Intelligent CISO Issue 48 | Page 64

Working with Tecala this situation has now been resolved and we now benefit from a standard operating environment across the company .
BUSINESS SURVEILLANCE
tightening security measures across the business . This was then followed by ongoing consulting to provide CXC with a future IT plan , which included the migration to Tecala ’ s cloud and managed services .
The agreement also covered day-to-day IT support for all offices and staff together with access to strategic advice and change management to enable a smooth transition for new solution deployments and assistance with future planning .
The relationship went ‘ live ’ in July 2019 when Tecala took over responsibility for centralised 24 / 7 helpdesk support and was also tasked with streamlining and standardising infrastructure support and developing a standard operating environment that could scale with remote access and reporting capabilities .
Work also began on a series of company-wide IT projects .
Security in the cloud
As the cybercrime industry continued to flourish , it became crucial for CXC to provide secure access across multiple locations . The initial consulting engagement , building out a public cloud security roadmap , emphasised the

Working with Tecala this situation has now been resolved and we now benefit from a standard operating environment across the company .

tightening of security measures across the business . This flowed into a future state roadmap which included migration to Tecala cloud and managed services .
Change management for identity-based access
To provide breach protection through superior identity-based access , including Multi-Factor Authentication ( MFA ), Tecala worked with CXC to complete an Azure Active Directorybased single-sign-on deployment across the company .
The project was significantly enhanced by Tecala ’ s change-management program , developed to ensure a smooth transition without disruption to staff . The process involved ensuring that staff in all offices were aware of updates that were being made and how this might impact them . The training and readiness component ensured that staff had secure remote access and understood the benefits of Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service .
“ The deployment was then fully completed in just three weeks . It involved the replacement of our legacy identity management platform and a shift to the new Microsoft alternative . The result has been the elimination of passwords and the introduction of identity-based security ,” said Sargent .
“ We have already seen a number of attacks that have been thwarted by the SSO system and so it ’ s already proven to be a significant upgrade for the company .”
The project has also improved the user experience for all staff . Everyone can now log into their device and have access to all the corporate IT resources they require without the need for multiple logins and passwords .
Streamlining and standardising infrastructure for the modern workplace
Overcoming the challenge of shadow IT
Another challenge that Tecala helped CXC to overcome was a proliferation of shadow IT across global offices . Because many offices had been operating relatively independently for many years , they had invested in a range of different hardware , software and services .
“ We had no oversight of exactly what was in place and whether it was being updated and patched ,” said Sargent . “ Working with Tecala this situation has now been resolved and we now benefit from a standard operating environment across the company .”
Improving user experience
Developing a standard operating environment that could scale and enable remote access and reporting capabilities was an initial priority . Tecala completed a comprehensive refresh of the networks across the three company offices in Australia , one in New Zealand and another in the Philippines .
The disparate legacy system was unable to provide remote management or reporting . Consequently , Tecala ’ s rollout of a centrally managed infrastructure and certificate-based access system “ enabled us to do away with passwords and significantly increased security for all staff ,” said Sargent .
Strategic technology support
As part of the strategic partnership , the two organisations come together each quarter for a strategy workshop . The consensus that is achieved in this forum facilitates an ongoing optimisation
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