Storm partners ContraForce to boost Littlefish SOC

Storm Technology has partnered with ContraForce in Ireland, adding the company to the Littlefish Group security operation run by Storm.

The deal focuses on security operations for organisations using Microsoft security tools. ContraForce will sit above Storm's existing Microsoft-based set-up as a delivery layer for incident triage, investigation and response.

Storm is part of Littlefish Group, which provides IT, cyber security, managed services and consulting across the UK and Ireland. The group says it supports more than 1 million users globally in public and private sector organisations.

The partnership is intended to change how security incidents are investigated, assessed, prioritised and mitigated. The system is designed to identify potential risks in seconds or minutes rather than over hours.

This is intended to reduce the time analysts spend sorting through alerts and classifying incidents. In turn, cyber specialists can focus more on decision-making, additional response actions and broader risk reduction work for clients.

Human oversight

Both companies emphasised the role of human analysts in the arrangement. Experienced cyber professionals will remain responsible for decisions, governance and accountability, while the software is intended to support analysts rather than replace them.

The partnership comes as the cyber security market adjusts to the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence by both businesses and attackers. Companies are using AI tools to improve productivity and speed, while defenders face threats that can be launched more quickly and at greater scale.

Sean Tickle, Head of Cyber Security at Littlefish Group, said: “AI is changing the cyber security landscape on both sides of the equation. Organisations are exploring how it can help them move faster and deliver more value, while attackers are using the same technology to become more sophisticated and harder to detect. We believe the answer isn't to replace people with AI. The real power comes from combining intelligent AI context and workflows with human expertise. AI can process information at incredible speed, but context, judgement and accountability remain essential when the stakes are high. This partnership allows us to give our analysts better intelligence, faster, helping them focus on protecting our customers and enabling them to adopt new technologies with greater confidence.”

SOC pressure

Security operations centres are under increasing pressure as service providers take on more customers with different technology estates and varying alert volumes. The challenge is to maintain a consistent response while handling growing complexity.

ContraForce Founder and Chief Executive Officer Stan Golubchik said the partnership is intended to address that operational strain. “Running a SOC is one of the most critical services delivered to businesses today, and one of the hardest to run well. At scale it gets harder still, because every client a provider adds brings its own environment, its own alert volume and its own expectations, and the standard has to hold across all of them. This partnership lets Storm's SOC put intelligent AI agents alongside their analysts rather than in place of them, cutting the time it takes to separate real threats from noise and act on them. The result is faster and broader coverage for every client Storm Technology protects, enabling their analysts to meet AI-driven threats. Storm's specialists have always been world-class defenders. What changes now is reach. Their expertise arrives at every incident, for every client, at machine speed.”

ContraForce describes its software as a platform for providers and security teams using Microsoft security products. Its delivery agents handle tasks across triage, investigation, response, tuning, ticketing and customer reporting under procedures defined by the provider.

For Storm, the addition expands the security operation it already offers through Littlefish Group's managed security services. The result is intended to be a more responsive operation that can detect and respond to threats more quickly, while freeing specialists to spend more time helping clients strengthen cyber resilience.

The announcement also reflects a wider push among IT and cyber security service providers to combine automation with analyst oversight rather than present AI as a replacement for security teams. In practice, that approach is framed as a way to manage larger volumes of alerts without handing over final judgement on incidents affecting critical systems and data.

Littlefish Group says its work spans Digital Solutions, Cyber Services, Managed Services, and Data & AI for customers in the public and private sectors.