Business security is no longer an issue solely for the IT department. It now spans into the boardroom and can have great financial impact. Recent high profile data breaches are proof of this, with CEOs and CFOs under heavy scrutiny. This also comes at a time when the upcoming changes to the European General Data Protection Regulation are set to carry fines for noncompliance at as high as 2% of annual worldwide turnover. In light of this, the ICO is urging businesses to start taking action to avoid fines.
To help business leaders tackle these pressures, Elite Comms Group has today announced the launch of a unique trilogy of Managed IT solutions that provides businesses with protection against external and internal threats, as well as backup and recovery capabilities, to minimise downtime while helping to protect against financial, operational and reputational damage. Via the Elite Group, these services are powered by leading technology vendors: Fortinet, Varonis and Quorum.
External threats – From 5.6 million fingerprints being stolen from US personnel by cyber-criminals,[1] to personal customer data being stolen from Lloyds just last month,[2] external risk is more prevalent than ever for businesses. The solution? Fortinet is an integrated security solution that defends businesses against the external threats of hackers, cyber-criminals and harmful malware. By harnessing Fortinet, the Elite Comms Group’s managed IT Security service mitigates risks in one straight forward suite, rather than slowing down operations with various security software all trying to access the system simultaneously. Fortinet quickly determines whether an access request is legitimate or not, keeping the system safe from malicious third parties.
Internal threats – Internal threats are just as detrimental to a business as external threats, if not more so, with staff potentially holding the knowledge of where to locate sensitive documents. The solution? Elite’s Data Governance product portfolio combines the Varonis ‘DatAdvantage’, ‘DatPrivilege’, and ‘DatAlert’ software components to combat internal security threats, including group permissions and internal file access, which can help external threats spread quickly once they have entered the system. Varonis provides a full audit of data access activity that creates standard user access profiles and can set alerts and notifications on any significant deviation from a user’s normal behaviour. This provides the IT Administrator and Data Owner with a real-time alert of a potential data breach and the ability to react quickly to reduce the risk of any malicious event.
Backup and recovery – A recent study found that 60 per cent of employees will allow themselves to be distracted by personal business during instances of downtime[3], arguably a huge loss of productivity for a company. The solution? The Elite Group’s hybrid backup and recovery service. Powered by Quorum, it allows for either physical or virtual system recovery in minutes with just one click. The hybrid design combined with an appliance based architecture means that the service provides onsite and off-site data backup; instant local server recovery; full site system recovery to an offsite appliance; on-demand or scheduled server DR testing; off-site full DR testing and a software upgrade testing environment, making it the most comprehensive backup and recovery solution on the market today.
Richard Chapman, Head of Managed IT at Elite Comms Group comments, “Today, so much of a business’s operations are reliant on IT that there is a greater need to minimise downtime and maximise the availability of IT systems so that users can operate efficiently. Business and IT leaders know this, but as the correlation between cyber threats and financial risk has increased, so has the number and form of threats to IT functionality. This brings the issue of cybersecurity to the forefront of boardroom discussions – no longer something just for the IT department.”
“We’re passionate about providing businesses with solutions to help protect them against external and internal threats, as well as mitigating the risk of data loss and IT system downtime. This trilogy of new services can be implemented individually or combined to provide a powerful perimeter defence, an internal early warning system and a fast data and server recovery capability. These services have been designed to give a business greater control, visibility, real-time alerting and react speedily to either prevent or recover from these modern threats. In essence we are giving them peace of mind.”
Every business is different, and there is no one size fits all solution. Elite Comms Group offers a consultation to find the best solution for each business, enabling them to protect themselves from the threats it is currently most vulnerable to.
[1] http://uk.businessinsider.com/56-million-fingerprints-stolen-in-us-personnel-data-hack-2015-9?r=US&IR=T
[2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34209500
[3] https://bdaily.co.uk/technology/24-09-2015/half-of-uks-mds-oblivious-to-downtime-issues/
