COVER STORY
managers . With over four decades of experience , it cares for 232,000 homes in England , Wales and Scotland across 4,200 developments .
FirstPort is a member of the Association of Residential Managing Agents ( ARMA ), the Association of Retirement Housing Managers ( ARHM ), and Property Managers Association Scotland ( PMAS ). It holds a five-star rating from the British Safety Council , has been awarded the British Safety Council ’ s prestigious Sword of Honour , is an accredited Safe Agent and belongs to The Property Ombudsman . FirstPort holds a Silver Investors in People accreditation and has been named as one of the UK ’ s Top Employers by the Top Employers ’ Institute for the last two consecutive years .
My role as Head of Information Security is first and foremost to ensure we keep our customer and business data safe . I also contribute to supporting the business to provide the best possible service for our customers to make their home lives easier .
What was the driver behind selecting Proofpoint and what security challenges were you looking to overcome ?
A huge part of managing information security for an organisation is to consistently revisit your security posture on an ongoing basis in order to stay on the front foot of potential cyberattacks and , better yet , stay ahead of them .
Throughout my career , I ’ ve always been totally vendor-agnostic . It ’ s the outcome and performance that I consider . Proofpoint offered all of the features I was looking for that were going to address identified gaps and risks in today ’ s cybersecurity landscape .
During the procurement process , it became clear that Proofpoint had superior features that we needed for our business . Our current relationship is brilliant , the account managers and technical experts are always at hand if we need them and that personal touch is really appreciated .
How would you describe the current cybersecurity landscape ?
The landscape is evolving like never before and it will continue to do so year-over-year . Technological innovations are becoming more advanced but so are cyberthreats .
This year , we have seen a big shift to remote working and while the majority of companies have dealt with this well , there has been a big drive to scale-up technologies to adapt to the new way of working . The rise in remote working has undoubtedly also created a larger attack surface for cybercriminals . This shift means that businesses need to ensure they are safeguarding their
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