Jamie StevensenCase Study: AO World

AO World is one of the UK’s leading online electrical retailers, managing a 3,000 device estate across head offices, warehouses, creative studios and operational sites nationwide. For Lee Crook, Head of Technical Services, that means keeping end user computing, infrastructure, and both cloud and on premises systems secure, healthy and compliant at all times.

The challenge: hours of manual work, no single source of truth

Around 18 months ago, AO World’s technical services team set out to answer a straightforward question: were the tools they had deployed actually working? Across a complex estate running multiple cyber, infrastructure and MDM solutions, each tool had its own console and its own view of coverage. Building a picture of the whole estate meant pulling data from several different systems, data that was often inconsistent and already out of date by the time it was compiled.

“We found that, because we have quite a mix of agents and technologies across the business and use them in different environments, it was becoming increasingly difficult to get a single view that stayed up to date and showed how these tools and agents were working for us.” - Lee Crook, Head of Technical Services, AO World

The team could identify individual gaps within each tool, but there was no reliable way to see the full picture or act on it quickly. Manual reporting was slow, labour intensive, and carried the constant risk of working from a list that was already outdated.

The ThreatAware solution: one view, trusted by everyone

AO World first encountered ThreatAware at DTX Manchester. The proposition was simple: consolidate data from every existing tool into a single, validated view of the estate. Deployment was agentless, with direct API integrations into existing management consoles.

Implementation was fast, and where a connector didn't yet exist, ThreatAware built it. The whole process took less than a month and has run smoothly ever since.

ThreatAware now provides:

• A consolidated inventory of all devices across AO World’s estate, from laptops and desktops to virtual machines and cloud infrastructure.

• Clear per device indicators showing whether each agent and security control is installed, active and functioning correctly.

• Role based dashboards used consistently across technical services, security and infrastructure teams.

Impact: visibility that drives action

From day one, bringing everything into ThreatAware surfaced coverage gaps the team had never been able to see before. Devices that were falling out of certain systems became immediately visible, along with the reasons why. That clarity allowed the team to move from reactive response to structured remediation, using dashboards to plan and track work systematically rather than chasing a constantly shifting list.

The reach of the tool also quickly expanded beyond its original scope. What began as an end user computing visibility project grew to include server infrastructure, cloud VMs and physical assets across the estate. Teams that had previously operated from separate views were suddenly working from the same data.

Reporting upwards with confidence

ThreatAware enabled AO World to introduce formal KPI reporting for agent deployment and health across the estate. Coverage rates, check in frequency and cross system compliance are now tracked monthly as part of governance sessions, giving leadership a consistent, evidence based picture of security posture over time.

Being able to demonstrate retrospective improvement has also proved valuable. The team waited until it was confident in the data before publishing, then used historical trend data to show the progress achieved since onboarding.

Uncovering the unexpected

ThreatAware’s tagging features surfaced insights the team had not anticipated. The ability to tag assets by OS version, hardware type, location and team ownership gave AO World a structured way to manage its estate at scale, including better oversight of bring your own device (BYOD) policies for executive users. Offboarding accuracy also improved, with ThreatAware helping to identify stale devices that had slipped through and tighten estate hygiene.

Looking ahead: from visibility to automation

With a reliable baseline now in place, AO World is working towards automating remediation. The team has documented fixes for recurring agent issues as they have been resolved, with the goal of triggering those fixes automatically as soon as ThreatAware surfaces a problem, without the need to raise a ticket.

“In the future, it’s about fully automating the resolution of those problems to make sure all assets remain in these systems until the end of their lifecycle.” - Lee Crook, Head of Technical Services, AO World

That shift from reactive to proactive has already begun to change what the team can focus on. With less time spent pulling reports and chasing issues, there is more capacity for higher value work: improving the employee experience, investing in collaboration technology, and engaging users on wider cyber hygiene.

Key benefits for AO World

AO World now relies on ThreatAware as the foundation of its day to day security and IT operations:

• Complete visibility: A single, trusted view of all devices across a complex, multi site estate, replacing fragmented data from separate tools.

• Security control validation: Real time confirmation that agents are installed, active and functioning across end user computing, infrastructure and cloud environments.

• Time savings for the team: Hours of manual reporting removed, freeing capacity for proactive and strategic work.

• Cross team alignment: Security, infrastructure and IT teams working from the same data, with consistent dashboards and shared KPIs.

• A platform for automation: A reliable foundation from which to build automated remediation workflows and reduce manual intervention over time.

Real time results

AO World has moved from managing a fragmented, hard to trust estate to operating with unified visibility across every device, every agent and every control. If you’re facing similar challenges, conflicting data, manual reporting and gaps you cannot easily quantify, ThreatAware can give you the same single source of truth.

If you'd like to see how complete visibility across your IT estate could transform your security posture, book a demo with our team today.