JDL Group Cuts Assessment Time in Half with Apptega

Founded in 2012, JDL Group is a provider of crucial IT solutions for medium to large enterprises. From large-scale wireless design to managed security and compliance services, JDL group combines expertise, strategic partnerships, and the latest technologies to deliver critical enterprise solutions to its clients.

Today’s businesses face sophisticated cyber threats and ever-tightening regulations that have made it increasingly difficult to balance security and operational efficiency.  

The risk of becoming the next high-profile victim of a data breach or regulatory violation has intensified, creating a high-pressure environment where organizations must continuously monitor compliance and adapt to new threats — while still maintaining business as usual.  

To minimize this burden for its clients, JDL Group sought a partner and platform that could help simplify compliance tasks, improve visibility, and enable continuous improvement.  

Working with Apptega, JDL Group built a continuous compliance offering and proprietary program that resulted in more clients, greater program adoption, and higher efficiency in the first six months of the partnership.

A Living Compliance Nightmare

JDL Group competes in a crowded provider market where consistently landing and retaining clients depends on its ability to outperform peer organizations in how it goes to market with and delivers products and services.

“As more firms enter the space and with the proliferation of cybersecurity tools, it’s becoming difficult to stand out in the crowd,” said Larry Akinsooto, executive vice president of sales and IT operations at JDL Group. “We saw continuous compliance management as an opportunity to differentiate our business and reduce the cost of services delivery.”

Before partnering with Apptega, JDL group relied on manual processes to manage client compliance, the industry standard for managed service and security providers.

JDL Group’s teams were tracking assessment information across scattered folders and files, defining risk and recommendations manually for each control. And they were building reports in clunky spreadsheets and documents, calling the process a “nightmare.”

Clients needed greater visibility into their security postures and compliance programs to better monitor progress and identify next steps. Others, like a leading fitness brand and longtime client, sought better reporting on security goals and progress — and peace of mind by proactively protecting their reputations.    

“Their main goal was to stay out of the news by avoiding breaches and maintaining regulatory compliance with multiple industry standards,” said Dhrupal Patel, cybersecurity architect at JDL Group. “The client also wanted interactive reports to show their work to board members and other leadership teams. We received the same request from many of our clients.”

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Out of the News

Working with Apptega, JDL Group has the flexibility it needs to deploy customized and scalable compliance programs for its clients, streamlining key parts of the compliance process.

“We created a proprietary compliance program called ‘Out of the News’ that serves as a solid foundation for our service delivery,” Akinsooto said. “It's a combination of multiple regulatory frameworks that ensure mature security postures and regulatory compliance for our clients, irrespective of industry.”  

The program is the core of JDL Group’s compliance offering, built to not only help clients meet regulatory requirements but also provide them with proactive risk management and greater progress visibility.

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With Apptega’s dashboards, risk manager, and automated project management, JDL Group can efficiently pinpoint key areas for improvement, assign remediation tasks, and provide tailored recommendations to enhance cyber resilience for its clients.

“The dashboards and reports provide assignable insights compared to dealing with multiple spreadsheets or documents,” Patel said. “With heat maps, risk prioritization, and remediation reports, the Apptega platform helps our clients and teams better articulate big picture security posture and actionable insights.”

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The Results — More Clients, Higher Program Adoption, and Greater Efficiency

Apptega gives JDL Group a one-stop solution for client compliance management, streamlining a previously manual and convoluted process.

“It helps automate and integrate our compliance tasks, saving time and reducing errors,” Akinsooto said. “Apptega also enables proactive compliance through real-time monitoring, collaboration across teams, evidence management, and facilitating audit preparedness, with a comprehensive dashboard showing the cybersecurity posture of any organization we work with.” 

Leveraging its Out of the News program alongside Apptega’s powerful features, JDL Group can now easily track and mange compliance tasks for its clients. This includes conducting structured and data-driven assessments of client security and compliance maturity, a highly manual and particularly painful process before Apptega.

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With a powerful dashboard and full program visibility through Apptega, JDL Group provides clients with clear, impactful insights that they can easily share with leadership through industry-standard reports, motivating them to implement essential and priority security controls.  

“Apptega is a key part of our continuous compliance offering, and the support from their team and partner enablement process provides us with an opportunity to compete in a crowded market,” Akinsooto said.

In its first six months with Apptega, JDL Group achieved a 14% increase in managed compliance clients as well as a 22% increase in compliance program adoption.

JDL Group also cut its time spent on assessments in half and significantly improved client efficiency.

“Apptega has a compelling strategy that we believe is a crucial step for success, ”Akinsooto said. “It’s refreshing to know that we have a partner we can trust and rely on as we go to market in a competitive, ever-changing cybersecurity landscape.”