MDL Marinas
MDL Marinas is the largest marina development and marina operations company within Europe with 19 locations in the UK, as well as a presence in Italy, Spain and France.
They have been a Chess customer since 2013 and have recently gone through a digital transformation, modernising and optimising their IT estate.
The Business Challenge
MDL Marinas were going through a digital transformation and had already migrated their legacy IT to next-generation solutions. The Head of IT needed to ensure that the organisation was making the most of these investments and that they were correctly implemented.
An external specialist would be able to provide an impartial review and advise on any optimisations.
The Solution
At certain levels of the company, MDL Marinas’ people use IT very heavily, while their more customer-facing roles require a simple set up. For this reason, implementing solutions which are easy to use and are secure-by-design was crucial.
Despite being a large organisation, MDL Marinas have a small knowledgeable IT Team. Outsourcing certain services to trusted partners would allow them to focus on more significant projects than day-to-day maintenance and on enabling the company’s growth, while also ensuring that the service they deliver is at a high standard.
After approaching Chess, MDL Marinas were very quickly advised on the best route for their organisation based on the challenges they were facing. Chess’ experts were given a short deadline as the Head of IT had suspicions of gaps in their system that could have potentially opened up during the business’ transformation.
The Cloud Security Assessment and Delivery for Microsoft 365, part of our Cloud Consult portfolio, were the right fit for MDL Marinas.
The staged approach is designed to help organisations make the most out of the intelligent built-in Microsoft security features which are often not used to their full potential. The Security Assessment helps to implement best security practices on a Microsoft 365 tenancy, while The Security Features Delivery, the second stage of the security journey, helps to roll out enhanced security features on a Microsoft 365 tenancy.
The Outcome
Working together with Chess, MDL Marinas confirmed that the multifactor authentication is currently set up for the whole organisation and that they use the correct Microsoft licences at any level of the company.
Implementing conditional access which allowed for policy creation based on the company personas and what data they have residing in Microsoft 365 (who can access what, from where, and on what device).
“We are confident that our users cannot be compromised from outside the organisation – that was the biggest concern we had at the beginning of our path. It gives myself as the Head of IT and our board the peace of mind that our accounts are secure,” said Keith.
As part of the service, MDL Marinas got access to the Chess Cloud Adopt learning portal, designed to support tenancy administrators and end-users in multifactor authentication adoption.
Keith explained, “as a business with diverse users, we had a training element to ensure that our people are aware and educated about what we are doing and why we are doing.”
Through the licence review, MDL Marinas expect significant savings as it helps them to rationalise and segment their licencing strategy. Furthermore, by working with Chess and implementing best practices, Keith said, “MDL Marinas can use this work as a reputational piece which will assure our customers and our partners that we are a secure, trustworthy business.”
MDL Marinas trusted Chess as their technology partner to provide regular penetration testing, their SIEM solution and their email security solution.
"All of the people I met were very, very good and they were clearly experts in the subject. They gave me the confidence that they would do a thorough job and that the outcome of that would be as good as it could be. Everything that we’ve worked with Chess on – I’ve been very satisfied,”
Keith, Head of IT, MDL Marinas
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