Efex launches cybersecurity product, services package for SMBs

Managed services provider Efex has launched a cybersecurity products and services bundle aimed for businesses with 50 employees or less.

Called Efex Cyber Essentials, the offering brings together cybersecurity products like endpoint protection and email filtering with services like a security audit, a 25/7 security operations centre, support and staff education.

“We have packaged our team’s unrivalled expertise with the assessment strategies and technological fixes to make cyber-crime readiness a seamless experience for leaders wearing the ‘IT hat’ in our important SME sector,” Efex chief executive Nick Sheehan said.

“The Optus breach has brought into stark relief the state of readiness for many firms in Australia. The pandemic has diverted the attention of boards and technology leaders to business continuity and operational flexibility. Now, all at once, they will need to pivot their focus.

“Efex Cyber Essentials will allow them to accelerate their readiness process without diverting or competing for scarce resources. Boards, business leaders and business owners will be able to reassure their customers and other stakeholders that they have battened down the hatches in a single leap.”

The bundle is based mostly on Microsoft’s security suite, along with some Kaseya products in the mix. Sheehan told CRN that Cyber Essentials will be the baseline product for all of Efex’s managed services clients moving forward.

“For small and medium-sized customers, most of their issues would be involving their Microsoft 365 environment, so [Cyber Essentials] gives them that security layer around 365,” Sheehan said.

“It’s managed - we turn it on for them, manage it for them, we give them monthly automated reporting on their licences and what’s going on. There’s also the upfront security audit, where customers are audited against the Essential Eight.”

Sheehan added that no one else has productised or packaged up a similar offering for SMBs and Cyber Essentials would give customers something that’s actually tangible.

Most of Efex's customers are based in regional areas, and Sheehan told CRN some businesses there think they are exempt from having discussions about cybersecurity.

“Secondly, cyber is just seen as a concept, so you need to boil it down to a bunch of products that you get, that people actually feel like it’s tangible and productised,” he said.

Sheehan added when you ask a business owner about cyber, most of them would talk about phishing or hacking and the like, but none of them could actually identify which products they could get to harden their business against those threats. “So that’s what we’ve tried to do,” he said.

In addition to Cyber Essentials, Efex is also planning to launch a Cyber Standard offering, which comes with “other bits and pieces” on top for a more expensive price, according to Sheehan.