Case Study: Brier & Thorn achieves scalable managed security services and faster threat detection with AT&T Cybersecurity (AlienVault USM)

AlienVault USM Powers Brier & Thorn’s Managed Security Services Practice

Brier & Thorn, a San Diego–based global IT risk management firm founded in 2010, faced a critical visibility gap during a 2013 spear-phishing incident: they could not see what attackers had accessed or whether data was being exfiltrated. They needed a quickly deployable forensics and detection tool that would alert on communications with known malicious hosts and that could later scale to federate security events across many customer networks.

Brier & Thorn deployed AlienVault USM and its Open Threat Exchange, which immediately flagged egress traffic to malicious hosts and enabled rapid forensics to identify and remediate compromised machines. The all‑in‑one USM platform let them build SOCs, launch a managed security services practice, provide cost savings and compliance support to clients, and scale to manage 100+ sensors across 70 countries, including a second SOC in Germany.

Brier & Thorn

Alissa Knight

Group Managing Partner