Background & Context
The client is an international law firm with 650 staff operating across offices in multiple jurisdictions including North America, Europe and the Middle East. The firm specialises in commercial litigation, government advisory and regulatory work — making government contracts a significant and strategically important part of their revenue base.
Their IT environment is a hybrid architecture — a combination of on-premise servers running the firm's case management and document management systems, Microsoft 365 for communication and collaboration, and a mix of managed and unmanaged devices across their global offices. The environment had been expanded significantly through several office openings and a merger over the preceding three years, but had never undergone a consolidated security assessment.
The firm had historically relied on their IT provider for security — a generalist managed IT services company with no dedicated security capability or certifications. No formal vulnerability management programme existed. Patch management was reactive rather than systematic.
The Contract Loss That Triggered Engagement
The firm submitted a bid for a significant government legal services framework contract worth approximately $5.2M over three years. The bid was rejected at the technical evaluation stage because the firm could not demonstrate Cyber Essentials Plus certification — which had become a mandatory requirement for all government suppliers handling sensitive legal matters.
The procurement team informed the firm that the reapplication window would open in 10 weeks — but that CE+ certification would need to be demonstrated at the point of submission. With 8 weeks to achieve certification from a standing start, the firm engaged Octa1ne following a recommendation from a peer firm.
The Octa1ne Programme
CE+ Gap Assessment — Week 1
A comprehensive gap assessment against all five Cyber Essentials technical controls was completed in the first week. The assessment identified 23 specific gaps across the environment, prioritised by severity and remediation effort. A day-by-day remediation roadmap was produced and agreed with the firm's IT team within 48 hours.
Emergency Patching Programme — Weeks 1–4
A total of 156 high and critical severity CVEs were identified across the firm's server infrastructure, endpoint estate and network devices. Octa1ne implemented an emergency patching programme that prioritised CISA KEV vulnerabilities first, clearing all critical CVEs within the first two weeks and completing all high severity remediation by Week 4.
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Deployment
The existing consumer-grade antivirus — which did not meet CE+ malware protection requirements — was replaced by Microsoft Defender for Endpoint across all 650 devices within 12 days. The rollout was sequenced to avoid disruption to fee-earning staff during court dates and client deadlines.
Identity Hardening & MFA Enforcement
A full identity audit identified 28 accounts belonging to former employees that retained full access to firm systems. All orphaned accounts were disabled immediately. MFA was enforced for all active user accounts within 10 days. A least-privilege model was implemented across all accounts.
Firewall & Network Security Configuration
All boundary firewall rule sets were reviewed and hardened across all office locations. Unnecessary open ports and services were removed. Network segmentation was improved — isolating guest Wi-Fi from the internal network and separating the legacy case management system from the broader corporate environment.
CE+ Assessment Support & Certification
Octa1ne managed the entire relationship with the CE+ certifying body — compiling the evidence pack, coordinating the technical assessment and preparing the firm's IT team. The assessment was completed with zero critical findings. The certifying body described the remediation as exceptionally clean for an environment of this complexity. Certification achieved in Week 6.
Outcomes & Results
Cyber Essentials Plus certification was achieved in exactly 6 weeks — two weeks ahead of the submission deadline. The independent technical assessment found zero critical findings and zero major non-conformities.
The firm resubmitted their bid and was awarded the $5.2M government contract. The contract award was directly attributed to the successful CE+ certification, which had been the sole disqualifying factor in the original bid.
Within six months of certification, two additional enterprise client contracts in financial services had been won — with both citing CE+ as a material factor in the decision. Octa1ne continues to manage the firm's security programme, maintaining CE+ compliance and operating 24/7 SOC monitoring. Annual CE+ recertification has been achieved with zero findings on both subsequent assessments.
“We thought we had permanently lost that contract. Octa1ne certified us in six weeks and the ongoing programme has transformed security from a liability into a genuine commercial asset. Every major enterprise client now asks about our security posture at the first meeting — and we can answer with complete confidence.”