Agency and CrowdStrike: Bringing Enterprise-Grade Endpoint Protection to Growing Companies

One of the things we have always been honest about at Agency is that compliance alone does not make you secure. You can pass every audit, check every box, and still be vulnerable to sophisticated threats that exploit the gap between what compliance requires and what real-world attackers actually do. Closing that gap is why we partnered with CrowdStrike — to bring enterprise-grade endpoint protection directly into the security programs we build for our clients.

We are announcing our partnership with CrowdStrike, one of the most respected names in endpoint security and threat intelligence. This is not a logo swap or a reseller arrangement. It is a deliberate integration of CrowdStrike's Falcon platform into the security and compliance programs we deliver to our clients. This article explains why we made this decision, what it means in practical terms, and how our clients benefit.

Why We Chose CrowdStrike

When we evaluated endpoint detection and response platforms, we looked at the market through the lens of what our clients actually need — not what looks good in a compliance checklist, but what genuinely protects growing companies against the threats they face today.

What we tell clients is that endpoint protection is one of the few security investments where the difference between a good solution and a great one is measured in breach outcomes, not feature lists. The platforms we evaluated ranged from lightweight antivirus replacements to full-featured EDR platforms with integrated threat intelligence. We chose CrowdStrike for specific reasons that align with how we approach security.

Detection quality matters more than anything else. In our experience, the single most important attribute of an endpoint security platform is whether it actually catches threats. CrowdStrike's Falcon platform consistently leads independent evaluations — including MITRE ATT&CK assessments — in detection coverage and accuracy. For our clients, this translates directly to faster threat identification and fewer missed attacks.

Cloud-native architecture fits our clients. The majority of companies we work with are cloud-first organizations. They do not have on-premise data centers or legacy infrastructure that requires heavy-footprint security tools. CrowdStrike's single lightweight agent deploys across Windows, macOS, and Linux without the performance overhead or management complexity that heavier solutions introduce. What we recommend is security tooling that works with our clients' technology stacks rather than against them, and CrowdStrike fits that criteria.

Threat intelligence integration closes the visibility gap. CrowdStrike processes trillions of security events per week across its customer base. This collective intelligence means that when a new threat is identified anywhere in CrowdStrike's ecosystem, protections are available to all customers. In our experience, this crowd-sourced threat intelligence model provides our clients with a level of visibility into emerging threats that would be impossible to achieve independently.

The platform extends beyond endpoint. While we initially evaluated CrowdStrike for endpoint detection and response, the Falcon platform includes capabilities that map directly to other security needs our clients have — vulnerability management, IT hygiene assessment, identity threat detection, and cloud workload protection. What this means for our clients is a single platform that addresses multiple security domains rather than a patchwork of point solutions.

What This Means for Agency Clients

The partnership changes what our clients can access and how we deliver security as part of our advisory engagements. Here is what it means in practical terms.

Access to the Falcon Platform

Our clients now have access to CrowdStrike's Falcon platform at partnership pricing that reflects our collective purchasing power. For a growing company with fifty to five hundred employees, enterprise endpoint security platforms have historically been either too expensive or too complex to deploy and manage effectively. What we tell clients is that this partnership removes both barriers — we handle the deployment, configuration, and ongoing management while providing access at a price point that makes sense for their stage.

Managed Detection and Response

Deploying an EDR platform is only the beginning. The real value comes from active monitoring, threat hunting, and incident response. What we have seen across our client base is that companies often deploy security tools but lack the expertise or staffing to operate them effectively. An EDR platform generating alerts that no one investigates is security theater.

Through this partnership, our clients receive managed detection and response that includes:

Capability	What It Means	Why It Matters
24/7 threat monitoring	Continuous monitoring of endpoint telemetry for indicators of compromise	Threats do not operate on business hours; neither should your detection capability
Proactive threat hunting	Active searching for threats that evade automated detection	Sophisticated attackers are designed to avoid triggering automated alerts
Alert triage and investigation	Every alert is investigated and classified before escalation	Eliminates alert fatigue and ensures real threats receive immediate attention
Incident response support	When a real threat is identified, response begins immediately	The difference between a contained incident and a breach is often measured in minutes
Monthly reporting	Regular reporting on endpoint security posture, threats detected, and actions taken	Provides visibility into your security operations and evidence for compliance

Compliance-Integrated Security

This is where the partnership creates the most value for our clients. In our experience, the fundamental problem with how most companies approach security and compliance is that they treat them as separate workstreams. The compliance team builds policies and collects evidence. The security team deploys tools and responds to alerts. The two efforts rarely inform each other in a meaningful way.

What we recommend — and what this partnership enables — is an integrated model where your security tooling directly feeds your compliance program. Specifically:

Endpoint protection as compliance evidence. SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and other frameworks require evidence that endpoints are protected against malware and unauthorized access. CrowdStrike deployment provides direct, auditable evidence of endpoint protection controls. When your auditor asks about malware protection, we can point to a comprehensive EDR deployment with documented detection and response capabilities — not just an antivirus installation.

Continuous monitoring satisfies control requirements. Multiple compliance frameworks require continuous monitoring of the IT environment for security events. The Falcon platform's continuous telemetry collection and analysis provides this monitoring natively. In our experience, this is one of the most efficient ways to satisfy continuous monitoring requirements because the evidence is generated automatically as a byproduct of security operations.

Vulnerability management supports risk assessment. CrowdStrike's Falcon Spotlight module provides real-time vulnerability assessment without additional scanning infrastructure. What this means for compliance is that your risk assessment is informed by actual vulnerability data from your endpoints rather than periodic point-in-time scans. We can identify which vulnerabilities exist, which are actively being exploited in the wild, and which require immediate remediation — and document all of this as part of your risk management program.

Incident response capability is documented and tested. Every compliance framework requires incident response capability. Through this partnership, our clients have a documented, tested incident response capability backed by CrowdStrike's threat intelligence and response expertise. This is not a theoretical plan sitting in a policy document — it is an active capability that can be demonstrated to auditors.

The Gap Between Compliance and Real Security

We built this partnership because we see a persistent gap in the market that we want to close for our clients. What we tell clients is that this gap is the most dangerous place to be — technically compliant but practically vulnerable.

Here is what that gap looks like in practice:

Compliance says you need endpoint protection. Reality says you need detection and response. A basic antivirus product technically satisfies many compliance requirements for endpoint protection. But antivirus alone misses the fileless malware, living-off-the-land techniques, and credential-based attacks that represent the majority of modern threats. What we recommend is endpoint detection and response that addresses actual attack techniques, not just known malware signatures.

Compliance says you need monitoring. Reality says you need someone watching the monitors. Deploying a SIEM or log aggregation tool satisfies the monitoring control on paper. But if alerts go uninvestigated — which, in our experience, happens at the majority of growing companies without dedicated security operations — the monitoring provides no actual security benefit. What this partnership provides is not just monitoring technology but the operational capability to act on what the monitoring reveals.

Compliance says you need incident response. Reality says you need practice and speed. Having an incident response plan is a compliance requirement. Having the capability to execute that plan effectively — with the right tools, the right intelligence, and the right expertise — is what actually limits the damage when an incident occurs. In our experience, the companies that suffer the worst outcomes during security incidents are not the ones without plans but the ones without the capability to execute their plans quickly.

Compliance gives you a point-in-time assessment. Reality requires continuous posture. Annual audits and periodic assessments are compliance mechanisms. But the threat landscape changes continuously, and a security posture that was adequate at audit time can deteriorate significantly before the next assessment. What we recommend is continuous security operations that maintain your posture between compliance assessments — not just periodic checkups.

What Clients Can Expect

For existing Agency clients, here is what the CrowdStrike partnership means in terms of what changes and what you can expect going forward.

For Clients with Existing Compliance Programs

If you are an existing Agency client with an active compliance program, we will be reaching out to discuss how CrowdStrike Falcon can be integrated into your current security controls. In our experience, the most impactful integration points are endpoint protection (replacing existing antivirus or basic EDR), vulnerability management (supplementing or replacing periodic scanning), and continuous monitoring evidence (generating automated compliance evidence from security operations). There is no obligation to adopt CrowdStrike — we believe in recommending what is right for each client's specific situation — but we want every client to understand what is now available.

For New Clients

New clients engaging Agency for compliance advisory or security program development will have the option to include CrowdStrike Falcon as part of their security stack from day one. What we recommend for most growing companies is deploying Falcon early in the compliance journey because it simultaneously addresses security needs and generates compliance evidence, reducing the total effort required to achieve and maintain certification.

Pricing and Deployment

What we tell clients is that our partnership pricing makes CrowdStrike accessible at a price point that is typically thirty to forty percent below list pricing for companies in our client size range. Deployment timelines are measured in days, not weeks — the lightweight Falcon agent can be deployed across an organization's endpoints in one to three business days depending on environment size and complexity. Our team handles the deployment, initial configuration, and policy tuning so your internal team does not need CrowdStrike-specific expertise.

Ongoing Support

The partnership includes ongoing platform management and optimization. What this means is that as your organization grows, as new threat intelligence becomes available, and as your compliance requirements evolve, we adjust your CrowdStrike configuration accordingly. You receive monthly security posture reports, quarterly reviews of detection and response activity, and continuous access to our team for security questions and incident support.

Looking Forward

This partnership with CrowdStrike is part of a broader strategic direction at Agency. What we believe is that the compliance and security industries have been artificially separated for too long, and that our clients are best served by an integrated approach where security operations and compliance programs reinforce each other rather than running in parallel.

In our experience, the companies with the strongest security postures are not the ones that spend the most on security tools or the ones with the most comprehensive compliance programs. They are the ones where security operations inform compliance evidence, where compliance requirements drive meaningful security investments, and where both functions are managed with a clear understanding of the business context they serve.

The CrowdStrike partnership is one step in building that integrated model. We will continue to evaluate and partner with best-in-class technology providers that help our clients close the gap between compliance and real security.

What we tell every client is this: your compliance program should make you more secure, and your security program should make compliance easier. That is the standard we hold ourselves to, and the CrowdStrike partnership is a concrete expression of that philosophy.

Key Takeaways

• We partnered with CrowdStrike because their Falcon platform consistently leads in detection quality, operates with a cloud-native architecture that fits our clients' technology stacks, and extends beyond endpoint protection into vulnerability management, identity protection, and cloud workload security — this is not a checkbox partnership but a deliberate technical decision
• What this means for Agency clients is access to enterprise-grade endpoint detection and response at partnership pricing that is typically thirty to forty percent below list, with deployment and management handled by our team so clients do not need to develop internal CrowdStrike expertise
• In our experience, the most valuable aspect of this partnership is the integration between security operations and compliance programs — CrowdStrike telemetry provides continuous monitoring evidence, endpoint protection documentation, vulnerability management data, and incident response capability that directly maps to SOC 2, ISO 27001, and HIPAA control requirements
• What we tell clients is that the gap between compliance and real security is where the most damage happens — being technically compliant while running basic antivirus, unmonitored logging tools, and untested incident response plans creates a false sense of security that this partnership is designed to eliminate
• We recommend that growing companies adopt endpoint detection and response early in their security and compliance journey because it simultaneously addresses genuine security needs and generates the compliance evidence required for certification, reducing total effort and cost compared to addressing security and compliance separately
• Our clients can expect managed detection and response including 24/7 monitoring, proactive threat hunting, alert triage, incident response support, and monthly reporting — because deploying a security platform without the operational capability to act on its output provides compliance evidence but not actual security

Frequently Asked Questions

Does this mean Agency only recommends CrowdStrike for endpoint protection?

What we tell clients is that we recommend what is right for their specific situation. CrowdStrike is our preferred endpoint platform and the one we can offer at partnership pricing with full managed support. However, if a client has an existing EDR investment that is performing well, or if their specific requirements are better served by a different platform, we will advise accordingly. Our obligation is to our clients, not to any vendor relationship. The partnership gives us an excellent default recommendation, but it does not create an exclusive arrangement.

How does CrowdStrike pricing through Agency compare to purchasing directly?

In our experience, our partnership pricing is typically thirty to forty percent below CrowdStrike's published list pricing for companies in the fifty to five hundred employee range. The exact pricing depends on which Falcon modules are included and the number of endpoints. Beyond the per-endpoint cost savings, our clients also avoid the cost of hiring or contracting CrowdStrike-specific expertise for deployment and management — we include deployment, configuration, policy tuning, and ongoing management as part of our advisory engagement.

What happens if there is a security incident on a client endpoint?

When a genuine threat is detected on a client endpoint, the response process activates immediately. CrowdStrike's Falcon platform can automatically contain threats by isolating affected endpoints while maintaining management access for investigation. Our team is notified and coordinates the response, which includes investigation of the scope and impact, containment actions, remediation guidance, and post-incident documentation. What we tell clients is that the response timeline is measured in minutes for automated containment and hours for full investigation — not the days or weeks that companies without managed detection and response typically experience. All incident response activities are documented and available as compliance evidence.