a new employee device was an excessively time-consuming process. Applications would have to be manually installed and configured one by one, easily taking an hour of follow-up per device. Now, thanks to the setup we handed over to Facq, any computer vendor that delivers a new device simply connects the new computer to Facq’s Intune in the cloud. That way, when it arrives at Facq, it takes only five minutes of minor configuration by IT staff before the end user is ready to go.
Obviously, this results in an impressive reduction in workload, but it also gives Facq the ability to strategically organize its security approach. With Intune, Facq can ensure company-wide and group-specific device compliance: from hard drive encryption to conditional device access settings (like MFA), antivirus requirements, operating system requirements, and much more.
The result | The X-factor, according to Facq
According to Andy Valgaerts, IT Engineer at Facq: “Xylos listens, understands our needs and also adapts to them. But never without giving their own honest input, which makes them trustworthy. There is no blind execution in the Xylos journey. The collaboration is great, not in the least on a human level.”
