Elite Business Systems

Dexter Schelin, Sales Manager at Elite Business Systems, started the phone call by telling Aroha Daniels everything was okay.

Aroha is the Practice Manager at Harris Tate, a mid-sized law firm in Tauranga, New Zealand. That morning, attackers had exploited her firm’s PaperCut print server, and Aroha believes Dexter’s call reached her before PaperCut’s own notification email.

“Something like that can make you feel quite ill very quickly, but knowing Elite were in control of it and informing me was comforting,” she says.

A few hours later, the server was patched and back in production. According to Harris Tate, no client information was compromised.

“Huntress did what it was meant to do,” says Aroha.

The response might’ve been quick, but the decision that made it possible came six months earlier, when Elite refreshed their security stack.

Challenge | Too many alerts and risks beyond Elite’s control

Elite Business Systems has spent nearly 40 years building relationships that last. Some clients have stayed with the managed service provider (MSP) for 20 years or more. Harris Tate has been with Elite since September 2012.

By late 2025, Elite had two problems they couldn’t solve on their own. The first was noise. Elite’s previous security platform had been a strong choice, but after the vendor was acquired by a larger company, support and product direction changed. By December, integration gaps, billing issues, and a hard-to-reach vendor were frustrating the team. The alerting was the worst of it. Every time something happened at a client site, all 22 of Elite’s engineers received a notification, and despite repeated requests, the vendor couldn’t change that.

The second problem was software that Elite didn’t manage. Harris Tate’s PaperCut print management system, for example, was supplied and maintained by a third party that was responsible for patching it.

“Some things were just out of our control,” says Christo Pretorius, General Manager at Elite.

Patching this software was the supplier’s job, but spotting and containing an attack on it was Elite’s.

Solution | Elite rebuilds their stack around meaningful alerts

In March 2026, Elite replaced their previous security vendor with Huntress. The transition took roughly a week.

Huntress’ human-led, AI-assisted Security Operations Center (SOC) triages suspicious activity before escalating actionable threats to Elite’s engineers. David Marquand, Technology Solutions Lead at Elite, estimates that false-positive alerts dropped by over 90%. Client onboarding to Huntress now takes only 15 minutes.

Elite deploys Huntress Managed Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) and Managed Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) across their client base, adding Managed Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) selectively for compliance and auditing needs.

Six months later, the new setup met its first serious test.

Incident | How the PaperCut response unfolded

Huntress observed attackers exploiting two vulnerabilities in PaperCut as early as August 26, 2026. Tracked as CVE-2026-81578 and CVE-2026-82078, the flaws could be chained to let an attacker change server settings and run code without logging in. CVEs, short for Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures, are standardized identifiers for publicly known security flaws.

PaperCut issued an urgent advisory on August 27 and released an emergency patch on August 28. Later that day, they released a second emergency patch with additional hardening developed with researchers at Huntress and watchTowr. CISA added both vulnerabilities to their Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on August 31.

Harris Tate’s third-party supplier, however, hadn’t applied the patches yet when attackers reached the server the next morning.

Around 9am New Zealand time on September 1, attackers exploited Harris Tate’s server and triggered a Trojan download. David says Microsoft Defender flagged the Trojan within about 14 seconds. At the same time, Huntress confirmed the threat and isolated the server, cutting it off from the rest of the network so the attack couldn’t spread. Elite received an alert within a minute.

Dexter called Aroha as soon as he was notified. “If something happens, we want to be the first call our clients get,” he says.

Elite then contacted the supplier, who was already aware of the vulnerabilities. Once Elite explained that Harris Tate’s server had been actively exploited, the patch became a priority. With Huntress containing the activity to that one server, Elite and the supplier applied the patches. David says the server was back in production within about two hours.

Results | Two hours to recovery, with minimal disruption

For Harris Tate, the stakes went far beyond the print server. Under New Zealand’s Privacy Act, privacy breaches that cause or are likely to cause serious harm generally require notification to the Privacy Commissioner and affected individuals. For a law firm entrusted with sensitive client information, a serious breach could also mean difficult conversations, loss of trust, and reputational damage.

According to Aroha, the PaperCut incident didn’t result in a data breach, and Harris Tate kept working.

“Their team didn’t have to stop and actually deal with the problem themselves,” Christo says. “They could carry on with their work while we took care of it.”

With Huntress behind them, Elite also gained operational benefits, like:

• Rapid containment: Huntress isolated the exploited server before the malicious activity could spread further.

• Less alert fatigue: David estimates over 90% fewer false positive alerts than with Elite's previous platform.

• Faster onboarding: Elite reports getting clients onto Huntress in approximately 15 minutes.

• Easier administration: With Huntress, Elite improved billing integration and reduced friction.

The PaperCut incident wasn’t Elite’s only early success. When Elite onboarded another client, Huntress identified attacker footholds that previous security tools on the same network had missed.

For Aroha, the biggest outcome was knowing the firm’s client information was safe. She remembers hanging up with Dexter and feeling relief. “It was an absolute nod that we were with the right people.”

Conclusion | A client who knows the value of protection

Elite has spent nearly 15 years earning Harris Tate’s trust. When the PaperCut exploit hit, their team was ready to act, with Huntress providing the detection and containment that made a two-hour response possible.

Christo says the risk for an MSP that does the basics well is that clients assume everything’s covered and will therefore skip the extra protection. David adds that most clients don’t see the return until something happens. That’s why Aroha encourages other businesses to review their risks, understand their processes, and talk to their IT providers before an incident forces the conversation.

After Dexter’s call, Aroha had a new appreciation for the protection Harris Tate had invested in. She states simply, “Huntress is definitely worth it.”