Echo: Strengthening security and scalability with Brightly

Echo is a fast-growing e-waste recycling company, recently recognised in the Deloitte Fast 50. The company refurbishes and resells technology, extending the life of devices and reducing e-waste.  

Following a merger and rebrand, Echo has continued to expand rapidly, with multiple sites and a team of 60 staff. For a business built on trust and responsibility, it was important that its internal systems and security kept pace with its growth. 

“We want to make sure that we are continuing to manage our security as best we can, and being careful with data. We deal with that for our customers, and we do that to a very high standard, so it’s about walking the talk, making sure we’ve got our ducks in a row and doing things the right way”, says Echo CIO, Niki Pedder. 

Scaling fast, staying secure 

Rapid growth brought exciting opportunities, but also complexity. Echo’s own technical team is focused on refurbishing and reselling equipment, not on maintaining internal IT systems. As more staff and sites came on board, Echo needed better visibility of devices, even more robust cyber security and smoother ways to onboard employees. 

Building security from the inside out 

The partnership began with a review of Echo’s network security, ensuring devices brought in from outside could be safely managed separate to internal devices. 

 From there, Brightly introduced Microsoft Intune, giving the business a central, easy-to-use system for managing every device across both sites. 

Intune is a cloud-based tool that lets businesses see, manage and protect all their devices from one place.  

“Implementing Intune helped me to get a lot more visibility… I can look in the system and say, okay, I’ve got, say, 47 registered devices. I know exactly whose they are. I know if there’s a problem with them. I’ve got full visibility on everything,” says Niki. “When I need to onboard people, that part is now much easier. I can install everything they need from one place, it’s like having our own little app store.” 

We also helped Echo roll out 1Password across the organisation. This gave staff a secure, simple way to handle passwords and login credentials, while strengthening awareness of good security practices within the team.  

What stood out to the Echo team was Brightly’s people-focused approach: user guides, checklists, and on-site training sessions made change and implementation feel easy. 

“Nives in particular is very good at pulling through what it is that you’re looking for, and making sure all of the information is there… anything that she’s doing, she’s writing instructions to the team on how to enrol the device, or what the different stages are. There’s always documentation that goes with it, which makes it a lot easier for me when I need to tell the team about things. And then you’ve got Tam, who’s managing timelines; you have a check in with them, you go through what’s happening when, and if there’s ever any questions, it’s no problem to answer anything. They’re very transparent, very clear on what can be done when and why. 

“From a day-to-day perspective Odelia and Ethan are fantastic; they work really hard, they’re quick to react, always there when you need them and they are super patient and very determined to resolve issues.” 

Peace of mind, day to day 

Echo now has the systems and on-going support to match their pace of growth. Onboarding and offboarding are smoother, security is stronger, and the team has the peace of mind that comes from knowing experts are across the detail when they need it with managed services.  

“I don’t spend all of my time firefighting tech issues. Knowing that I don’t have to disturb the team to get something done, and that we have that level of security that we know they’re on top of; it’s peace of mind.”