The Company

Founded in 2010 with offices in Ontario and Quebec, BioAcuity Consulting provides operations and compliance consulting services for clients in the pharmaceutical, biotech, cosmetic, and food industry. The team works with small and medium businesses ranging from 10-500 employees in Canada, the U.S., Europe, and Asia.

Julie-Lea Lipszyc, Principal of Quality & Compliance, manages IT operations as well as overseeing quality assurance, and compliance and regulatory affairs.

“We are a small, fast-growing company with amazing clients in cities around the world,” Julie-Lea shares. “Everyone on our team brings very specialized expertise in all aspects of strategy, operations, quality management, and regulation and compliance for the biopharmaceutical industry.”

The Challenge

Julie-Lea’s biggest security challenges are ensuring employees can connect safely to the BioAcuity network from any location and that client data and communications are confidential and secure.

“Our team is spread between offices in Ontario and Quebec and travels frequently to client sites across the globe. We get a lot of phishing scams as well as emails from our clients that contain malware. We are also on the internet daily researching and downloading regulatory information critical to our work and this puts us at risk,” she explains. “We must be able to share and store data safely without internal and external threats, and maintain the integrity of the data we work with. Ensuring a strong security defense against web and email threats is our top priority.”

The Solution

A happy Avast Antivirus customer for the past five years, Julie-Lea had deployed the free antivirus solution for BioAcuity employees when she joined in 2015. As the customer base grew and Internet research and email communications increased, Julie-Lea needed a business-grade security solution to keep mobile employees secure in the cloud and protect against phishing emails and web threats.

After evaluating antivirus solutions from Avast Business, Norton, McAfee, and Microsoft Defender, she chose Avast Business CloudCare and its integrated Secure Web Gateway service for web threat protection.

“After discussing our needs with the Avast Business team, I saw the advantages of strong antivirus, centralized management, and email and web threat security in one solution. CloudCare and Secure Web Gateway also offered the usability and functionality that our team was already familiar with through our experience with Avast Antivirus,” she says.

Through the CloudCare platform, the BioAcuity team is also using Antivirus Pro Plus with more than 20 features and Email Security Services. “I can now work from one platform and see the status of every device with access to many more features to deliver services, set up alerts, and see threats identified and blocked in real time,” she adds. “The VPN feature in the antivirus service is another bonus to protect our team when they are traveling to client sites and connecting to our network using public WiFi.”

Using CloudCare’s Email Security Services, email communications are encrypted and filtered for spam, viruses, and malware. Julie-Lea is also impressed with the Secure Web Gateway service, which blocks employees’ access to potentially malicious websites and prevents suspicious downloads. She adds, “We haven’t had any incidents since deploying CloudCare and Secure Web Gateway.”

The Results

According to Julie-Lea, upgrading to CloudCare and Secure Web Gateway has dramatically improved email and web protection. She has also saved time responding to email and web threats, viruses, and other potential security issues.

“In the first two months, I noticed a significant trend in threat reduction. We have reduced threats by up to 90%,” she says. “Our emails are filtered for spam and viruses. There are less phishing emails and I have more control over web threats. I estimate that I’ve improved efficiency and productivity by at least 20%.”