Taylor Bracewell attains Cyber Essentials Plus Accreditation with Access Legal
Taylor Bracewell is a high-street law firm with around 60 staff across Four offices in Doncaster and Sheffield. The firm specializes in Wills and Probate, Family, Employment, Litigation, and Residential and Commercial Property.
Roy Sharp is the Practice Manager who oversees IT, staffing issues, and the day-to-day management of the firm. He sat down to speak with us about how Access Legal supported their firm to achieve the Cyber Essentials Plus Accreditation.
The Importance of Cyber Essentials Plus
Cyber Essentials is a Government Accreditation that certifies that a business has appropriate controls and processes in place to protect against common online security threats. Cyber Essentials Plus provides the same protections but has more rigorous, independent testing.
Roy found that Cyber Essentials Plus provided a competitive advantage while also giving peace of mind.
“Law firms are a prime target for cyber criminals due to the nature of the work we do, so security is hugely important to us and having the Cyber Essentials Plus accreditation with the extra checks that come with it, is a huge kudos to the firm.”
“Thankfully with the help of The Access Group we were able to achieve that.”
Upgrading Proclaim to meet Cyber Essentials Standards
The journey to Cyber Essentials Plus was not without its challenges. An initial assessment by their IT provider revealed a number of areas in which the firm needed to strengthen, and highlighted some potential security weaknesses that needed to be addressed. One of these issues that required immediate attention was that Taylor Bracewell at that time were using an older version of Access Legal Proclaim.
“We got in touch with The Access Group as time wasn’t on our side due to the deadline date set by Cyber Security. However, Chris Kelly and the team really pulled out all the stops to help us get the latest version of Proclaim installed across all our offices, which resulted in us being compliant and meant that we achieved the required standard of Cyber Essentials before our accreditation date.”
“The team were very helpful, understanding and thorough. There was lots of communication throughout the process which made the whole thing feel very smooth and in the end we were able to pass the accreditation with flying colours.”
Future Plans and Technological Upgrades
Taylor Bracewell is committed to continuous improvement and technological advancement. They are currently upgrading to Proclaim 3.5.14 and are also beginning a project to move their version of Proclaim to the cloud with Access Hosting.
