Background
SolomonEdwards is a national professional services firm that delivers strategic expertise and proven project delivery models to businesses of all sizes. Their team of trusted advisors and expert business consultants focus on business transformation, change management, communication strategies, executive leadership coaching and implementation of strategic initiatives. Knowing security standards are ever-changing and seeking an opportunity to solidify their reputation in the marketplace as a business leader who clients could have the utmost trust in, SolomonEdwards understood their priority needed to be information security management.
In the last 8 years, more than 7.1 billion identities were exposed in data breaches
The Challenge
SolomonEdwards wanted to assure clients their environment was as secure as possible. Not only would this make their proposals more competitive during the sales process, but it would set the company apart as the safest option for businesses to partner with.
SolomonEdwards Senior IT Security Manager Zdravko Markov engaged Nortec to identify and remediate potential vulnerabilities in their network and to ensure compliance with National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) standards.
The need for managed security that includes protection against cybersecurity threats has become a well-recognized business requirement
~Microsoft Security Practice Development Playbook
The Solution
To start with, Nortec brought out the big guns. Michael Vaillancourt, Nortec’s Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH), and our team of Certified Information System Security Professionals (CISSP) conducted a full-scale security assessment to identify network vulnerabilities along with a physical site visit, staff interviews and the management of social engineering protocols to identify all potential risk factors.
“We conducted unique tests and experiments to uncover potential vulnerabilities within the company as part of the security assessment, bringing expertise that no other IT company in the region was able to offer SolomonEdwards,” Vaillancourt says.
Once Nortec completed their initial assessment, they provided a detailed report with specific findings and in-depth recommendations.
SolomonEdwards has expanded their partnership with Nortec to include Nortec’s premier managed security solution giving SolomonEdwards access to continued advisement and enforcement of essential security policies. Plus, Nortec provides ongoing company-wide training to ensure that every employee is fully engaged in a corporate culture of information security.
1 in 31 emails contain malware
The Benefit
“With Nortec’s advice, we developed security policies and an educational program for our employees, so we can stay on top of industry standards and ahead of ever-increasing cyber threats,” Markov says. “We’ve had Nortec assess our security every year since 2016 and now have added another scan of our system to document the remediation of security concerns.”
SolomonEdwards has raised a wall of defense with security policies that reliably protect and deflect modern cybersecurity threats. Nortec’s team conducts annual security assessments and continuous vulnerability scanning. Each assessment measures the security maturity level, looking across 14 control areas to measure the current state of security against previous years and identifying areas of improvement.
