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Benetas is a not-for-profit organisation that provides a range of services to the aged care community in Victoria. Since 1948, Benetas has supported older Australians through residential care, in-home care and nursing, respite care, and retirement living.
Mr Arpi Cseh, Head of Technology at Benetas, has been working with the team at Tesserent for over nine years. With the organisation's data security as one of his key responsibilities, Mr Cseh partners with Tesserent to ensure leading experts in cybersecurity are working to strengthen Benetas’ defences against cyber attacks.
The Problem: Email Security
Following a penetration test, Mr Cseh identified the need to boost security training for Benetas’s 1700 employees, particularly when it came to identifying and blocking phishing scams.
“Over 1.2 million emails are now hitting our perimeter each year. This is a massive increase from 500,000 messages a year before COVID. We were seeing a significant increase in phishing attempts and needed to take action to ensure our staff and volunteers were protected so that the organisation’s systems and data were kept safe,” he explains.
The Challenge: Limited Resources
Benetas has a small IT team and needed an experienced partner at the cutting edge to assist them to manage the colossal scale of phishing attacks. Having worked with Tesserent for nearly a decade, with a focus on perimeter security, Benita’s knew they were with the right partner to support the organisation through these challenging times.
“We needed a partner that is highly knowledgeable with a proven track record of success,” says Mr Cseh. “While having the right tools in place is important, having a strong team is critical. With Tesserent as a partner, we are able to get the best value and solutions.”
With a small team, Mr Cseh says it can often be
challenging to develop and deliver new strategic
initiatives. That can mean important projects
have to compete for limited resources. For
example, Mr Cseh and his team are continuing
with several projects to improve their security
posture. With that work in progress, he was not
able to dedicate staff to the important email
security project.
Without Tesserent, we'd still be trying to work out what to do. We've been able to get there must faster with Tesserent's support.
The Solution: Managed Email Security and Education with Tesserent
Benetas chose Tesserent’s managed email security solution, based on software from email security specialist Proofpoint. Tesserent’s ISO 27001 certified 24/7 security operations centre stops threats before they reach inboxes and escalate into an incident.
Tesserent and Benetas started with a broad program of testing, where users were sent phishing messages as part of an investigation to detect which users and business functions were at greatest risk.
As well as providing a more secure email service to users, Benetas Webmail has engaged Tesserent to develop an internal education program that provides specific and targeted advice to the whole business.
Although Benetas has some generic security education resources, Tesserent has developed training that is specific to Benetas’ needs.
The value of the program was proven quickly when a combination of more informed users and improved security resulted in a potential incident being avoided. Significant time and resources were saved as a result of the new system and training.
“We are seeing a definite decrease in risk,” says Mr Cseh. “And using a managed service has enabled my team to spend less time on managing email and more time on higher-value activities.”
The Future: Stronger Focus on High-Risk Email Accounts
Tesserent and Benetas have developed a program of work to ensure that email security and security training are continuously refined. The next stage of the project will focus on high risk and high value email targets.
“We have a number of shared email accounts that may be accessed by multiple people. We know that email boxes for general inquiries are highly targeted, so we are boosting our efforts there. And we know specific staff members, such as members of our executive team, are also high- profile targets so we are also increasing awareness training and security there,” says Mr Cseh.
Across the entire organisation there has been greatly heightened awareness of the risks email can pose and what can be done to mitigate those risks. Mr Cseh says knowing there is also a plan for continuous improvement gives the whole Benetas team confidence that his team can handle whatever lies ahead.
“Partnering with Tesserent we are assured that our defences are robust and that we continue to mitigate risk,” says Mr Cseh.
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Security Specialist
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