JW Hughes & Co

SECURITY LEVELS INCREASED AND SERVERS VIRTUALISED FOR TOP LEGAL FIRM

JW Hughes & Co began its life in 1903 and is now a renowned legal practice with offices in Conwy and Llandudno, North Wales.

Founded and run by John William Hughes, John ran the practice alone until his daughter, Agnes Twiston Hughes, joined him 20 years later, in 1923. Agnes was the first female solicitor to qualify in Wales!

JW Hughes & Co now employs more than 30 members of staff and offers a diverse legal service.

The company’s ethos matches B2’s as both businesses are wholly focussed on providing care and commitment to their clientele.

As IT is an integral part of the practice at JW Hughes & Co, it is vital that data protection, security and availability are of the highest and most stringent quality.

“Due, in part, to our long-standing relationship, we have full confidence in the B2 team.”

What did we do?

The most recent project undertaken by B2 was to update the servers at both of the office locations and, at the same time, review and increase security levels.

Here, the initial step was to replace the standard router with Unified Threat Management Gateways (UTM) and migrate JWH’s Exchange server to the cloud. By performing this migration to Microsoft Office 365 datacentre, not only was the security stepped up, but also compliance and flexibility too.

When the servers were replaced, they no longer needed to host the email server and therefore the previous need for high performance machinery was no longer required. This, in turn, became a cost saving.

B2 also virtualised the servers on the new hardware meaning that backup and recovery was significantly improved and the incidence of downtime was vastly reduced due to the added flexibility that comes with virtual infrastructures.

How did we help?

Over the past few years, B2 and JW Hughes & Co have enjoyed an excellent working relationship. With many varied projects completed, one of the most significant was to network 30 users across its two sites in Conwy and Llandudno. Both of these sites are fully supported by B2.

Through growth and technical advancements, JW Hughes & Co have relied on B2 for all aspects of their IT requirements and support. Providing audits and detailed reports on JW Hughes’ infrastructure has ensured that any areas of concern or note, both internally and through compliancy, are addressed and managed.

What else did we do?

As the level of threat from Crypto viruses and fraud has now become an everyday possibility, B2 ensured that two next generation firewalls provide the added security JW Hughes needs.

These devices scan and check all data coming in and out of their network preventing risks, whilst also allowing B2 to monitor Cyber threats enabling them to implement quick and proactive measurements.

The devices also provide web filtering and can manage the bandwidth of their connection too, which has a huge importance to the everyday operation.

“We have been very impressed with B2 and we look forward to continuing our working relationship for a long time to come.”

We listened

“Due, in part, to our long-standing relationship, we have full confidence in the B2 team. We were delighted that they could so easily grasp our issues and put into practice much more stringent security, hardware and processes that would ensure we are future-proofing at the same time as shoring up our existing procedures.”

“We have been very impressed with B2 and we look forward to continuing our working relationship for a long time to come.”

Lara Charles-Hulme, Office Manager