About SentinelSMB

Real Security. Real Person. Real Accountability.

SentinelSMB is not a faceless platform. It is a business built by a person who answers when you call, fixes what breaks, and stakes his name on your protection.

36
Engines
5min
Scan cycle
288
Scans / day
$1M
E&O insured
Meet the Founder

One person. One company. One phone number that rings.

Cole Kingsley, Founder of SentinelSMB
Cole Kingsley
Founder · Bismarck, North Dakota

I sell homes at Verity Homes in Bismarck, but I have been into technology my entire life. Computers, networks, how systems work — that has always been the thing that kept me up at night. My day job puts me in front of contracts, closings, and sensitive financial documents every day, all of it flowing through email. That combination — a tech mind inside a business that runs on email — is how I noticed the gap.

Antivirus watches laptops. Firewalls watch networks. But nobody was watching the email accounts where everything that actually matters to a business lives. I went looking for something I could recommend to other local businesses — a monitoring service that watches cloud email for threats, explains what it finds without jargon, and does not cost six figures a year. It did not exist. So I filed the LLC, got the insurance, and built it myself.

I put my name on this company because I stand behind it. I am right here in Bismarck. If SentinelSMB finds something in your environment, I will help you fix it. That is not a tagline — it is how I run this business.

colekingsley@sentinelsmb.co
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Why We Stand Watch

Protect what people work hard to build.

Every alert, every engine, every line of code answers to one of three things. If it does not, we do not ship it.

1
The business
The work. The payroll. The years of effort an owner poured into building something real.
2
The family
The people that business supports at home. The reason the doors open every morning.
3
The community
The place those families call home. The neighborhood a strong local business strengthens.

Five principles. We do not break them.

How we operate. How we sell. How we build.

01
Plain English wins.
If the owner cannot understand the alert, the alert failed. Jargon serves the vendor, not the customer.
02
Prove it before you sell it.
Real findings before real invoices. The pilot is the pitch. If we cannot show value in your environment, you owe nothing.
03
Honesty over flattery.
We tell the truth even when it costs the deal. A customer who knows the limits trusts the wins.
04
Complementary, never competitive.
We layer on top of what works. We do not fight the IT pros and managed providers already helping our customers.
05
Local roots, real accountability.
Built in Bismarck. The founder answers the phone. The name on the door is the name on the alerts.
The Whole Job
Stand watch.
Two words. It is what a sentinel does. It is what we do for the business, the family, and the community behind every customer we serve.
Why SentinelSMB Exists

The security industry forgot about small business.

Small businesses face the same attacks as large enterprises, without the budget or staff. The numbers tell the story.

43%
of cyberattacks target small businesses
Verizon DBIR
60%
close within 6 months of an attack
National Cyber Security Alliance
$3.31M
average breach cost under 500 employees
IBM Cost of a Data Breach 2024
14%
rate their cyber risk mitigation as effective
Accenture

Enterprise security tooling is built for enterprise budgets and security teams. Full-service IT and managed security providers do great work for the businesses they serve. But there is a gap: the very small business — often under 50 people — that wants continuous monitoring without a full IT overhaul or an enterprise contract. SentinelSMB is built for that gap, and works equally well as a 24/7 monitoring layer alongside an existing IT provider or MSP.

What Makes Us Different

Four pillars. Nothing fluffy.

Plain English, not jargon
Every alert tells you what happened, why it matters, and exactly what to do. Your office manager should be able to understand every notification without a cybersecurity degree.
Built for regulated industries
Every threat is mapped to the frameworks that apply to your industry. Law firms get ABA Rules. CPA firms get FTC Safeguards. Defense contractors get CMMC 2.0. Insurance agencies get NDCC 26.1. Pro subscribers also get six audit-ready policy documents with the right citations already built in.
Automated intelligence
36 detection engines analyze your cloud environment every 5 minutes. An AI triage layer (Anthropic Claude) evaluates every event, separates real threats from noise, and writes the plain-English explanations. A full security operations center in software.
One-click response
Block a malicious IP. Force a password reset. Suspend a compromised account. Deactivate a leaked AWS key. Respond to threats in seconds without logging into four different admin consoles.
How It Works

Three steps to protection.

01
Connect
5 minutes
Link your Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, AWS, or Cloudflare account. OAuth for Microsoft and Google — no passwords shared. API keys for AWS and Cloudflare — encrypted at rest, never stored in plaintext.
02
Monitor
24/7, automatic
36 detection engines scan your environment every 5 minutes — 288 scans per day, over 8,600 per month. Threat intelligence from AbuseIPDB, AlienVault OTX, and GreyNoise enriches every event. An AI triage layer evaluates each event and writes the plain-English explanations.
03
Protect
Instant alerts + response
Critical threats trigger immediate Slack, email, and SMS alerts. Every alert includes the threat severity, affected compliance frameworks, specific remediation steps, and one-click response buttons. Monthly reports, downloadable compliance summaries, and audit-ready security policy documents give you everything auditors and insurance carriers ask for.
Trust & Credibility

Why you can trust us.

Registered Business
SentinelSMB LLC is a registered North Dakota limited liability company, filed with the Secretary of State. EIN 41-5213020.
Professionally Insured
Professional liability (errors and omissions) coverage with $1 million per claim and $2 million aggregate limits through Next Insurance.
Your Data is Encrypted
All data encrypted in transit (TLS 1.3) and at rest (AES-256-GCM). Stored on Supabase, which holds SOC 2 Type II certification.
Audit Log Access Only
We monitor audit logs and event metadata only. We never access email contents, file contents, documents, or confidential records.
No Vendor Lock-In
Month-to-month billing. Cancel from your dashboard anytime. Export your data anytime. No contracts, no cancellation fees, no penalty.
Human Support
Email us directly. Response within hours on business days. No chatbots, no ticket systems, no hold music.
Continuous Monitoring
Not a once-a-year assessment. Scans every 5 minutes, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Mandatory MFA
Every customer account is protected by mandatory multi-factor authentication — TOTP or passkey — with 365-day audit log retention.
Terms & Privacy Published
Full Terms of Service and Privacy Policy live and reviewable. No hidden data-sharing. You own your data, always.
Built for Regulated Businesses

Every industry has its own compliance story.

We started with the verticals where small businesses face the sharpest compliance exposure.

Law Firms
ABA 1.6 / IOLTA
Client confidentiality is an ethical obligation. ABA Model Rules 1.1 and 1.6 require competent protection of client data.
Learn more →
CPA & Accounting
IRS Publication 4557
Tax preparers handle Social Security numbers, bank accounts, and income data. IRS 4557 requires a written information security plan.
Learn more →
Construction
CMMC / DFARS
Federal contractors must meet CMMC Level 2 requirements. SentinelSMB maps threats to NIST 800-171 controls.
Learn more →
RIAs & Wealth Mgmt
SEC Reg S-P
SEC Reg S-P gives RIAs 30 days to notify clients of unauthorized access. Continuous monitoring starts the clock on time.
Learn more →
Insurance Agencies
NAIC Model Law 668
30+ states require insurance producers to maintain an information security program aligned to NAIC Model Law 668.
Learn more →
Real Estate
FBI IC3 / Wire Fraud
$1.3B annual wire-fraud losses in real estate. One hijacked agent inbox is all it takes.
Learn more →
Auto Dealerships
FTC Safeguards
FTC Safeguards Rule amendments apply to dealers. $40K maximum per-violation penalty for non-compliance.
Learn more →
Plus 4 more
Full catalog
Staffing, property management, nonprofits, and trades all have dedicated landing pages with their own compliance stories.
See all industries →
What Powers SentinelSMB

The technology stack.

36 Detection Engines
Across 7 categories: Identity, Data, Email, Cloud, Network, Threat Intelligence, and Behavioral & Advanced.
3 Threat Intelligence Feeds
AbuseIPDB (malicious IPs), AlienVault OTX (open threat exchange), GreyNoise (internet noise vs. targeted attacks).
AI Triage Layer
Every event is evaluated by Anthropic Claude for severity, classified by attack pattern, mapped to compliance frameworks, and explained in plain English.
5-Minute Monitoring Cycles
288 scans per day. Threats detected in minutes, not days. Not once a quarter.
AES-256-GCM Encryption
Credentials encrypted at rest using authenticated AES-256-GCM with a separate key-encryption-key (KEK) stored in Vercel + droplet env.
365-Day Audit Retention
Every detection timestamped and retained for a year. Exceeds the 90-day standard required by most cyber insurance underwriters.

Ready to see what SentinelSMB finds in your environment?

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