Wave9_Lee

We're happy to competitively quote against any Sophos Endpoint pricing - and even better rates for customers who have a Sophos firewall with us.

That pretty much covers everything (unusual to see SIP and minutes in a lease - normally it's a capital spend tool), so what is the new company trying to sell you?

Typically (old school) telephony providers will contract minutes and support, SIP trunks, call plan, software/licencing direct and offload hardware system lease externally where capex is required. This operating model is dying out thankfully, as this situation occurs more than you'd think. In these scenarios, I'm sure there are genuine reasons for the main company to go bust and for the owners/directors to get in touch with their previous customers to hoover up the contracts under a new company (whilst avoiding paying legacy HMRC and other creditors) and many would say they are doing the customer a favour, but it would stick in my throat a bit if I'm honest. Hardware leases are usually pretty tight and difficult to get out of, but worth reviewing your terms in detail. If you're stuck with the LG system for another 2 years, you should be clear what the new 'service contract' is offering you and importantly, for how long. If it's SIP and minutes, these should be available anywhere at inclusive rates, as I'm sure you're aware. If it's more licence and software, then perhaps calculate what terminating now would cost you over, say, 5 years. For instance, if the new company is only offering a minimum 5 year term for an expensive service, your hardware lease expires in 2028 (any warranty after?), then does cancelling, paying termination, but having a new system for 50/30/20% less work out in the long term.

There is no silver bullet in my view and what suits one school/MAT may not suit another. There are lots of solutions and providers out there, and most will be compliant, but in my view, what counts is what works for your circumstances and if the company providing the service will support you effectively, especially through change. What is the plan ref servers, door access, BMS, cctv, telephony, security, DHCP, VLANs, remote access, multiple sites, hosted services, third party support, etc etc. We tend to offer a co-managed firewall/filter combined service for most schools but my personal view for secondary schools is leaning to more of a hybrid approach as complexity increases. A cloud based filter service, agent on device is fine in many cases and will effectively cater for any off-site requirements too, but we prefer an on-premise enterprise firewall approach for the security element. When configured as HA, with dual, separate (load balanced), internet connections, this will give you a fully compliant service with the added benefit of a base network filter service as a fallback for any unmanaged devices, byod or misconfigured DNS etc. Added benefits are proper network visibility of your LAN and devices/users/applications, remote access, SDWAN, clear audit and ownership, no shared service, and flexibility to change/amend what you like quickly. VPN and prox detection are added insurance for your cloud filter. For smaller schools, with a poor LAN environment, the firewall can even be deployed as a core layer 3 switch, moving the school on a path to VLAN separation and enhanced security profile. Many schools are still operating flat nextworks and VLAN deployment is one of the single biggest things you can do to improve your network security for little cost. This could include routing all internal traffic through the firewall for inspection, not just inbound/outbound. A hosted, multi-tenanted firewall deployment is ok, but I'd want to be satisfied (with evidence) that my main and backup connections are properly diverse, not terminating on firewall or filtering clusters that aren't propery resilient. Too many customers see both their links useless when a suppliers core service falls over. And I'm not sure many 'hosted' providers will allow load-balacning of links to maximise throughput without spending additional money - it creates excess resource demands on core networks/DC that may not be catered for. I'm also not clear on exactly how much visibility of config/changes/patching/users a hosted firewall can give. Back to the support question on hosted services, are you allowed to make unlimited and significant changes to firewall rules, or if reliant on the supplier helpdesk, how much can be done, and how quickly - is the helpdesk responsive. Lots of pros and cons with deployment, happy to chat through any time.

This is a 'pre-pack' after liquidation - same owners of both companies. So the new entity does not have any accounts, no trading history etc - what is the service they are asking you to sign up to?

If any schools in Derbyshire are looking for new provision, we're working closely with DCC to ensure a smooth transition. Drop me a PM or reach out if you'd like information,

It's a quirk of the reseller ecosystem that you should probably have an idea of your main preferred vendor/partner before asking for quotes. The deal registration process means that usually the first company you approach for, say, Meraki, will have the deal registration, meaning they get preferential pricing throughout your process. So if you later decide that Meraki is your preferred option, the first company you approached will get the best price (even if you changed your mind about them through the process)

this is a pretty niche issue i think but>> Root cause; "Through the joint investigation we were able to identify an anomaly within our Google configuration linked to pupil accounts that had been set to “change password at next login.” As our pupils authenticate using MyLogin QR codes, this requirement was not visible to the user and therefore was not being surfaced or flagged during the login process. This resulted in repeated authentication attempts from accounts unable to complete the password change requirement, which we believe triggered Google’s automated security and IP reputation controls, leading to the CAPTCHA challenges."

Long shot but we recently had this with a customer who had extensive chromebook users and it was an issue with their google authentication for login - if your problem persists and you use chrome books can go into more detail for you, cheers

Hi @alordcharlie drop me a PM or contact me using my signature info if you'd like some pricing/info, happy to help anytime. Thanks all for the recommendations, Lee

We don't see any issues when using Sophos XGS with Voip - on the contrary. you already have an allow any rule on you VLAN So to help rule out LAN issues you could configure a port directly on the XGS and plug a phone(s) in and/or during a quiet period, bypass the XGS and plug a phone(s) directly into your ISP router? Do you have a backup connection you could use for elimination purposed? I would advise having a backup connection in any case and particuarly if you have VoiP.

Happy to provide a quote - drop me a pm if you like? Are you hosting 3cx onsite? cheers

What reports are you looking at in Sophos if Securly is doing your filtering? When our customers deploy a filtering solution behind our firewall, we don't decrypt, just apply minimal/baseline filtering for unmanaged/BYOD/IWB etc

@kennysarmy do you have a preferred brand? Might be worth downselecting on that basis initially. If you choose a delivery partner first, they may not support the vendor you prefer, or be able to obtain gold/platinum/price support from the manufacturer. Appreciate it's a bit chicken and egg, budget-wise - but if you have a min-max budget, then this will also exclude some brands.. happy to chat through if you need some advice, cheers

Yeah I was surprised it wasn't mentioned on here earier either.. perhaps lots of people had left already. I would assume your novation might be direct to Nasstar, the underlying provider today (previously KCOM) - But I understand there are other services outside of connectivity to consider too.