Tim Brasil boosts security operations with Microsoft Defender XDR in 12,000 endpoints

When complexity becomes a structural challenge

The telecommunications sector is considered critical infrastructure. The availability of services is essential to the economy and everyday life, which makes operators frequent targets for cyberattacks, including ransomware and threats to continuity. In Brazil, in addition to the increasing sophistication of attacks, operators also face stringent requirements for governance, auditing, and security controls.

In this context, the operation of a large telecommunications operator imposes a permanent level of demand on its cybersecurity operations. At TIM Brasil, protecting critical environments means ensuring the continuity of services that connect millions of people and companies every day. As the threat landscape in the country has evolved, this challenge has gained new layers of complexity.

Within this scenario, the security environment was functional but fragmented. Different tools generated high volumes of alerts, requiring manual correlation and constant attention from the SecOps team. The problem was not the lack of signals, but the difficulty of quickly connecting the right points. As attacks grew more sophisticated, this fragmentation began to slow response times. "With so much information coming in, the risk was wasting time on what was not critical," says Fábio Soares Pereira, Director of Cyber & ICT Security at TIM Brasil.

From fragmentation to faster decisions

As the operation grew, TIM Brasil began to question whether its current security model could keep up. The company supports a distributed workforce, with different access profiles and operating environments ranging from administrative teams to technical areas and customer service. Securing this ecosystem, with distinct policies and high volume of devices, required a more integrated and scalable approach. The challenge was not just in detecting threats, but in quickly understanding what actually required a response. Reducing fragmentation and gaining decision-making speed have become clear priorities.

Microsoft was already part of the company's environment, providing a structured foundation. With standardized endpoints, centralized identity, and unified device management in place, TIM Brasil saw the opportunity to evolve into a truly integrated security model. The adoption of Microsoft Defender XDR marked this advancement by consolidating, on a single platform, endpoint, identity, and behavior signals.

With this unification, the team started working with more context from the first alert. Investigations became more straightforward, correlation was no longer manual, and the team gained clarity to quickly differentiate what required immediate action from what could be treated as operational noise. "Microsoft Defender XDR helped us transform dispersed information into an integrated view," says Fábio Soares Pereira, Director of Cyber & ICT Security at TIM Brasil.

Unified technology with expert support

Even with a unified platform, TIM Brasil knew that the security operation could not depend only on technology. The daily pressure of the SOC required quick decisions, constant validation, and confidence in prioritizing incidents. This is where Defender Experts for XDR began to play a central role.

The service brought an active layer of expertise to the operation. Acting as an extension of the SOC, the Microsoft team started to help validate alerts, refine investigations, and reduce unnecessary escalations. In practice, this reduced the operational burden on the internal team and brought more predictability to day-to-day security.

More than technical support, Defender Experts for XDR consolidated a continuous partnership model, in which critical decisions are made in a safer and more collaborative way. In telecommunications, resilience is not just an IT metric, it directly impacts the customer experience. By strengthening its response capacity without interrupting critical operations, TIM Brasil modernized its security while maintaining the stability of a distributed and essential operation. "Defender Experts for XDR has come to function as an extension of our own team," points out Moises Marcone Ferrari, Director of Cloud & IT Service Management at TIM Brasil.

Scaling protection without disrupting operations

The transition to the new model was conducted with a full focus on continuity. In less than 20 days, Microsoft's managed XDR solution began protecting nearly 12,000 endpoints across different areas of the company. The process was closely monitored by the TIM Brasil and Microsoft teams, with adjustments made jointly whenever necessary. "In less than 20 days, Microsoft Defender XDR went on to protect about 12,000 endpoints," says Moises Marcone Ferrari, Director of Cloud & IT Service Management at TIM Brasil.

The result was a seamless migration, carried out with zero operational impact. For most employees, the change went unnoticed. For the security area, it represented a significant advance in response capacity, without affecting users or critical services.

Clearer decisions, stronger business stability

With the new structure in operation, the impact on daily life was immediate. Alerts began to arrive more contextualized, investigations became more objective, and manual effort decreased. The combination of Microsoft Defender XDR and Defender Experts for XDR has not only accelerated incident response, but has also continuously strengthened the company's security posture, reducing risk exposure and proactively enhancing controls.

For leadership, this meant greater confidence in response times. For the technical team, more time to act preventively. For the business, continuous stability, with security operating efficiently and discreetly. "The team started to spend less time investigating and more time preventing," says Fábio Soares Pereira, Director of Cyber & ICT Security at TIM Brasil.

A foundation ready to evolve

By consolidating its cybersecurity operation, TIM Brasil has created a solid foundation for the next steps. This unification makes room for automation, expanded use of AI, and continuous modernization of SecOps, always with a focus on scale and resilience.

More than a technology upgrade, the partnership with Microsoft helped structure a more integrated security model aligned with the critical nature of the operator's services. A model prepared to evolve along with the business and market demands. "Today we have a much more prepared base to evolve along with the business," says Moises Marcone Ferrari, Director of Cloud & IT Service Management at TIM Brasil.

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