Archive for October, 2022

Outsource secures three new contracts for fast growing cloud business

Outsource Group has secured three new contracts for its fast-growing OSG Cloud business across the transport, homeware and hospitality sectors.

TST Group, Maestro and Bedeck are the latest customers to sign up for the services offered by the Antrim-headquartered company. This brings OSG Cloud’s customer-base to over 50 companies, spanning Europe, the Middle East & Africa and North America.

TST is one of the UK and Ireland’s major haulage and logistics companies, Canada-based Maestro PMS provides technology for hotels around the world, and Bedeck is the UK’s leading luxury bedding brands with retailer outlets across the UK and Ireland.

These new contracts and the 50 + contracts secured since last year, have delivered exceptional results, and Outsource has exceeded all expectations by recovering its entire capital investment 3 years earlier than planned.

OSG Cloud, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Outsource Group, launched last year with a mission to provide an alternative to the ‘Big 3’ Public cloud providers of Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Service and Google.

Terry Moore, CEO of Outsource Group says: “OSG Cloud’s goal was to deliver guaranteed performance, security, reliability and recoverability for enterprise applications and IT workloads.  At the same time demystifying the commercial and billing models; putting an end to ‘bill shock’ that many businesses have begrudgingly been tolerating for years.”

“OSG Cloud has enjoyed exceptional results across its first full 12 months of trading, exceeding all our expectations by recovering its initial capital investment and enjoying a positive cashflow position, almost two-years ahead of original forecasts.

“We expect the extremely strong demand for OSG Cloud to continue as companies prioritise cyber resiliency and disaster recovery services,” he continues.

“With our recent acquisition of Ansec IA, the expertise that now exists within the group lays the foundations for many exciting new products and services that will bring together the best technology, people and processes.  Providing world class security, resiliency and absolute recoverability solutions that help enterprises achieve and protect their investments in digital transformation,” he adds.

Outsource Group, headquartered in Antrim, was founded in 2000 and offers a broad range of technology support and services to customers in the UK and Ireland, with an increasing focus in recent years on embedding IT security in everything it does. It recently merged with ANSEC IA, one of the most highly regarded IT security consultancies in the UK & Ireland.

Outsource Group currently employs around 70 people and expects to grow that to over 100 this year. Longer-term, the group has aggressive growth plans at home and abroad, with a number of additional strategic opportunities currently being progressed, which will see staff numbers and revenues continue to grow significantly year-on-year.

OSG is listed on G-Cloud 13 Framework

Outsource Group is delighted to announce that the OSG Cloud business has secured a place on the G-Cloud 13 Framework, which launches in November. We are very proud to be an approved supplier and looking forward to working with more public sector customers.

#cloud #hosting #gcloud13 #consultancy #framework

40 New Jobs at Outsource Group

Outsource Group, the Antrim headquartered IT services business with five offices across the UK and Ireland, is actively recruiting for another 40 new roles that will primarily be based in Northern Ireland. 

The company, which acquired ANSEC IA, the leading IT security consultancy in NI, earlier this year, has experienced ongoing stellar demand for its products and services from across all of its markets this year securing high profile customers locally and abroad. 

The new roles are primarily sales and technical positions, including technical support engineers, project engineers, sales support executives and account managers. Recruitment for the positions is already underway, and once filled, they will take the company’s headcount to over 100 people, with additional growth plans thereafter. 

Terry Moore, CEO of Outsource Group says: “The unprecedented success of our market beating OSG Cloud suite of services and IT Managed Services & Security offerings, have been further enhanced with the inclusion of the UK’s leading dedicated security consultants in Ansec. Security has always underpinned what we do at Outsource, however as businesses face into an unprecedented threat landscape, we have pro-actively taken steps to firmly establish Outsource as the leading IT & Security Managed Services business in NI and beyond. We believe the local market both needs and should expect exceptional levels of expert security advice and support from their IT partner. Our proven model has contributed to another year of record breaking growth, securing some of NI’s most high profile enterprise customers and a pipeline of new business that will see the Outsource Group continue to grow and break records”. 

 “There is no doubt recruiting in the IT sector remains challenging however our focus on staff development and wellbeing, the work flexibility we offer, our enhanced remuneration packages and the ability for staff to work with leading technologies in a multi-award winning company, all underpinned with a culture where our people really matter, have all helped us secure and retain some of the best talent in the marketplace. Being headquartered in Antrim, a 20 minute commute out of Belfast, has also ensured that we are recruiting from the largest talent pool across Northern Ireland,” he continues. 

Outsource Group was founded in 2000 by CEO Terry Moore and now has offices in Antrim, Belfast, Cookstown, Dublin and Edinburgh. Earlier this year, the company won the Best Medium Sized Business in NI and appointed IT entrepreneur Patrick McAliskey as its chairman to support the continuing growth plans of the company.

To find out more Careers, Jobs – Outsource Solutions (osgroup.co.uk)

Outsource Group announces 40 new Jobs

Have you thought about your applications and third party access and access rights?

In the Blog post below, Network Engineer Kevin Lyons talks about the threat of 3rd party access rights over applications.

Over the years, I have come across third parties which will insist on Domain Admin rights, just to install a piece of software on a server and a few workstations. I have worked with a company where the third party would not give a date for install without granting Domain Admin rights. The reasons given where not justified – such as ‘because it prevents issues during the install’ and ‘because that is required’. As an Network Engineer, I have dealt with a third party company who wanted to add users to the Domain Admin groups to prevent issues and it is the access needed to run in order to execute on the elevation. In this case and usually if planned properly, the correct access to a key folder was sufficient.

What can be insisted on are generally Domain Admin accounts which also run services and have non-expiring weak passwords.

Whenever a company comes on board with Outsource Group, one of the first things we do is check who are members of the Admin groups in Active Directory; the record so far was 75 accounts (a combination third party accounts and users) to run a certain piece of software, the reason given was ‘because it is needed when there is an update to the software’. On investigation the users required ‘modify’ access to a sub-folder of the program files directory.

The concerning part is users had no idea what power they wield as one mis-click could authorise an encryption of an entire domain. When thinking about the insider threat, intentional or not we have to consider what permissions our application support companies request for both themselves and the users of their system and why.

If there are any questions then please ask us at Outsource Group

#cybersecurity #microsoft #credentials #adminrights  #insiderthreat #permissions #security #mssp #whensecuritymatters

Bronze Diversity Mark Accreditation awarded for 2nd Year running

We are committed to creating an inclusive and diverse workplace and value each and every one of our employees. We are absolutely delighted to achieve the Diversity Mark Accreditation for the 2nd year running. We will continue to build on this achievement and are committed to developing on this journey.

The Diversity Charter Mark is awarded to companies following an independent panel assessment. It is a ‘mark of progress’ that publicly declares a company has reached the required standard of commitment to advancing diversity and inclusion to benefit all employees. Outsource Group is committed to creating an inclusive environment, accepting of every individual’s differences, enabling all employees to achieve their full potential, and as a result, allowing the business to reach its fullest potential. By valuing each person’s differences, everyone can contribute their unique experiences, which can have an extremely positive impact on work, other employees, motivation, productivity and client experience.

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