Specialist internet service provider awarded UK’s Best Security ISP

A specialist schools internet service provider has been unveiled as the industry’s best network security provider in the UK.
Hot on the heels of their 10^th anniversary celebrations, Talk Straight, the parent company of Schools Broadband, received Best Security Award at the national Internet Service Providers Association Annual Awards, the most prestigious in the industry.
Held in London in July, the dominant theme this year was cyber security. Scores of entrants were whittled down through a combination of technical testing and scrutinising from an expert panel of judges. The industry judges said: It was the fact that Talk Straight operates in a critical and constantly evolving education environment, together with their innovation and seamless integration that made their managed security service stand out from other entrants.”
David Tindall, founding director of Talk Straight and Schools Broadband said: “I am thrilled we have won the national award for Best Internet Security. The timing couldn’t be better to help raise the profile of how important it is for schools and all organisations to have really robust networks. The secret to our success is that we take very complicated and advanced cyber security solutions, and make them simple for schools and organisations to understand and implement, without the need to become experts.”
The Wannacry and Petya ransomware attacks experienced by the NHS and Westminster highlighted the very real issues organisations of every size face from cyberattacks. Talk Straight has certainly experienced an increase in enquiries for secure networks during the last few months, mostly as a result of the doubling of cyber-attacks in the last three months, but also in preparation for the forthcoming European Data Protection Requirements.
The government’s Cyber Security Breaches survey shows too many organisations suffering disruption, financial loss and theft of intellectual property as a result of cybercrime. Whilst recognition of the importance of network protection is increasing, organisations are taking action too late and fall victim to attacks.
Talk Straight is one of the leading specialist Internet Service Providers to schools throughout the UK.  They protect and report on over one million staff and pupils at UK educational establishments via their unique cloud based Next Generation Firewalls and content filtering platform. This year their managed service has been expanded to include cloud managed end-point protection for on and off-site customer devices. Their hosted solution incorporates the largest number of Fortigate Virtual Firewalls per cluster in Europe, using carrier grade devices, running dedicated ASIC hardware accelerators.
They are also one of the first to market with innovative SIP and VoIP telephony solutions, saving schools and business thousands of pounds on their telephone bills.
With year on year growth for ten successive years, Talk Straight is going from strength to strength and has recently announced a further 17% growth in business on the previous year. Tim Sedgwick Joint founding director said: “we have made substantial investments in our network infrastructure and innovative configurations during the last two years, which is an investment paying off. We pride ourselves on being an organisation at the forefront of technology and I am delighted to report further investment to strengthen our position in the market even more.”
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