Cyber security services in Hertfordshire

Cyber security for a Hertfordshire small business is not a product you buy once. It is a set of controls that have to be in place, monitored and kept current, and most of them are unglamorous: endpoint detection and response on every laptop and server, multi-factor authentication that staff actually use, email filtering that stops the invoice-fraud message before the finance manager sees it, patches applied on time, backups that have been restored in a test, and people who know what a phishing email looks like. The GOV.UK Cyber Security Breaches Survey consistently finds phishing to be the most common attack on UK businesses, most of them small firms.

EDR is where we start, because antivirus alone does not detect the way attackers now work. We deploy endpoint detection and response to every client device so that unusual behaviour, such as a process encrypting files or credentials being harvested, is identified and isolated rather than discovered on Monday morning. Alongside it, remote monitoring and management applies Windows and third-party updates on a schedule, and Microsoft 365 is hardened with MFA, conditional access and sensible sharing settings. Email security adds filtering, link protection and impersonation checks. Backups run locally and to the cloud, with Microsoft 365 data backed up separately because Microsoft's retention is not a backup.

Cyber Essentials comes up in almost every conversation with Hertfordshire firms that supply larger customers, from aerospace and pharma suppliers on Gunnels Wood Road to solicitors in Hertford and St Albans. The scheme, run by the NCSC through IASME, checks five control areas: firewalls, secure configuration, access control, malware protection and patch management. We prepare businesses for it by putting those controls in place and documenting them for the self-assessment questionnaire. We are clear that certification is issued through IASME's certification bodies rather than by us, and we do not describe ourselves as certified or accredited.

Being local matters more in security than people expect. When something does go wrong, an engineer who can be in Hertford, Ware or Cheshunt within 20 minutes, or Hatfield and Welwyn within half an hour, can isolate a machine, check the firewall and start a restore while a remote-only provider is still asking for a postcode. We combine that with a security awareness programme for staff and an IT health check to establish where you are today, then a plan that fixes the highest-risk gaps first rather than everything at once.