Enhanced IT Adopts CYRISMA to Offer Managed Security and Compliance Services
Enhanced IT, an MSP based in Dorset, UK, has 30 years of experience providing IT support and services to organizations nationwide. The Enhanced team works closely with clients to understand their objectives, network, and preferred working methods, and provides solutions tailored to individual needs and business structure.
We spoke to Jonathan McHarg, Head of Managed Services at Enhanced, to understand his team’s experience with CYRISMA and how they are using the platform to drive growth.
The Challenge
The Enhanced team’s adoption of the CYRISMA Platform was part of a strategic decision to transition from being a traditional MSP to a Managed Security Services Provider (MSSP). This was driven by multiple factors, one of which was they had a number of customers in the Defence sector, who needed effective cybersecurity solutions. Some other customers had experienced security breaches in the past and wanted to be in a position to prevent that.
The leadership at Enhanced saw this both as a way of meeting customer needs and adding a new revenue stream to the business. They wanted to create a managed security service that they could provide as an additional service layer to their existing customers and also differentiate themselves from competitors.
The Solution
To deliver their planned MSSP service, Enhanced wanted to create a white-labelled solution that they could brand as their own and build their own portals and dashboards for. This would need some clever integration with a vulnerability management platform (among others) which CYRISMA enabled.
Ease of Building an API Integration
McHarg’s team evaluated three or four solutions, and CYRISMA was by far the most helpful when it came to building API integrations and exposing the vulnerability and risk data that the team needed. This meant that they could use the solution exactly as they wanted, and present a single-pane-of-glass view to customers with insights and progress statistics from CYRISMA and other tools.
Today, Enhanced IT’s standard security solution includes CYRISMA by default. Apart from offering the security package as an additional service to their existing customers, McHarg’s team recommends the security component to all prospects looking for a fully managed service.
Changing Attitudes to Managed Security
While in the past, organizations had some hesitation in adopting a paid security solution unless they’d experienced a breach, McHarg says this is changing now.
“In recent weeks, I think we’ve gained five new customers and four of them immediately took the managed security platform as part of their initial delivery. We’re starting to see that cybersecurity is actually a driver to why people are coming to us, which is a big change. Security is becoming a core demand rather than an additional layer.”
Jonathan McHarg
Head of Managed Services, Enhanced IT
This change is fuelled by increasingly stringent compliance requirements and the need to minimize the risk of a breach. As more organizations become aware of the serious repercussions of data breaches and non-compliance, they are turning to MSSPs like Enhanced to keep them protected.
Enhanced now offers three tiers of security services—Basic, Standard, and Advanced—with 95% of customers opting for the Standard package. This tier includes CYRISMA’s vulnerability and risk management, alongside EDR, Microsoft Secure Score, and email security, resonating particularly in the Defence, Manufacturing, Finance, and Legal sectors.
Cyber Essentials and ISO/IEC 27001
CYRISMA is also key to getting Enhanced IT’s customers audit-ready.
“When customers ask us about Cyber Essentials, Cyber Essentials Plus or ISO 27001, CYRISMA becomes part of that conversation immediately. We make it part of the service, so if they’d like us to run their CE Plus certification, they will need CYRISMA on their systems.”
Jonathan McHarg
Head of Managed Services, Enhanced IT
McHarg likes the fact that he and his team can use CYRISMA before they book an auditor to do an actual audit. That way, by the time the auditor gets there, the client is 99% ready. Prior to using CYRISMA, they were spending up to four days with expensive consultants doing assessments to get clients ready for an audit.
“It’s sped up the process for us and the amount of investment that we need to put into it has greatly reduced because CYRISMA helps us continuously maintain this rather than it being a once-a-year check,” he says.
Building a True Partnership
From a support perspective, McHarg feels that when working with CYRISMA, the Enhanced team has the confidence that their issues will be heard and addressed quickly. They’re comfortable enough to raise an issue, and they always get the support they need. “This is really important to us because we think of it as a true partnership, not just a vendor purchasing relationship.”
The Enhanced team has seen significant growth after adding managed security to their service offerings, and will continue to leverage CYRISMA as they extend the service to more customers in the coming year.