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City West Country Limited

City West Country Limited partnered with Zensec to strengthen protection across its multi-brand automotive operations, implementing advanced threat detection and 24/7 managed security monitoring.

Company

City West Country Limited

Industry

Automotive / Vehicle Retail & Servicing

Location

South West, United Kingdom

Company Overview

City West Country Limited is a large automotive group operating across the South West of the UK. The business sells and services vehicles across multiple brands, including Mercedes-Benz Southwest, BYD Southwest, and a wide range of commercial vehicles. With around 700 employees, the organisation supports customers across sales, servicing, and manufacturer-specific vehicle diagnostics.

Project Description

Zensec partnered with City West Country Limited to modernise and strengthen its cyber security infrastructure. The project focused on replacing legacy protections with advanced threat detection, improving security across the Microsoft 365 environment, and introducing 24/7 SOC monitoring to provide continuous oversight and rapid response to emerging threats.

Project

Cyber security partnership for large-scale automotive group operations

Project Specifics

  • EDR implementation
  • Microsoft 365 XDR monitoring
  • 24/7 SOC support
  • Rapid threat response
  • Ongoing security partnership
VIDEO

Watch the full case study

Head of IT, Andrew Samuel, discusses how partnering with Zensec helped City West Country Limited strengthen protection, improve visibility, and gain greater peace of mind across its automotive operations.

CHALLENGE

Modernising security across a complex automotive environment

When Andrew Samuel joined City West Country as Head of IT, he quickly identified significant cyber security risks within the existing environment.

Although firewalls were in place, they lacked modern next-generation protections such as intrusion prevention and deep packet inspection. In addition, some critical servers were directly exposed to the internet, bypassing firewall protection entirely. Several of these systems were also end-of-life, increasing the overall risk to the business.

Andrew had previously experienced the impact of ransomware and business-down scenarios and understood how damaging a serious cyber incident could be — not just technically, but for staff and operations across the business. With limited internal capacity and a need to move quickly, he began looking for a specialist security partner.

SOLUTION

Strengthening security through proactive monitoring and response

Zensec worked alongside the internal IT team to strengthen City West Country’s security posture at pace, introducing modern protections designed to improve visibility and reduce risk across the organisation.

As part of the solution, Zensec deployed Endpoint Detection & Response (EDR) to replace traditional signature-based antivirus, enabling behavioural threat detection across devices. Extended Detection & Response (XDR) was also integrated across the Microsoft 365 environment to ensure cloud activity and user accounts were continuously monitored.

To provide round-the-clock oversight, Zensec’s UK-based Microsoft 365 Security Operations Centre (SOC) delivered 24/7 monitoring and rapid response. This ensured threats could be identified and contained quickly, even outside of business hours.

“We treat Zensec as another member of staff. It's like having that fourth member of the IT team, but with the benefit of the experience of the whole Zensec organisation.”

Andrew Samuel, Head of IT, City West Country Limited
RESULT

Building lasting confidence in cyber security

City West Country now benefits from a significantly improved cyber security posture, with continuous monitoring and expert oversight across its environment.

Andrew and his team have greater confidence that threats will be detected early and managed effectively, reducing the risk of disruption to the business.

Zensec has also become a trusted extension of the internal IT team, supporting security decisions and providing direct access to experienced specialists whenever needed.