TOTE Strengthens Cyber Resilience with TierPoint Adapt MDR
Discover how TOTE Resources expanded its TierPoint partnership with Adapt MDR to improve threat visibility, support compliance readiness, and connect cybersecurity with infrastructure resilience.
“The product is there. The product works. But it’s trust. I trust TierPoint so much that I can sleep at night, not even worrying about a thing.”
- Danny Smith
VP of Information Technology, TOTE Resources
Background
TOTE is a logistics and shipping organization supporting critical supply chain operations across markets including Alaska, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and mainland United States. As the business grows more digital, cybersecurity has become directly tied to operational continuity, customer trust, and compliance.
TOTE’s IT team supports key systems, including those used for shipment booking, container tracking, vessel loading, and electronic data interchange. The organization also has compliance needs tied to government-related vessel management, CMMC, NIST-aligned controls, controlled unclassified information, and maritime cybersecurity expectations.
TOTE already trusted TierPoint for private cloud, managed IT, storage, backup, disaster recovery, firewall management, and security services. As its cybersecurity needs evolved, TOTE expanded that relationship with TierPoint Adapt Managed Detection and Response (MDR).
The Challenge
For TOTE, the cybersecurity challenge was clear: protect an increasingly distributed environment while giving leadership the visibility and confidence to understand risk.
The organization already strengthened its infrastructure foundation with TierPoint, but its security needs were growing. In addition to whether a threat had been blocked, the team needed to know what was happening across users, endpoints, and connected systems as they expanded across the business. They also needed forensic detail that could support compliance and reporting obligations in the event of a cyber incident.
That level of visibility was especially important in a maritime and government-related operating
environment. TOTE needed to be prepared to explain what happened, how it happened, where activity moved, what systems were affected, and how the organization responded.
At the same time, TOTE runs a lean IT organization. The team needed security depth, threat intelligence, incident insight, and compliance support without building every capability internally. TOTE needed a cybersecurity partner that could help them:
- Improve visibility across endpoints, infrastructure, and logs
- Reduce blind spots across remote and distributed users
- Support CMMC, NIST-aligned, and maritime cybersecurity expectations
- Provide forensic detail for incident response and reporting
- Correlate security activity across a complex environment
- Extend a lean internal IT team with experienced security specialists
The Solution
TOTE expanded its TierPoint relationship with Adapt MDR to gain more unified, actionable visibility.
Unlike standalone MDR tools, Adapt MDR could build on TierPoint’s existing knowledge of TOTE’s infrastructure, workloads, perimeter, backup, and disaster recovery environment. That context mattered. Beyond alerting, TierPoint could help TOTE understand activity across its broader environment and connect security insight to operational response.
For TOTE, one of the biggest differentiators was the single-pane visibility Adapt MDR provides. The team no longer had to rely on disconnected systems. Adapt MDR unifies security data, so TOTE can better evaluate activity across endpoints, logs, infrastructure, and other systems.
Endpoint visibility was especially valuable. TOTE had strong infrastructure protection, but remote and distributed users added complexity. With Adapt MDR agents in place, the team gained granular insight into suspicious activity, user behavior, files, scripts or processes, and potential phishing-related exposure.
“We designed Adapt MDR for security leaders, not just network engineers or security engineers. The goal is to help leaders see value across a deeper, tool-agnostic security stack.”
- Paul Mazzucco, SVP and CISO, TierPoint
Adapt MDR also supports TOTE’s need for flexibility. Its tool-agnostic approach allows security-relevant data from different systems, workloads, devices, and IoT environments to be brought into the platform. For a logistics organization with a growing IoT footprint, that flexibility gives TOTE a path to monitor more of the environment in the future.
TierPoint’s broad security expertise added another layer of value. TOTE benefits from capabilities such as vulnerability scanning, certified penetration testing, tabletop exercises, virtual CISO support, threat hunting, honeypots, sandboxing, and monitoring for emerging threats.
Together, those capabilities help TOTE move beyond basic detection. Adapt MDR connects detection, investigation, and response across complex environments. By bringing together diverse telemetry, TierPoint can help identify indicators of compromise, analyze suspicious activity, and provide the context needed to support faster, more informed response. Simultaneously, TierPoint’s managed infrastructure, DRaaS, backup, and storage services support a broader cyber resilience strategy.
Results
With Adapt MDR, TOTE gained stronger visibility into the security activity that matters most, including at the endpoint level. This helps TOTE identify where additional controls, awareness training, or investigation may be needed.
Adapt MDR also helps TOTE reduce uncertainty. Instead of wondering whether a threat reached the network or what it touched, the team can use deeper telemetry and TierPoint expertise to investigate activity with more confidence.
That visibility supports executive communication. TOTE’s IT leadership regularly briefs the business on cyber risk, security posture, and areas for improvement. TierPoint helps provide the data and insight needed to translate technical activity into a business-level risk story.
Compliance readiness is another important outcome. Adapt MDR, combined with TierPoint services like penetration testing and vulnerability assessments, helps TOTE demonstrate a more mature approach to cybersecurity. This aligns with industry regulations, standards, and government contracting requirements that TOTE must account for.
The relationship also gives TOTE access to specialized expertise without significantly increasing internal headcount. With only a small number of primary contacts engaging regularly with TierPoint, TOTE can draw on TierPoint’s SOC, NOC, security engineering, managed services, and advisory resources.
Most importantly, TOTE gained trust. For Smith, that trust comes from knowing TierPoint understands the environment, responds quickly, and brings both technical knowledge and partnership to the relationship.
“If I get an inkling of anything happening in the environment, Paul is one phone call away or an email away, and he has his team dropping what they’re doing to jump on it. I won’t get that from anyone else.”
- Danny Smith, VP of Information Technology, TOTE Resources
A Cybersecurity Partner for What Comes Next
TOTE’s cybersecurity priorities continue to evolve. The organization is looking to further correlate data from penetration testing, vulnerability assessments, SIEM activity, firewall logs, endpoints, servers, applications, and connected systems. The goal is to better understand where risk is concentrated and where to invest next.
Adapt MDR gives TOTE a foundation for that next stage. With single-pane visibility, tool-agnostic ingestion, threat hunting, endpoint telemetry, and searchable log retention, TOTE can continue improving security posture while supporting business growth. For security teams, that retained telemetry can help support faster investigations, deeper threat hunting, and more informed incident response when suspicious activity needs to be reviewed.
For IT leaders evaluating cybersecurity providers, Smith offers clear advice: look for a partner that is constantly evolving. “Don’t just look for the products that are in a quadrant,” he said. “Look for a product that is consistently evolving and always looking at how it can protect better.”
For TOTE, that is what TierPoint delivers: an evolving cybersecurity partnership built on technical
expertise, visibility, resilience, and trust.
At A Glance
Industy
Logistics & Shipping
Services
TierPoint Adapt MDR, private cloud, DRaaS, backup, firewall management, threat hunting, vulnerability
scanning, penetration testing, tabletop exercises, and virtual CISO service
Challenges
TOTE needed deeper cybersecurity visibility across endpoints, infrastructure, users, logs, and connected systems while supporting compliance and incident response requirements.
Solutions
TOTE expanded its TierPoint partnership with Adapt MDR to gain single-pane visibility, endpoint telemetry, tool-agnostic log ingestion, forensic insight, and access to TierPoint security expertise.
Results
TOTE improved threat visibility, strengthened compliance readiness, extended its lean IT team with TierPoint cybersecurity resources, and gained a trusted partner for detection, response, and cyber
resilience.
Website
https://totegroup.com/
Keep Exploring
Visit our knowledge center to explore expert insights and thought leadership to power your digital breakaway.