We recently gave our company logo a refresh. I wanted to take a couple minutes to tell you about why I think it was important.

The What

First, let’s talk about the three major changes:

• The shield itself is a bit beefier, with thicker, more pronounced lines. It’s a subtle change, but it’s there.
• We’ve ditched the venerable Helvetica font in favor of a more modern, all-caps style.
• We dropped the ‘IPS’ from the logo, preferring instead to spell out ‘Intrusion Prevention Systems’ in a much smaller size underneath ‘Sentinel’.

There were other changes, too, but these are the most important. Now let’s talk about the ‘why’.

The Why

The most important reason for the refresh was to resolve an identity crisis. Our bread and butter is our managed IPS service, but we’re so much more than that. Yes, people love the simplicity and effectiveness of our device, our over-the-top personal service, and the additional protection of our CINS Active Threat Intelligence. (OK, enough self-promotion.) But, since we’re a relatively small, unknown company, we never really knew if having ‘IPS’ in our name helped people recognize what we did, or simply pigeonholed us in to a too-small niche.

Ultimately, we decided to ditch the IPS in the logo. Instead, we now spell out Intrusion Prevention Systems underneath ‘Sentinel’, using an intentionally small font size. Honestly, no one else in the world would notice or care about that change, but it’s important to us: We recognize that moving away from having ‘IPS’ in our name is a meaningful symbol of our committment to be more than just an IPS company. In fact, if 2018 goes according to plan, we’ll have several more features and products that will continue to move us far beyond your garden-variety IPS offering.

We’re slowly but surely replacing the logo everywhere we can. It’s truly amazing what a small, simple change can do; it really has galvanized our team. We’re all showing off our new Sentinel t-shirts, putting our new Sentinel stickers on our laptops … and nothing says ‘team building’ like matching Sentinel tattoos.