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Is your Managed Service Provider taking IT security seriously enough?

Recent high-profile breaches highlight growing cyber threats, often enabled by social engineering.  Hackers can exploit human error and third-party vulnerabilities to gain access sensitive data such as credentials, Personal Identifiable Information (PII) or financial data and even cripple IT systems costing companies huge sums of money.  This underscores the critical role of a Managed Service Providers (MSP) in cybersecurity.

What do I need to know?
An MSP such as ourselves is a big target and therefore we take IT security very seriously. We are ISO27001 and Cyber Essentials Plus certified and are constantly reviewing our security practices to make sure we’re ahead of the curve, so that our and your data is protected. As this is quite an investment in both time and expense; businesses can sometimes cut corners to remain competitive leaving systems at risk.

We believe that your IT partner should play a crucial role in preventing social engineering and other forms of attack, by implementing a multi-layered security approach that focuses on both technology and human behaviour. Here are some of the basics:

  1. Human Risk Management: Education for everyone on how to recognise phishing attempts, suspicious links, and common social engineering tactics, reducing the risk of human error and testing it on a regular basis with simulated phishing.
  2. Email Filtering and Anti-Phishing Tools: Deploying advanced email security solutions that detect and block phishing emails before they reach the recipient.
  3. Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): Enforcing MFA on all systems to ensure stolen credentials alone aren’t enough to access systems.
  4. Access Controls: Limiting access to only what’s necessary, thus reducing exposure if an account is compromised.
  5. Monitoring, Vulnerability Patching and Incident Response: We monitor systems in real-time to detect unusual behaviour and can be agile in our response to breaches.

Combining user education with strong technical safeguards helps an MSP and their customers build a solid defence against most modern day threats.

If you are unsure whether or not your MSP covers all of the areas above, please don’t hesitate to get in touch and we’d be happy to give some free guidance.

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