Ceros Case Study

BARR Advisory’s cybersecurity consulting team leads Ceros to a SOC 2, an ISO 27001 Audit, and 200+ closed deals.

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At a Glance

For more than a decade, Ceros has empowered some of the largest brands to share their stories and engage their audiences by unlocking a world of creative possibilities.

By offering an end-to-end, cloud-based platform built to design and publish immersive digital experiences, Ceros gives marketers and designers complete control and flexibility to collaborate, create, and iterate content in real-time—no coding required.

The Ceros platform has helped companies in a variety of industries achieve their bottom line and stand out amongst the competition by cutting through the noise, keeping audiences engaged longer, and increasing the quality (and quantity) of leads.

The Challenge

Now more than ever, a strong digital presence is critical to any successful business. With the increase in demand for engaging and experiential content, Ceros found itself struggling to keep up with a key part of its sales cycle—the security assessment process. At the end of each quarter, the sales team had a difficult time closing deals on time due to the overwhelming demand for security assessments and questionnaires.

“I knew we needed help filling out the assessments so we could spend more time on the business,” said Dan Wash, Ceros’s director of engineering. As a fast-growing startup, Ceros’s business infrastructure wasn’t in a place to organize a dedicated security team. With all of its expertise in equipping marketers with on-demand content creation, Ceros was missing an in-house security resource. Outsourcing a security team who could create a comprehensive security program was the solution. Ceros found a partner in BARR’s cybersecurity consulting services.

“We knew we could trust BARR to speak on our behalf to our customers. BARR knows enough about our product, where we fit in the market, and where we stand from a security standpoint,” said Brian Abent, Ceros’s chief technology officer.

I was spending 50 to 70 percent of my week completing security assessments and questionnaires for prospective clients, all of whom are large enterprises.

Dan Wash
Director of Engineering
Ceros

The Solution

By partnering with BARR, Ceros offloaded the security questionnaires workload, established a systemized security process, demonstrated their commitment to protecting customer data, and ultimately, attracted more enterprise clients.

“Engaging an outside consultant was two-fold. First, to ease the pain in the security assessment process within the sales cycle. Then, to put a formalized information security program in place and let BARR take the lead,” said Abent. Settling for a firm that would function as an extension of the team wasn’t enough—Ceros wanted the firm to be part of the team.

“We knew we could trust BARR to speak on our behalf to our customers. BARR has to know enough about our product, where we fit in the market, and where we stand from a security standpoint,” said Abent.

BARR knows security best practices, which was really helpful in going through the audit process. Being able to look at issues through the eyes of an auditor and having the ability to make impactful minor adjustments to meet controls is something we needed.

Brian Abent
Chief Technology Officer
Ceros

The Results

BARR got to work by starting with a gap assessment, which led to a SOC 2 audit. After working through the SOC 2 audit with BARR, security process improvements were made seamlessly and a SOC 2 report was issued last year.

Providing the highest level of security has not only achieved Ceros’s goals of easing the burden on its sales process, ultimately making it shorter, it has also helped Ceros close more than $10 million in annual recurring revenue from 200 deals just since they started working with BARR Advisory two years ago. But they are not stopping there. This year, Ceros is in the process of an ISO 27001 audit with BARR to further raise the security standard for Ceros and their customers.

What does this mean for Ceros?

Over 200 closed deals

$10 million recurring revenue

Reduced length of sales cycle

Initially, we didn’t even realize how impactful working with BARR would be. They just feel like part of the team. At Ceros, our core value is to ‘find a way.’ BARR consistently finds a way and fits into our company culture. I know they have other clients, but it never feels like that to me.

Tori Belkin
Head of Revenue Enablement
Ceros

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