In 2013, Hawaii-based cybersecurity provider Referentia Systems deployed AccelOps on Amazon EC2 to launch managed security services without first building its own data-center infrastructure. The cloud-hosted platform supported security monitoring for Prince Resorts Hawaii and gave Referentia a way to expand services as demand grew.
How Referentia combined Amazon EC2 and AccelOps
Referentia selected AccelOps for a new managed-security-services business and ran the platform in Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). The 2013 announcement described the deployment as 100 percent cloud-based and said Referentia was the first managed security service provider (MSSP) deployed in EC2 with AccelOps. CRN reported the deployment on October 29, 2013; the “first” designation is the announcement’s claim, not an independently established industry-wide ranking.
Rather than invest in its own data-center infrastructure before entering the market, Referentia used AccelOps to provide security information and event management (SIEM) as a service and expand into managed network services. The platform was presented as covering servers, storage, networks, security, applications, and users, with native multi-tenancy and role-based access controls intended for managed service providers.
Why Referentia chose a cloud deployment
Lower initial infrastructure commitment
Referentia’s director of solutions, Anthony Kay Giandomenico, said the company wanted to enter managed services but was not ready to make a large investment. Avoiding a dedicated data-center build let it offer services without committing that capital up front.
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Faster service rollout and expansion
Giandomenico contrasted provisioning services in days or weeks with a process that could otherwise take months. He also described the scaling idea simply: “As I grow, the Amazon Cloud can grow with me.” CRN reported that Referentia paid for bandwidth it used and could begin with less bandwidth before expanding. These are descriptions of Referentia’s 2013 model, not current EC2 pricing terms.
What Referentia monitored for Prince Resorts Hawaii
Prince Resorts Hawaii was the named customer. The hospitality company needed more visibility into IT operations and had PCI DSS requirements. Its information-systems director, Ryan Doi, said the impact of using Referentia and AccelOps was immediate, citing better performance and more proactive security.
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The work described in the 2013 announcement included analyzing and tuning security data, assisting with threat response, and monitoring network-device logs, configuration changes, patches, updates, and events. The platform’s cross-domain scope was intended to bring operational and security information together, while multi-tenancy and role-based access controls supported service-provider administration across customers.
Was Referentia the first MSSP using AccelOps on EC2?
Referentia’s 2013 announcement called it the first MSSP deployed in Amazon EC2 with AccelOps. CRN separately reported the deployment on October 29, 2013. The available accounts substantiate that Referentia used the combination, but the “first” wording should be attributed to the announcement rather than presented as a separately verified market-wide fact.
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What happened to AccelOps?
Fortinet announced that it had acquired AccelOps on June 7, 2016, and said the acquisition was completed immediately. Fortinet’s announcement positioned the AccelOps solutions as FortiSIEM, part of the Fortinet Security Fabric, with security and compliance monitoring, analytics, and threat intelligence across multi-vendor environments. Fortinet reported total cash consideration of $22.3 million for the acquisition; that is a 2016 transaction figure, not a FortiSIEM price.
So, AccelOps is now associated with FortiSIEM through that product lineage. Referentia’s present-day careers page describes the company as an NSA Trusted Integrator and cites more than 15 years of Department of Defense information-assurance and cyber-risk-management experience; it also lists cybersecurity automation and supply-chain cyber-compliance work. The page is undated, so the experience figure should not be treated as a statistic measured for a specific year.
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What this case study shows—and what it does not
Referentia’s deployment illustrates one MSSP’s 2013 approach to entering managed security: use public-cloud infrastructure to avoid an upfront data-center build, deploy a multi-tenant monitoring platform, and expand capacity as the service grows. The reported rationale was speed, cost control, and elasticity, while the customer example linked the service to operational visibility, security monitoring, and PCI DSS needs.
It is a historical case study, not evidence that the same product configuration, cloud architecture, costs, or support arrangements are available today. Anyone evaluating a current managed SIEM should separately check deployment choices, tenant isolation and administration, supported integrations and monitoring coverage, scaling and billing, and the vendor’s current product lifecycle and support.
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