American Alarm Moves From Reactive Security To Proactive Data Protection With BlackFog

Learn how one of New England’s largest independent security systems integrators transformed its cybersecurity strategy, closing the data exfiltration gap after a network incident and laying the foundation for secure enterprise AI adoption.

“A few years ago, cybersecurity was all about ‘not if, but when,’” says Derek Arsenault, Vice President of IT. “You assumed you were going to get hacked and focused on recovering as quickly as possible.”

That philosophy reflected the reality facing many organizations. American Alarm had invested in leading security technologies, including SentinelOne and Cato, yet those solutions were designed to detect and respond. They could not stop sensitive information leaving the business.

Everything changed after a network incident. Although the company recovered quickly, one question lingered: had customer or company data already been exfiltrated?

“We worried about what data got exfiltrated. We were fortunate on that front, but we didn’t want to take that chance again.”

When BlackFog first called, Derek wasn’t convinced. “I was skeptical.” 

Instead of accepting the claims at face value, American Alarm embarked on a six-month technical evaluation. Independent cybersecurity consultants challenged BlackFog’s engineers, explored the architecture and tested whether anti data exfiltration protection could genuinely complement the company’s existing security stack. 

“We brought in outside cyber companies we worked with to question BlackFog and meet BlackFog’s sales engineers. We grilled them. It really satisfied the need.”

The outcome wasn’t that BlackFog replaced EDR, it filled the missing layer. For the first time, the organization had a way to proactively prevent data leaving endpoints before attackers could exploit it.

The decision came down to more than technology. BlackFog changed the way American Alarm approached cybersecurity. 

Instead of preparing for the inevitable breach, the team could begin preventing one of the most damaging outcomes – data exfiltration. 

Looking back, Derek reflects: “I don’t know why I took the cold call, but it was one of the best decisions I made.”

BlackFog was deployed across every endpoint across the organization and became mandatory for network access. After minor tuning during the initial rollout, it settled into everyday operations with almost no administrative burden.

“It’s a set it and forget it solution.” Its simplicity was initially surprising. “In fact, it’s so easy to use it’s hard to believe it’s working.” 

For a lean IT team supporting hundreds of employees, one console and very low false positives translated into greater efficiency without sacrificing protection.

As the business began evaluating ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and Grok, BlackFog’s role expanded. ADX Vision gave the team visibility into AI usage, allowed licensed and unlicensed users to be managed differently and provided the evidence needed to create sensible governance policies.

“It gives us a barometer of what we need to establish our AI policies going forward.”

Rather than slowing innovation, American Alarm is using visibility to enable AI adoption with confidence.

Reactive to Proactive
BlackFog fundamentally shifted American Alarm from preparing for cyber incidents to proactively preventing data exfiltration.

Operational Simplicity
A small IT team benefits from one console, minimal management overhead and consistently low false positives.

Future-Ready Security
The same platform now supports both ransomware resilience and enterprise AI governance.

Today Derek regularly recommends BlackFog to fellow security professionals through the NetOne community, a network of 30 security companies across the U.S. and Canada. His advice to organizations evaluating proactive data protection is simple:“They should have deployed it yesterday.”

That endorsement carries weight because it comes from someone who was once the sceptic in the room. After rigorously testing the technology, living through a network incident and expanding into AI governance, American Alarm now sees BlackFog as a foundational part of its cybersecurity strategy.