Panther Securities – Cybersecurity overhaul

‘Planning and communication were key to the success of this project, and Minerva is especially good at both.’

– Raphael Rotstein, Associate Finance Director

Raphael, what was the IT issue that led you to involve Minerva?

‘On this occasion, there was no specific issue, and it was Minerva that alerted us to the need to make some changes, in order to improve the reliability and security of our technology, particularly in relation to our cyber security compliance.

‘Minerva have been looking after our IT systems for a number of years now, and we rely on them to keep our systems up to date.’

So what was the process?

Having highlighted the need for some updates to our servers and software, Minerva gave us some options. They gave us plenty of notice, so we were able to consider how to prioritise and phase some of the upgrades.

‘Everything was discussed, including anticipating all the potential downtime, so that work could be scheduled to minimise any disruption.’

Richard Martins, Minerva’s Technical Account Manager for Panther, explained the background to their upgrades:

‘Panther had two servers that were coming to the end of their warranty period, which had legacy operating systems. We suggested a number of alternative scenarios to Panther, and ultimately agreed to install new server hardware, and a new operating system. We migrated all the server data and replaced the old firewall, implemented DUO security for two-factor authentication (2FA), and migrated their on-premise email to Microsoft 365 Exchange Online.‘The additions of 2FA and moving their emails to the cloud have given them greater security whilst providing more secure and more widely available access for their communications.’