Security Archives - Page 7 of 7

Digital Acceleration for businesses. Why 2020 was just the start

January 18, 2021/in Cloud, General, Latest Tech, Professional Services, Project Management, Remote Working, Security, Telephony /by James Dell

We all saw the scenes in March 2020 as lockdown across the U.K and most of Europe was announced. At a moment’s notice, businesses across the globe scrabbled to build vital communication and digital strategies that could support their business operations.

This for many included the mass roll out of new digital devices, communication tools, work place and data management tools and virtual telephony. At the time many businesses made these changes as a knee jerk reaction, simply to combat the “in the moment” problem. However, this dynamic shift in our approach to working, the working environment and our forms of communication has enabled leaders in business to accelerate IT strategies in a way they never would have been able to if 2020 had been “a normal year”. For many CIO, CTO’s and Technical Directors 2020 marked the beginning of a new chapter and the start of a very different IT landscape moving forward. 2021 is already beginning very much where last year left off we are seeing this continued trend of digital acceleration across the business landscape.

Breaking through the red tape

Some businesses when asked about the effect of 2020 on their digital strategies have said they jumped through two years of red tape, internal approvals and cost benefit analysis in two days. This shows the systemic shift we saw almost overnight. This change has seen many business jump from traditional technologies (desktops / servers and onsite telephone systems) to cutting edge technologies emerging across the IT landscape with the likes of Public Cloud, Mix Media Devices and cloud telephony with unified communication.

This trend can easily be reflected in the numbers published by Microsoft in relation to the usage of their communication platform Microsoft Teams which jumped from 900 Million meetings held on the system per day in March 16th 2020 to 2.7 Billion per day by the end of March. That number is yet to drop and if anything will continue to rise as the pandemic runs in course and staff continue to be offered the flexibility of work space.

The Importance Of Being Ready

It is worth mentioning at this point for the business which unfortunately saw their trade days come to an end in 2020. Many had failed to adapt, grow and change before 2020 and where therefore unable to adapt in a way that enabled them to be flexible around the pandemic. For these business, the lack of development of IT systems lead to a perfect storm of spending requirements, insufficient time and a lack of business commitment to IT and digital development.

The importance all business must learn from the events of 2020 is that digital transformation in the modern age is imperative. A business without IT cannot function and the drive of CIO, CTO and Technical Directors has and will always remain in the development, expansion and overall success of a business. They above all others know how critical those systems are.

Unfortunately for many businesses, IT is often considered to be a “cost with little reward” which from last year we can see is ultimately the wrong way to approach the topic. IT is a business enabler and when used as such it can allow all business to overcome situations and circumstances which is never would otherwise be able to.

The right focus

As we move in 2021 with earnest, I am working with all of our customers to enable this continued business growth with the aim of removing the stigma around IT spending. The focus is on the benefits vs the cost rather than the costs vs doing nothing as was so clearly the case for many business in the years leading up to 2020.

If any business wants to strive and succeed in 2021 then the goal must be to continue the path of digital acceleration and put IT as a business focus for all. Remember, don’t just look at the short-term pains. It’s all about how we develop and implement strategies that protect businesses for many years to come.

If you want to discuss your business IT strategy or how Planet IT can help you to accelerate your growth using IT then please call 01235 433900 or you can reach out to me via DM or at [email protected].

Quick Thoughts – Information Security – WhatsApp Data Sharing 2021

January 12, 2021/in data, General, IT Security, Security /by James Dell

There are lots of social media commentary this week around the changes in the WhatsApp privacy policy.

First of all yes this privacy policy is scary and moves WhatsApp ever closer to Facebook in terms of their approach to who has the right to user data and what its worth to the business. However should you worry about it as a U.K or EU citizen? No. And the reason for that is simple, WhatsApp has to adhere to the guidance as laid out in the articles which form GDPR, therefore they cannot use the data or share this data with it’s parent company Facebook for the purposes of remarketing as it would be outside the fair use of the data.

That said, Facebook are looking to move Facebook access for UK users away from their Facebook Ireland entity to being governed by Facebook Inc. This would therefore change their obligations as your account would sit outside of the GDPR region. Furthermore, following the U.K. leaving the EU they would be able to do this and therefore WhatsApp would fall under the privacy policy of the U.S.

Planet IT security health check

So in short, don’t panic right now. There is no need to leave WhatsApp or not accept the terms in February. However, when Facebook moves the U.K. to be governed and controlled by the U.S., then if you want your data from being used for a number of questionable activities you need to leave and delete your Facebook account and do the same for WhatsApp.

I hope this quick thought helped you demystify the current situation.

If you want to talk to me about information security and data protection then please call 01235 433900 or you can reach out to me via DM or at [email protected].

Technology that SHOULD shape your business in 2021

January 6, 2021/in Backup, Cloud, IT Security, Remote Working, Security, Software /by James Dell

While the world continues to turn day to day life upside down and “normal” is more of a relative word than ever before, I wanted to take this opportunity at the start of the year to look at the technology trends your business should be looking into and adopting in order to ensure that whatever the global or national situation, your business is safe secure and up to date.

Cloud Services

If 2020 didn’t already do this for your business you should be looking at moving services to the cloud, now this is bigger than just moving your email to Office 365 or G Suite. When we talk about cloud services in 2021 this is about moving as much of the infrastructure, it’s management and the associated risks away from your physical business location.

If we take a traditional office where you have your servers, storage, back-ups and user data onsite close to where your users where working, in 2021 this approach is illogical with staff working from home and in the office suddenly you have a single point of failure in your office environment as well as needing the equipment maintained , monitored and managed in a location which may be shut due to local restrictions.

With the move to Cloud services the aim is to push as many of these services to diverse, secure and robust providers which removes the inherent risks and reduces any downtime you might face. If done in the right way you can do this with the same level of latency that you would get in your office environment but accessible quickly for your users working from home.

With businesses that implemented cloud services in 2020, they saw an decrease in running costs of up to 50% and an increase in uptime and productivity up to 99.99% which is beyond what any onsite system can deliver and this is due to the scale and depth of the product line of some of the cloud services on the market.

work from home

The Human Firewall

The trends we saw in 2020 made it very clear that we need to invest as much time into training our staff to be safe and secure as we do into finding the right technology to support them. That is why in 2021 one of the key areas of development we believe all business should be looking at is the human firewall. By this we mean training your staff to know what is safe and is not safe in the digital world and how to prevent risks to the business.

We saw the effect that phishing can have on business with an increase of 667% in March last year when COVID first became a major issue for the U.K. and scammers took in their waves to try and use peoples vulnerabilities against the businesses they work for. These attacks continue today following trends of presenting vaccination options and emails about furlough schemes all designed to capture business information and defraud businesses.

Now with this there is no one size fits all approach but there is a logical approach which will prevent your business being open to risks that exist on your doorstep. If we can teach our staff in 2021 to stop, deal with and report these problems then we increase the ability of a business to be robust and secure and remove the guess work from the technology we need to ensure a business is safe, for me 2021 is the year of the Human Firewall.

human firewall

Zero Trust Networking

As we move to a more dynamic way of working, both now and post COVID, we need to think about how the new fleet of devices we operate as businesses are managed, controlled and protected. The physical borders of your office space are no longer 4 brick walls but unlimited by the connectivity we have in place. Because of this we need to look at how we secure and control our devices, users and data across such a wide spectrum of use cases.

Now this can start with the simple steps of Mobile Device Management, Cloud based anti-virus technology but very quickly we need to be thinking about virtual connections to datacentres, home broadband and wireless security and cloud access control.

This is why in 2021 I believe all businesses need to review their approach and look to embed a zero-trust approach into all aspects, and while some people will see this approach as intrusive and over the top, it has been proven time and time again to not be. You only have to look at the speed in which a home wireless network can be broken into to realise that you are not safe trusting peoples home set ups.

In conclusion 2021, like 2020, is going to be a very different year, with the cyber criminals and the threat landscape changing everyday. However as business owners, technical professionals or employees we need to switch our approach and ensure we are using these changes to make our business ready for this continually changing landscape as we move forward.

If you want to talk to one of our experts about how we can help you in 2021 then please call 01235 433900 or you can email [email protected] or if you would like to speak to me directly you can reach out to me via DM or at [email protected].