Supporting Legal Services to achieve a secure cyber posture Cyber Essentials

Find out from Fiona Fitzgerald, Chief Executive of Radcliffe Chambers, how Aztech helped them become one of the first barristers chambers in the United Kingdom to achieve Cyber Essentials Plus.

About Radcliffe Chambers

Located in Lincoln’s Inn in London for over 100 years, Radcliffe Chambers is a barristers’ chambers specialising in commercial work. Covering everything from pensions, banking, finance through to property, private client and wealth work, Radcliffe Chambers provide legal advice and representation with just over 70 barristers and 20 staff. Delivering their services to their clients requires absolute security and peace of mind as they continue to grow and develop.

The Challenge

“We first looked at carrying out an overview variety technology about 2 years ago, because we were looking at really becoming more professional and how we did things, and we were very concerned about cyber security in particular. We deal with a lot of confidential information from our clients, and we find that it’s incredibly important to us to have the best systems in place. So Cyber-security is very important to us. It’s particularly important in the legal market because over the last few years there have been a number of attempts to infiltrate law firms and barristers’ chambers, some of which unfortunately have been successful. The IT company we were using, I didn’t feel as though they had the expertise in terms of leading as an IT director would.”

Solution

“As we went through the tender process and looked at various people in the market, Aztech stood out from day one, simply because they were interested, and they spent time getting to know us. The only concern I had was their lack of knowledge in the barrister market, but I found myself being quite reassured by the fact that they were actually willing to put somebody in house over a period of 6-10 weeks. We had a manager onsite getting to know us and understanding our systems and that was really impressive. They came into us and carried out a full audit, reviewed processes and systems and asked the right questions. We decided to implement cyber-essentials and cyber-essentials plus, and Aztech IT were a fantastic partner for us in terms of helping us implement what we needed to do.

I’ve continued to be impressed by them in terms of both the service they offer, the cultural alignment and the fact that they are constantly looking forward.”

Benefits

“We are one of the few chambers in the UK that actually have cyber-essentials plus. So cyber-essentials plus is incredibly important to us, because it helps us to build on the expertise we currently have in place; in fact, I almost see it as a competitive advantage in the market.

I find that our clients are sending us information security questionnaires, asking us what systems we have in place, and it’s fantastic for me as a chief exec of a barrister’s chambers to feel confident in what we’re able to offer and in how we do that, and Aztech IT are a fantastic partner for us to do that with. I was also impressed that they were not just dealing with day-to-day service issues but also looking at wider issues of where we were going as a business, with a remit of growing the business over the next number of years. It was important to understand where we were going also how we were going to get there and IT is a fundamental part of that.”