Raising the Bar: How Siax Leads with Security in Australia’s Most Demanding Sectors 

Siax is a Melbourne-based MSP with 40 years in business and 250+ clients across healthcare, financial services, professional services, and regulated industries. When cybersecurity started shifting from an IT line item to a business priority, CEO Milan Maricic and Sales Manager Brendan Garrick “changed the company’s whole positioning to be a security-first managed service provider,” said Brendan. “We saw where the industry was heading and we got ahead of it.” 

That call, made six years ago, now shows up in the clients they win, the RFQs they compete for, and the lasting partnerships they maintain.  

Anticipating the Advanced Threat Landscape  

Rewind to 2020 and the threat landscape looked a lot different than it does now, with most MSPs still treating security as an add-on. But Siax could see the ground shifting. Phishing emails were getting harder to detect. Cloud-based attacks were rising. And their clients — hospitals, financial firms, professional practices — were operating in environments where a single incident could mean a compliance breach, a damaged reputation, or worse. 

Siax understood that building an internal SOC wasn’t the right move for their business. The smarter play was partnering with a team whose entire focus was security operations and building an exceptional practice around it.  

Partnering with Blackpoint Cyber 

In 2020, Siax decided to partner with Blackpoint Cyber for the core of their security stack. The 24/7 SOC was the foundation, a team of security specialists watching their clients’ environments around the clock, responding to threats in real time, and freeing Siax’s engineers to focus on what they do best. 

What started as endpoint MDR expanded into a full CompassOne deployment covering identity threat detection (ITDR), Cloud Posture, Dark Web Monitoring, Vulnerability Management, and Application Control, with integrations into tools their engineers were already using like Sentinel One and Cisco Duo. 

The result was a single platform that gave the team visibility between every layer of their clients’ environments across endpoint, identity, and cloud without having to jump between tools to get it.  

“The sophistication of attacks has been a big shift,” said Milan. “With Blackpoint, we’ve really kept up with all those changes in the landscape.” 

Their confidence in that decision ran deep enough that when a client inquired what made Blackpoint different, Siax put it to the test. They conducted a live trial alongside the client’s existing product for an organization that hadn’t seen an incident in over a year. Within two days, Siax’s setup intercepted a threat and isolated the affected user. The competing product never detected it. 

What a High-Performing Security Practice Actually Looks Like  

The difference in how Siax operates today is tangible. Engineers who used to jump between five to six portals for every incident now work from one place. CompassOne’s two-way integrations with the team’s existing tools mean issues get resolved without anyone leaving the platform. The time that used to disappear into triage now goes back into the business. 

200+ 
working days given back to the business every year 

The equivalent of a full-time employee, redirected from triage to growth. 

With CompassOne’s Vulnerability Management module, Siax identifies and remediates critical exposures before clients know they exist. In healthcare and financial services, where data obligations are strict and the margin for error is obsolete, that level of security coverage is a key differentiator.     

CompassOne’s Security Posture Rating gave their already strong practice a language and measurable performance clients could understand. In conversations, they can easily communicate their progress with a number, and the risk becomes visible. Seeing the work laid out clearly evolved Siax from an esteemed vendor into a trusted advisor. 

“It gives us honesty and transparency,” said Milan. “It becomes a consultative engagement rather than a transactional sale.” 

Today Siax wins engagements that once would have gone to firms twice their size, across some of the most compliance-heavy sectors in Australia. They compete on credibility, retain clients through consistent delivery, and keep getting stronger as the threat landscape gets harder. 

As AI-driven threats evolve and compliance requirements tighten, being a security-first MSP looks less like a smart positioning choice and more like the only sensible way to operate. Siax made that call years ago, and the results speak for themselves.