Executive summary
The Mantle Group case study picks up where the Ethikos story left off, and looks at how commitment to core values, high standards, and a robust security stack has led to steady growth and increased capacity.
The Mantle Group is an IT services firm formed in early 2026 when Nicholas Thomas (Head of Technology) joined forces with Mark Thill (Head of Operations) and Alex Scheer (Head of Security) to build a team designed for high-trust, high-accountability IT—especially for biotech and venture-backed organizations. The Mantle Group delivers Okta through ZeroTek to bring modern identity and access management (IAM) to customers who need strong security without the friction of long-term vendor lock-in.
Nick originally launched his consulting practice as sole proprietor of Ethikos in mid-2024 and quickly grew his customer base by standardizing whenever possible on Okta IAM, with 10 client orgs on Okta by the end of 2024. ZeroTek enabled that growth by making Okta simple for Nick to deliver and manage—especially to smaller organizations that need enterprise-grade identity security without enterprise cost or procurement complexity.
Today, the Mantle Group builds on that foundation with deeper bench strength across engineering, operations, and security strategy—so clients can benefit from the wealth of experience this team now brings to every project.
Alex says the firm was formed to address a clear gap in the market. “We believe the IT services market is underserved by truly experienced professionals with breadth and depth across multiple verticals,” he explains. “We’ve served in-house in leadership roles and externally as consulting technologists and engineers; as a result, we’re well-equipped to meet the needs of the most demanding clients.”
By formally joining forces, Mantle became more resilient and more complete—without losing the boutique quality their clients valued in the first place.
From Ethikos to Mantle Group: building a team around trust, depth, and continuity
Mantle’s formation grew out of real-world client needs. Nick and Mark had already been collaborating: supporting shared clients, assisting each other on projects, and delivering Okta-centric identity programs in fast-moving environments. Over time, they both ran into a recurring objection from prospective clients: “We love your approach—but we’d prefer a team, not a solo consultant.”
By formally joining forces (and bringing in Alex, a security- and compliance-focused technologist with deep life sciences IT experience), Mantle became more resilient and more complete—without losing the boutique quality their clients valued in the first place.
“One of the best things about joining forces is the depth of talent,” Mark says. “Each of us has a particular area of focus, so we can be more holistic with clients—not just ‘here’s your helpdesk.’”
Mantle’s leadership team shares a common perspective: growth is only worthwhile if it preserves service quality. Rather than scaling headcount quickly, the firm’s goal is to scale thoughtfully, maintaining consistent standards, and ensuring every client engagement remains aligned to strong outcomes.
“Our operating model is designed to be slow, intentional, and highly adaptive to customer goals and environments,” Alex adds. “We’re not looking to grow as quickly as possible; we prioritize maintaining a scalable yet bespoke model.”
Why IAM became non-negotiable
Nick started thinking seriously about identity security years ago, after managing deployments of earlier-generation IAM and MFA solutions and seeing how quickly credential sprawl and inconsistent access controls can become a liability. He remembers discovering Okta as the first platform that felt built for where the industry was headed—cloud-first identity, strong MFA, and secure single sign-on (SSO).
Mark’s path led to the same conclusion from a different angle. After decades in IT—much of it supporting biotech startups through rapid growth—he saw that the faster a company scales, the faster identity security and management becomes an operational bottleneck. For him, the standout advantage of Okta is its ability to streamline new user onboarding and lifecycle management at speed, especially through automation: “When you’re spinning up employees and you need to do it really quickly… it’s nice to know you can click a button, they get access to everything they need, and they’re off to the races,” explains Mark.
IAM isn’t a “nice-to-have”. It’s the backbone that makes everything else more secure and more manageable.
In Mantle’s view, IAM isn’t a “nice-to-have” security add-on. It’s the backbone that makes everything else more secure and more manageable. As Nick puts it, customers don’t always speak in IAM terminology, but they do know what they want: simpler access, fewer logins, stronger security, and faster onboarding. When Mantle explains what Okta does in those terms, adoption tends to follow naturally.
Why the Mantle Group recommends Okta
Mantle works primarily with biotech and venture-backed organizations—environments where compliance expectations are high and where security needs to support velocity. That makes Okta a strong fit: one identity layer; consistent policy enforcement; clean, fast app integrations; and a better experience for both end users and administrators.
“A lot of what we do is helping fast-moving teams scale without chaos,” Mark says. “Identity is one of those things you want to get right early, because everything else depends on it.”
Mark is direct about why Mantle so often lands on Okta. “We’re client-first—we’re not going to force a platform on anyone,” he says. “But it’s easy to make a compelling case for Okta from the client’s perspective. First, the actual end-user experience is second-to-none. People just really like using Okta. You go from juggling 14 different logins to one. It’s just so easy.”
Then there are the app integrations. “No comparison. Okta has way more of them, they’re faster to set up, and they’re easier to configure,” Nick explains. “For our clients, that translates to cost and time savings on implementation, then gives them total flexibility to add or switch out apps as their needs evolve.”
Nick also points to the operational realities Mantle sees in the field. “Microsoft’s delays between Conditional Access Policy changes and logs reflecting them are a significant operating problem during or outside of an incident. Once you factor in the labor and the Microsoft licensing required to achieve similar outcomes with Entra and Conditional Access, there’s often no real cost advantage there, either. I talk to clients about the ‘real cost’ of Entra and Microsoft.” (Read more about ZeroTek + Okta vs Microsoft Entra.)
“A lot of what we do is helping fast-moving teams scale without chaos. Identity is one of those things you want to get right early, because everything else depends on it.”
– Mark Thill, Head of Operations, Mantle Group
Why ZeroTek: enterprise-grade IAM without sticky commitments
Mantle’s business model is built around flexibility and client choice. They want clients to stay because their services deliver value—not because they’ve made it painful to leave. That aligns closely ZeroTek’s Okta delivery model: month-to-month consumption-based billing that keeps costs under control and eliminates the friction of long-term commitments.
“Month-to-month matters for a lot of the companies we work with,” Mark says. “It’s cash-flow friendly, and it lets clients start with what they need now and expand without getting boxed into a long contract.”
Mantle sees this as a strategic advantage. ZeroTek’s licensing and billing model lowers the barrier to enterprise-grade IAM for startups and growing organizations, and it makes it easier to scale Okta programs responsibly as clients evolve.
Nick and Mark’s experience with ZeroTek’s support and openness to feedback has reinforced Alex’s confidence in the partnership. “We look forward to continuing and strengthening our collaboration with ZeroTek.” As technologists on the ground with deep IT and security expertise, the Mantle team is well positioned to offer highly relevant product feedback through the lens of real customer environments.
“ZeroConfig’s ability to centrally build, manage, and modify client-wide secure baselines is critical.
As we continuously optimize security in response to evolving threats, ZeroConfig allows us to push needed changes efficiently and transparently.”
– Alex Scheer,
Head of Security,
Mantle Group
ZeroTek’s ZeroConfig helps Mantle deploy and maintain Okta standards at scale
Nick has been using an early access version of ZeroTek’s ZeroConfig feature for over a year, and for him it’s become the fastest, most repeatable way to stand up a new Okta tenant with Mantle’s baseline standards—without sacrificing the client-specific details that matter.
Okta security configuration: from 2+ hours to ~20 minutes
Before ZeroConfig, a clean, consistent Okta org buildout—done carefully—could easily take two hours or more. With ZeroConfig, Nick can create a tenant, apply a baseline configuration template, and complete a full rollout in about 20 minutes.
That speed matters in Mantle’s world, where their clients typically need to onboard quickly, establish strong identity controls early, and keep the end-user experience clean from day one.
Alex frames this as foundational: “ZeroConfig’s ability to centrally build, manage, and modify client-wide secure baselines is critical. That consistent, secure foundation, using a central, cloud-managed dashboard is important not only to us but our clients. As we continuously optimize security in response to evolving threats, ZeroConfig allows us to push needed changes efficiently and transparently.”
Before ZeroConfig, a clean, consistent Okta org buildout—done carefully—could easily take two hours or more. With ZeroConfig, Nick can create a tenant, apply a baseline configuration template, and complete a full rollout in about 20 minutes.
That speed matters in Mantle’s world, where their clients typically need to onboard quickly, establish strong identity controls early, and keep the end-user experience clean from day one.
Alex frames this as foundational: “ZeroConfig’s ability to centrally build, manage, and modify client-wide secure baselines is critical. That consistent, secure foundation, using a central, cloud-managed dashboard is important not only to us but our clients. As we continuously optimize security in response to evolving threats, ZeroConfig allows us to push needed changes efficiently and transparently.”
Configuration drift checks: from 45–60 minutes to ~2 minutes
ZeroConfig is also a major operational win for Mantle’s co-managed Okta tenants, where the customer has some admin access to Okta and may adjust settings without realizing downstream impacts.
Previously, confirming whether an Okta tenant still matched the intended baseline could take 45–60 minutes of manual review. With ZeroConfig, Nick can verify alignment in about two minutes: “It’s immediately obvious whether changes occurred—and exactly where they were made compared to the assigned configuration.”
That turns what used to be a periodic, time-consuming audit into a quick, reliable check—making it easier for Mantle to keep customers compliant to their agreed security configuration without slowing anyone down.
“Doesn’t get more intuitive than this”
Nick trusts ZeroConfig because he has put it through its paces, and it works. He notes its UI layout is highly intuitive because it mirrors Okta’s settings and navigation, so users with any Okta admin experience immediately know where they are and what they’re looking at.
In Nick’s words, “it doesn’t get more intuitive than this.” ZeroConfig makes the whole process of rolling out new Okta orgs—and monitoring ongoing compliance to the assigned configuration—feel “very sane and simple.”
Mantle wants clients to stay because their services deliver value—not because they’ve made it painful to leave. That aligns closely ZeroTek’s Okta delivery model.
Results: high-end identity delivery for organizations of all sizes
Mantle delivers IAM programs for customers ranging from very small teams to hundreds of users—often in high-compliance, high-change environments. With Okta as the identity backbone and ZeroTek as the delivery platform, Mantle can:
- onboard users with access ready on day one (“digital birthright entitlements”)
- offboard users cleanly by disabling one identity, instantly cutting all downstream access
- standardize a secure baseline while still supporting bespoke, project-driven requirements
- deliver enterprise-grade IAM to customers who need flexibility in commitment and cost
Looking ahead: value-driven growth
Mantle’s goal isn’t to grow fast—it’s to grow well: adding customers and capabilities without sacrificing rigor, responsiveness, or outcomes. With Alex expanding Mantle’s ability to deliver security strategy, Mark anchoring operational execution, and Nick leading identity engineering and automation, Mantle is positioned to deliver a rare combination in the IT services landscape:
High-touch Consulting + Strong Identity Standards + Scalable Automation.
And with ZeroConfig, Mantle can now deliver those standards faster, more consistently, and with ongoing posture assurance—turning identity into a durable advantage for the organizations they support.
Alex adds that this approach is ultimately about partnership, not packaged service tiers: “We’re trying to create effective partnerships that are aligned to customer goals, not a pipeline of tools and ticketing.”
“We look forward to continuing and strengthening our collaboration with ZeroTek.”
– Alex Scheer,
Head of Security,
Mantle Group
About the Mantle Group
Founded by passionate, highly professional, and experienced operators who were formerly MSP professionals and biotech IT leaders, Mantle Group exists to address a gap in how IT, cybersecurity, compliance, and digital transformation is typically delivered. The team excels in their ability to understand each client’s business strategy, interpret financial statements, and speak non-tech to business audiences, while leveraging their strong engineering backgrounds to architect, build, and manage amazing ecosystems that help their clients thrive.
Founded by passionate, highly professional, and experienced operators who were formerly MSP professionals and biotech IT leaders, Mantle Group exists to address a gap in how IT, cybersecurity, compliance, and digital transformation is typically delivered. The team excels in their ability to understand each client’s business strategy, interpret financial statements, and speak non-tech to business audiences, while leveraging their strong engineering backgrounds to architect, build, and manage amazing ecosystems that help their clients thrive.
The Mantle Group on ZeroTek | Okta
275
Groups managed across clients
120+
SaaS apps behind Okta
0
Identity-based breaches
20
Minutes to complete Okta baseline security configuration
80%
Reduction in time to fully provision new users
