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As you may have heard from the press, a security issue was recently found through the widely used application named “Apache Log4j”. “Apache Log4j” is a supporting application mainly used by programs that use a web browser (Chrome, Edge Internet Explorer…) as well as public websites. Read more

Why you should work with an IT partner (when it concerns cybersecurity)?

Why work with an IT-partner for cybersecurity?
IT & telecom news

Why you should work with an IT partner (when it concerns cybersecurity)?

We have already communicated a lot about cybercrime, and in fact there are new threats occurring every day that we could talk about. Governments, multinationals, but especially SMEs are increasingly victims of all kinds of attacks.

 

Despite all the cybersecurity solutions available, companies are still being attacked and/or hacked. How come? Hereunder we list some things that we often notice during intake interviews with customers.

”This will not happen to me”. People have not yet been the victim of hacking, or they are not (yet) aware that there has indeed been a successful attack or a data breach. This often creates the erroneous perception that they will not be impacted.
Solutions are very seldom tailor-made to the customer’s needs and simply implemented, often without any further monitoring. This can happen in two ways: security for home use will never provide adequate protection for an SME environment. On the flip side, a state-of-the-art solution with numerous bells and whistles are often overkill and too expensive for SME’s. A high budget does not necessarily stand for a good protection.
Cyber security is not being deployed and implemented on all necessary fronts. Good protection consists in combining several layers of protection. Think of it as a city wall: if one of the walls is not protected, the city will still be taken via this one wall. Or a chain can only be as strong as the weakest link.
It is sometimes feared that cybersecurity is (too) expensive for an SME, but this does not take into consideration the huge potential cost in case of data loss or a data breach. Fortunately, there are indeed decent and reliable solutions tailored to the SME needs. We implement them on a daily basis.

The numbers

In addition, there are many studies that demonstrate that cybersecurity is certainly not something that can not happen to you. One of these studies, which Proximus conducted together with Telindus and Davinsi Labs, from October 2021 to November 2021 among 144 companies (mainly SMEs) from Belgium and the Netherlands, demonstrates that cybersecurity should definitely not be underestimated. Some of the key conclusions from this study:

34 %
acknowledge that they were the victim of a cyber incident within their organization in 2021. Of the 62% who say no incident took place, only 38% say that they are absolutely certain.
Social engineering was the most common cybersecurity incident in 2021. In this technique, cyber criminals exploit human vulnerabilities to penetrate a system or extract confidential information.
43 %
of organizations do not train employees in security awareness. Such a training program reduces the chance of human errors. For example, employees learn to recognize phishing. In this way you are better armed against the number 1 of cyber incidents, social engineering.
100 %
All affected respondents say that every incident has a high cost or a negative impact. This can range from the costs to report and to solve the incident, loss of time due to unavailability and of course reputational damage.
40 %
Of the larger organizations with their own IT department, 4 in 10 experience a shortage of cybersecurity specialists and more than half experience a scarcity of such profiles.

Good implementation and monitoring are key

If you have made the choices for your cybersecurity solutions together with your IT partner, preferably after a sufficiently extensive audit or analysis, it is important to implement them tailored to your organization. A simple example: suppose that no one needs access outside the company’s network, then it is of course better to close it off completely. If you do need this for one or more employees in the future, this access (for those people) can be provided and adequately secured. Do only a few employees need access to certain files and applications? Then block the access for all others who do not need these files.

It is also important that you or your IT partner centralize all necessary layers of protection so that everything remains manageable and affordable. Patches and updates can therefore also be implemented much more efficiently. You also want to be able to count on potential risks being identified proactively as much as possible and preferably resolved automatically. That is why it is important to continuously monitor all traffic and ensure that all systems are up to date to always have the latest information to help better detect anomalies. A team of people who are tech-savvy and who monitor the evolution of cybersecurity is also of great importance. They must be able to intervene in case of an intrusion, despite all measures already set in place.

The IT partner must be a “Jack-of-all-trades”

Up to this point, we’ve only briefly discussed a bit of cybersecurity. Most business leaders do not comprehend and manage this matter (at all) and are almost never able to free up enough time for it. In addition, there is the delivery, installation and maintenance of computers, smartphones and tablets, (cloud) servers, network and Wi-Fi for guests and employees, printers and copiers, …. We haven’t even mentioned coordination with the internet provider yet, but also the activation and management of mobile subscriptions. The installation, maintenance and user support of software should certainly not be underestimated either. And then there’s account and password management, general user support for all employees, problem solving and so forth.

When any IT-related problem occurs, it is expected that it will be resolved as soon as possible (immediately). A very broad IT knowledge is therefore indispensable.

International providers of security solutions have a very in-depth knowledge of their services. But why work with large international companies when you can be serviced better, faster and in your own language by your local IT partner?

Our priorities

Because we are an SME ourselves, we know all too  well how important continuity and accessibility are. That is why we consider quality, permanent striving for continuity, and above all a first-class personal service being of the highest importance. We offer a wide range of solutions to be the most complete IT and telecom partner for our customers. Within our team of more than 30 employees we find product experts for the most important pillars within the IT world, such as security, cloud, Office, hardware, etc.

In summary: we do everything we can to completely unburden our customers, both in the field of IT and in the field of telecom. This way you can keep your focus on what really matters: making your company and business a success.

Focus on Corporate Social Responsibility

But sustainable entrepreneurship is also a natural and unavoidable part of our daily way of working. In order to keep our promise of sustainable business operations, we have invested heavily in recent years (and we still do) and all kinds of initiatives have been developed that, among other things, contribute to the lowest possible CO2 emissions (in the last 3 years we saved 23 tons of CO2!) and support (local) social goals. To give these initiatives the attention they deserve, we have listed them on this page (click).

The partners we closely work with, Microsoft and Proximus, also make sustainability a top priority. Read all about the transformation at Proximus here (click) and here about the sustainable future at Microsoft (click).

A very interesting example is Proximus’ Tier-3+ data center. Environmentally friendly technology was chosen to cool the computer rooms. For example, the new data center uses two so-called Kyoto wheels: heat exchangers with a diameter of 6 meters that, thanks to their aluminum casing, absorb heat faster but also cool down faster. In this way, the computer rooms can be cooled 90 percent of the time with outside air. In terms of energy consumption, this is much more favorable than traditional mechanical cooling and as a result 60 percent less power is consumed.

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