Accountancy firm invests £60,000 in IT upgrade

An accountancy firm has invested over £60,000 in upgrading its IT infrastructure to combat cyber threats and protect client data.

Howards Chartered Certified Accountants, which employs almost 40 staff at its office in Stafford, has installed a site-wide connected mobility solution with enterprise-class security.

Infinity IT Solutions carried out the installation, which was completed in stages, over four months. It includes an on-site private cloud solution with multi-factor authentication (MFA), layer 7 security firewall and industry-leading end point detection and response, all monitored by a 24/7 and 365 days a year off-site service centre.

Howards’ managing director Matt Bailey said: “The UK is now the most targeted nation for cyber-attacks and as a professional services firm handling payroll, pension and taxation and dealing with mergers and acquisitions as well as litigation matters, we hold a lot of sensitive data. We have always made client confidentiality our priority, but with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) coming into force in May last year, data privacy was taken to an entirely new level. We have embraced this change and are using it to fuel strategic advancement in our business.”

The security-as-a-service solution has multi-layer protection and delivers an anti-ageing security platform for Howards that can defend against the most aggressive cyber threats.

Simon McAlpine, sales and marketing director of Infinity IT solutions, who won the Empowering Potential accolade at TheBusinessDesk.com’s Leadership Awards last year, said: “We’d been working with Howards for around four years and had already installed network and server upgrades as well as bringing them to a fully outsourced IT service provision with 24/7 coverage and faster response times. Early this year, we completed the major upgrade to the private cloud solution. With ‘thin clients’, instead of bulky desktops, softphones and devices such as the Surface Go, the team now have immediate and responsive access to their workspace from any device anywhere, with total security.”