Globalization was no new concept in modern society, but it hit an entirely new level during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, especially for business owners. Even though the distance between businesses and consumers grew physically, new ways of maintaining the remote connection between service/product providers and customers increased massively. Therefore, demand for email marketing jumped, helping e-commerce companies like Omnisend considerably expand their team globally. It remained a challenge during times of uncertainty when the world stopped moving.
Omnisend is an e-commerce-tailored email and SMS marketing automation platform that helps businesses boost sales without increasing workload. Founded in 2014 and operated on a couple of local offices based in Lithuania, the company featured in Shopify’s TOP5 apps for email marketing and marketing automation. Due to the growing number of 70,000+ customers, Omnisend expanded their team globally to the US market during 2020. Director of Information Security at Omnisend Žygimantas Stauga shared how choosing NordLayer helped the company overcome security and remote access issues when opening an office in another continent.
The Challenge
Omnisend needed to establish effective network security for global team distribution
With the majority of the world working from home, Omnisend implemented hybrid work policies for remote employees — providing access to critical company resources ensured business continuity and service quality. A local team with access to the company HQ or opting to work from home is a minor challenge until it comes to scaling a business.
Once the company confirmed expansion to the US, how international colleagues accessed sensitive resources behind the company firewall became a problem. Moreover, a growing team means a heavier traffic load to company infrastructure with limited capacity. Without sufficient network connectivity, company performance drops, affecting the quality of provided services. Besides seamless transition to operational procedures, security remains a top priority to protect internal resources and customer data from malicious activity.
“The pandemic situation proved that internal cybersecurity policy has to change together with our growing workforce.”
Launching an off-site team in a different location means limited staff resources, at least for a while; thus, consolidated system management solutions must handle the criticality of skilled IT professionals.
“Having technical people on all sites can be challenging, and hiring a tech-savvy person for the site is not very cost-effective until more movement occurs.”
New integrations to a mainly cloud-based company infrastructure have to be simply compatible with existing solutions within the perimeter and easily deployable while setting up organizational expansion.
The Solution
NordLayer secures integral Omnisend team expansion overseas
Omnisend scaled together with NordLayer to adapt to relevant business needs. Unlimited user numbers and account transferability allowed for fast onboarding and access rights management with zero-trust defined identity control.
NordLayer ensured comprehensive network security and remote team integration to business flow. It offers a Smart Remote Access feature that enables an on-site experience with encrypted point-to-point file sharing and Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) that allows effective troubleshooting for dispersed IT management teams.
“Omnisend uses dedicated servers in different locations - US and EU - for better latency and two servers per continent for failover.”
Remote network access security solution takes distance to the company’s advantage, making it flexible and adaptable to any situation and work model. NordLayer is versatile to global challenges and contributive to mitigating risks of external threats. For example, international teams have higher exposure to various cybercriminals that use similar methods but in different languages — resulting in dependence on enhanced security policies.
Business VPN is instrumental in achieving hidden user and data traffic and is a mandatory tool for the Omnisend engineering teams that develop high-quality services for their customers. In the context of a long-term solution that scales up & down with the business growth, NordLayer combines extensive cybersecurity practices to adapt to business requirements.
The Outcome
Multiple layers of network security for enhanced company performance
Omnisend required a cybersecurity solution that provides business VPN capabilities and establishes network security measures effectively. NordLayer design smartly combines the most relevant and essential security policies that enable remote and distributed teams to co-operate without unnecessary struggles and challenges.
Intuitive client controls make employee training effortless as only a few clicks allow to connect to a private gateway, “a simple document with a few screenshots was enough” to get everyone on the same page, Žygimantas Stauga noted.
NordLayer solution enabled Omnisend traffic encryption - reinforced by the global server grid - and provided closely supervised identity management controls. The hardware-free solution didn’t require a physical presence to deploy infrastructure upgrades and coordinates impeccably with already utilized cloud-based solutions and services.
Centralized Control Panel focuses on substituting missing skilled staff resources with automated and unified system configuration, also saving IT managers time significantly — NordLayer helps “calculate a general reduction in the activities during the COVID-19 period”, Žygimantas adds.
With proper tools at their disposal, Omnisend successfully achieved company expansion to the US to secure exquisite service quality and performance to their clients — during the most unstable time in our recent memory. NordLayer helped Omnisend implement cybersecurity practices quickly and grow the team at an intercontinental scale.
Following Omnisend success story, besides choosing NordLayer for your company’s fast and secure growth, simple yet effective tips from Omnisend Director of Information Security Žygimantas Stauga:
Follow good hygiene for your accounts, passwords, and software
Secure the company’s network
Keep your eyes open
Interested in trying out NordLayer for scalable, adaptive, and easy to implement business expansion? Contact our team to find out more.
