Milestone Financial Engineers Uses Alcion for Secure Microsoft 365 Data Protection

CUSTOMER SPOTLIGHT

Industry: Business Consulting / Accounting

ABOUT MILESTONE FINANCIAL ENGINEERS

Milestone Financial Engineers began as a technology-focused accounting firm that provided customized accounting solutions from bookkeeping to CFO-level services. More recently, their customers have driven them to also add a technology consulting and outsourcing division that helps with everything from Microsoft 365 administration to data warehousing and data mining. They have clients from all verticals across multiple states and countries.

Bryan Whiting is the CTO and one of the partners at Milestone Financial Engineers. He has a background in accounting and operations but has mostly focused on technology over the last several years. Apart from internal responsibilities, he also works as an outsourced CIO or CTO for his clients. Bryan and his team at Milestone manage multiple Microsoft 365 tenants for their clients.

The Challenge

Milestone Financial Engineers knew they needed a backup solution for Microsoft 365 as they were aware of the shortcomings of relying on the recycle bin to protect against cyber threats and accidental data loss. They had evaluated solutions in the past, including an add-on to their current backup product, as well as the leading software product solution for Microsoft 365 data protection. One of the main impediments was the setup complexity of these on-premises solutions. Total cost of ownership (TCO), including everything from licensing cost to time spent configuring, patching, and upgrading was also a concern. Finally, given that Milestone Financial Engineers is in the finance space with clients in equally sensitive areas, they were also looking to address customer requirements for compliance and long-term retention.

Securing Microsoft 365 Data Protection with Alcion

With a focus on ease of use and operational simplicity, Alcion’s Backup-as-a-Service platform easily solved Milestone Financial Engineers challenges around data protection. They measured time from onboarding to first backup in single-digit minutes. Alcion not only solved pain points around ease of use, operational complexity, and cost effectiveness but also started addressing emerging concerns around ransomware prevention and malware detection.

Key Benefits

Ease of Use

With no software to install and no advanced configuration required, Bryan was able to onboard his company and clients and start protecting data in minutes. A clean modern UI with simplified yet robust workflows allowed him to easily create backups, configure policies, and perform restores.

No Operational Pain

With a SaaS platform, Alcion freed Bryan from maintaining, patching, and upgrading software and avoided the operational pain he had run into with previously evaluated offerings.

Secure Backups

Alcion’s multi-layered security model with end-to-end encryption, strong tenant isolation, and per-tenant encryption keys ensured data safety for Milestone Financial Engineers’ sensitive data.

Malware Detection

Alcion’s malware detection and incident reporting delivered instant value to Milestone Financial Engineers’ customers that they don’t find in many other backup products.

Ransomware Protection

Delayed and cancelable backup deletion prevents backups from being easily targeted by hackers or even malicious insiders, addressing a key risk at Milestone Financial Engineers.

Robust Backups

Given the nature of their business, Milestone Financial Engineers had larger than average Exchange inboxes and OneDrive drives. Alcion’s backup engine, purpose-built to work with the Microsoft Graph API unpredictable latencies and error rates, delivered fast reliable backups for all their users.

Compliance and Long-Term Retention

With many backups captured by default, Alcion allows Milestone Financial Engineers to meet compliance requirements and retrieve old data if requested by clients.

No Training Required

Built for both IT generalists wearing multiple hats as well as experienced backup admins, Alcion allowed for self-guided onboarding and backup workflow creation within minutes. No training or documentation was required at any point.