CASE STUDY
ÉTUDE DE CAS
Fireant quickly and seamlessly obtains first security certifications with Vanta
By automating up to 90% of the work required to obtain ISO 27001, Fireant got certified within 5 weeks.
From existing templates to easy-to-use tools, Fireant enjoyed a streamlined certification journey.
Using the Vanta platform, Fireant is now preparing for future growth with new certifications.
“Vanta gave us the confidence we could achieve our requirements on time and at a very reasonable price. We have since completed the ISO 27001 certification and are continuing to complete additional security accreditations. This is giving our company a genuine competitive advantage when compared to our SMB competitors.”
The company
Fireant serves millions of Australians in critical systems
A scale-up that prides itself on its robust and highly secure solutions, Fireant partners with government agencies to build software that matters.
Offering a full spectrum of services ranging from design and development to testing, program management, training and support, Fireant delivers its scalable software to clients including the NSW Rural Fire Service and NSW State Emergency Services (SES).
With a suite of ready-to-use, off-the-shelf software components designed to handle common use cases—such as Notification, Geospatial, Workflow, User Management, and many more—Fireant’s solutions serve millions of Australians in critical systems.
The challenge
An urgent need for compliance
Presented with an exciting opportunity to participate in a digital product solution tender for the NSW Government, Fireant was eager to showcase its capabilities. There was, however, one major challenge.
Due to increased cybersecurity standards within the NSW Government, all participants would need to demonstrate that their digital products met the ISO 27001 Standard—a standard that Fireant didn’t possess.
Now faced with the seemingly impossible task of completing an ISO 27001 stage one and two in less than two months over the Christmas and New Year period to meet the tender submission deadline, Fireant needed a super fast solution.
Adding more complexity to the situation was the fact that the company had no existing documentation, meaning they’d need to start the process from scratch. Evan Allitt, Fireant’s Head of Operations, summarises the challenging situation the company found themselves in:
“In order for us to be considered for any of the tenders, we needed a minimum level of compliance. And we had none. So at the same time as writing and responding to these government tenders, we now had to jump through hoops to get accreditation within the shortest period of time.”
The solution
An accelerated path to ISO 27001 certification
While one of Fireant’s owners had previous experience working with Vanta and was a strong champion of its solutions, Evan was agnostic at the start. However, once he began working with Vanta, Fireant’s Head of Operations was thrilled with the company’s approach and process.
“We jumped in and it just worked. It was fantastic and made the journey really straightforward. As an engineer, I like to look at the outcome and work my way back to where I am now. Using the Vanta process, it was as if it was written by an engineer for an engineer.”
Vanta’s templated yet flexible approach to security and compliance allowed Fireant to develop workflows, reporting, and documentation in record speed, resulting in a rapid journey to the required ISO 27001 certification.
Speaking about the comprehensive documentation templates that form the basis of Vanta’s automated compliance solution, Evan notes that “setting up policies and tying them to the relevant pieces of legislation are normally the hardest part when it comes to governance, but the templates from Vanta acted as a guide, prompting you if you’ve missed anything, which was super helpful.”
"We love the fact the platform recognises documentation from one application and will automatically attribute it to other security frameworks, meaning no double up on document maintenance.”
{{quote-2}}
The Fireant team has also turned to Vanta’s Trust Center, with Evan explaining that this feature “will really allow us to accelerate our security reviews and ultimately decrease the amount of effort involved in the sales cycle, particularly with repetitive processes for each deal.”
The impact
Compliance-ready for future growth
As a result of Vanta’s streamlined approach to obtaining ISO 27001 certification—automating up to 90% of the work requireand saving clients up to 400 hours of work—Fireant was able to complete their desired accreditation within the extremely tight 5-week timeframe.
With this accreditation successfully secured, the company is now looking ahead to its future growth and moving towards completing its ISM Essential 8 Maturity Level 2, ISO 9001, and SOC2 accreditation—all using Vanta’s trust management platform.
“We’re not a startup anymore,” says Evan. “We’re a scale-up, and we’ll need to demonstrate our security posture to future clients. Getting these additional accreditations will help us to continually improve over time, giving us the opportunity to access more and bigger clients, as well as larger contracts with our existing clients."
{{quote-3}}
“The manual processes involved in obtaining certification are complex and a lot of work. The fact that Vanta has the tools that allow us to track our maintenance against compliance on a near real-time basis was fabulous.”
