Executive Summary

When presented with the opportunity to participate in an inaugural AWS Competency Program as a result of years of close industry collaboration with AWS through companies like Australia's 1st AWS Premier Partner in APJ Bulletproof Group Ltd, 6pillars created a next generation Managed Security Service Provider and attained AWS' Level 1 MSSP Competency.

The Challenge

AWS Competency Programs are designed to identify, validate, and promote AWS Partners with demonstrated AWS technical expertise and proven customer success. AWS Level 1 MSSP Partners are vetted, validated, and verified against a high bar to achieve the AWS Competency designation. 

The first challenge was to establish whether achievement of the requirements was possible within the timeframes involved. After some discussion with the core cofounder team (all of whom had successfully executed together as a team in previous cloud management businesses), a project around strategy, prototyping, partner and customer validation and launch milestones was created.

The next challenge was to apply startup best practice to the requirements of an MSSP. The team quickly defined that, while the impression of MSSPs is of a group of advanced technology based providers, like many service providers, that have changed little over several decades.

To this end, the core team determined that the following traits needed to be incorporated in the nascent company:
 
- Best Practice
- Scalability
- Value that grows over time

With these values front of mind, the team used their industry experience to create the concept of 6pillars and Australia's 1st Automated Cyber Security and Continuous Compliance was born.

6pillars’ Solution

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Best Practice
 

The team started with the framework of the AWS MSSP program framework of requirements and arrived at the conclusion that they all reflected one trait: Best Practice.

AWS' Well Architected Framework was the starting point for defining AWS Security Best Practice. 

It was quickly established that by leveraging a comprehensive suite of AWS native security and compliance services, 6pillars could then focus on the core of the offering: automation.
 

Scalability

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When reviewing existing MSSP offerings, automation was established as the obvious focus to deliver both scalability and security best practice in real time.

 

The team referenced existing frameworks to develop what has now become 6pillars' Patent Pending automation platform which references a comprehensive Control Automation Library to deliver automated cloud security best practice in real time and, as a result, continuous compliance with a growing number of leading international security standards.

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Value that grows over time

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If automation of best practice controls could deliver significant value for customers today, as the number of standards and controls grew over time, the team could see that the Control Automation Library (and as a result the value of the service) would grow as automation for more standards and security best practice controls were released over time.

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In addition, the opportunity emerged to deliver customised automation to customers that would not only build a customer's own automation library but be able to create a Customer Automation Library referenced by the entire customer base, resulting in accelerated growth of value over time across all 6pillars' customers.

Lift Shift Secure

In addition to adopting existing AWS environments to dramatically improve their security posture and ensure it on a continuous basis through automation, 6pillars also developed its unique "Lift Shift Secure" offering.

Lift Shift Secure, as the name suggests, takes the concept of "Lift and Shift" and develops it further to allow customers to:

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• Deploy a fresh, compliant and automated environment

• Lift and Shift existing or new environments into it

• Secure their workload through 6pillars' automation on a continuous, real time basis

Why 6pillars chose AWS

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6pillars' chose AWS as the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform, offering over 200 fully featured services from data centers globally. 6pillars also saw that AWS offered the most comprehensive suite of integrated security and compliance services.

 

Finally, the 6pillars team saw that development of an automation framework would be accelerated due to AWS' service integration.

Results and Benefits

Initial pilot customers quickly established that they were able to leverage 6pillars' deployment of AWS' security and compliance tools like AWS Security Hub, Control Tower, GuardDuty, Config combined wth 6pillars' automation platform and Control Automation Library to deliver significant benefits:

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• Greatly improved security posture

• Remediation of security issues in real time

• Continuous compliance with leading international standards

• Reduced operating costs associated with compliance

• Increased revenue from customers requiring compliance

 
“The achievement of AWS Level 1 MSSP Competency as a global launch partner of the inaugural MSSP Program is a testament to the entire 6pillars team's vision, dedication and ability to execute."  said Lorenzo Modesto, 6pillars CEO.

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"When combined with the validation and enthusiasm from AWS, partners and customers, our goal of creating a scalable MSSP platform and service that provides customers' with growing value over time is now a reality that can be enjoyed by customers around the globe to dramatically improve their security posture and enjoy the benefits of continuous compliance."