The Importance of Zero Trust Network Security

Zero trust network security is an alternative IT security model with the main principle being “never trust, always verify” which is being adopted by many companies to improve their cybersecurity. Here we discuss the importance of zero-trust network security.

What is Zero Trust Network Security?

This model has a strict identity verification for each person and device trying to access business resources from a company network, is regardless of whether they are working from home or at the office.

Five Misconceptions of Cloud Computing

The cloud is consistently growing with many public and private sector companies using it in some form or another. Whilst some may see it as a way to solve all of their IT issues, others find it a source of worry. As with many new technologies, there are sometimes myths and inaccurate information being spread about them. Here are some of the top misconceptions of cloud computing. 

The cloud will guarantee money-saving on IT 
Although cloud computing is a great and effective way to reduce costs, a company needs to bear in mind that this will not happen instantly.
Cloud computing offers flexible options based on your budget. However, a business should not focus on cost alone. The cloud enables a company to quickly adjust the computer power they need which is extremely useful if the team gets smaller, as you do not have excessive computer capacity that is being wasted.

How Hosted Exchange Benefits Businesses

For the majority of small and medium companies, email is essential to the everyday running of the organization. As email is such a critical business tool, it not only has to be fast and reliable, but it also needs to be able to be accessed remotely. Having this flexibility allows staff to always be in touch with the business. Although managing your email infrastructure in-house is definitely achievable, this method can be both time-intensive and expensive. Luckily, there are hosted exchange options available that allow businesses to outsource their emails to help streamline their business. Here, we discuss in more detail how hosted exchange can benefit businesses.

How Cloud Computing Can Save Your Business Money

Cloud computing has brought new and exciting opportunities for companies of all sizes. Small and medium-sized companies have seen benefits as the flexible technology allows them to compete on a global scale. They can now utilize technologies that were previously too expensive. Not only does cloud computing provide storage, software solutions and technology infrastructure, it can also help businesses minimise their costs.

Here we discuss 5 ways that cloud computing can help your business save money.

Outsource Your IT Support- 7 Reasons Why

There are many reasons why businesses should outsource their IT support. Here we discuss 7 reasons to outsource your IT Support. Having an internal IT Manager can be reassuring to many small businesses for reasons such as familiarity of systems and process as well as accountability, however, after reading our list below, you might find the better option is to outsource your IT.

1.Reduce the cost of hiring

When you are hiring a new member of staff, it is not just the cost of their salary that you need to budget for. The associated costs of recruiting the new member of staff and any costs for taxes, staff benefits, and training will all add up to a significant amount. Choosing to outsource your IT support instead turns what could be a large fixed cost into a variable cost. The amount of support you pay for is based on your individual requirements. You can control the costs when you outsource, choosing from retainer based packages to fixed and scheduled visits.

Best Email Practices for Companies to Adopt

Emails have become a fundamental communication channel for many people and companies. Email is a powerful tool that should be used with consideration for the best results. Here we go through some of the best email etiquette practices that companies should consider adopting for their members of staff to ensure professionalism and efficiency at all times.

1.    Be clear in subject lines

Ensure that your subject lines are as clear as possible. You want the recipient to understand exactly what the email will contain before they even open it.

2.    Always use a professional email address that is standard across the company

Ensure every member of staff uses a professional email address. Never let them use their personal emails and try and obtain a company domain so all will be standardized. This provides professionalism and is expected from companies now.

5 Steps for creating a cyber security prevention plan

Cybercrime is risk to any business with an online presence. Cyber-attacks can have huge and sometimes detrimental implications for a business. A cyber- attack may even reduce trust in the company which can dramatically affect sales. As technological sophistication levels rise hackers are becoming equally as sophisticated. All companies should ensure they have a security prevention plan in place to try and avoid the damage cyber-attacks could do.

Here we discuss the 5 steps to improve cyber security in your business.

10 things for IT departments to do when an employee leaves their job

It is inevitable that you will have employees come and go throughout the years. Whether the employee has left due to poor performance, the company downsizing, or they are moving on to another job, you must consider the actions needed to happen to ensure once they have left your company data remains secure. Here we discuss a checklist of actions you need to take to ensure IT security remains tight once an employee has left. Regardless of whether there was hostility when the employee left or it was amicable, you can never be too safe when it comes to sensitive information and company secrets.

Once the decision has been made that the employee is leaving (regardless of whether this decision was made by the company or the individual) the HR department should let the IT department know immediately the date the employee is leaving so they can complete the actions on the checklist.

The dangers of working remotely

It is common nowadays to have a lot of your staff, at some point, working remotely. Whether this be from home, at a client’s office, in a coffee shop or by hiring freelancers, it has never been easier to access your work and continue your job outside of the office.

Despite this freedom being convenient and the fact that it can increase productivity, remote working can be potentially dangerous for the company. Here we discuss what the dangers and risks are and what actions you can implement to ensure online safety for all your staff that take their work out of the office.

How Office 365 can benefit your business

Office 365 is “Microsoft Office in the Cloud” and provides access to email, contacts, documents and calendars wherever you are via cloud computing.

Office 365 comes with a range of functions which can be extremely useful to your staff. Some of these features you may not even be aware of, but they have the ability to revolutionise the way you work and improve both productivity and efficiency. Here we discuss some of the top features Microsoft Office 365 provides and how they can be used effectively within your business.

Lots of storage
A common problem, depending on your area of work, can be not having enough storage. With Office 365 each user gets 50GB worth of storage with Exchange online that can be used for emails, storing contacts, your calendar, storing notes, etc. Having access to the OneDrive cloud storage on email also means you can save space by using this for attachments. Each user also gets 1TB of storage available through OneDrive so there is no worry about running out of space.

How safe is your password?

There has never been a more important time for your company to be as secure as possible online. With the constant development of technology, it has become more common for cyber threats to occur.

Having passwords online is the first step to achieve this security, however, it is scary when you hear potentially how easy it is for people to break through these passwords if they are not strong enough. This poses a security risk for both the individual and the business as a whole so it is vital that all passwords used are as strong as they can be. Password theft is growing in popularity and can lead to a privacy breech of data or even identity theft. This article discusses the dangers of password theft and what actions businesses can take to ensure that their assets remain safe.

What is a firewall and why do you need one?

Firewalls are a protective barrier between your computer, phone or tablet and the other computers that are connected to you. As soon as you are connected to the internet, the whole world can see you and this can make your computer vulnerable to cyber threats. When data is exchanged between computers it goes into cyberspace. Firewalls monitor this data to decide whether it is safe, and therefore firewalls are essential!

If your computer is left unprotected, it can quickly be attacked with popup messages and viruses among other things, all in a matter of minutes. Having a firewall installed can prevent some of these attacks from taking place. In some instances, hackers can install a trojan (malware which is misleading to the user) onto your PC which will give them the power to control it.

How Cloud Computing can help your business

Cloud computing is everywhere and has definitely become part of our daily lives. Whether you are watching films, listening to music, editing documents or checking your email, you are already using it. Cloud computing is about storing data on the internet rather than hard drives, meaning you can store unlimited amounts of data over the internet which was impossible before.

How can your business benefit?
There are many reasons why many businesses across the world are using Cloud computing. Here a just a few:

9 Reasons why your computer may be slow

It can be extremely frustrating when your computer is slow as it can reduce your productivity and make you job harder. There are many reasons why your computer may be slow, some of which are simple and easy to avoid.

1.    Your hard drive may be failing
This can happen over time as a hard drive is constantly moving and, as with anything that consists of moving parts, they can eventually wear down.

How to fix: Run a hard drive check.

Kwik Fit hack highlights dangers of malware for businesses

Recently we wrote an article detailing predictions from some of the world’s top experts including McAfee and the World Economic Forum forecasting greater levels of hacking and phishing in 2019. Well it appears that we have the first major casualty of 2019 with a major hack of UK firm Kwik Fit’s computer network.

The popular car service specialist has over 600 garages across the United Kingdom and Ireland and provides tyres, exhausts, batteries and breaks as well as MOT testing and car servicing. However, the chain experienced a recent malware attack which caused huge delays to customers’ car repairs as garages were unable to process orders.

Global cyber-attack would cost businesses billions

A new report has produced findings in which it claims that a coordinated global cyber attack could cause economic damage of between £65-96 billion.

In the hypothetical scenario developed for Lloyds of London and Aon, findings showed that a malicious campaign similar to those of real-life ransomware (such as WannaCry and Not Petya) could spread around the world incredibly quickly and cause devastating damage in its wake.

The scenario involved an infected email which once opened forwards itself to all contacts. It estimated that within 24 hours, data on 30 million devices worldwide could be encrypted and business owners faced with the prospect of paying a ransom or losing their data.

The impact on those businesses through reduced operation, productivity, consumption, ransomware payments and disruption to the supply chain was estimated to be in the tens of billions with businesses most heavily impacted in Europe and North America.

Has your email been stolen in massive data leak?

Dubbed a ‘mega-leak’, more than 2.2 billion stolen emails and passwords have surfaced online in a leak that is growing bigger by the day.

First reported on January 17, 2019 by researcher Troy Hunt, the leak included an astonishing number of email addresses and password combinations. However, upon further investigation the list of breached data was even bigger than first suspected, with 2.2 billion user’s worth of data included.

The data is apparently an amalgamation of leaked email addresses and passwords from other various leaks in recent years (Yahoo, LinkedIn, Dropbox, etc.) bundled together in an easily downloadable package for illicit purposes.

It has been reported by tech website Wired that the leak is being shared among hacker circles on forums and through torrents providing what is essentially a ‘phone book’ of email address credentials. This effectively allows any would-be hacker to attempt to gain access to websites using those credentials in the hopes that the password remains unchanged.

Levels of hacking and phishing predicted to increase in 2019

2018 brought with it many major cyber-crime attacks over the year.

A number of global businesses and industries fell victim to data breaches including the likes of Facebook, Under Armour, MyHeritage and the Marriott Hotel Group – even the French President, Emmanuel Macron, had his emails hacked!

Together with increasing levels of ransomware and malware attacks, cyber security is rightly at the top of many business agendas in 2019. Here are what some of the world’s top experts are predicting for the year ahead.

McAfee

Leading software experts McAfee have warned that businesses may well find themselves ‘under siege’ from threats like malware, ransomware and over attacks in the coming months. They predict that criminals will turn to social media, cloud technologies and mobile phones as key windows for attacks and ‘upscale’ their efforts to bypass security controls.

6 ways to protect your business from ransomware attacks

A recent report from cyber security company Sophos has uncovered some disturbing trends in the advancement of online crime. The report found that teams of online criminals are now turning to targeted ransomware attacks as a means of earning millions of dollars from businesses and high-value individuals.

The report by SophosLabs also suggested that cyber criminals are manipulating flaws in Windows systems admin tools as a means of stealing sensitive information and of delivering ransomware. Once activated, the ransomware will cut off access either to the entire system or specific files until the user delivers a ransom payment – usually paid for in untraceable currency such as BitCoin. However, there are no guarantees that a payment will mean your data will be restored.

Following a string of worrying malware strains released last year such as Meltdown, Spectre, Foreshadow, Petya, NotPetya, X-bash and WannaCry, it is important that businesses have protocols in place to defend against and minimise damage carried out by a ransomware attack. Here are just a few things that you can do.

What are the benefits of VDI for businesses?

Virtual desktop infrastructure. Even the name itself can sound confusing. But the benefits of VDI are well worth the small amount of time it takes to understand what it is and how it works. Read on to find out more.

What is VDI?

VDI can be simply described as a type of technology that detaches the application processing from the physical computer in front of you. Rather than running applications on the computer under your desk, you will instead run them from a server that mirrors them on to your PC.