ACR Scales Securely Through M&As with Ontinue's AI-Powered MXDR

 Five Years of Partnership: How Ontinue's Microsoft Expertise Helped ACR Accelerate Integration and Reduce Risk

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., May 20, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Ontinue, a leading provider of AI-powered managed extended detection and response (MXDR) services and winner of the 2023 Microsoft Security Services Innovator of the Year award, today announced it remains the MXDR provider of choice for ACR.  As ACR accelerates its aggressive growth strategy—completing 10 acquisitions since 2016, the company has leaned on strategic technology partners to ensure its operations remain secure, agile, and efficient. Central to this approach is Ontinue supporting ACR's 24/7 managed security operations to help the organization scale confidently. ACR has been an Ontinue customer for 5 years—a testament to the consistent value and high level of service the team at Ontinue delivers.

With a product portfolio that spans more than 6,000 items for the food service and hospitality industries, ACR depends on a reliable and secure supply chain. As the pace of mergers and acquisitions accelerates, integrating new companies with different systems and risk profiles has become increasingly complex. In response, ACR has elevated cybersecurity as a core business enabler—embedding it across M&A, supply chain resilience, and digital innovation. This enterprise-wide focus is led strategically by Thai Vong, the company's top technology executive, who serves as Vice President of Technology and Acting CIO, overseeing ACR's full technology portfolio—spanning cybersecurity, architecture, data and analytics, application delivery, and enterprise support functions.

"Ontinue has helped us build a secure foundation that protects our environment around the clock," said Vong.  "Their team feels like an extension of ours—proactive, responsive, and deeply embedded in our operations. That trust allows us to shift focus to broader business priorities like integrating acquisitions, optimizing the supply chain operations, and driving growth, without constantly worrying about what might be lurking in our environment."

"The ability to scale without sacrificing security has become a competitive advantage for us," said Tom Boyles Jr., Director of Infrastructure and Security at ACR. "Ontinue's 24/7 monitoring, AI-driven capabilities, and deep integration with Microsoft tools like Defender and Sentinel ensure our environments remain secure—while freeing up our internal team to focus on high-impact projects. ACR values innovation in its partners, and Ontinue's use of AI is a hallmark of the kind of forward-thinking approach we look for. Their AI-powered capabilities, combined with Thai's strategic leadership, helped us take our cybersecurity program to the next level."

Future-Ready Security Investment: Managed SecOps Built to Scale

Ontinue's ION MXDR service sets a new standard for MDR by going further to investigate and resolve every incident without customer involvement. This empowers CISOs and their teams to shift focus from day-to-day security tasks to more strategic initiatives. Ontinue has pioneered several key innovations to reimagine how managed security is delivered – combining collaboration, intelligent automation, AI and human expertise.

Ontinue launched the industry's first Microsoft Teams-based collaboration model that enables real-time, direct engagement between customers and the Ontinue Cyber Defense Center for faster communication and decision-making during incident management. Smart Response further tailors the service to each organization by automating customized rules of engagement and escalation paths that allow the ION MXDR service to seamlessly integrate into a customer's desired operational model. Additionally, to accelerate investigations at scale, Ontinue introduced autonomous investigations powered by agentic AI. Every incident escalated to the Ontinue Cyber Defense Center is automatically investigated by ION IQ, the AI at the core of the ION MXDR service, before being passed to a human for further analysis. For each incident ION IQ uses agentic AI to gather contextual information from disparate systems, form a hypothesis, develop an action plan for testing the hypothesis, conduct the investigation, and provide a detailed summary for review by one of Ontinue's Cyber Defenders – all in a matter of minutes. Together, these capabilities have led to a 50% decrease in the meantime to investigate (MTTI) incidents in ACR's environment, despite the fact that the ACR environment has grown larger and more complex over time.

"Our mission is to deliver nonstop security that enables our customers to stay focused on what matters most to their business," said Geoff Haydon, CEO at Ontinue. "As attack surfaces and new threats emerge faster than ever before, CISOs and their teams face mounting pressure. From the beginning, Ontinue has always viewed AI — especially GenAI and agentic AI — as a critical technology, a force multiplier for overcoming scale and speed limitations that legacy MDRs simply can't address. For the first time ever, we are able to leverage human reasoning and problem solving at machine speed and scale. We're incredibly proud to be a trusted partner to ACR as they scale their business through rapid growth."

By selecting Ontinue, ACR also found a partner to improve its security posture and reduce enterprise risk. Ontinue's proprietary Security Posture Improvement Framework has helped ACR improve their Microsoft Secure Score (a common metric for measuring security posture health) to 68, 70% higher than the industry average. As part of the ION MXDR service, the ACR team works with their designated Cyber Advisor to identify, prioritize, and implement tactics and controls that systematically reduce the attack surface, even while the ACR environment continues to grow with each new acquisition. ACR is now better equipped to integrate newly acquired companies swiftly and safely, often within a two-month window.

"As we integrate acquisitions and expand our digital landscape," added Vong, "we've prioritized building a unified security architecture that doesn't just protect but adapts in real time. Ontinue's Managed SOC services have allowed us to extend Microsoft Defender and Sentinel across our hybrid infrastructure—giving us centralized visibility, standardized controls, and streamlined incident response across every business unit. That consistency is critical when onboarding new companies, especially at the pace we're growing."

"With the addition of a dedicated cybersecurity analyst, we accelerated the implementation of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, improved our CIS benchmarks, and began our journey into NIST's AI Risk Management Framework—all while strengthening enterprise risk and business continuity planning," said Tom Boyles Jr., Director of Infrastructure and Security at ACR. "It reflects the shift we've made from reacting to threats to systematically building maturity across our security program."

Rather than building an in-house security operations center (SOC), ACR leverages Ontinue's 24/7 SOC to deliver around-the-clock coverage while minimizing internal staff burnout. Ontinue's team acts as an extension of ACR's IT organization, helping them operationalize their Microsoft Defender and Sentinel solutions and maximize the return on these investments. As a result, ACR can scale its operations—both organically and through acquisition—without needing to scale its security team or implement additional tools at the same pace.

Key Results of Partnership between ACR and Ontinue

• 30 hours of analyst time saved in the last 90 days, freeing up ACR's internal talent to focus on high-impact, enterprise-level initiatives rather than day-to-day security tasks.
• 50% reduction in mean time to investigation (MTTI), significantly accelerating threat detection and response.
• Increased Microsoft Secure Score to 68 (from 53 since November 2024), which is 70% above the industry average.
• 28% improvement in Microsoft Secure Score (from 53 to 68) since November 2024, reflecting stronger configuration hygiene and overall security posture.
• Zero security breaches in 2024, maintaining industry-best standards for proactive threat prevention.
• 5-year partnership milestone, underscoring the sustained value and trust ACR places in Ontinue's managed security services

Innovation & Collaboration Builds Trust

The partnership with Ontinue extends beyond technology. Embedded collaboration through Microsoft Teams enables seamless communication during incident response. Ontinue's high-touch approach fosters transparency, trust, and faster decision-making across both organizations. This close working relationship has also strengthened ACR's broader enterprise risk management and cybersecurity framework, supporting continuous improvement and resilience.

"Cybersecurity is no longer just about defense, it's about enabling the business to move faster with confidence," said Thai Vong, Vice President of Technology and Acting CIO. "As we continue to scale through acquisitions and digital transformation, having a partner like Ontinue, who understands our pace, our architecture, and our priorities, has been invaluable. Their seamless integration with our Microsoft ecosystem and real-time responsiveness through Teams allow us to navigate complexity without slowing down. Together, we've strengthened our risk posture while creating space for continuous improvement and innovation."

As ACR continues to evolve and expand, its partnership with Ontinue remains a critical enabler—ensuring every new acquisition, system upgrade, or operational change is underpinned by modern, resilient cybersecurity.

While ACR accelerates its digital transformation and navigates an increasingly AI-driven threat landscape, the company remains focused on building a cybersecurity program that is both scalable and deeply integrated. In today's environment, adapting in real time—without slowing business momentum—is essential.

"At ACR, cybersecurity is part of our business model, not just a defense mechanism," said Vong. "Modern cybersecurity is not a bolt-on. It's embedded in how we operate and grow. It's the foundation for every digital move we make, whether we're onboarding a new business, launching a new platform, or protecting the trust our customers place in us. Ontinue's approach gives us the clarity and assurance that our environment remains protected."

Vong's leadership continues to define how ACR embeds cybersecurity into the fabric of its operation, aligning innovation, trust, and resilience at scale.

For more information on how Ontinue helps organizations like ACR protect and scale their operations, visit www.ontinue.com.

About Ontinue: Nonstop SecOps  

As a leading provider of AI-powered managed extended detection and response (MXDR) service, Ontinue is on a mission to be the most trusted security partner that empowers customers to embrace and accelerate digital transformation by using AI to operate more at scale, and with less risk. The combination of AI and human expertise is essential for delivering effective managed security that is tailored to a customer's unique environment, operational constraints, and risks. Our MXDR service combines powerful proprietary AI with the industry's first collaboration with Microsoft Teams to continuously build a deep understanding of our customers' environments, informing how we prevent, detect, and respond to threats. Our Microsoft expertise allows customers to achieve these outcomes with the Microsoft Security tools they already own. The result is highly localized managed protection that empowers security teams to be faster, smarter, and more cost efficient than ever before.

Continuous protection. AI-powered Nonstop SecOps. That's Ontinue.

Ontinue PR Contacts:
Alison Raymond
[email protected]

ICR Lumina
Nathaniel Hawthorne
[email protected] 

SOURCE Ontinue