Fourway Communication – Achieving Cyber Essentials Plus to Unlock High‑Value Contracts

Fourway is a UK-based infrastructure specialist delivering telecommunications and MEP building services across the rail, aviation, and energy sectors. The company combines design and build capability to support complex infrastructure projects from concept design through to construction and commissioning. 

Problem 

As Fourway moved towards larger and more complex contracts, Cyber Essentials Plus became a requirement. Their IT estate was mixed and difficult to manage, combining Azure services, legacy physical and virtual servers, and a workforce of both permanent staff and contractors with varying access needs. 

Gaps in asset management, inconsistent patching, specialist engineering software, and reliance on an older remote desktop setup created compliance risks. Without CE+, Fourway would not have been able to bid for key tenders or comply with ongoing project requirements. 

Solution 

Croft supported a structured programme to simplify and standardise the IT estate over the course of two years. This included reducing the number of on-premise servers and moving appropriate services to the cloud, helping to reduce reliance on older, costly infrastructure while improving scalability and futureproofing the environment. 

Endpoints were brought under central management using Microsoft Intune, with monitoring and patching improved through Datto RMM and Patch My PC. This provided more consistent control across both standard and specialist applications. 

A renewed virtual desktop environment was introduced to better support specialist software for a varying workforce, while aligning with Cyber Essentials Plus requirements. 

Result 

Fourway has now achieved Cyber Essentials Plus certification, enabling compliance with client requirements and aligning to industry standards. The IT environment is now more consistent and easier to manage, with improved visibility of devices and patching. 

The business has also started to make better use of its data, supporting improvements in how information is accessed and used during tender submissions and live projects. 

Croft supported us in improving our IT infrastructure and getting to Cyber Essentials Plus. Our environment wasn’t straightforward, and James was instrumental in getting it into a more controlled and standardised position. 

He knows our IT well, having worked with Fourway for over 20 years, and understood the constraints we were operating under, particularly around our design software and legacy setup. It’s been an interesting insight working closely with James and Mehmet over the last two years, dealing with and resolving issues and identifying what needed to change, many of which people won’t even realise have happened. 

We’ve now got better visibility, more consistent control across the estate, and we’re in a position where we can proactively maintain our IT rather than being reactive.

Stuart Nixon
Technical Director, Fourway Communications