by Nouveau | Jul 15, 2019 | Articles
It’s that time of year again.
Amazon Prime Day.
Amazon’s yearly event plays host to a wide variety of excellent deals for televisions, clothes, smart home devices, cool gadgets and tech, toys and so much more. Millions of people flock to the website in order to catch themselves a bargain – but consumers aren’t the only people that love it.
Cybercriminals adore events like Prime Day, as they can guarantee that a huge number of people will be visiting certain sites at certain times, which means they have a larger selection of people to try and scam. As a spike in internet traffic to any site is a certain guarantee on special sales days, hackers know when and where consumers could be sharing their personal information.
Not to fear! Nouveau know all about how cybercriminals try to exploit events such as Prime Day and Black Friday, and the scams are relatively easy to avoid (if you know how to!).
It’s the Amazon, but not the one we’re talking about!
A primary method that cybercriminals use in order to access payment information and account login details, is by using phishing emails. Cybercriminals can make an email look like it has come from Amazon themselves, using official branding, font types, specific deals and more in order to trick consumers into clicking the email and typing in their important information. This isn’t Amazon’s fault, however, and it happens to a wide range of different companies. It’s common place to find a phishing email in your inbox every now and then – they will always manage to find their way through even the most advanced mail filters – but if you know what to look for, they are easy to manage.
For this reason, we here at Nouveau recommend reading our 6 Tips and Tricks to Avoid Phishing Scams blog post, where you can find out the best ways to prevent yourself becoming a victim of cybercrime. We also suggest that you access Amazon’s site directly to shop for deals and treat all emails with caution in order to keep yourself safe. If you receive an email from ‘Amazon’ offering an awesome deal, head over to the site manually and search for the item yourself. That way you will know if the deal is real or not, and it’s always best to play it safe. Another tip is to change your password regularly, and if you have just bought something online, now is a better time than any to change it just for that peace of mind.
With practice, you can easily become a pro at spotting phishing emails. Just remember to read our blog to get yourself started!
For more information and tips and tricks about Cyber Security, visit out content hub or email us at hello@nouveau.co.uk.
by seoadmin | Jul 12, 2019 | Articles
In an increasingly online world, the importance of IT cannot be understated for businesses.
Most companies (89%) expect their IT budgets to grow or stay steady in 2019, with the need to upgrade outdated IT infrastructure is the biggest driver of these budget increases (source).
However, balancing the upgrades and maintenance of your IT infrastructure, as well as the day-to-day IT needs of your employees and customers can become an overwhelming experience for your IT department.
Choosing a managed services provider can help to alleviate this problem – keeping your systems business as usual – allowing your IT department to focus on improving business efficiency and performance.
But, first…
What is a Managed Service Provider?
A managed service provider (MSP) is an organisation that remotely manages a customer’s IT network and infrastructure, as well as their on premise or cloud applications.
Providing extra IT support when you need it most, managed service providers acts as an extension of your IT team – ensuring that your business’ IT systems remains secure, robust, and operational.
Typically, MSPs operate under a subscription model, creating a scalable IT solution that allows you to choose the coverage that’s the best value for your organisation.
How do Managed Services work?
When outsourcing your IT to a managed service provider, you will have an initial consultation to assess your current IT environment. The infrastructure you have invested in, the systems you use, and your end-to-end applications will be reviewed to ensure that you receive the most suitable managed services support for your business.
As a leading managed service provider, we proactively review your security, infrastructure and system performance and let you know if there are any areas of concern, or network improvements. We also monitor and detect threats to your system in real time, taking immediate action when required, while keeping you informed to protect your business.
What Services can an MSP Offer?
Typically the services that a managed service provider can offer your business is tailored to your IT needs. Typically services provided include:
- IT Support – keeping your infrastructure operational and secure.
- Endpoint Protection – monitoring your applications and network to ensure all suspicious activity is detected and re-mediated.
- Compliance – ensuring you are GDPR compliant.
- Firewall Management – managing your firewall, making sure it’s always optimised and up-to-date to guard against the most recent advances in security threats.
- Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) – constantly monitoring the integrity of your entire IT system, and creates an alert if any potential weaknesses are detected.
Why Choose a Managed Service Provider?
There are many benefits to working with a managed service provider. Here’s why your business should consider working with an MSP:
- Cost Effective – by only paying for the cover your business needs, you can rest assured that your infrastructure is secure without needing to break the bank.
- Flexible – if you only require office-hours support, there’s an option for you, or if you need round the clock, 7 days a week support, you can have the option that gives you the level of managed IT support your business needs.
- Peace of Mind – enables you to focus on your business without having to worry about your IT.
- Expertise – working with a managed service provider allows your business to access a wide pool of knowledge that may not be otherwise available within your in-house IT team.
- Secure – proactively monitoring your IT systems and infrastructure ensures that your business is protected from evolving security threats.
How much do Managed Services Cost?
The cost of working with a managed services provider varies depending on the support your business needs.
At Nouveau, our IT support services are flexible, so you can choose the Service Desk coverage that’s the best value for your organisation. So, whether you need 8-5 support, or 24-7 assistance, we have a range of managed service packages to help ensure your business continues to operate at maximum efficiency.To learn more about managed services, and how we can help keep your business’ IT secure and operational, speak to one of our expert consultants on 0118 918 6822.
Alternatively, you can get in touch via our contact form.
by seoadmin | Jun 25, 2019 | Articles
Every day, cloud security threats to your business are becoming more complex, sophisticated and difficult to detect. With 77% of cyber-attacks in 2017 involving the use of file-less malware and exploits to compromise data and/or infrastructure, it’s now more important to ever to ensure that your business’ cloud applications are secure.
Here are four ways that your business can improve its cloud security.
Authorisation
Ensuring your employees only have access to the data necessary to performing their business functions can help mitigate a large amount of risk for your business. Creating different access permissions within your organisation can help make sure that if one of your employees were compromised, there’s a smaller chance that the hacker would gain access to all of your customer and business data.
Layered Security
Going for a single crown jewels approach to your business’ cloud security can be good, but why take it for granted? Even Medieval Lords and Ladies knew not to rely on just the security of their castle gate, often creating a multi-tiered defence, including high walls, moats and ramparts, so that if one layer is penetrated, not all is lost.
The same principle applies for your business’ cloud security. Whilst an all-in-one application can protect your business enterprise, if it is compromised, your business will be left unprotected. In total, there are six layers to consider when securing your cloud applications:
- Human – teach people to spot scams and be careful when storing and sending important information.
- Physical – ensure your physical assets are protected from theft or damage.
- Endpoint – protect devices from running malicious programs that could jeopardise data security.
- Network – secure connections between computers. Monitor entry and exit points, encrypt communications, and keep an eye out for anomalies.
- Application – test applications to ensure they don’t provide avenues for attacks.
- Data – ensure that only the right people all have access to the right data at all times.
Learn more about how your business can benefit from a Layered Security solution.
Authenticate
The traditional username/password combination is no longer good enough way to authenticate who is accessing your applications. Of 10 million compromised accounts analysed in a recent report, it was found that just 25 passwords made up more than half of the list.
To ensure that your business remains safe in the cloud, it’s not only important that your employees are using unique, secure passwords, but are also utilising two-factor authentication. Using two-factor authentication can be an effective way to make sure that users are who they say they are, and adds an additional layer of protection around your logins.
Build Your Firewall
As the major line of defence against cyber threats to your organisation, your firewall needs careful configuration and a high level of ongoing maintenance. Whilst many cloud applications offer robust security, more additional cloud security measures can be applied to your applications, to provide extra peace of mind.
As cyber threats become more sophisticated we advocate a layered security approach to improve your business’ cloud security. We recommend the Fortinet Security Fabric, which delivers broad protection and visibility to every network segment, device, and appliance. Applications today are everywhere, and securing applications at the stack is now the new perimeter. Fortinet’s next-generation security solutions deliver comprehensive protection for your business.
How we can help
As experts in cloud security, and a Fortinet Platinum partner for many years, we can install, configure, monitor and manage upgrades to your organisation’s firewall, ensuring it’s providing the maximum defence for your cloud applications.
Get in touch with one of our expert cloud security consultants today.
by Nouveau | Jun 25, 2019 | Articles
We are absolutely delighted to announce that we have won the Fortinet Collaborative Partner of the Year Award at #PartnerSync 2019.
David Park, Director Channel & Commercial Sales UKI at Fortinet, says we were awarded Collaborative Partner of the Year because “this Partner has consistently delivered 20-40% year on year growth numbers. Nouveau has embraced all areas of the Fortinet Security Fabric, training numerous engineers, not only on our FortiGate, but also NSE 6 & NSE 8 which encompasses our wider portfolio. This has enabled them to deliver projects around our SIEM, Wireless, Switching, Client, Sandbox and so on. They work very closely with our SE and Sales community and are always seen as a safe pair of hands”.
Paul Martin, our Account Manager at Fortinet, says “it is an absolute pleasure working with Nouveau. It’s fantastic to see how the positive internal culture is generating consistent results and great customer satisfaction”.
“Our partnership with Fortinet is very important to us and we are very proud to receive this award in recognition of the role we play within the Fortinet partner ecosystem and for our dedication to Fortinet. Alongside Paul and Dave, over the years we have made some great relationships with the wider channel team at Fortinet and would like to thank them for all the support that they give us on a day-to-day basis. From coming to events with us to popping into the office every now and then, it’s great to have a group of friendly and accessible people that we know we can rely on. There’s never a dull day with Fortinet around!” says Andy Stevens, Business Unit Director.
by Nouveau | Jun 18, 2019 | Articles
As part of the process of growing the business, we have made it one of our aims to improve and enhance our ability to provide top-tier services to all of our customers. It is of our belief that delivering excellent service to each and every customer is of utmost importance, so expanding the team with new faces to help accelerate development and increase efficiency and productivity is high on the list of things to do for us.
As a result, we are extremely proud to announce that we have taken on three new starters in a couple of different roles across the business. We welcome Andy Trafford, Marianne Starnes and Peter Trafford to the Nouveau family!
Peter Thompson
Senior Account Manager
Marianne Starnes
Finance Business Partner
Andy Trafford
Senior Account Manager
by seoadmin | Jun 17, 2019 | Articles
Endpoint security is the process of protecting your business’ network through the securing of endpoints – internet-capable devices such as desktops, laptops, smart phones, tablets, and wireless printers.
There are two types of endpoint security:
- Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP): An Endpoint Protection Platform is a preventative tool that provides reactive protection scanning files once they enter your business’ network. This typically takes the form of traditional antivirus software.
- Endpoint Detection & Remediation (EDR): An Endpoint Detection & Remediation platform provides a more proactive solution, continuously monitoring all files and applications that enter a device. This provides greater threat detection, and in turn greater protection for your network.
In order to protect your business and allow it to operate safely and securely, we advocate for an Endpoint Detection & Remediation solution, such as SentinelOne’s Endpoint Protection Platform, which proactively protects your network’s entry points from advanced malware exploits and other cyberattacks that would look to do your business harm.
Why You Need Endpoint Security
Analysing over 35,000 companies and a large number of publicly disclosed breaches – BitSight Insights found that over 2,000 organisations were running more than half of their computers on an outdated version of an operating system—which makes those companies nearly three times as likely to experience a publicly-disclosed breach.
Mobile working is on the rise, with a report from the Work Foundation at Lancaster University predicting that, by 2020, more than 70% of businesses will have adopted flexible working policies.
This creates a challenge for IT Security professionals, as each device remotely connecting to the business’ network creates a potential entry point for security threats. This is especially prevalent when it comes to mobile workers not having access to on premise updates that can provide added protection for networks.
With threats increasing in sophistication and frequency, it’s become even more important to ensure that stability of your network security.
Benefits of Endpoint Security
- Security across all devices: you’re only as strong as your weakest link, and with an endpoint security platform in place, you can rest assured that your business’ barrier to entry is solidified.
- Stop attacks before they can do damage: detecting and mitigating threats where they start not only provides greater security to your network, but can greatly reduce the costs associated with remediation.
- Increased productivity – cyberattacks can slow down computers to a crawl, and in some cases such as the 2017 WannaCry ransomware attack, shut them down completely. This makes work practically impossible. Effective endpoint security eliminates this possibility, maximising your business’ potential output.
- Protection for your customers – ensuring that your business is secure from cyber threats will also help to protect your customers, who could be susceptible to a cyber breach by proxy.
How We Can Help
Nouveau are one of SentinelOne’s first UK managed services partners. With extensive cyber security experience gained from over 25 years of helping clients to mitigate threats across networked, application, cloud and mobile environments, we can offer your business a comprehensive endpoint security package.
Our endpoint security managed service will monitor your endpoints and eliminate threats via proactive monitoring and integrated response in order to protect your business and allow it to operate safely and securely.
To learn more about SentinelOne’s Endpoint Protection Platform, and our managed endpoint security services, get in touch today.
