Key Results
- 550+ remote users protected across entire SaaS ecosystem
- 6 enterprise applications secured
- 51% of issues automatically remediated by end users
- 1% false positive rate
- Zero additional headcount required to operate DLP
The Challenge: Enterprise Security for a Lean IT Team
ZenBusiness, the SaaS company providing trusted guidance for small business owners, found themselves in a familiar modern dilemma: handling highly sensitive customer data with 550+ remote staff spread across the globe and just five people managing the entire IT infrastructure. This means traditional DLP solutions were not an option for their unique needs.
"Because of the highly sensitive data we handle, we needed to put some data security measures in place," says Chris Chipman, Enterprise IT Architect at ZenBusiness. "We didn't have any type of DLP solution before Nightfall, because we didn’t have time to install or fine tune anything. We have 551 active users, and five people in IT running everything. Nightfall reaches out directly to our users to help them self-remediate any issues, and allows us to manage everything inside a single application.”
The Solution: Automation-First DLP That Fits the Way They Work
Nightfall delivers enterprise data protection across the tools ZenBusiness uses most—without adding security headcount. Setup was “unremarkable in the best way”—fast, smooth, and supported with weekly, proactive CSM check-ins.
Use Case 1: Customer PII Protection in Google Drive
The Risk: Customers sometimes send sensitive data that can land in Drive.
Nightfall's Solution: AI-native DLP detects customer PII in real-time, automatically categorizing what's acceptable versus what needs immediate attention. When inappropriate data is detected, end users receive clear guidance on proper handling procedures.
The Impact: "Nightfall automatically categorizes customer data risks and guides our response," says Chris. "When customers send sensitive data that ends up in G-Drive, Nightfall immediately distinguishes between data that's 'allowed, but not in the location we found it' versus data that's 'just not allowed whatsoever.' Our users get exactly the guidance they need without IT having to investigate every incident."
Use Case 2: Protecting IP & Secrets in GitHub
The Risk: Production API keys and GCP secrets accidentally committed to repos.
Nightfall's Solution: Real-time scanning of code commits catches production credentials before they become a security incident, with automated alerts sent directly to developers.
The Impact: “Our engineers get immediate Slack notifications and can resolve these security risks on their own," says Chris. "Sometimes they'll come back to us with a justification that they’re using test API keys for a project, and we can acknowledge the alert without interrupting productivity. But most of the time we never have to intervene at all.”
Use Case 3: Managing SecOps Where Work Happens—Slack
SecOps at Scale: ZenBusiness runs the majority of their SecOps communications through Slack: approvals, ticket routing, IT automation, and a lot more. Traditional DLP would create thousands of alerts in their primary work hub and overwhelm their five-person IT team.
Nightfall's Approach: Tune policies by context—strict in public channels; allowances in internal DMs; tight controls for external Slack DMs. Alerts are readable, succinct, and actionable in-message.
The Right Fit: "Nightfall's Slack integration is huge for us," says Chris. "The notifications are perfect—easy to read, succinct, with action buttons so people can resolve issues right there in Slack. Since we do everything through Slack, it fits seamlessly into how we already work."
Use Case 4: Automated Compliance Documentation
The Problem: Manual compliance processes were draining valuable security team time and resources during SOC and PCI DSS audits.
Nightfall's Solution: Automated documentation and reporting demonstrates proactive data protection across all monitored applications.
Staying Consistently Safe: “Nightfall filled a giant gap that we simply did not have something for," says Chris. "Our director of security has to handle PCI compliance, SOC compliance every single year—and the fact that we have this portion covered now, when we didn't before, is essential. Nightfall has become as essential to our security stack as disaster recovery is to business continuity."
The Results: Automated Data Security That Actually Works
Immediate Enterprise Visibility
ZenBusiness achieved comprehensive data protection visibility across their entire SaaS ecosystem within hours of deployment, not months.
"We saw results immediately," says Chris. "When we first deployed Nightfall, we gained valuable visibility into areas where sensitive data might be across our environment. In the early weeks, we identified opportunities to strengthen data handling practices and began refining our policies. Through systematic remediation and ongoing adjustments, the number of policy alerts steadily decreased as employees were trained on employing better data handling habits.."
Self-Healing Security Culture
Over half of ZenBusiness’ data security alerts are remediated automatically with Nightfall. They have built a security-aware culture where data protection is strengthened through employee education rather than IT enforcement.
"Nightfall educates our people about data sharing in real-time," says Chris. "Over time, employees become behaviorally trained to share less sensitive data inappropriately—which is exactly the outcome you want from any DLP solution."
Precision Detection
Nightfall eliminated the alert fatigue that forced them to abandon previous solutions like Google Workspace DLP entirely. This precision enables true automation for the ZenBusiness security team.
"Any type of system that requires constant babysitting or manual intervention is an automatic no for us,” says Chris. “We needed a solution that we don’t need to constantly check on. Nightfall is perfect in that regard. If we didn't have it, we would need a full-time security person just to do DLP. That's headcount we just don’t have.”
DLP for Modern Remote Companies
"If we didn't have Nightfall, we would need a full-time data auditor. That's headcount that we don’t have. Nightfall allows us to creatively solve our data security challenges." - Chris Chipman, Enterprise IT Architect, ZenBusiness
The Bottom Line
ZenBusiness is proving that lean IT teams don't have to choose between comprehensive data protection and operational efficiency. They eliminated a significant compliance challenge while actually reducing security overhead, demonstrating that the right DLP solution enhances rather than hinders a high-trust, high-automation culture.
In an era where remote-first companies handle increasingly sensitive data with smaller teams, ZenBusiness chose Nightfall: the DLP solution that scales with modern work patterns rather than against them.
