Case Study

Personal Group

What we did for Personal Group

Industry: Business Services

Published: 08/12/2025

Personal Group

Project Overview

Personal Group, a UK-based employee benefits and insurance company, faced a critical challenge in their security operations with their existing platform. The tool was aging, highly complex, and drowning their small security team in an overwhelming volume of false alarms. As their agreement with the former provider ended, Personal Group took the opportunity to upgrade their Security Operations capability. They chose the SEP2 Wingman Managed Detection and Response (MDR) service, which utilises the Google security platform, viewing Google as a necessary strategic partner in the evolving tech industry. The goal was to secure robust 24/7 monitoring and gain much-needed operational efficiency to shift their security focus from firefighting to strategic enablement.

The Challenge

  • Previous platform was difficult to manage, lacking innovation and containing significant technological limitations
  • Excessive alerts peaking at 10,000 per week
  • Cyber security resource stretched thin

The Solution

  • Drastically reduced alert noise, often resulting in zero escalations each week
  • Saved time allowed the analyst to focus on higher-priority strategic projects that support business growth
  • Rapid and transparent response to incidents 
  • Partnership immediately improved workload

Who is Personal Group?

Personal Group is a UK-based employee benefits, insurance and reward consultancy company. Personal Group aims to help businesses positively impact their employees' happiness, health, and protection, with both technology and services. With around 250 employees working both from their office in Milton Keynes and from home, security is a continuous challenge. As the sole information security analyst, Jack Marshall requires robust, 24/7 detection and response capabilities to protect their employee data and ensure seamless business operations.

Why Personal Group chose SEP2

Personal Group ultimately chose SEP2 as a partner due to a desire for expert support. Jack emphasised the value of having experts on board, stating: “It was nice having experts - people who actually know what they're doing whilst supporting us.” This trust was crucial for the switch to the Wingman MDR service, which provided a timely opportunity to move from their aging system to the highly advanced Google security platform. Jack noted that the new tooling offered capabilities like AI summaries and was "far more advanced compared to our previous platform for nearly the same price."

As Personal Group's sole security resource, the managed service was a practical necessity, Jack said he values: “the support from SEP2, particularly the managed security response side. It's just me and god forbid if I take a holiday, there’s nobody else to cover. So knowing that there's a dedicated team in there that can ease the workload on me, and allow me to focus on what I need to do to support Personal Group was a no-brainer.”

Finally, SEP2's collaborative ‘Wingman’ approach was vital to their success. Jack appreciated that, unlike other suppliers who hide details, his team got full visibility, and the engineers "actually handheld us a lot and actually taught us the platform ourselves."

Working with SEP2

The partnership with SEP2 led to immediate and significant improvements in Personal Group’s security operations. Most significantly, the SEP2 team's proactive management resulted in a complete transformation of Jack's personal workload. He described the result as a "night and day difference," explaining that: “there's been weeks where I've had zero escalations or zero alarms to look at because SEP2 have already picked up the low-hanging fruit, realised it's a false positive or realised it's nothing and they've dealt with it straight away.”

This helped significantly in lifting the severe pressure of dealing with the "10,000 alarms a day" he previously faced. Beyond the daily operations, Jack praised the speed of deployment, describing the onboarding process as "really smooth," Jack said: “The whole process was fantastic. We'd set out a multi-week plan. On the kickoff day we actually had the guys come down to Milton Keynes and we got most of the plan achieved in one day.”

Looking to the Future

Moving forward, the relationship with SEP2 represents more than just a managed service: it provides the stability Personal Group needs to grow their security maturity. With the foundational work of monitoring and alerting now efficiently handled by SEP2’s experts, Jack is empowered to dedicate his time to strategic, forward-thinking projects that directly support the business.

He looks forward to the continuing collaboration with the SEP2 engineers, pointing out the "passion and dedication" that makes them feel like an extension of his team. Overall, he emphasised the peace of mind whilst working with SEP2: "it's nice knowing that we can take time to do the important things, or take time off and not have to worry."

Testimonials

Hear From Those We Protect

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.

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.