Global IT Services and Cyber Security Consultancy, Assurance and 24/7 Managed SOC

A&O IT Group is a UK-headquartered provider of global IT services and cyber security, serving organisations from SMEs to multinationals across finance, public sector, pharmaceutical, energy and utilities, and retail. The company describes origins as an IBM operation in the 1960s and more than 50 years of trading. It now runs from Bracknell with additional offices in France, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, the UAE, India, Turkey, Brazil and the United States, supporting customers in over 130 countries.

Delivery is organised into three cyber pillars alongside the managed IT business. Cyber consultancy covers security strategy development, incident response planning, M&A cyber due diligence and virtual CISO engagements. Cyber assurance is the hands-on testing arm, spanning penetration testing, red teaming, social engineering, vulnerability assessment, third-party risk management, IoT device and ICS/SCADA/IIoT assessments, awareness training with phishing simulation, and Cyber Essentials certification. Cyber operations runs a security operations centre for round-the-clock monitoring, threat management, risk assessment and incident response.

Breadth is the stated differentiator: the same supplier that handles engineering, service desk, endpoint lifecycle and warehousing also performs the offensive testing and staffs the SOC, which suits outsourcing partners wanting a single accountable vendor rather than several point providers. Scale figures cited include over 1,000 engineers, a 250-strong core team and 24/7 coverage. Accreditations shown include CREST, Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus, with technology partnerships covering Microsoft, Cisco, AWS, Fortinet and Zabbix.