Cyber security Sydney

Cyber security services in Sydney

We advise Sydney organisations on what to spend security money on, in what order, and what a managed service is genuinely taking off your plate. We are paid by the provider that is selected rather than by you, so the shortlist is not a sales process and the overlaps in what you already own get found rather than quietly renewed.

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Where the money goes

What actually reduces risk in a Sydney business

Four areas carry most of the risk. The order matters more than the brand on any of them.

Identity, first and by a distance

Multi-factor authentication on every account that can reach data, and a real process for removing access when somebody leaves. In a hybrid Sydney workforce identity is the perimeter, because there is no office boundary left to defend and the laptop in a cafe is the normal case rather than the exception. This area prevents more incidents than everything else on this page combined, and it is usually already licensed.

Backups you have actually restored from

A backup that has never been restored is a report, not a backup. Test a restore and time it, and check what is being backed up now that so much work is created and kept in cloud services rather than on a file server somebody remembers to protect.

Who responds outside your hours

Whether a person or a queue, in which country, and what happens between the alert firing and somebody with authority acting on it. In a hybrid workforce the answer matters more than it used to, because the people who would once have noticed something odd in the office are no longer in it.

The New South Wales policy you will be measured against

NSW agencies work to the state Cyber Security Policy administered by Cyber Security NSW, and its reach extends to the suppliers holding agency data. If you sell into NSW government, the security questions in a tender come from that policy, and a proposal that cannot answer to it does not survive procurement regardless of how good the technology is.

The decision

Build detection in house, or buy managed detection and response

This decision sets your security operating cost for the next three years. It turns on staffing, and hybrid working has made staffing it internally harder rather than easier.

In house

You keep the context, the tuning and the institutional knowledge. You also need people awake at three in the morning, which is where this option usually fails. It suits organisations with an existing team and a genuine reason to hold the capability.

Suits a team large enough to roster nights properly

Managed detection and response

Somebody is watching at three in the morning and that is most of the value. The question is authority: whether they can isolate a machine without you, or only tell you about it. Ask what leaves with you if you change provider in three years.

Suits most organisations, particularly where staff are rarely on site

Due diligence

What we check that a demonstration will not show you

A demonstration shows the product working in ideal conditions. These decide what it is like to own.

Capability you are buying twice

Buying a control you already own inside another licence is the most common avoidable line in a security budget, and it is found by inventory rather than by argument.

Where the telemetry is stored

Which country your logs and alerts are held in, for how long, and who at the provider is able to read them.

Authority to act

Whether the provider can isolate a machine at two in the morning, or has to wait for one of your people to answer a phone.

Exit, and what you keep

Whether the detection rules, tuning and incident history built up over three years leave with you or stay with the provider.

What is actually covered when nobody is in the office

Cover written around a corporate network means less each year that hybrid working continues. Ask what is monitored on a laptop at home on a domestic connection.

Evidence against the NSW policy, not just a product list

If you hold NSW agency data, the security questionnaire comes from the state Cyber Security Policy. Ask how each control is evidenced, because that is the form the question takes.

Common questions

Asked by Sydney organisations

The questions that come up in nearly every first conversation about security spend here.

Where should a Sydney organisation start?

Identity, backup and endpoint, in that order. Multi-factor authentication on every account that can reach data, backups that have been restored from rather than merely reported as successful, and endpoint protection that somebody actually watches.

We supply New South Wales government. What do we need to show?

Evidence against the NSW Cyber Security Policy administered by Cyber Security NSW, which reaches the suppliers holding agency data. The security questionnaire in a NSW tender is drawn from it, so the work is in being able to evidence the controls rather than list the products.

Does hybrid working change what we should buy?

It changes the order. When most staff are outside the office most of the week, identity becomes the perimeter and endpoint becomes the only place you have visibility. Spending on network controls ahead of those two is the most common misallocation we see in Sydney.

What does the Essential Eight actually require?

Eight mitigation strategies with four maturity levels, and the honest answer is that most organisations sit between level one and two on some strategies and nowhere on others. The useful exercise is establishing which level each of the eight currently reaches, because that is what turns a security budget into a plan rather than a shopping list.

Should we run detection in house or buy managed response?

It depends on whether you can staff it around the clock, which most organisations cannot. The question worth asking a managed provider is what they are permitted to do without you: isolating a machine at two in the morning is response, sending you an email is monitoring, and the price difference between them is smaller than the outcome difference.

What does your advice cost us?

Nothing. We are vendor funded, so the service costs your business nothing.

We are vendor funded and completely free to your business. Always focused on the right outcome.

Spend the security budget in the right order

Tell us what you already own and what worries you. We come back with what closes a real gap, what overlaps with something you are already paying for, and what a managed service would genuinely take off your plate.