Ten years of partnership with Complete Network has brought financial firm the Capitala Group worry-free efficiency and compliance, clearing the way for long-lasting success.
The Capitala Group is a leading provider of capital to lower and traditional middle market companies. As a long-term strategic partner, Complete Network has provided over a decade of network and technology support services to the Capitala Group, helping the firm successfully eliminate crucial IT bottlenecks, navigate a complex regulatory framework, and optimize their efficiency with the latest technologies.
Prior to its partnership with Complete Network, the Capitala Group had no IT services partner and was managing its technology infrastructure in-house. The absence of centralized management of the firm’s technology assets was severely effecting efficiency, and causing frequent network downtime. As the firm grew, these inefficiencies were beginning to take a toll on employee morale and the firm’s ability to effectively serve its clients.
An area of particular concern for the Capitala Group was staying ahead of the quickly-changing compliance landscape. The lack of compliance support became exponentially more important as the firm prepared to open its first public fund, which would subject it to stringent new regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley, in addition to those from FINRA and the SEC. Faced with these new challenges, leadership at the Capitala Group began to look for an experienced IT partner who could help them address all of these requirements with a single, comprehensive solution.
“I am constantly on the road with just my phone and computer to keep in touch. It is great to have Complete Network always a phone call or email away to help me with any of my computer or IT security issues. Their ability to remotely monitor my computer and get things working with minimal involvement from me is a huge time saver.”
– Jack McGlinn, Capitala Group COO
After a rigorous interview process of the region’s leading technology services firms, the Capitala Group chose Complete Network as the technology partner best suited to meeting their high requirements. The leadership of the Capitala Group was particularly impressed by Complete Network’s rigorous commitment to proactive service and demonstrated track-record of deploying highly-secure network solutions for financial firms.
Complete Network’s first job at the Capitala Group was streamlining the firm’s disorganized network by centralizing the management of the company’s IT assets into a single platform. This initiative included deploying the firm’s first network server and implementing a Microsoft Active Directory system to coordinate collaboration and data sharing across the firm’s network. This Active Directory implementation provided each Capitala staff-member with a single account for fast access to the required company assets, while also securing sensitive materials from unauthorized users and providing a single management point for overseeing all network and user operations.
Complete Network has subsequently rolled out many other key IT infrastructure projects for the Capitala Group, including the creation of a comprehensive offsite backup solution that regularly updates the firm’s data archives, and a cloud-based disaster recovery solution that can restore a disabled server in minutes.
The Complete Network solution has delivered many benefits to the Capitala Group. Firstly, it allows our engineers to proactively supervise the Capitala Group’s network activity in an unobtrusive way so we can solve IT issues before they start to negatively affect operations. This has ensured consistent and predictable network uptime. Secondly, the Complete Network solution has also enabled Capitala employees working from the road to securely access and share data from offsite locations, further improving the firm’s operational efficiency. The solution has scaled out to meet the firm’s needs as it tripled in size over the last decade.
“As a regulated financial firm, the best thing about working with Complete Network is their proactive approach to information security trends and best practices. Complete Network provides very specialized technical solutions in a way that doesn’t assume we’re any sort of information technology experts.”
– Richard G. Wheelahan III, Capitala Group General Counsel
A top priority of all Complete Network’s clients in the financial services field is staying current with the rapidly-evolving compliance landscape, and the Capitala Group is no different. In the early stages of our cooperation, the firm’s compliance priorities included the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), as well as regulations from the SEC and FINRA. To help the Capitala Group meet these security requirements, Complete Network ensured that best practices for password management and network segmentation were being implemented throughout the firm. To help protect sensitive client data during transmission, we deployed an enterprise-grade firewall solution, and a robust email security system that included attachment protection and enterprise-grade encryption.
As the Capitala Group prepared to launch its first public fund, its compliance needs become exponentially more complex. This includes compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, a set of regulations aimed at publicly held US corporations and entities, which requires end-to-end monitoring of all IT systems to enable accurate reporting, and sufficient operational transparency to allow external auditors to verify this information.
A top priority in meeting Sarbanes-Oxley’s requirements was ensuring internal security. To accomplish this, we implemented systems at the Capitala Group to track all user activity and established verifiable controls to monitor data access and integrity. Next, Complete Network implemented a real-time auditing system to keep security logs of all attempted network intrusion, an automatic email archive solution to track all inbound and outbound communication, and systems to ensure that the firm’s new employee onboarding and off-boarding are handled in the most secure way possible. Our compliance expertise has ensured that beyond the initial growing pains of building out these new systems, the Capitala Group has stayed fully Sarbanes-Oxley compliant with minimal stress or efficiency loss.
Complete Network has worked to keep the Capitala Group secure and efficient for over a decade. During this time, the Capitala Group has grown from a firm managing one fund in a single office, to a firm with five offices managing over $1.4 billion dollars in three separate funds. Complete Network is honored to have helped the Capitala Group along its journey, and values the opportunity to help its clients in the financial service field prosper through more efficient, more secure technology solutions.
