Case Study

Sunbelt Rentals

What we did for Sunbelt Rentals

Industry: Construction

Published: 25/09/2025

Sunbelt Rentals

Project Overview

Sunbelt Rentals UK & Ireland is the country’s largest hire company with a diverse and mobile workforce spanning multiple roles and departments. They’re committed to maintaining Information Security by ensuring its Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability (CIA). Protecting customer data and operational information is central to their business, and managing security for such a distributed team presented a challenge. Sunbelt Rentals sought a partner that could provide a proactive, collaborative managed security service, safeguarding data and operations while enabling internal teams to focus on strategic initiatives and innovation.

The Challenge

  • Protecting a geographically dispersed workforce 
  • Ensuring robust security for a non-office-based team working across multiple sites
  • Ensuring dedicated, tailored support to meet the organisation’s specific needs
  • Supporting internal teams to manage alerts efficiently without disrupting daily operations
  • Finding a partner that combined technical expertise with a collaborative, client-focused approach

The Solution

  • SEP2 established a collaborative partnership with Sunbelt Rentals, providing a tailored managed security service.
  • The team collaborated closely with internal staff, integrating with their existing operations to ensure security processes were efficient and effective.
  • By taking responsibility for monitoring and incident management, SEP2 allowed Sunbelt Rentals’ internal teams to dedicate more time to strategic projects and innovation.
  • By taking this approach, Sunbelt Rentals strengthened its overall security posture, ensuring operations and customer data remained consistently protected.

Who are Sunbelt Rentals?

Sunbelt Rentals UK & Ireland is the country’s largest hire company, providing rental equipment and managed solutions across every market and sector, including construction, industrial, energy, infrastructure, government and events. Sunbelt Rentals approached SEP2 seeking a new security operations partner to provide comprehensive protection for its widely distributed workforce and required a new security service to be implemented quickly and smoothly, ensuring protection was maintained throughout the changeover. SEP2 delivered a tailored managed security solution that integrated seamlessly with Sunbelt Rentals’ internal operations.

Why Sunbelt Rentals Chose SEP2

Sunbelt Rentals reviewed multiple security providers and selected SEP2 for its combination of technical expertise and collaborative, customer -focused approach. Dan Sutcliffe, Head of Information Security at Sunbelt Rentals, was heavily involved in the evaluation and highlighted SEP2’s culture, which emphasises honesty, engagement and staff development.

Dan also noted that SEP2’s people-powered, honest approach aligned closely with Sunbelt Rentals’ own values, ensuring the company partnered with an organisation committed to doing the right thing for its people and customers. The consistent quality of service and operational confidence provided by SEP2 reassured Dan and his team that company data and operations were effectively protected, making SEP2 the clear choice for a long-term partnership.

Looking Ahead

Dan Sutcliffe highlights that the benefits of the partnership extend beyond technical metrics. While he doesn’t focus on traditional KPIs, his confidence in SEP2 demonstrates the value of a reliable, comprehensive security service. The SEP2 system produces very few false positive and when alerts occur, they are verified and actionable.
This efficiency has allowed Sunbelt Rentals’ internal team to focus on strategic and innovative work, enhancing engagement and job satisfaction. The partnership also ensures that customer data and operations are consistently safeguarded, providing confidence across the organisation.

Dan credits SEP2’s people as a key strength, noting that their ‘Tech Driven. People Powered.’ ethos is evident in every interaction:

“Partnering with SEP2 has strengthened our ability to protect both our people and our customers. Their collaborative approach and technical expertise have allowed us to enhance our security posture while giving our internal teams the freedom to focus on innovation and strategic priorities.” – Dan Sutcliffe, Head of Information Security, Sunbelt Rentals UK & Ireland

Looking forward, Sunbelt Rentals and SEP2 will continue to collaborate on strengthening security processes, exploring new ways to protect the business and its customers, while maintaining a proactive, people-focused approach.

Testimonials

Hear From Those We Protect

We knew we couldn’t do it on our own. We didn’t have the time, and we wanted additional expertise to guide us through the process. If we tried to do it ourselves, we’d probably spend a lot of time and effort in the wrong areas.

Emails take time, people miss them even for small things, and you can end up waiting weeks for a response. Having support through channels like Slack makes a real difference. SEP2’s flexibility around how we communicate is something I really value.

During the evaluation process it was clear to me that SEP2 were the strongest candidate from a technical standpoint. During our first meeting, their ability to give immediate solutions to ongoing issues we were experiencing at the time was a breath of fresh air.

SEP2 are knowledgeable, motivated and switched on; they take ownership and they have a drive for resolution. They know their stuff! They are not merely a firewall partner, they are a cyber security partner. They take a strategic approach. They are approachable and offer additional value outside of their support contract. Working with SEP2 means we are no longer fire-fighting; rather we can now take a step back and proactively get things sorted. SEP2 say they are tech driven and people powered, and that’s exactly what they are! It all comes down to the people you are dealing with.

When we hit the limits of our knowledge, it’s having SEP2 there to say, ‘Try these things first.’ That expertise on hand is really important to us.

You’re vendor agnostic, which is key for growth, and your team are providing really good insights in terms of the alerts raised. They also provide meaningful context behind them, which is great for us as an organisation,”

To have people like that around our account that we can pick the phone up to and ask questions was refreshing. Ultimately, we trusted SEP2 and we trust you with our cyber security.

Often the term used is ‘you can’t see the wood for the trees’. Most organisations implement security tooling tools and you’ve got different dashboards. The idea is you put them into a single place, and leverage expert resource such as the SEP2 SOC that actually understands that data and work with it on a daily basis. They can assess it case-by-case and escalate it back to us at Funding Circle only when necessary. And that whole process has been really, really smooth.

They are phenomenal: both personable and very knowledgeable. Our main contact is like a fountain of knowledge. If you ask him a question, he always comes back with ten answers – all the shades of grey, not just a ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’ To me that shows the level of passion he has, and that he really wants to do things properly.

The original group of people who founded SEP2 were very deep in their knowledge of this type of technology, which can be complicated. It’s become the whole field of firewalls, intrusion prevention, antivirus, ransomware, etc. Cyber security as a whole has really ballooned, and there’s lots of dimensions to it, but you’ve managed to keep up.

They live and breathe the technology. It comes from the top, however, everyone is an expert within SEP2, from sales through to the service desk. We don’t want to wait to be told what more we can get from vendors’ products. SEP2 are great in pro-actively helping us achieve value-add solutions. They aren’t about chasing revenues, they are about providing best possible value.