Over the last week, school leaders have risen to the challenges of the current crisis. It is a reminder of the responsiveness and resilience of our education system, and for those that are living on another planet (or wish they were at the moment!), the government is closing schools as of today to the vast majority of students. Children of key (critical) workers are still able to attend to ensure medical and transport staff can remain at work, but what does this mean for the other students?
With the current global situation, the past week has shown the importance of being able to create the Digital Workspace to provide flexible working solutions for your workforce. I decided to write a blog around how Microsoft's Teams, a Unified Communication as a Service (UCaaS) solution, has enabled my productivity to not slip despite the whole of my team now having to work from home thanks to Coronavirus.
Twitter, WhatsApp and other means of consumer service technology are becoming part and parcel of communicating at work alongside Unified Communications (UC) technologies. As a result, the boundaries between our work and personal lives are becoming increasingly blurred.
Ransomware is malware that encrypts an individual's files so that they no longer have access to them, and subsequently demand payment for the files to be released. Usually the payment is asked to be made in an untraceable cryptocurrency form, such as Bitcoin. The most common way ransomware ends up on an individual's computers is through email...
Phishing is the fraudulent use of electronic communications to try and obtain sensitive information, such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by posing as a legitimate institution. Phishing attacks attempt to get individuals to click on a malicious link and enter confidential information to steal their identity, funds or to be the first step in a serious cyberattack against an organisation.
All organisations store data, and regardless of whether it's a recipe or an algorithm, this data is an organisation's most prized asset, which is why hackers make it their target. The Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2019 from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) found that 32% of businesses identified cyber security breaches or attacks in the last 12 months, which have cost an average of £4,180 in lost data and assets
Cybercriminals are only getting more cunning and skilful with their cyber attacks, which is bad news for organisations when it comes to meeting privacy and compliance regulations. There can be significant legal implications for organisations if their data is not secure and regulations are not met. For instance, since the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) came into effect in May 2018, data protection regulators have imposed 114 million euros (approximately 97 million pound) worth of fines under the GDPR regime (GDPR Data Breach Survey 2020 by DLA Piper).
In 2019, we worked with a customer who owns and operates a mine in Mozambique to help them identify their key business objectives and advise them on how to succeed on these. Throughout our discussions with them, we defined the below key objectives:
In today's competitive environment, being flexible is a fundamental part of any business strategy to survive. To be flexible, organisations must make the necessary changes needed to respond effectively to the changing market. One simple way organisations can increase their flexibility is by using the innovative technology solutions and services that are available.
Organisations generate millions of system logs every day from the likes of servers, firewalls and network devices. Their ability to process, analyse and react to this information affects how they will manage any security risks and incidents. To help process this data, many organisations implement a Security Incident and Event Management (SIEM) system or outsource to a Cyber Security Operations Centre (CSOC) for their monitoring, which provides a real-time analysis of security alerts.
Although 'agile' has become a hype word, it is an important concept that organisations should strive to achieve in a world of continuous change and uncertainty. Being agile enables organisations to be more adaptive and reactive to the changing market, allowing them to respond quickly to customers' demands to keep a competitive edge.
Over the past few years there has been a major increase in organisations adopting digital tools. With serious cost and efficiency gains to be generated, the benefits of transitioning to digital ways of working are no great secret; and companies are now consistently seeking to streamline with varying degrees of success.