SAFE Assessment

SAFE today, resilient tomorrow

Combined Strategy, Assessment, Frameworks and Execution

Our SAFE assessment service drives continuous threat and exposure management to ensure your business is resilient against advanced, sustained attacks today, and the unknown unknowns of tomorrow.

Static security postures are no longer sufficient. With SAFE, we delve deeper into a continuous cycle of assessment and enhancement that ensures your business isn't just reacting to threats, but proactively preparing for them.

SAFE is about more than averting disaster; it's a robust blend of strategy, comprehensive assessments, blended frameworks, and planned expert execution that delivers assured resilience.

This holistic approach not only identifies and exposes blindspots in your defences but also aligns cybersecurity seamlessly with business continuity. SAFE scopes all assets, reveals how to minimise vulnerabilities and maximise resilience, and ultimately provides clear, evidence-based insights to drive budgeting and strategic decisions.

"It's like night and day"

Mark Petar, Head of Systems, Montanaro: SAFE webinar guest

"SAFE from ITHQ is not an audit, it's a discussion based on evidence with proportional outcomes based on business needs. When management sees the old spider graph compared with the new spider graph, they can see exactly where [my budget's] gone, where the time and effort's gone ... We can basically prove: 'Look at the difference we've made.' The SAFE reports provide an independent view of our systems like Pen Tests and are 32 pages long: very useful in many regulation-centric scenarios.

The difference in what ITHQ has done for us as a company is just gigantic."

Watch SAFE webinar

Discover

Thorough exploration of your security posture using blended frameworks to establish a resiliency baseline

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Reveal

Insightful analysis, scores, and visual representations transparently illustrate your true resilience and reveal blind spots

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Initiate

Plan targeted improvements and strategic initiatives to strengthen and enhance your organisation's resilience

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Measurable Progress

Measurement is key to improvement. We use established frameworks to create 19 benchmarked domains and score against them.

Our 19 SAFE domains cover all critical areas and can be grouped into 4 main areas of scrutiny: security policies, data protection, exposure and information security management system (ISMS).

A combination of scorecards, reports and visual data representations deliver a detailed, 360 degree view of your resilience profile that enable board level discussions regarding future security spend, and offer proof of improvement activities to cyber insurers, for example.

The spider graphs below are typical of a visual way in which we demonstrate progress. Each point represents one of the 19 domains, with each concentric line a measure of achievement. Resilient businesses will place all points on the green or blue lines.

Security Policies: All security policies across the business including security team training and security awareness training for other teams

Data Protection: Identity and access management, user and entity behaviour analysis, secure remote access, endpoint protection and data loss prevention

Exposure: Vulnerability management, network and systems security, asset management, observability, incident response management, business continuity

ISMS: Service provider management, information sharing and collaboration, lessons learned and improvement

Day zero

6 month retest

12 month retest

"We couldn't do it without ITHQ"

Philip Mitchell, IT Director, The Hippodrome Casino

"First day of our support contract, three hours in; all hell broke loose in the casino. There was a flood downstairs - New Year's Day 3am - and I had senior ITHQ guys on the phone dealing with our issue here ... it really showed their commitment ..."

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Discover

Explore and assess your current security assets to establish a baseline

This first stage of your SAFE assessment is all about understanding your current security posture, and your baseline ability to anticipate, withstand and recover from an advanced, sustained cyber attack.

We meticulously assess your business's cyber resilience using a blend of established frameworks, predominantly the MITRE Cyber Resiliency Engineering Framework (CREF) and the CIS Critical Security Controls, with additional elements of the Cyber Maturity Model (CMM).

Your business will be assessed across 19 domains, providing a detailed security maturity profile. Your assessment scores, depicted in clear, visual formats will be used to create a candid view of your security posture, identifying strengths and areas in need of enhancement.

The Discover stage enables us to understand your current security environment, guiding the next phase where we present our findings to you and your team.

Reveal

Illuminate strengths and weaknesses in your security posture

The second stage of SAFE uses your data to clearly show your strongest areas of defence, to scope where improvements are needed and in which order of priority.

In the Reveal stage you receive a complete analysis of your cyber security posture through detailed scores, reports and visual tools. This transparency ensures a 360 degree view of your resilience status, clearly showing strengths, areas for improvement and even total blind spots in your defences.

Using a ‘traffic light’ style report, we highlight priority areas and offer actionable insights for strategic enhancement. These comprehensive findings illuminate the path forward, minimising risks and preparing you for the next phase.

Our aim with Reveal is to deliver clarity and direction ahead of the final stage, where plans for improvements will be initiated.

Initiate

Create a roadmap for prioritised resilience improvements

The Initiate stage of SAFE is all about planning informed, prioritised actions that demonstrably improve your resilience status.

In this final, Initiate stage, we plan your path to resilience based on insights from Reveal. With a pragmatic roadmap, we prioritise actions that address identified weaknesses and bolster strengths.

Our expanded VAST Strategy - Visibility, Availability, Stability, Transmutability - has been developed to encompass all ITHQ practice areas: Cyber, Infrastructure Services, Data & AI, and IT Operations. The VAST strategy provides a comprehensive approach to technology assessment and roadmap development that will help build resilient, adaptable technology environments.

Regular reassessments and strategic investments are built into the plan, to continuously enforce your security posture, equipping your organisation to withstand and recover from cyber incidents while sustaining growth. This proactive approach secures your operational continuity and fortifies your defence mechanisms for a robustly resilient future.