Are you ready to make your organisation more resilient?

August 1, 2022

Organisations invest heavily in preventative security, but resilience is just as important when it comes to protecting yourself and keeping your data safe.

A skills gap isn’t the only thing challenging modern IT teams. As the network demands of our businesses change, so too does the landscape, creating holes in the traditional security measures we have all depended on for so long to keep our systems safe.

Organisations moving their business applications and data stores to the cloud, paired with device usage and growing regulatory complexity, have made on-premises internet gateways cumbersome and expensive to manage. Meanwhile, distributed workforces as a result of remote and hybrid working models have rendered corporate firewalls powerless.

According to the results of Q Associates’ Independent UK Survey of IT Priorities, many organisations are struggling to adapt their protective measures to this dynamic environment while still maintaining efficiency. Of the IT leaders surveyed, 63% cited security threats as the biggest major IT challenge they’re concerned about in 2022.

As new threats continue to emerge, organisations need to think differently about how they are securing their networks. What do these threats look like? How exactly are traditional systems finding themselves challenged and what steps can you take to protect your company, your network, your data and your customers from ever-shifting threats?

IT services

A dynamic landscape

The UK government’s work-from-home initiative meant that many teams have been accessing company systems remotely, without the protection of the corporate network. At the same time, businesses were rolling out new systems and software in order to enable distributed workforces and remote collaboration. For some, this included the allocation of mobile devices like laptops and tablets. Whether software or hardware, the priority at the time was getting employees set up to work from these, not their long-term security.

The transition to the cloud, which many businesses have taken to improve access and reliability, have challenged the effectiveness of on-premise internet gateways. Now, with hybrid working models on the rise, the risk of remote employees with compromised devices returning to the office and plugging straight into the corporate network are magnified.

Of course, system security is constantly innovating to meet these challenges head on. But the emphasis here is not that these risks can’t be defended against. Rather, the challenge is that they appear quickly, and many of them are new. As a result, they can threaten your systems before you’ve had the opportunity to assess them and implement a solution.

In this landscape, it’s not the strength of your walls that will keep your systems safe but your ability to detect, monitor and isolate attacks or quarantine devices before damage is done.

Cyber resilience explained

Cyber security is a series of measures focused on preventing hackers penetrating your IT systems. Whilst implementing basic cyber security best practices will prevent some attacks, even with your defences up, hackers can find holes when the landscape changes. As much as any organisation can try, 100% prevention isn’t possible. This leads us to cyber resilience: solutions that identify and respond rapidly to cyber attacks when they get in.

The government defines cyber resilience as ‘the ability for organisations to prepare for, respond to and recover from cyber attacks and security breaches.’ Typically, you can distinguish it from cyber security through its leverage of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to study ‘normal’ user behaviour and detect strange or unusual activity.

“Whereas cybersecurity measures must be constantly updated to meet evolving threats, cyber resilience bakes in the agility and intelligence necessary to shut them down when they happen.”

As the landscape continues to shift, it is the most resilient organisations that will be able to adapt best, safely embracing new technologies, enabling secure remote/hybrid workforces, isolating SDN attacks and countering insider threats to keep your organisation safe.

How do we help our customers to become more resilient and protect their systems?

Cyber monitoring

Building resilience with cloud-based solutions

Through our partnership with a range of leading software providers, Q Associates enables our customers to build core resilience against everything from phishing emails to spam, malware URLs and files, ransomware, data loss and virus outbreaks.

Using innovative solutions, our customers gain a comprehensive and multi-dimensional view of evolving email-borne threats and make meaningful decisions to combat them. When evasive phishing gets past traditional security barriers, there are cloud-based internet security solutions that detect them and remediate the breach automatically through:

• Continuous monitoring of all emails in all folders in user mailboxes
• Continuous scanning and real-time analysis of URLs and web pages
• Ongoing analysis of email sender and recipient behaviour to detect anomalies and threat patterns
• Front-line detection and reporting of new, emerging threats — powered by users.

By automating advanced analytics within the cloud, cloud-based internet security solutions like Mimecast and Cyren reduce the mean time to detect (MTTD) and mean time to respond (MTTR), helping you improve your threat detection and respond faster when it matters most.

Find out more about our Networking and Security Services.

Cyber Security

Getting started with a cyber resilience strategy

If you, like 68% of respondents to the Q Associates’ Independent UK Survey of IT Priorities, see cyber security as the primary focus area for your 2022 IT strategy, there are steps you can take to futureproof your security and plan for your cyber resilience strategy.

For personalised advice tailored to your network demands, IT environment and technology setup, get in touch today — we’d be happy to help. For IT professionals who’d like to go it alone, we can still point you in the right direction. As we’ve touched on above, cloud-based solutions that offer always-on protection, comprehensive visibility and reporting, and streamlined management are the single most effective way of building resilience into your systems. Research providers that meet these criteria to find the right partner for your needs.

When most of us think about resilience in the context of the last few years, we automatically turn to our people — and rightly so. But your systems need looking after too. And in a way, a safer, more resilient network will make your employees’ working lives that bit better. So take care of your people and your processes with a cloud-based security solution you can trust to handle the next breach — wherever it comes from.

To find out more about upgrading your security solutions, get in touch today

 

Get In Touch

Contact Q Associates today if you have any questions or would like to discuss your IT requirements in more detail.

Tel: 01635 248181
Email: Info@qassociates.co.uk

Donna Robinson

PARTNERSHIPS
Build complementary solutions and joint innovations.

Q Associates have strategic partnerships with the world’s most exciting and innovative providers, so you can access the best services and technologies. Select a technology partner below to find out more about our specialist knowledge, products and services.

  • NetApp
  • Cisco
  • Cisco Meraki
  • Lenovo Platinum Partner
  • VmWare
  • Microsoft
  • Microsoft Azure
  • Amazon Web Services
  • Dell Partner
  • Nvidia
  • Rubrix
  • Oracle
  • IBM
  • Veeam
  • Veritas
  • Mimecast
  • Equinix
  • Transition Manager
  • Cyren
  • Splunk
  • Acronis Gold Service Provider
  • Intel
  • DDN
  • Storage Awards

CERTIFICATIONS

  • SSSNA
  • G-Cloud
  • Cyber Essentials
  • Cyber Essentials Plus
  • ISO 27001
  • ISO 9001
  • ISO 14001

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