Dayforce Strengthens Cybersecurity with Exabeam, Reducing Investigation Times from Days to Minutes

Dayforce, a global leader in payroll and workforce management, provides HR solutions to organizations in more than 200 countries. With over 10,000 employees of its own and a platform that handles sensitive personal data, robust cybersecurity is not just a priority — it’s a necessity. The global 24/7 Security Operations Center (SOC) at Dayforce is tasked with securing, monitoring, and responding to threats across all Dayforce IT systems and cloud environments. To meet this critical mandate, the team required a security operations platform that could overcome the inefficiencies of legacy tools and provide the analytics needed to combat modern threats.

The Challenge: A High-Maintenance, On-Premises SIEM

Before partnering with Exabeam, the Dayforce SOC team was using a legacy on-premises SIEM solution that presented significant challenges. The system required constant software and server maintenance, consuming countless hours of valuable time and resources that could have been dedicated to threat detection and response.

This operational burden was compounded by a critical analytics gap. The legacy platform’s lack of modern user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA) capabilities forced the SOC team into a reactive posture, requiring them to manually input detection rules. This meant they needed to know exactly what they were looking for in advance, which put them at a significant disadvantage when facing novel or insider threats.

“As we approached the renewal of our legacy SIEM, we knew we had to make a change,” explained Akinniyi Ojo, Director of Cybersecurity Operations at Dayforce, “Our team needed a solution in the cloud that allowed us to focus on what matters most — monitoring, detecting, and responding to threats.”

The Solution: A “Game Changing” Move to Exabeam

As the Dayforce team began the RFP process for a new SIEM, they had three primary requirements: a cloud-based platform to reduce maintenance, an analytics-driven solution to combat a fast-paced threat landscape, and a simplified, intuitive interface to accelerate their SOC triage process.

The decision to choose Exabeam was driven by several factors. After a comprehensive evaluation of leading SIEM vendors, Dayforce selected Exabeam for its advanced analytics capabilities, seamless integration with their existing security ecosystem, and proven ability to accelerate threat detection, investigation, and response (TDIR). Their assessment identified Exabeam as a strategic partner capable of transforming their security operations through analytics-driven insight, automation, and scalable resilience.

“One of the stand-out features when we were piloting Exabeam was the UEBA functionality. The Exabeam analytics engine was able to ingest vast amounts of data and surface real threats with clarity and precision,” added Ojo.

The Results: Enhanced Visibility, Faster Response, and a Happier Team

Since deploying Exabeam New-Scale Fusion, Dayforce has seen a dramatic improvement in their security operations. In particular, the most significant and measurable impact felt by the Dayforce team has been the reduction in investigation times.

“Instead of having to pull logs, then build timelines ourselves — which takes a lot of time — Exabeam provides that readily available. This cuts down the time needed to operate and investigate an alert from hours or days to just minutes,” Ojo emphasizes.

This newfound efficiency is driven in part by the smart risk-scoring system built into New-Scale Fusion, which has transformed how the SOC team handles alerts. Instead of manually investigating every single alert, which proved time-consuming and unsustainable, the team can now focus their efforts on the events that Exabeam surfaces as a priority.

“I think what really sets Exabeam apart is the risk-based approach,” stated Alistair Lamb, Principal Security Analyst at Dayforce, “We’re not investigating every single alert that comes into the SOC. We’re looking at an overall session, and we’re only [investigating] when it reaches a certain risk threshold.”

Other key results that Dayforce experienced include:

• Reduced False Positives: With Exabeam, the team noticed a significant reduction in false positive alerts. This reduction has allowed them to focus on high-fidelity alerts that require immediate attention from analysts.
• Proactive Insider Threat Detection: Exabeam out-of-the-box rules and UEBA capabilities have empowered Dayforce to proactively identify and respond to a wide range of insider threat scenarios, including insiders exfiltrating data or impersonating others.
• Simplified Operations, Happier Team: The move to Exabeam has not only strengthened the security posture at Dayforce but also improved the day-to-day experience of the SOC team analysts.

“Instead of having to pull logs, then build timelines ourselves — which takes a lot of time — Exabeam provides that readily available. This cuts down the time needed to operate and investigate an alert from hours or days to just minutes,”

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• Akinniyi Ojo

  Director of Cybersecurity Operations at Dayforce

The Future: A Valued Partnership

The experience of the Dayforce security team implementing Exabeam highlights the transformative power of a modern, analytics-driven SIEM platform. By moving to the cloud and embracing UEBA, Dayforce has not only reduced their operational overhead but has also gained unprecedented visibility into their environment, enabling them to detect and respond to threats with speed and precision.

Dayforce website: https://www.dayforce.com/