Fending off attacks from cyber criminals intent on stealing your data and holding businesses to ransom is a major issue for all businesses. Since the introduction of GDPR, the potential penalties for not sufficiently protecting your data have become severe. Regardless of penalties, the disruption caused by a loss of data due to a breach can be costly, and in extreme cases terminal for a business.
A number of our team come from backgrounds working in extremely secure environments, so we have a lot of experience in this area to offer.
We help you to protect the systems and data in your business with the following multiple layers of protection...
Firewall
At the virtual front door of any secure business should be a good quality firewall.
These days firewalls can do a whole lot more than blocking basic ports. With the right subscriptions in place they can scan traffic for viruses and other malware, block spam emails, block users from visiting websites with potentially malicious content, and even recognise attempts to install ransomware.
We provide and manage Watchguard firewalls for our customers. We believe Watchguard provide some of the best firewalls in the industry, with a range to suit all sizes of business.
Anti-Virus
We provide and manage a range of Anti-Virus and PC security software for our customers to help further protect their computers when both on the local business network and when roaming (in the case of laptops). We use a range of products from Eset and Sophos, depending on which suits the size and type of IT infrastructure.
System Updates
There's a constant battle between cyber criminals and software manufacturers such as Microsoft, to find ways to compromise the security of software. As such, updates are regularly being provided to patch and defend against potential security holes.
We can manage the rollout of updates within a business to make sure devices are kept up to date and that it's done efficiently, in some cases using centralised update management depending on the systems in place.
Encryption
For portable devices such as laptops, encryption provides a layer of protection in the event that the device is lost or stolen. While losing your device is really bad news, your company's data falling into the wrong hands would be far worse. We always recommend the encryption of laptops which can be done a number of ways depending on the age of the laptop.
Advice
With all of the technology available, nothing is 100% guaranteed and it is still important that users of systems are diligent and alert to potential threats, particularly when using email. We provide advice on what to look out for and we're happy to take a look if you think you've received something suspicious. We'd much rather hear from you and check something harmless than be picking up the pieces and performing a recovery for you.
Backups
When you've done everything in your power to protect your data and environment from attack but data is still somehow lost, this is the last line of defence and absolutely vital.
We recommend and use a number of different products depending on the environment to set up and manage backups, both to local devices and to secure cloud-based storage as appropriate.
Backups also cover you for less dramatic circumstances of course, such as accidently deleted files.
In addition to server backups, cloud backups are particularly useful for mobile workers where storing data on the laptop rather than server is unavoidable.