Publish date: 06.03.23

“By working with Xeretec we were able to leverage their strong partnership with Barracuda and gain a very competitive deal for the group. This played a pivotal part in our decision to go ahead with the investment.” - Matthew Cordon, IT Operations Manager, The Aurora Group

DRIVERS FOR CHANGE:

  • The need to migrate to the cloud from an outdated, on-premise system
  • The management of 15 independent sites had become time-consuming, repetitive, and expensive
  • The requirement for better protection against increasing numbers of phishing attacks was growing
  • The desire to achieve government recommended certification, Cyber Essentials
  • The need to consolidate technology enabling centralised management across the group

SOLUTIONS:

  1. Barracuda – Email Protection, Cloud to Cloud backup & Web Application Firewalls
  2. Xeretec Managed Cyber Security Services

 

ABOUT AURORA:

The Aurora Group is the UK’s sixth largest provider of education, care and support services for young people with special educational needs or disabilities. With 15 schools and colleges across the UK, Aurora’s aim was to deploy technology which reduced cyber risk and increased operational efficiencies for the group. After a thorough discovery session to uncover Aurora’s existing challenges, Xeretec presented Barracuda & as the best fit solution, which had also been recommended to Aurora by peers in the education industry. Matthew Cordon, IT Operations Manager stated, “The Barracuda demo quickly displayed the instant benefits deploying the technology would have for the group”. Xeretec’s cyber security services partner were introduced as a partner who could guide Aurora through the process of passing government recommended certification, Cyber Essentials. They also provide on-going support to Aurora to achieve improved cyber hygiene with a managed security subscription that includes monthly services such as penetration testing, phishing simulations, vulnerability scanning and user awareness training.

 

“The process of passing Cyber Essentials has taught the group that we need to do more regular testing in order to spot vulnerabilities and be able to react to them in a more timely fashion, constantly ensuring our attack surface and therefore risk is minimised”
– Ben Harvey, Senior Cloud Technician, The Aurora Group