Brief Overview

• Oxford Rhine is a commercial and residential real estate brokerage firm headquartered in Louisville, KY.
• The firm opened in 2019 and experienced rapid growth due to rising real estate demand.
• Louisville Geek improved the firm’s security posture by adding Defender for Office 365, while saving Oxford Rhine $300/month by switching to Microsoft 365 and adding Defender for Office 365.

Like most real estate businesses, the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic were uncertain times for Oxford Rhine. Would commercial real estate ever rebound? Would businesses that rented office space and spent the last year with all their employees working from home need as much space? Would retailers that shifted operations online during the pandemic cut back on storefronts?

Then, in the middle of the recession, the housing market boomed, and Oxford Rhine saw an opportunity. With mortgage rates reaching record lows, the company opened a mortgage company (Veritas Mortgage) to supplement clients’ buying process. The company grew over 50% in revenue and moved quickly to recruit new employees and real estate agents to support demand.

The Challenge

When Oxford Rhine opened in 2019, the firm had three employees. Like most startups, it was on a shoestring budget and kept everything in house. It used GoDaddy Email 365 for email, Microsoft productivity applications, and antivirus. As the firm continued adding employees, its monthly spend with GoDaddy continued increasing, and onboarding new employees ate valuable time. Before opening the mortgage company, the owners recognized additional layers of security to protect themselves and their clients would be a necessity, but they didn’t know where to turn.

Why did Oxford Rhine choose Louisville Geek?

We’ll let you hear it from the owners:

Cole Schwein: “We recognized that we needed some guidance, especially with cybersecurity. We’ve all seen the headlines and heard the nightmare stories about ransomware targeting small businesses. We knew the threat was real, but if you’re not in that space, it can be difficult to know what you need and what’s going to protect you. Louisville Geek listened to our concerns and came back with a plan that was practical and affordable.”

Todd Smith: “Louisville Geek was highly recommended by a few of my colleagues, all of whom have used Louisville Geek to manage their IT for several years. I think the main reason we chose them was because they were able to explain everything in simple terms and didn’t attempt to sell us a bunch of stuff we didn’t need. They really simplified the buying and onboarding process.”

How did Louisville Geek Respond?

As we do in most cases, the first thing we addressed was their existing environment. We reviewed their GoDaddy bill and immediately realized we could reduce their Microsoft 365 licensing costs by better structuring subscriptions and converting several licenses to alias accounts, thereby eliminate those costs altogether.

Moreover, some of the executives stored substantial data within their email folders. With GoDaddy, the mailboxes were limited to 10GB of storage. Once the accounts were defederated and flipped to CSP, all user accounts increased to 50GB of storage. This change was a substantial value-add for the executives, as many were nearing their previous storage limits.

Lastly, we were able to reinvest some of the monthly savings by applying Microsoft Defender for Office 365 licenses across all accounts, an upgrade that significantly increased the firm’s security posture. Even with the additional storage limits and security licenses, the customer still benefited from an overall savings on its monthly Microsoft 365 expense.

Results

By utilizing Louisville Geek, both Oxford Rhine and Veritas Mortgage took substantial steps in improving their overall cybersecurity defense strategy, upgrading their storage capacities, and reducing monthly recurring expenses by $300/month.