Case Study

Sunbelt Rentals

Sunbelt Rentals leverages Airlock Digital for application control across tens of thousands of endpoints in the United States and Canada.
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About Sunbelt Rentals

Headquartered in Fort Mill, South Carolina, Sunbelt Rentals is the premier provider of equipment rental and services to all of North America. The organization has a workforce of 23,000 and manages more than $15 billion worth of assets, ranging from backhoes to digital cameras.

Learn more about Sunbelt Rentals by visiting www.sunbeltrentals.com.

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Challenge
Control the execution of files and applications across a large, diverse endpoint fleet to reduce security risk in a simplified manner.
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Approach
Sunbelt Rentals elected to move to a cloud-based, practitioner-developed solution to help deliver in-depth endpoint protection.
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Result
With Airlock Digital application control and allowlisting, Sunbelt Rentals implemented powerful, resilient endpoint security to minimize the risk presented by ransomware, malware and unauthorized software.

“We could tell immediately the Airlock Digital solution just worked, provided good visibility and was reliable, so we decided to invest.”


Ken Collins, Senior Director Information Security, Sunbelt Rentals

Benefits to Sunbelt Rentals

With Airlock Digital application control and allowlisting, Sunbelt Rentals has:

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Protected tens of thousands of endpoints across a wide geographic area
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Delivered endpoint security that has repeatedly passed thorough testing, minimizing risk
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Reduced endpoint detection and response solution ‘noise’ to enable the security team to focus on relevant alerts
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Decreased FTE time required to administer and monitor application control
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Enabled security operations to focus primarily on cloud, data protection, and human behavior instead of endpoint security

The Customer

Operating with more than 16,000 workstations and thousands of servers across a widely distributed geographic area, Sunbelt Rentals relies on well-managed, maintained, and protected technology to ensure customer satisfaction and earn their trust on a continuous basis.

The Challenge

Sunbelt Rentals initially opted for a traditional application control solution provided by a multinational vendor but struggled with its limited functionality. 

As the business quickly grew, security threats increased in scale and sophistication, forcing Ken Collins, Senior Director Information Security, Sunbelt Rentals to explore more powerful capabilities and tools. He also focused on rapidly maturing organizational security.

The Approach

Sunbelt Rentals initiated a capabilities review with a focus on cloud-based application control solutions that could minimize infrastructure management and administration while meeting the company’s functional requirements. “We identified the Airlock Digital application control and allowlisting solution in the CrowdStrike Marketplace and I referred the product to our engineering team to evaluate,” said Collins. 

The team appreciated the solution had been developed by practitioners who understood how to make application control viable through ease of implementation and use, a lightweight agent, and skilled technical support. Sunbelt Rentals commenced a pilot and, within a day, was evaluating an endpoint in enforcement mode. “We could tell immediately the Airlock Digital solution just worked, provided good visibility and was reliable, so we decided to invest,” said Collins. “We quickly added budget to procure the solution and after design and testing, rolled it out across the enterprise. Within months we were fully deployed in enforcement mode.”

The Result

With the integration of Airlock Digital with CrowdStrike endpoint detection and response platform, Zscaler security and data protection services, and other technologies, Sunbelt Rentals sought to test the effectiveness of its security stack. They engaged Mandiant to perform a series of tests, starting with a purple team exercise which, according to Collins, left the Mandiant team incredibly frustrated by its inability to load any negative payloads into the Sunbelt Rentals environment via its endpoints. “We received an A+ from that team for our endpoint security,” said Collins. “We followed this up with a red team exercise and they experienced similar frustrations, achieving no lateral movement within the environment.” 

The Airlock Digital solution has been so effective that the company’s security analysts typically review its dashboards only when notified or during the occasional onboarding of an updated or new application. “Barely one eighth of an FTE's time is required for administration now that the solution is fully implemented,” said Collins. 

This light engagement combined with the effectiveness of Airlock Digital means his team can focus on cloud, data protection, and human behavior rather than on endpoint security. 

Because Airlock Digital stopped all untrusted files and applications from running in its environment, Sunbelt Rentals experienced a considerable drop in ‘noise’ generated by alerts and notifications from CrowdStrike. “Our ticket count plummeted when that occurred, which freed up our team to focus on more important tasks,” 
said Collins. 

The solution’s flexibility enabled Sunbelt Rentals to effectively manage exceptions to its allowlist of trusted applications. The business’s help desk uses one-time passwords as needed for the secure, temporary use of diagnostic software used for equipment, non-Windows or custom software patching, developer requirements, computer-aided design software, and more. 

“Our enthusiasm for and appreciation of Airlock Digital continues to be very high, and we follow its innovation strategy closely,” Collins concluded. “We regard our relationship with Airlock Digital as a partnership, and this is reflected in the professionalism and technical capability of its support team when we engage with them.” 
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