At Primary PC Solutions, protecting our customers in an increasingly complex digital world has always been a top priority. We’re excited to announce that we are now an official ESET Gold Partner, a milestone that allows us to deliver even higher levels of cyber security expertise, protection, and value to our customers.

What Does ESET Gold Partner Status Mean?

ESET is a globally recognised leader in cyber security, trusted by millions of users and businesses worldwide. Achieving Gold Partner status means that Primary PC Solutions has met ESET’s strict standards for technical knowledge, sales performance, and ongoing training.

In practical terms, this means our customers benefit from:

• Expert cyber security advice from certified professionals
• Access to enterprise-grade protection backed by ESET’s award-winning technology
• Highly competitive pricing on ESET solutions
• Tailored security solutions for businesses of all sizes

Advanced Cyber Security at Great Prices

As a Gold Partner, we can now offer ESET’s powerful endpoint protection, antivirus, and network security solutions at exceptional value. Whether you’re a small business or a growing organisation, we can design a security package that fits your needs without compromising on protection.

ESET’s solutions are known for being:

• Highly effective against ransomware and malware
• Easy to manage and scale as your business grows

Enhanced Phishing & Cyber Awareness Training

Technology alone isn’t enough to stay secure — people are often the first line of defence. That’s why Primary PC Solutions now also offers enhanced cyber security training, including phishing awareness training designed to help your team recognise and avoid online threats.

Our training helps users:

• Identify phishing emails and malicious links
• Understand common cyber attack techniques
• Build safer online habits at work and at home
• Reduce the risk of costly data breaches

By combining powerful ESET protection with practical, easy-to-understand training, we help create a stronger, more cyber-aware workforce.

If you’d like to learn more about our ESET solutions or cyber security training, get in touch!

Quality Qualifications!

Another great few weeks here at Primary, having first recertifying on both our ISO Qualifications 9001 and 27001 and then going on to Pass and gain our Cyber Essentials Plus Qualification – it was a great way to celebrate 23 Years of Trading on Nov 1st !!

If you aren’t sure what Cyber Essentials Plus is, Cyber Essentials Plus is the UK Government’s cyber security certification that proves your business has been independently tested against common online threats. It’s essentially the “next level up” from the basic Cyber Essentials, because instead of just filling out a questionnaire, your systems are actually checked and audited by security experts. Kieran Williams our Operations Manager was instrumental in ensuring we met all the criteria to achieve this pass.

Being as secure as possible ourselves is obviously advantageous for us and being conversant in best security practices is in the best interests of all our clients.

The team took on all this, whilst also welcoming a new member to the Primary clan last month – a big warm welcome to Charlie! It’s great to have you.

Here’s looking towards a safe and secure December!!

Congratulations are in order for our engineer Lola who has recently completed her Level 4 Network Engineer Apprenticeship with a shining distinction!

“Working full time for Primary PC and studying for an apprenticeship for over two years has been difficult to juggle at times but it was great to get so much experience” said Lola.

Phil Williams, Director at Primary PC said, “This is the fourth successful apprenticeship that Primary PC has hosted and we are so pleased to have Lola working on our team. She is a great asset and the distinction is a credit to how hard she has worked. Apprenticeships play a vital role in getting new engineers trained up and that is why we continue to support them.”

We spoke with Lola about how she found the process and what she is most looking forward to doing next…

 “Now that I’ve finished the apprenticeship, I’m excited to keep learning and growing in my role. This is a job I genuinely enjoy. Every day is different, and that variety is what makes it so engaging. It also feels really good to have an official English qualification under my belt.

One area I’ve become especially interested in is UniFi technologies. I love how their systems make life easier for both administrators and users and the design and functionality of their products really stand out. I want to keep developing my knowledge in this area as I see how much value it can bring to our clients.

I’m also looking to build more confidence in cloud services like Microsoft Entra and how we can use them to offer better solutions to our customers. Making things easy to understand and use is something I always try to do, especially for those who aren’t technical and I want to keep improving on that.

Lastly, I really want to thank my colleagues. They supported me through the simulation exams, interviews and project work, and were always there when I needed help or time to focus. I’m genuinely grateful for that”.

Well done Lola, well deserved!

Happy 20th to us!

I’m really happy to share a landmark day with you today – our 20th Anniversary!

For it ‘twas on this day in 2002 that Primary PC Solutions was born, originally working from Phils basement in Porthleven and initially spurred on by the support of various contacts from Primary Schools (hence “Primary”), we set sail on a voyage of Business discovery!

It was a real leap of faith for the pair of us, facing loads of different dilemmas, just like every other new business, finding advice where we could or making it up as we went along but eventually work started to come in and things started to take off. We both had extremely young families at the time and so the pressure was on!

We’ve kept a simple ethos which is basically to treat our customers as we’d hope to be treated and deliver quality, timely service at a reasonable price. We’re hopefully doing something right as we still have many of those initial customers even now.

Times change and we started dealing more with Businesses than schools, we started to employ people and have been blessed with the staff we have had over the years – you know who you are and thanks.

Without turning this into an Oscar acceptance speech, we’d both like to thank anyone who has advised, helped or worked with us both past and present and look forward to taking things onwards and upwards into the future and the next level.

It would also be very remiss not to thank all our clients for their support but also and especially Fiona and Marie, our long-suffering partners for the odd hours we’ve worked at times and the occasional whinge we have!

We’re also very happy to announce that, in keeping with our customer service ethos and our on-going desire to deliver ever better services and support, we have recently attained ISO certifications 27001 and 9001 on our first assessment which says a lot about the strength, dedication and skills of the team here at Primary.

Happy 20th to us!

PS – Thanks to our friends at Fidelity Group for the Bolly and balloon!

Security Overhaul at Local Garden Centre

Trevena Cross approached us with requirements for a brand new CCTV system

Designed to capture all areas of the three acre centre, from car parks to shop, plant areas to café, counter to compost bay.

They wanted no ‘dark spots’ and so we were tasked with the install of a system that would incorporate 60 cameras, multiple TV screens to capture main entrances and exits, and a number plate recognition system, in particular to highlight any ‘banned’ visitors entering the premises.

It has been a pleasure to help such a longstanding local business heighten its defence against an unlawful minority and deter any opportunists that step onto the premises.

Read the full story here

Wireless Links Cornwall

Last week saw us out onsite in the early May sunshine installing more managed wireless networks.

Two of the sites were quite different in the goals we had to achieve but with the versatility and robustness of the equipment we use they were easily achieved.

The first of the two sites was – Little Trevothan Camping and Caravan Park located in a beautiful location just outside Coverack https://www.littletrevothan.co.uk/

This has been a great project in which we’ve worked with the owners to roll out site-wide wireless coverage in time for the summer season.

We’ve achieved this using multiple point to point and multi-point wireless links to avoid costly cabling which would have also required a lot of channel digging across the site.

These were then connected to multiple outdoor access points which we made as inconspicuous as possible so as not to turn the site into a GCHQ lookalike with loads of antennae etc which would have detracted from the natural beauty of the park itself.

The second sites requirement was to install a wireless link between a residence in Porthleven and an annex across a road.

This simple connection removed the need to dig up the road and install a cable (expensive) or alternatively pay for a second internet connection to the annex which again would prove costly over time!

So if you want to extend your internet connection to an annex, shed, garage, multiple buildings – whatever you can think of – if there’s a line of sight and be it metres or miles we can do it.

Just get in touch and we’ll carry out a no obligation survey.

The images show an access point next to a ladder to give an idea of scale (although we do use smaller ones!) and also Kieran, one of our enthusiastic wireless installers next to a base pole configured at Little Trevothan.

Microsoft New Commerce Experience

Quite a lot of time and effort has been spent recently here at Primary on firstly researching the new Microsoft New Commerce Experience platform for their Cloud Services such as Microsoft 365 and then moving each of our clients who subscribe their services through us onto it.

This has now been achieved fairly seamlessly to our clients by us in the background and now means we will be able to administer their accounts and users even more efficiently than before.

It comes at no additional costs to them and we continue to carry out account administration such as adding/removing users, resetting passwords etc at lightning speed.

We charge the same for all Microsoft services as you would if you bought direct from Microsoft but we remove the administrative headache and advise on setup options from the start.

If you are interested in adopting any Microsoft Services we’d be happy to help and advise.

If you already have Microsoft Cloud Services but have had enough of managing them yourself or are not content with your current provider we can migrate them over to us and take care of them for you (although a small charge may need to be levied for the migration).

More information on Microsofts Cloud Services can be found here;

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-365/business/

Alternatively contact one of our Team here who will be able to help;

Ransomware Protection

Recently we’ve prompted our clients to be even more vigilant for spurious emails and think before they click!

This is in light of the recent tragic events in the Ukraine as it is feared that there is a heightened risk from Russian cyber criminals further targeting Western companies to extort money from them and disrupt business.

Ransomware is malware that differs to a virus in that it employs encryption to hold a victim’s information at ransom. A user or organization’s critical data is encrypted so that they cannot access files, databases, or applications. A ransom is then demanded to provide access.

Ransomware is often designed to spread across a network and target database and file servers and can thus quickly paralyze an entire organization. Even when organisations have paid the criminals for the release of their data, more often than not they don’t which at the very best leaves victims working back through backups to a non-infected one or worst case lose everything.

It is a growing threat and one that we too have already had to prepare against – just in case.

There are plenty of discussions about this online and previously to the recent conflict it was widely accepted that the bulk of Ransomware attacks were Russian in origin.

As an example Reuters published this article recently;

https://www.reuters.com/technology/russia-based-ransomware-group-conti-issues-warning-kremlin-foes-2022-02-25/

Those of our clients who have already adopted our Ransomware protection package are pretty well protected but should still question any seemingly odd or out of the ordinary emails.

If you don’t have any Ransomware Protection (which differs from antivirus software) but would like to find out more then please contact the team.