A Managed Threat Response Force that Anticipates, Manages and Eliminates Threats: Rook Security

"Anticipate, Manage, & Eliminate.”

Rook Security was founded as a security advisory firm in 2008 in Silicon Valley. Due to J.J Thompson’s (Founder and CEO) desire to relocate back near family and be involved in growing a technical market in Indianapolis, the company was relocated to Indianapolis in 2010. Over time, Rook Security has added managed security services and its own internally-developed security tools and applications as services available to its client base, which now totals well over 100 organizations spread across the U.S. In 2014, Rook Security earned a spot on the prestigious Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing privately held companies in the United States.

Addressing the unique factor, J.J Thompson says, “We meet clients at THEIR level of security and customize solutions, which most of our competitors do not do. We also focus all of our efforts on providing additional value. For example, many security companies doing managed security essentially “throw alerts” over the wall to clients without much additional context. By contrast, we focus our efforts not on passing through alerts, but on enriching that information so our clients can make far more informed decisions about how to treat security incidents. We embed ourselves deeply within our clients’ security teams and can reach very different conclusions about how to react to security threats than our competitors who are more likely to recycle alerts and remain at an arm’s length from their client base.”

Rook in the Market
Rook Security meets its clients at their level of security and works with them over time to improve their security posture at a pace their organization can meet and afford. By offering solutions on demand, as a service, and via both the cloud or on premise – all through a scalable business model – the company has the unique ability to solve the growing number and range of cyber security threats facing corporations today and in the future.

Security at its Best
Rook Security is a managed security services provider (MSSP) that anticipates, manages, and eliminates threats. It does this by providing Advisory, Managed Security and Solution Integration Solutions to clients. Rook Security provides clients with global IT security solutions that decrease negative outcomes, increase accountability, maximize business value, and challenge the status quo. Rook Security’s advisory teams work with its clients to proactively strengthen their security posture through training, testing, assessments and other projects. Its managed security offering is a 24x7x365 solution that has its analysts working side-by-side with client teams to identify and remediate real-time security threats present in the networks its clients have entrusted to Rook Security. It has also painstakingly developed a number of security tools and solutions over the past 3 years as it works to close the gap between what current security solutions are able to do and the ideal state of security that it can see and aspire to achieve. As they work with clients in greater numbers, Rook Security sees a number of holes in the security solution landscape and continue to create better offerings for the industry.

Into the Future
At present, it operates security advisory and managed threat response teams. Advisory teams work to anticipate threats and proactively work to improve security posture as well as mitigate any vulnerabilities before they can be exploited. Managed threat response analysts work to manage and eliminate threats present in its client environments.

The future of its firm includes the continuance of these areas along with expansion into SaaS security offerings. In essence it is working to isolate the processes, automation and other “secret sauce” that makes it advisory and MTR teams efficient and offer that platform to its clients and new clients to give them the Rook Security experience even if they have a sufficient security team or security relationships, but seek to “turbo charge” their capabilities.

The Customer Centered
Its clients operate across a wide range of industries while the majority of its revenue is derived from medium to large enterprise firms. It works with marketing firms, law firms, packaging companies, local governments, banks, non-profits, hospitals, political candidates, utilities, sporting goods and other industries.

Over time, Rook Security has moved from mostly professional services clients to a much broader industry mix. Specifically, it has significantly expanded the work it performs on behalf of financial services and healthcare organizations. Some of Rook Security clients include Omnicom, Westrock, Interactive Intelligence, The Cellular Connection, Ingevity, Andretti Autosport.

“We believe that every engagement we support should result in actionable, decision-driving data that will help our clients improve their security posture.”

Meet the Master

JJ Thompson; JJ is a graduate of the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business, has over 13 years of experience serving clients in industries such as Media & Entertainment, Financial Services, High Technology, Manufacturing and Healthcare. Prior to Rook Security, JJ served Global 100 accounts through strategic incident & crisis response while at Ernst & Young.

“We are driven by the belief that we can fundamentally change the way people view IT security challenges and improve their ability to protect a company’s coveted digital assets that comprises the ultimate value of an organization and its ability to
continue operations.”