Imagine your entire computer system fatally crashing first thing in the morning one day with no warning at all and there's no way to get it working as normal quickly. You've no way to retrieve files that weren't backed up, you may have sent a computer virus to all your suppliers and customers, and have absolutely no idea what caused it. Every single day computer systems are attacked in this manner using automated software that is constantly searching the Internet for unprotected systems. If it finds yours, look out! Automated attack software can then destroy your computer, your network, steal your files and use your system to distribute viruses that can cause great damage to others too. 'Protection is expensive, right?' I hear you ask, it really doesn't have to be - why not get in touch with us and we can assess your situation and make recommendations as to what products and services would benefit you most and bring a valuable return for your money.

Systems Health Check
Simply in order to ensure your network of computers is a business enabler and meeting the needs of your business operations we can perform a check-up and maintenance service to make sure each computer is performing to its best. This may involve low budget replacements or upgrades of some parts to boost the system performance where possible, proactively scanning your harddisks and memory for hardware faults before they cause you any problems, specialist expertise in resolving problems with operating systems that may be annoying you or slowing you down in your work, assistance in removing viruses and spyware if your existing antivirus software hasn't managed to successfully quaruntine them, ensuring a suitable backup system is in place and working effectively, using network scans to check computers are not exposing themselves to external threats unnecessarily and to check the network bandwidth and particularly internet traffic is being used only as desired.

Gateway and Endpoint Security Products
If you think your servers and workstations may not be adequately protected from threats originating from the Internet then get in touch as we can assess your IT infrastructure and produce recommendations for any additional hardware or software products required (firewalls, anti-virus, content-filtering etc). Where you already have the correct equipment on-site we can assess and correct any weaknesses in configuration to ensure risks are minimised - for example disabling remote administration or changing remote access passwords after a member of staff with that information has left your company.

Encryption and Biometric Authentication Solutions
"Workers who are anxious about being laid off are prepared to steal corporate data on removable devices or bribe IT staffers for information, a survey has revealed." (Source: Computerworld UK, Workers worried about job security might steal corporate data. Published: December, 2008). After discussing your requirements we can provide or recommend encryption solutions that facilitate private/sensitive communication or restricted access to stored data. For physical building security where physical access to IT systems and servers needs to be controlled and restricted we can also help you implement door security systems and internal software systems that make use of physiological biometric authentication (identification recognition of face, fingerprint, hand, iris, DNA or a combination of these). If you want to use encryption to protect sensitive information from being accessed without authorisation by staff within your company then we can take on the role of encryption key custodian if you would prefer to have an independent third party keep a safe copy of your encryption keys rather than trusting your internal IT staff to refrain from using them without permission.

Compliance Solutions and Advice about current IT related Legislation
In the event of a successful attack on your network, perhaps a leaving member of staff who has stolen or copied files, should you wish to report the crime and proceed to prosecute the individuals involved your company will need to have electronic records of events stored in such a way that they can be considered suitable and admissable as evidence in Court. We can take you through a series of preparatory steps to become ready prior to incidents such as this happening. Did you also know that depending on the content subject of an email you may be required by law to keep it for a certain number of years at it counts as an official record in the same way your paper files do? We can provide your company with an email archiving solution that makes keeping an archived copy of all your business emails straightforward. We can prepare written procedure documents for the different aspects of working with IT equipment in order to protect your company's interests as much as possible. Rather than just loaning out laptops to staff for remote working etc it's important to have procedures in place to ensure you will get the laptops back at the end of their employment.

ISO27001 Audit Management
We are not able to perform an official audit of your company against ISO27001 specifications however we can make arrangements for a suitable external auditor to assess your company and can guide you through the process, perform gap analysis assessments and help to implement the changes required to meet the standards set out in ISO27001. We're very familiar with the requirements and would be pleased to provide consultancy on any aspect of the process to certification.

Network Vulnerability Detection
In addition to ensuring suitable protection is in place to prevent attacks we can also provide solutions which continuously scan your network in the background to identify network intrusion attempts, detect strategic attack patterns of network traffic such as port scanning, and monitor critical network devices and servers for alert conditions such as unusual or unexpected behaviour, failing to respond or failing to respond within defined timescales (such as service level agreements), unauthorised access attempts and detect software which has not been kept updated and needs to be in order to close up security holes that have been identified and fixed.