First-hand account from Ybert Depauw, Cybersecurity Director at Solina Group
Solina Group: when trust is a requirement from end to end
In the food industry, trust is not an advantage, it is a prerequisite. Solina Group knows this better than anyone.
A leading European player in ingredients for the food industry, catering and butchery, Solina supports its customers in designing recipes that are nutritionally balanced and ever more sustainable. With more than 4,000 employees across Europe and North America, the group has made responsibility towards consumers, partners and the planet the heart of its strategy.
Solina's customers expect ingredients that meet the strictest health and ethical requirements. Solina naturally carries that same demand for trust into the choice of its own partners, starting with those who protect its digital infrastructure.
It is out of this logic that the collaboration between Solina and SecOps Forces was born.
A complex technical context, typical of fast-growing mid-sized companies
Solina operates in an environment that is complex by nature. A multi-entity group, growing strongly through a strategy of regular acquisitions, it manages more than 50 domain names today for the group's email, and that number rises with every new subsidiary brought in.
For Ybert Depauw, the group's Cybersecurity Director, the challenge was a considerable one:
"Email security is complex. Not hard to understand in its broad principles, but complex to implement. Technologies like SPF, DKIM or DMARC are very old, and creating visibility around their real state is extremely difficult without the right tools."
With every acquisition, new domains have to be brought quickly into the email security arrangement, the standards deployed, the mail environments migrated, and the consistency of the whole verified. Add the progressive hardening of Microsoft 365 to that, and you get a perimeter which, without rigorous management, rapidly becomes a critical blind spot.
"Solina buys a lot of companies, which means we are constantly onboarding new domains. Today we are past 50. And for each one, SPF, DKIM and DMARC have to be implemented, and sometimes Mimecast has to be migrated."
Choosing a partner: beyond delivery, the advice
It is in this context that Solina turned to SecOps Forces, now more than four and a half years ago.
The relationship first started informally, around a specific need on DMARC, before gradually taking shape with a dedicated contract, a monitoring platform, and a broader scope of work. What made the difference? Not only technical competence, but the overall value proposition.
"What I expect from a supplier is not only that it delivers with good quality. It is that it should also be an advisor. That I can ask it questions, explore options with it. And that is exactly what SecOps Forces brings."
That ability to combine excellence in delivery with strategic support is, according to Ybert Depauw, what sets SecOps Forces apart in the market:
"There are plenty of people in cybersecurity. But people who really know what they are talking about, and who also know how to pass it on, that is far rarer."
Making the invisible visible: the keystone of the engagement
One of the major contributions of SecOps Forces lies in its ability to create clarity where there was none.
Email security is, by nature, an opaque subject. Teams often know they need to attend to it, but rarely know where they actually stand. SecOps Forces answers that challenge with a rigorous method: impeccable documentary organization, monitoring dashboards, a dedicated platform, regular reporting.
"What is incredible about SecOps Forces is a way of organizing data that always produces visibility. We know exactly where we stand."
In concrete terms: Solina's teams have a permanent, clear view of the state of the domains, the priority actions, and the recommendations to come. The SecOps Forces platform is actively used by the operational teams, including on the Microsoft 365 scope.
"Even among the best security firms in Europe, it is very rare to have this level of service management on top of the delivery itself."
Concrete results, at a cost suited to a mid-sized company
After four and a half years of collaboration, the outcome is very satisfying. Solina benefits today from:
- An email attack surface reduced continuously, with all its domains monitored and correctly configured,
- Consistent hardening of Microsoft 365, managed with the same level of rigour,
- Real operational peace of mind: SecOps Forces operates autonomously, proactively, without needing to be supervised,
- A level of service usually reserved for large enterprises, at a cost compatible with the reality of a mid-sized company.
"If I had to go and find this level of expertise in a large consulting firm, it would cost me at least three times more. The cost-to-value ratio is exceptional."
This account illustrates something that is sometimes forgotten in debates about cybersecurity: trust is built in both directions.
Solina Group asks its own customers to trust it on the quality of its ingredients, on its rigour, on its commitment to a more sustainable food system. Ybert Depauw applies that same demand to his security partners. And it is precisely because SecOps Forces meets it with consistency, expertise and transparency that the collaboration has lasted more than four and a half years.
Small and mid-sized companies deserve cybersecurity that is proactive, legible and effective. SecOps Forces makes that a reality, without unnecessary complexity, and without compromising on quality.