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ALL4TEC Cybersecurity Risk Management Provides Secure, Flexible Software Licensing
ALL4TEC helps organizations identify and manage cybersecurity risks through software designed for highly regulated and security-sensitive industries. Because its customers operate in complex IT environments, including permanently offline and air-gapped systems, ALL4TEC needed a software licensing solution that could deliver flexibility without compromising security.
This customer success story explores how ALL4TEC uses Thales Sentinel to simplify software licensing and provisioning while supporting fixed and floating license models across offline environments. Discover how Sentinel helped reduce licensing management overhead, improve customer onboarding, accelerate software deployment, and support ALL4TEC's plans to introduce SaaS offerings while retaining on-premises licensing options.
What you will learn:
- How ALL4TEC supports secure software licensing in offline and air-gapped environments.
- Why fixed and floating licensing models improve customer flexibility.
- How digital license delivery simplifies provisioning and deployment.
- How Sentinel reduces internal licensing management and development overhead.
- How software providers can support SaaS growth while retaining on-premises licensing.
ALL4TEC has helped companies identify and manage cybersecurity risks since 1998. Headquartered in Changé, France, the company serves heavily regulated, security sensitive industries, including banking, defense, healthcare, and education. Relied upon by CISOs and cybersecurity risk analysts across Europe, the platform provides their risk assessments for potential cyber breaches.
Since their products contain highly sensitive information about their customers’ cybersecurity risks, ALL4TEC has historically deployed software offline. To support this approach at scale, ALL4TEC turned to Sentinel in 2010, initially using Sentinel hardware keys and then transitioning to on-prem software licenses.
The digital software licenses give their customers instant delivery, the choice of fixed or floating licenses, and eliminate the challenges of manual shipping, such as supply chain delays, damage, or loss. This more streamlined licensing and provisioning made deployments easier and quicker, reducing friction for both customers and support teams.
Flexible Licensing for Security Sensitive Environments
Due to the data sensitivity that ALL4TEC discloses, their customers cannot operate their software in the public cloud. Their products therefore need to be deployed on-premises in temporary offline or isolated, permanently offline (air-gapped) environments — while still offering modern, flexible licensing.
Before Sentinel, ALL4TEC relied on in-house or 3rd-party licensing tools, and the main reasons they sought a new 3rd party platform were to support floating licenses, and improve security. Maintaining licensing functionality internally also consumed valuable development resources for a capability outside ALL4TEC’s core business.
The limits became more apparent as customers deployed their products across diverse IT environments. The lack of flexibility affected customer experience and hindered sales. Moreover, IT teams had to dedicate time to maintaining licensing infrastructure rather than focusing on their own operations. “Our customers work in complex IT environments, and we needed diverse licensing options to match their needs,” emphasized Tony Hedoux, Product Owner. Searching for a licensing platform that could adapt to these environments without compromising its security requirements, ALL4TEC chose Thales Sentinel.
With Sentinel, customer onboarding improved immediately. Previously, licensing was complicated when customers with unusual or highly restricted IT environments, whereas Sentinel’s streamlined licensing accommodates various requirements without needing to develop a tailored approach for each customer. Moreover, after implementing Sentinel’s streamlined license provisioning, the company also reduced the resources needed to manage licenses. This allows its development teams to remain focused on the core cybersecurity application rather than a licensing infrastructure.
Expanding Sales with Fixed and Floating Licenses
One of the most valuable capabilities of Sentinel SL (Software Licensing), was the ability to support both fixed and floating licenses. Fixed licenses provide access for designated users or devices, while floating licenses allow organizations to share a defined number of licenses simultaneously. The floating model is particularly important for customers with larger teams with intermittent usage. Instead of requiring an individual license for every potential user, organizations can share licenses while maintaining a controlled limit on concurrent users. For ALL4TEC, this flexibility was a necessity for market-centric revenue growth through software subscriptions.
By making their products easier to deploy, and more adaptable to customer environments and user needs, Sentinel helped remove barriers to adoption and usage. Customer feedback has reinforced the value of the approach: the simplicity and flexibility of the licensing mechanism are viewed positively by end users. “Our ability to offer both fixed and floating licenses in offline environments allowed us to truly penetrate our market,” exclaimed Hedoux.
ALL4TEC Customer Benefits
- Instant license delivery
- Flexible on prem licensing – fixed or floating
- Secure protection of sensitive data with offline licensing, including air-gapped environments
- SaaS supportive, while maintaining on-prem licenses
- Straightforward implementation achieved using Sentinel’s clear documentation
Looking Ahead: SaaS without Compromising Security
ALL4TEC is planning to offer a SaaS version to meet the market demands for cybersecurity risk assessment. At the same time, even for its cloud-based software, licensing will remain on prem rather than migrate to the cloud, preserving the security its customers prefer. ALL4TEC plans to continue offering on-premises licensing to customers that require maximum control over sensitive cybersecurity data, while introducing SaaS for customers who prefer cloud-based delivery. This hybrid approach gives ALL4TEC a path to evolve its commercial model without losing the security and deployment flexibility that are fundamental for its customer base.
Conclusion
For ALL4TEC, software licensing is not just about controlling access to their software. Rather, licensing is their means to offer a secure, easily deployable, and commercially flexible solution. Sentinel provides the on-prem, offline, fixed or floating licensing capabilities needed by ALL4TEC’s customers with high-level security needs and complex IT requirements.
As ALL4TEC prepares to introduce SaaS capabilities, the company can retain the on-premises, offline licensing its customers depend on. With Sentinel, ALL4TEC has turned software licensing from a development and deployment challenge into an enabler of customer flexibility, operational efficiency, and continued growth.
About Thales Sentinel
Thales Sentinel is the leading platform for software licensing, protection, and monetization. Our solutions enable software providers to generate new revenue streams, improve operational efficiency, increase customer satisfaction, and gain valuable business insights. Based on award-winning technology, Sentinel has a strong global customer base with thousands of customers in 100+ countries spanning 30+ industries.