Collaboration is key to safeguarding the housing sector and its tenants

From the outside it might seem like housing associations only need to focus solely on looking after their tenants and not worry about anything else. But providers of every size have found themselves at the forefront of digital technology.

The rise in cyber threats aimed at organisations that store large volumes of confidential data has driven decision makers to step up to the plate and strengthen defences. This can only be achieved effectively with a cyber security strategy.

Cyber security is a team sport

It’s clear that nobody, whether it’s a market-leading B2B or B2C company, a government agency, a niche service provider, or a pioneering technology company, can successfully go it alone when it comes to protecting assets, data, customers and reputations from harm. This is apparent to anyone who scrolls down the latest news of any cyber security or information security website. Cyber security is now a team sport.

Everyone knows that safeguarding customers’ data is paramount. But now it takes a team of experts employing best-in-class practices and the latest technologies, to communicate and collaborate to secure large volumes of data, while permitting access to the people who need to use it to do their jobs. And, because adversaries are continually adapting their tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs), it’s also a race against the clock.

Successful teams in the field of cyber security typically span multiple enterprises to achieve common objectives. When they work together, end users, technology companies and service providers can be greater than the sum of their parts.

Sharing ideas and insights to make the sector a safer place

That’s why, at Quorum Cyber, we attend a variety of topical events up and down the UK, and sometime overseas, to discuss our specialist subject. We join discussion panels, participate in roundtables, present to housing sector audiences and when necessary, we host virtual webinars. As a company of cyber security and technology experts who concentrate on minimising risk, we feel that it’s our duty and responsibility to share our insights and recommendations. We’re keen to talk about the lessons we’ve learnt from protecting over 150 customers around the world, including several of the leading and largest housing associations in the UK such as Notting Hill Genesis, which manages around 60,000 homes for 200,000 tenants in south-east England.

Wherever providers are on their cyber security journey, whether they’re just getting started or have made inroads to improving their security posture but are perhaps a little frustrated by their progress, we’re here to help. We’re passionate about sharing our advice to help associations make the best decisions to reduce their total cost of ownership and achieve a maximum return on their investment.

Everyone has their own unique challenges. That’s why when we were founded in 2016 we set out to create a partnership model where our customers only pay for what they use – and through our purpose-built customer platform, Clarity, they have total transparency of what we do for them.

Housing Technology 2023

Next up on our calendar is Housing Technology 2023, which will be held at the East Midland Conference Centre in Nottingham on 8th and 9th March. We’re looking forward to meeting as many people in the industry as we can to share ideas and discuss how we can help them reduce risk.

We’re more than happy to talk about some of the key challenges that many organisations are facing today, among which are migration to the cloud and cloud security, data management and security, digital transformation and securing Internet of Things (IoT) devices – which is becoming a hot topic in the sector.

Defending assets, data and tenants from adversaries

At Quorum Cyber, our services were born in the cloud. We understand that the entire IT estate, including IoT devices and the cloud, need to be defended as well as any other part of the infrastructure. That’s why we designed our Managed Extended Detection and Response (XDR) service to monitor absolutely everything, from any vendor, be it on-premises or in the cloud, in IoT or Operational Technology (OT), and any cloud environment, including from Amazon Web Services (AWS), the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Microsoft Azure.

A Microsoft Solutions Partner for Security and member of the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association (MISA), in 2022 we were the first cyber security company headquartered in the UK to be verified by Microsoft for our XDR service.

That said, our strengths are our qualified professionals and our partnership approach with our customers. Only through teamwork can we meet the cyber security challenges facing every housing association in the UK today and help them minimise their exposure to risk.

Find out more

You can learn more about how we protect the sector on the ‘Cyber Security in Housing Associations’ page of our website.