Pres Les is one of South Africa’s largest and most distinguished direct selling companies. Founded in 1971, the firm has always been a keen advocate of social and economic empowerment in a region where many don’t have the opportunities they deserve. Today, its luxury bedding, home accessories, and cookware are enjoyed in over one million homes across Southern Africa. As CIO and IT Director, Darren Levin’s mission over the past two-and-a-half years has been to digitally transform Pres Les, migrate key IT systems to the cloud, and refocus its efforts on cybersecurity. The company has over 300 full-time staff and a 14,000-strong consultant network.
Digital transformation can bring huge customer experience and operational benefits to organizations. But it also exposes them to new cyber-risks. Pres Les experienced this first-hand as it moved from paper orders as the primary mechanism for customer interaction, to becoming a modern, digital-first business. The firm rolled out new service delivery tools, a website, cloud infrastructure, and other digital innovations. Despite only launching in August 2020, its app now fields over 70% of all customer orders. As these new systems came online, the threat of phishing attacks, ransomware, and other cyber-attacks mounted. Levin found that neither native Microsoft 365 security capabilities nor an email filtering tool provided by the firm’s communications partner, were enough to block these threats. Several impersonation attacks snuck past these defenses and it became clear a new solution was required.
Pres Les employees receive large volumes of emails from customers and consultants sent as proof of payment, alongside other business-critical communications. Levin, therefore, needed an AI-powered solution to distinguish these legitimate messages from the growing number of phishing and spam emails inundating inboxes. He was also looking for a way for users to report suspicious emails for IT operations to look at—enabling them to remove threats from inboxes and neutralize malicious campaigns.
Pres Les had already partnered with UK-based business consultancy BDO for penetration testing and third-party threat assessments. BDO recommended the IRONSCALES solution to Pres Les in order to enhance email filtering and to identify/remediate advanced phishing attacks. After looking at several alternatives, Levin found they were too expensive for the specific needs of the firm. IRONSCALES’ ease of use and deployment also stood out, and after a proof-of-concept (PoC) trial lasting a couple of weeks, Levin was sold.
Pres Les is now protected by leading AI-powered email filtering and advanced phishing detection/remediation capabilities to keep threats out of their end users’ inboxes. Anything suspicious is highlighted and quarantined for the IT team to inspect, while dynamic warning banners help to raise awareness about email threats among users, says Levin. The IRONSCALES platform’s ease of use also extends to administration by Levin and his team, who can now focus on higher-value tasks while the solution works automatically in the background. Since they began using IRONSCALES, Pres Les has already seen improvements across the board—in user awareness, threat protection and IT productivity.
With IRONSCALES up and running for several months now, Levin and his team are confident to let it work in the background while they attend to more urgent work. In the meantime, the platform is continually adding new features and improvements.