New managed service monitors an organisation’s people, processes and technology controls to provide easy-to-interpret Cyber Resilience Score and action plan to reduce risk exposure.
Fareham, UK – 11 January 2022 – NormCyber, the award-winning managed security service provider for midsized organisations, has today launched smartbloc.™, a fully managed service that provides businesses with complete visibility and control over both cyber and data protection risks. Each smartbloc. customer will be allocated their own Cyber Resilience Score, which has been designed to give business and technology leaders a near real-time view of the level of risk facing their organisations, as well as actionable insights on how to reduce their exposure.
Reducing the risks associated with processes, people and technology
Smartbloc. offers comprehensive protection against both known and unknown cyber threats by continuously assessing the strength of a company’s entire defences. In contrast to traditional, technology-focused managed security service offerings, smartbloc. includes a number of service modules that, together, assess the organisation’s people, process and technology controls, identifying all potential weak spots and providing the broadest possible protection.
Smartbloc.’s process service modules make sure that all operational procedures are either Cyber Essentials or Cyber Essentials Plus certified as a minimum, while its lawyer-led team of data protection experts ensure all processes comply with the UK and EU GDPRs as well as any other relevant data protection legislation.
The people service module ensures all employees receive continuous cyber safety awareness education, training and testing, as endorsed by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), while the technology-focused module includes vulnerability management, threat detection and response, as well as penetration testing by norm.’s in-house team of CREST-certified ethical hackers.
Jargon-free reporting with actionable advice
Smartbloc. subscribers also gain access to an online visualisation tool – called smartbloc. LIVE – that demonstrates how cyber defences can be strengthened and the actions companies should take to improve their security and compliance posture.
Each company will have a Cyber Resilience Score on a scale of one to 100, which is based on the effectiveness of its security and data protection processes, the behaviour of its employees, and the robustness of its technology infrastructure. Scores of 75 and above are considered best practice, although highly-regulated or risk-averse organisations should aim higher.
This score has been developed to give business leaders a highly accurate snapshot of the strength of their organisation’s cyber and data protection measures, and appears on the smartbloc. LIVE portal alongside clear KPIs and actionable insights into how companies can boost their security postures.
The portal also enables organisations to benchmark their operations against their peers and demonstrate compliance to external stakeholders, such as auditors, regulators, certification bodies and customers. Just as importantly, it also allows organisations to quantify the value of their cyber security investments.
“Midsized companies face complex security threats and increasingly onerous compliance requirements but rarely do they have the in-house resources to manage all of this themselves; this is exactly where smartbloc. comes in,” said Pete Bowers, COO at NormCyber. “The Cyber Resilience Score, in particular, has been designed to give a simple yet accurate snapshot of a company’s risk exposure at any one point in time. It tells CEOs when they can rest easy and when they should act, without bogging them down with long reports containing needless technical detail.”
Smartbloc. is a subscription-based service designed for midsized organisations that want to proactively address cyber security and compliance requirements, but without the in-house expertise or budget to manage these mission-critical activities themselves on a day-to-day basis. The managed service is fully backed up by norm.’s 24/7 UK-based Security Operations Centre (SOC) and organisations can subscribe to the complete service or to the modules on an individual basis. The service pulls in feeds and information from across the technology estate, regardless of location and whether the technology has been procured through smartbloc., which means that businesses have a complete view of their cyber security status at any given time.