Tag Archive for: IT London

Data Firm Exposes 235 Million Social Media Profiles

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A social media data broker has exposed the public-facing profiles of 235 million users via a misconfigured online database, according to researchers.

Comparitech teamed up with Bob Diachenko to uncover three identical copies of the data on August 1, left online with no password or other authentication required to access it.

In total, 192 million profiles were scraped from Instagram, 42 million from TikTok and four million from YouTube.

Each record contained some of the following: profile name, real name, profile pic, account description, age, gender and more.

Around a fifth of profiles also contained either a phone number or email address, according to Comparitech.

Although the personal information contained in this trove was all publicly available, social media companies like Facebook have threatened legal action in the past against automated data scraping firms that subsequently sell their collections to marketers.

Comparitech said that although access to the exposed database was shut down three hours after its first disclosure, it’s unclear how long the information was left online without a password.

The firm warned that, if discovered, the trove could have been used by spammers or to make follow-on phishing attacks more convincing.

The data itself was traced back to Social Data, a firm that apparently sells data on social media influencers to marketers. It was at pains to point out that the exposed information was taken from publicly available profiles, even though their consolidation into a single database makes it a more attractive prospect for cyber-criminals.

Comparitech also claimed that “evidence” suggests a connection between the data and a now-defunct company known as Deep Social which was removed from Facebook and Instagram marketing APIs in 2018 and threatened with legal action.

Social Data reportedly denied any connection between the two companies, although some of the original datasets were labelled as follows: “accounts-deepsocial-90” and “accounts-deepsocial-91.”

We’re Cloudscape.

We believe you should have the best backup solutions for your business.

We’ll get to know your business and determine the most appropriate solution to meet your technical requirements while being commercially sensible in cost and productive with time.

If you feel that your data isn’t being backed up correctly, please get in touch.

 

News Source: https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/

Travel Site Exposed 37 Million Records Before Attack

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The company behind one of India’s most popular travel booking sites exposed 43GB of customer and corporate data before it was deleted by the infamous “Meow” attacker, according to researchers.

A team at SafetyDetectives led by Anurag Sen discovered an Elasticsearch server without password protection or encryption on August 10.

It failed to get a response from the company in question, government-backed travel marketplace RailYatri, but the database was eventually secured after contact was made with India’s national CERT (CERT-In).

However, that was too late to save most of the information stored there: the Meow bot struck on August 12 and apparently deleted all but 1GB of the data.

The trove itself contained an estimated 37 million records linked to around 700,000 unique users of the popular site, a mobile app version of which has been downloaded over 10 million times on Google Play.

Exposed in the misconfiguration were users’ full names, age, gender, physical and email addresses, mobile phone numbers, booking details, GPS location and names/first and last four digits of payment cards.

“Exposed user information could potentially be used to conduct identity fraud across different platforms and other sites,” argued SafetyDetectives.

“Users’ contact details could be harnessed to conduct a wide variety of scams while personal information from the breach could be used to encourage click-throughs and malware downloads. Personal information is also used by hackers to build up rapport and trust, with a view of carrying out a larger magnitude intrusion in the future.”

The firm also warned that exposed data could have put customers in physical danger.

“RailYatri’s server recorded and stored users’ location information when booking their tickets, and also allowed users to track their journey progress with integrated GPS functionality. This information could be used by hackers to locate the nearest cell tower to the user, and potentially, the user’s actual location including current address,” it explained.

“Regular train users generate clear and distinguishable travel patterns which malicious actors could use to commit violent crime directly upon the individual.”

The bot-driven Meow attack campaign has so far destroyed data from thousands of victims, providing an even greater urgency for IT managers to ensure any cloud databases are properly configured.

 

We’re Cloudscape.

We believe you should have the best backup solutions for your business.

We’ll get to know your business and determine the most appropriate solution to meet your technical requirements while being commercially sensible in cost and productive with time.

If you feel that your data isn’t being backed up correctly, please get in touch.

 

News Source: https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/

Poor Cybersecurity Behaviours Prevalent Amongst UK Remote Workers

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Nearly a quarter (23%) of UK office workers rely on unauthorized devices to work from home, a new study by CybSafe has found.

The research revealed that poor personal cybersecurity practices are commonplace amongst workers operating outside of corporate environments, which is worrying as home working is expected to become far more prevalent following the COVID-19 crisis.

The survey of 600 UK workers also found that one in 10 (9%) share their work devices with other people in their household.

One in five (20%) said they do not keep collaboration and video conferencing software, such as Zoom, Webex and Microsoft teams up-to-date, while 23% do not ensure software on devices connected to their home WiFi network, including work computers, are updated.

These bad habits could be linked to a lack of adequate cybersecurity training for staff, according to the report, with 65% of workers revealing that they have not received any training on keeping data secure when working remotely in the last six months. Additionally, only 37% of workers had received a working from home cybersecurity policy from their employer by the start of lockdown.

Oz Alashe, CEO of CybSafe, commented: “We now live in a world of borderless organizations where increasing numbers of people work remotely. Many are mobile. The lines between personal and professional are increasingly blurred, and everyone is at greater risk.

“Some staff are making cybersecurity mistakes in their homes, and businesses will need to adjust their cybersecurity approaches accordingly. What may have worked in the past doesn’t necessarily work now. Cybersecurity policy, as well as awareness and behavior change programs, will all require updates based on today’s working conditions.”

Dr John Blythe, head of behavioural science at CybSafe, added: “While our latest research suggests that many UK businesses have been forthcoming with changes to cybersecurity strategy, these haven’t taken place on the scale that we would have hoped for.”

In June, a study by CyberArk found that employee work from home habits are putting businesses at greater risk of cyber-attack.

 

We’re Cloudscape.

We believe you should have the best backup solutions for your business.

We’ll get to know your business and determine the most appropriate solution to meet your technical requirements while being commercially sensible in cost and productive with time.

If you feel that your data isn’t being backed up correctly, please get in touch.

 

News Source: https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/

Tackle your business challenges head on – With Microsoft Planner

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“If only there was a tool to help me manage my project work.”

Looking for a project management tool? Look no further than Microsoft Planner.

Struggling to Effectively manage tasks and projects?

Task management is an uphill battle for many businesses. Many businesses use a multitude of different applications in their daily operation, each with a different purpose and function. This inevitably leads to task management becoming a logistical nightmare, with tasks and projects often getting overlooked and even getting completely forgotten about.

A culture of poor task management frequently leading to unfinished and abandoned tasks can result in systemic low productivity. Therefore, efficient and effective task management should be at the forefront of your business’ productivity strategy, as it’s virtually impossible to achieve a decent level of productivity when tasks are going missing and remaining unfinished.

As mentioned above, using a range of unrelated, unconnected applications is one of the most common issues when it comes to managing tasks. Integration is key! You need an umbrella-type application that allows you to keep track of and monitor task progress in a range of applications. Luckily, Microsoft Planner lets you do exactly that!

Introducing Microsoft Planner

Similar to other project management tools such as Asana, Slack and Trello, Microsoft Planner acts as a project/task management hub, enabling users to monitor task progress and outcomes, assign tasks and create plans. It also functions as a gathering space for the whole team and acts as a central file sharing resource.

What’s more, seamless integration within the Office suite ensures a hassle-free user experience. See below for an overview of some of the useful components and features of this productivity-boosting application.

Plans. Alternatively, you could consider these ‘projects.’ Plans are the structures into which you set tasks. Plans allow you to gather all the tasks relevant to a specific project or outcome in one place, allowing for easy management and tracking of task progress.

Groups. ‘Groups’ refer to the people connected to a particular project. When you create a plan and add ‘group members’ the individuals concerned will automatically be notified.

Tasks. Once you establish a plan you can set up tasks within it. Why not include a description, assign team members to it, attach files, add a due date or expected completion time; with a rich range of features available your team will always know what they’re doing.

Seamless Integration. Firmly embedded within the Office 365 family, Planner offers the convenience of seamless integration with the other office applications your team are using. From file sharing via SharePoint, automated email notifications via outlook or team communication via the Teams app the ability for all your favourite apps to ‘talk to each other’ is sure to make life a lot easier.

Office 365 users should look no further than Microsoft planner for all their project and task management needs. It’s compatibility with the Office family and intuitive dashboard makes keeping track of tasks and projects a dawdle.

 

Struggling to find a solution that fits around your business?

At Cloudscape, we use our extensive experience to deliver custom-fit technology solutions to SMEs in London and the home counties. Technology should serve your business’ aims and aspirations, it shouldn’t be something to mould your operation around. We are experts in Cloud-computing and we know how empowering Cloud Services can be when leveraged correctly, so let us help you tailor Office 365 so that it works for your business and the unique challenges you face. Call us on 0207 952 8123 or send us an email info@cloudscape.it.

Ensuring an effective workforce – The Challenges of our new working world

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The turbulent business environment of the past 5 months has likely left business owners feeling stressed and exhausted. The Covid-19 pandemic has presented an ever-evolving business landscape that has required businesses to continually adapt their offering and operations in response to ever-changing restrictions on working life.

For many businesses, this has resulted in a compromised service offering.  Factors such as unfamiliar new ways of working and a reduced workforce have threatened operational capacity. As a result, it’s more important than ever that businesses level-up their productivity to maintain their service, remain competitive and even countenance the prospect of growth despite a difficult environment.

Let’s assume that you now have the basics of remote-working sorted; your team are comfortable working from home, have access to the resources and equipment they need and you’re confident that your data is secure. It’s now time to look at the tools that will let you extract every drop of value from the working day. Working flexibly has been on the rise for several years now, so thankfully the platforms that enable effective collaboration and workflow management have been a long time in development. In this article, we will look at a few of such offerings available through Microsoft 365. These affordable, accessible, and intuitive platforms will act as a springboard to your business’ productivity aims while requiring little investment in terms of time or money.

 

Innovate, perform, deliver – make you’re working week more fruitful with Collaboration and Task management solutions from Microsoft 365

Introducing Microsoft Teams

Microsoft’s workplace communication focal point, Teams is popular with remote and office-based workforces alike.  If you are already a Microsoft 365 customer or if your team use the Office apps daily, then you really don’t have to look any further than Teams for your communication needs.

  • An all-in-one communication platform. Teams have it all; instant messaging, video conferencing, scheduling capabilities and effortless document sharing and real-time editing thanks to deep integration with SharePoint and OneDrive. Microsoft Business voice even lets you turn Teams into your business’ phone system and the eagerly anticipated ‘lists’ app will help you organise work schedules, track task progression and more; all within Teams’ interface.
  • Organise discussions with ‘Teams’ and ‘Channels.’ Teams let you assemble groups of employees for collaboration on specific topics. You can then subdivide discussion to focus on even more specific issues using ‘channels.’
  • It’s intuitive. Launched in 2017, Teams was born in the age of ‘intuitive software,’ and it shows. There is a very little learning curve with Teams; your employees will be up to speed with most features in a few hours.
  • Customise the experience with your favourite third–party apps. If you’re currently using a third-party productivity or workflow management app there is a good chance you’ll be able to bring it under the Teams umbrella. Compatibility with hundreds of popular apps such as ‘Zoom’ and ‘Asana’ means Teams really can function as your one and only communications hub.
  • Peerless security and compliance capabilities. A core component of MS 365, Microsoft’s Enterprise Mobility and Security platform lets you manage access, control document permissions, monitor online threats, secure your endpoint devices and much more. This empowering security platform coupled with the flexibility of Teams will let your Teamwork effectively while ensuring your digital assets remain secure.

Available with many Microsoft 365 subscriptions or as a standalone product discover why Teams is one of the world’s most popular collaboration platforms today!

 

Say ‘Hello’ to Planner

There are several workflow managements tools within the MS 365 landscape. Microsoft Project offers the most in-depth, feature-rich experience and at the other end of the scale you’ll find ‘To-Do,’ a more basic application that’s great for managing straightforward work tasks and personal errands. ‘Planner’ is situated between these 2 offerings and offers a good balance of features and ease-of-use; offering more features and greater insights than To-Do and while avoiding the learning curve that comes with the more complex Microsoft Project.

  • Plans. Set up project sites called ‘plans’ and organise all tasks relating to a particular topic in one space.
  • Tasks. Assign tasks to individuals or groups. Set start and end dates, attach a ‘priority’ status, add attachments, and add a detailed description so that your team know what they’re doing.
  • Buckets. Buckets let you arrange and sort tasks in any way you want. You might want to gather all high priority tasks in a single place or move all completed tasks to one bucket.
  • Chart, schedule and Board views. Planner features several ‘views’ that allow you to review task progression and look ahead to see what’s coming up. The ‘charts’ dashboard contains info pertaining to task progression; see at a glance how much progress your team are making. The ‘Board’ view displays tasks in their allocated ‘buckets.’ ‘Schedule’ view displays tasks in a calendar format, enabling you to schedule tasks well in advance. Filters let you view information relating to priority, task status, assignees and more.

Available to Premium, Business and Educational subscribers to MS365, you may already have planner available to you if you’re a 365 customer. Take this intuitive tool for a spin today and see if it could help you simplify your task management challenges.

 

Streamline scheduling with ‘Bookings,’ improve engagement with ‘Forms’ and keep the conversation going with ‘Yammer’

With so many peripheral apps complementing the ‘core’ services in the Microsoft environment you’re bound to find a solution to some of your business challenges with a little digging….

‘Bookings’ is an invaluable scheduling tool that takes the time-consuming legwork out of meeting scheduling. It lets you publish your timetable so attendees can select a time that suits, thus avoiding the tedium of lengthy email threads that arranging meetings can involve.

‘Forms’ is a simple survey generation application that lets you create and publish surveys, quizzes and polls. A great way to gauge customer satisfaction, test employee knowledge, drive engagement and much more.

‘Yammer’ Without the hubbub and camaraderie of the office environment, keeping spirits high and employees engaged while working remotely can be more of a challenge. Yammer functions as a social networking site for businesses; a great way to help employees connect and share news and updates.

How can I get the ball rolling?

As part of the government’s economic response to the Covid-19 pandemic, packages of grant funding are to be announced to help businesses make efficiency transitions. These grants of between £1000 and £5000 could help your business innovate and optimise its IT system, to drive efficiency and productivity gains using some of the ideas we’ve discussed above.

 

Struggling to find a solution that fits around your business?

At Cloudscape, we use our extensive experience to deliver custom-fit technology solutions to SMEs in London and the home counties. Technology should serve your business’ aims and aspirations, it shouldn’t be something to mould your operation around. We are experts in Cloud-computing and we know how empowering Cloud Services can be when leveraged correctly, so let us help you tailor Office 365 so that it works for your business and the unique challenges you face. Call us on 0207 952 8123 or send us an email info@cloudscape.it.

Levelling-up your business’ efficiency – The Challenges of our new working world

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2020 has been a challenging year in the business world. The Covid-19 pandemic has thrown businesses in most sectors into a period of rapid change – those who are willing to rise to the occasion and innovate are those most likely to survive this continuing period of uncertainty.

Flexibility, agility, efficiency, resilience…the recipe for survival in 2020

When business slows and uncertainty looms there is a temptation to batten down the hatches, play it safe and hope for a return to better times. However, the current crisis requires exactly the opposite. The possibility of further lockdowns requires businesses to empower their teams with technical solutions that enable greater levels of agility and flexibility. Additionally, continued uncertainty and a difficult economic environment mean it’s never been more important to do as much as possible with the IT resources you have.

 

That sounds great, but where do I begin?

In recent months we’ve been busy helping our clients across London and the home counties make the IT transition necessary to thrive during these troubling times.

For some time now businesses have been discovering the benefits of reducing reliance on physical infrastructure by migrating services to the cloud. The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated this trend massively and driven home the inherent benefits of operating a flexible, cost-effective, infrastructure-lite IT system.

Cloud services are just one piece of the puzzle; let’s look at some of the ways you can improve your business’ efficiency while offering the same great service to your customers.

 

Discover the ‘Cloud’

The concept of ‘Cloud’ computing has been around for a long time and most businesses are now familiar with its capabilities in some form through the likes of Microsoft 365 or storage services like Dropbox or Google Drive.

The potential of ‘the cloud’ to transform your business is almost limitless due to the range of services it can offer. For example, you could migrate traditionally, fixed infrastructure to the cloud to free up space in your office and eliminate the burden of costly/time-consuming hardware maintenance. Physical firewall appliances, servers and networking infrastructure are some of the hardware you could migrate. In addition to the cost savings cloud migration also gives you the flexibility of being able to access your resources remotely.

 

Discover Automation

It’s estimated that the average small business employee spends 2 out of 5 working days bogged down with repetitive, manual tasks such as data entry. That represents a lot of time spent doing tasks that don’t add value to your business.

Automation is the process of supplementing ‘human effort’ with ‘machine effort,’ giving employees more time to focus on more value-adding tasks such as improving customer relationships, driving sales and developing business strategy. Automation technology comes in a huge variety of forms; it could be a small feature within a larger piece of software (Microsoft 365 has many examples of this) or the software itself could be centred around automation (email marketing software being a prime example).

Nowadays, automation often comes embedded in accounting software, CRMs, HR software and many other applications. Microsoft 365 users benefit from a suite of automation apps, which are often included within 356 subscription bundles. One of these is ‘power automate’ which gives users the tools to automate processes through an intuitive interface without the need for technical expertise.

 

Invest in the home office

As an employer, you may have to invest in technology or the home-office setup of your employees to ensure productivity. If your team are operating using slow, unresponsive, and insecure personal devices efficiency will suffer, your customers may notice a drop in service standards, and you may be exposing sensitive data to unacceptable levels of risk.

  • Provide work devices where feasible. This allows you to control security and ensure devices are working optimally more tightly.
  • Are devices past their best? Old, clunky machines may be an obstacle to your business’ productivity goals. Additionally, unsupported software and operating systems present security vulnerabilities.
  • Is the home environment suitably equipped for 8-hour days? Consider desks, chairs, lamps, and footrests to ensure staff are as comfortable at home as they would be in the office.
  • Is home broadband proving too slow or unreliable? It may be worth considering a business internet connection for key employees, to ensure connectivity issues don’t stifle your ability to operate effectively.
  • Can your team keep in touch? Webcams and headsets may be needed to help all team members participate in Zoom meetings. These virtual get-togethers are a good way of keeping staff engaged and morale levels high.

 

Invest in a proactive, engaged, and reliable IT partner

With so much going on now you’ll need an IT partner you can rely on. That means someone who takes the time to get to know your business and provide best-fit solutions that address the unique challenges you face. It also means having an experienced and knowledgeable partner who can guide your business seamlessly to new ways of working while ensuring minimal downtime thanks to proactive maintenance and network monitoring.

Ensure you choose an IT partner who’s commercially savvy, and understands the importance of cost-effective, budget-conscious solutions particularly during these uncertain times.

 

It’s about more than efficiency, your reputation is at stake!

Months ago, when the country was first plunged into lockdown a compromised service from businesses was considered acceptable for a while, as companies grappled with new operational challenges. However, by now, as life starts to return to some form of normality, customers are becoming less accepting of a reduced or poor service offering. This means it’s important to invest in fit-for-purpose solutions that allow your team to perform at (or near) maximum capacity while working from home.

  • Are tasks taking longer than they should be due to poor file management?
  • Is communication suffering due to inadequate telephony provision or outdated communication platforms?
  • Are tasks being abandoned due to poor process management and a lack of organisation?

Clients will notice all the above and failing to address such issues now may affect your business’ reputation going forward.

 

How can I get the ball rolling?

As part of the government’s economic response to the Covid-19 pandemic, packages of grant funding are to be announced to help businesses make efficiency transitions. These grants of between £1000 and £5000 could help your business innovate and optimise its IT system, to drive efficiency and productivity gains using some of the ideas we’ve discussed above.

 

Struggling to find a solution that fits around your business?

At Cloudscape, we use our extensive experience to deliver custom-fit technology solutions to SMEs in London and the home counties. Technology should serve your business’ aims and aspirations, it shouldn’t be something to mould your operation around. We are experts in Cloud-computing and we know how empowering Cloud Services can be when leveraged correctly, so let us help you tailor Office 365 so that it works for your business and the unique challenges you face. Call us on 0207 952 8123 or send us an email info@cloudscape.it.

Investing in remote working infrastructure – The Challenges of our new working world

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While the initial scramble to get employees set up for remote working home may seem a distant memory now, you should still consider whether your remote-working arrangements are the best they could be.

Many businesses will have allowed their employees to work from personal devices and while this path offers convenience it can also be a minefield in terms of data security. Similarly, in the hope of normality resuming, its likely many businesses left telephony out of their remote-working plans, resulting in no ability to transfer calls between employees and clunky, staccato communication experience for customers.

While we’ve seen a degree of normality returning to the world of work over the past month or so, working from home remains the government’s recommendation where it is feasible to do so. Implemented properly, remote working can have many benefits; productivity can improve, employees will enjoy a better work-life balance, lengthy commutes are eliminated, and it’s even been shown to improve employee retention and reduce absence rates.

‘Implemented properly’ is the key phrase here, as when too many compromises are made, working from home can also present challenges in terms of productivity, data security and operational performance. In terms of infrastructure, computers and telephony are your 2 main considerations. Let’s consider each of these in more detail.

 

BYOD, COPE, COBO and CYOD – to provide or not to provide?

If you’ve ever looked into issuing your staff with work devices to enable remote working you’ve likely encountered some of the acronyms above. But what do they mean?

  • BYOD (Bring your own device) – Employees use their own devices to access business resources. This gives you the least control.
  • CYOD (Choose your own device) – Employees choose a device from a pre-approved list and the business then buys, manages, and retains ownership of the device. Affords much greater control than BYOD due to remote management.
  • COPE (Company-owned, personally enabled) – Devices are supplied by a business that and managed by the IT department but also set up to enable personal use. It avoids the need for employees to carry separate devices for personal and work use.
  • COBO (company-owned, business only) – This is where a business provides a device and sets it up strictly for business activities. This option offers the greatest level of control for employers and is particularly suitable where high levels of compliance requirements are involved.

For many small to medium-sized businesses, a BYOD program is tempting as there are no hardware overheads to be borne by the company. However, allowing staff to use their own devices almost always means relinquishing control, as employees may be reluctant to agree to mobile device management (MAM) on their personal devices. Having a comprehensive BYOD policy is essential where personal devices are concerned, but again, limited control means this policy will largely rely on employees acting in good faith, which may not be a risk you’re willing to take where sensitive data is concerned.

CYOD, COPE and COBO programmes will give your IT team much greater control and oversight over all aspects of device management, security and access control.

Providing devices and protecting them with remote device management is the most effective way to ensure data security. Microsoft’s Enterprise Mobility Management and Security platform provides a comprehensive set of tools to ensure your remote workforce is operating securely. Incorporated within this platform is Microsoft Intune, an endpoint management platform that helps your secure data, manage access, configure security settings and much more.

 

Hosted VoIP – receive and make calls from anywhere, as though you were in the office.

“If only there were away, I could use my business’ phone system while working remotely.”

Fear not; hosted VoIP could be just what you’re looking for. If you use a traditional private branch exchange system in your office, you may have thought that this was a technology you’d simply have to live without when working from home. Hosted VoIP (often known as a Hosted PBX) simply takes traditional telephony infrastructure and hosts it in the cloud. Users can then access the call interface through a portal or a dedicated VoIP handset and make calls from anywhere using a single phone number. It essential virtualises your office phone system. There is a huge range of Hosted VoIP providers out there, each offering a unique range of features at varying price points. Remote access is an obvious benefit of VoIP telephony, but it has many other advantages over traditional telephony:

 

  • Private branch exchange without the infrastructure. Hosted PBX doesn’t require investment in a physical PBX server as everything is cloud-hosted. Additionally, phone lines aren’t necessary, all that is required is an internet connection.
  • Reduced running costs. It’s estimated VoIP can reduce phone bills by an average of 40%. If your business makes a high volume of international calls the savings would likely be much higher.
  • A plethora of useful features! A hosted PBX can give you access to all the features of a traditional PBX and more. Caller ID, call forwarding, call transfer, call logs, ‘do not disturb,’ call recording and much more.
  • Unified business communications to drive productivity. Some hosted PBX services incorporate other business tools into a single interface, vastly improving communication efficiency among your team.
  • Leverage a single phone number with the ability to transfer calls. Maintain a single point of contact and improve the service experience for your customers.

 

Microsoft Business Voice – Hosted PBX through Microsoft Teams

Users of Microsoft 365 can incorporate a Hosted PBX phone system into Microsoft Teams by subscribing to Microsoft Business Voice. This enables users to bring business-grade telephony into the Teams interface, resulting in a sleek, all-in-one communications hub incorporating instant messaging, video conferencing and telephony in a single unified space.

Investing a little today in robust, remote-working solutions that will stand the test of time could pay dividends in the long run. Secure, managed and high-performance devices will help your staff stay productive while keeping your data secure. While a modest investment in Hosted VoIP could futureproof your business’ communications and give you the ability to work remotely without compromise.

How can I get the ball rolling?

As part of the government’s economic response to the Covid-19 pandemic, packages of grant funding are to be announced to help businesses make efficiency transitions. These grants of between £1000 and £5000 could help your business innovate and optimise its IT system, to drive efficiency and productivity gains using some of the ideas we’ve discussed above.

 

Struggling to find a solution that fits around your business?

At Cloudscape, we use our extensive experience to deliver custom-fit technology solutions to SMEs in London and the home counties. Technology should serve your business’ aims and aspirations, it shouldn’t be something to mould your operation around. We are experts in Cloud-computing and we know how empowering Cloud Services can be when leveraged correctly, so let us help you tailor Office 365 so that it works for your business and the unique challenges you face. Call us on 0207 952 8123 or send us an email info@cloudscape.it.

Tackle your business challenges head on – With Microsoft Forms

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“How can I ensure the data I collect has value?”

Microsoft Forms lets you generate surveys and quizzes and helps you make sense of the data you gather.

Tired of wasting time on ineffective data collection tools?

Problematic forms and over-complicated survey reports; you may think these are par for the course with data collection. However, it’s important to get these considerations right before embarking on data gathering, otherwise, you could end up with screeds of data that are completely useless to your business.

Unnecessary data or data with little to no value represents wasted time, energy and resources. If the data you gather routinely holds little to no valuable insights then it’s time to adopt a new data collection solution. There is a vast range of tools out there that will give you the ability to generate vast quantities of data in a short time, but that’s only half the battle, as knowing what to do with the data afterwards and how to present it in a coherent way can be where the real challenge lies.

Once you’ve gathered data, the task of having to organise it begins, as a random jumble of words and numbers with no analysis won’t present well to your intended audience. Organising the data you gather can be the most agonising aspect of data collection, often involving lots of manual data entry depending on the format used for data gathering. Also, as with other data, your business holds you’ll have to give serious consideration to your data protection obligations by ensuring any personal data remains secure and that it is used and stored in compliance with any relevant legislation.

Fortunately, Office 365 features an application that responds to many of the traditional challenges of data gathering and analysis.

Introducing Microsoft Forms

Microsoft Forms is an effortlessly simple, intuitive tool that lets you publish surveys, polls and quizzes in a matter of minutes. Respondents can then interact with your form from virtually any device or web browser. Integrated analytics tools let you visualise and evaluate responses and you can export the data gathered to Excel for more in-depth analysis.

Seamless integration within the Office 365 family makes for a hassle-free experience. See below for a round-up of Forms’ simple yet empowering tools and features.

Surveys. Surveys are an invaluable means by which to gauge customer satisfaction, improve staff engagement and arrange events. Thanks to templated question branching and ready-to-go themes you’ll be able to launch surveys in minutes and have the responses rolling in no time.

Quizzes. These are particularly useful for keeping an eye on staff training and development. By having staff complete quizzes, you can identify knowledge gaps and areas where further training might be required. With the ability to analyse scores and add instructions and explanations these could soon become a vital learning and development tool in your business.

Polls. Perfect for gauging opinions, polls are ideal for many scenarios. Find out what your customers think of your latest product, see what the team thought of their training day or find out when they want to hold their next meeting, the possibilities are endless!

Straightforward yet powerful analysis. As forms gather responses in real-time it automatically visualises the data gathered in easy-to-interpret charts. Thanks to Office 365 integration you can export data to Excel and take advantage of its extensive range of data manipulation tools.

Simple yet extremely effective; Microsoft Forms streamlines data gathering into one effortless process. Gather data from within and outside your organisation, view results in real-time using user-friendly analytics and extract value from your data gathering to make informed decisions and improve your business’ operation.

 

Struggling to find a solution that fits around your business?

At Cloudscape, we use our extensive experience to deliver custom-fit technology solutions to SMEs in London and the home counties. Technology should serve your business’ aims and aspirations, it shouldn’t be something to mould your operation around. We are experts in Cloud-computing and we know how empowering Cloud Services can be when leveraged correctly, so let us help you tailor Office 365 so that it works for your business and the unique challenges you face. Call us on 0207 952 8123 or send us an email info@cloudscape.it.

Over 43,000 Phishing Emails Slip Through NHS Security Filters

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More than 43,000 NHS staff have been hit by phishing emails over the past few months, as they battled to save patients infected with COVID-19, a Freedom of Information (FOI) request has revealed.

Think tank Parliament Street asked NHS Digital for the data on spam and phishing emails from March to July 14.

A spokesperson confirmed to Infosecurity that the figures related to user reports of malicious and scam messages in their inbox, so the real total could be far higher.

If correct, it would mean that NHS Digital filters are failing to catch a significant volume of threats at a time when the health service is under extreme strain due to the pandemic.

The FOI request revealed a total of 43,108 reports of malicious emails made by doctors, nurses and other NHS staff during the period. The vast majority came from March (21,188) at the start of the crisis, with fewer reports in April (8085), May (5883) and June (6468), plus 1484 in the first half of July.

With reports circulating of cyber-criminals attempting to deploy malware in hospitals, the email inbox is a vital first-line-of-defense against potentially serious cyber-threats.

Although the 43,108 individuals who reported the emails are unlikely to have fallen for the scams, many attacks have been successful. NHS Digital revealed in June that over 100 NHS inboxes were compromised in such raids, although the end goal was not clear.

In some cases, employee finances have been targeted in the attacks: one NHS trust in the north-west warned that criminals impersonated employees in emails to HR and Payroll staff, with the aim of tricking them into changing staff bank account numbers.

Chris Ross, SVP sales international at Barracuda Networks, warned that hackers may also be after patient data to sell on the dark web.

“After the WannaCry attack of 2017, the NHS did a great job in eradicating many of its cyber-defense weaknesses, however, it’s important that they maintain this resilience and constantly keep up with the developing cyber-threat facing them,” he argued.

“Our recent research revealed that there has been a spike in cyber-criminals using official email domains, such as Gmail and Yahoo, to bypass inbox defences and trick users into revealing personal details by impersonating a colleague, manager or trusted partner.”

AI-powered tools can help in identifying unusual senders and requests, he added.

 

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News Source: https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/

Incident Response Exercises Not Taken Seriously by Business Leaders

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Only 2% of organizations have run incident response scenarios related to the pandemic response.

According to research by Immersive Labs of 402 organizations, nearly 40% are not fully confident in their teams training to handle a data breach if one occurred, and 65% of exercises consist of reviewing PowerPoint slides.

In an email to Infosecurity, Heath Renfrow, director and vCISO at the Crypsis Group, said incident response is one of the pillars of a sound information security program, and it needs to be taken more seriously—not only among the organization’s information security team, but all the way to the CEO and board of directors.

“It is evident from the incident response cases we assist with daily that incident response is frequently viewed strictly as information security/IT’s responsibility, rather than from an overall business perspective,” he said. “This is unfortunate, because many across the business—from leadership to legal, communications and HR staff—have a potential role to play and can help influence better outcomes and the right cultural mindset to be better prepared for an incident.”

Renfrow said that to build stronger programs, incident response plans and playbooks should be developed and exercised at a broad company level — but that requires buy-in from the top leadership.

He recommended an approach, in order to achieve buy-in, to first run tabletop exercises just among the information security team to refine the plan, taking the lessons learned and updating the documents. Next, identify a “champion” in the executive ranks — a cybersecurity advocate who is influential among leadership and sit down with inside or outside counsel and discuss the various scenarios the company could face from a range of cyber-attacks and the ramifications of each (e.g. downtime, reputational loss, regulatory notifications, sensitive information exposed, etc).

“With that information in hand, security teams can work with their identified champion to get executive leadership educated on those risks and bought into an incident response tabletop exercise,” he said.

The Immersive Labs research also found that 61% of respondents think having an incident response plan is the single most effective way to prepare for a security incident, however when they do perform crisis exercises, nearly 40% of all senior security leaders surveyed said the last exercise generated no action from the business.

Also a quarter of organizations ran crisis exercises without senior cybersecurity leadership in attendance, and only 20% of exercises involved communications team members.

James Hadley, CEO of Immersive Labs, said: “With three-quarters of organizations agreeing that business continuity was at the forefront of their minds, it is time to close the gap between attackers and defenders and shake up the outdated status quo. This requires faster, shorter crisis drills run with the people you will be standing shoulder to shoulder with when the worst happens. Crisis exercises must be made more contemporary.

“Dusting off the three-ring binder crisis plan does not cut it today. In the first 30 minutes of a crisis, it is highly unlikely you’re thinking of your plan. It’s the real-life, crisis simulation training that prepares organizations to effectively respond to security incidents.”

Renfrow said a company-wide incident response exercise should include legal, HR, communications, and all senior business executives including the CEO, and should be focused on a plausible cyber-incident, for example, a ransomware attack, and walk through the chain of events and response by the entire organization. It should also include the steps needed to engage (as applicable) any retained cyber insurance companies, outside counsel, and incident response providers.

“These exercises truly do open the eyes of executive leadership, and most of the time they really start seeing cybersecurity as an asset to the business that is vital to the overall success of the organization,” Renfrow said.

 

We’re Cloudscape.

We believe you should have the best backup solutions for your business.

We’ll get to know your business and determine the most appropriate solution to meet your technical requirements while being commercially sensible in cost and productive with time.

If you feel that your data isn’t being backed up correctly, please get in touch.

 

News Source: https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/