Tag Archive for: IT Project Management

NHS: 100+ Email Accounts Hijacked in Phishing Campaign

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The NHS has confirmed that 113 internal email accounts were compromised and used to send malicious spam outside the health service around two weeks ago.

A brief NHS Digital statement issued on Friday revealed that the incident occurred between Saturday May 30 and Monday June 1 2020.

It claimed the security snafu affected a “very small proportion” of NHS email accounts, around 0.008% of the 1.4 million total, and was linked to a wider campaign designed to steal victims’ log-ins.

“There is currently no evidence to suggest that patient records have been accessed. We are working closely with the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), who are investigating a widespread phishing campaign against a broad range of organizations across the UK,” it added.

In fact, the NCSC first raised the alarm about the campaign back in October last year, claiming that automated attacks designed to harvest credentials had been active since at least July 2018 and were spreading “indiscriminately” across multiple verticals.

“In this campaign, the user receives a phishing email from a legitimate and known email account which has been compromised. Phishing emails were previously sent from contacts in recent email communications with the recipient, and the subject lines often mirrored the most recent email exchange. This created an initial plausibility for the user to trust the email,” it explained.

“More recently, the subject lines include the compromised user’s address-book entry for the recipient of the phishing email. This could be in the recipient’s name, the email address or may just be blank.”

Clicking on a link in the email would take the user to a fake log-in page featuring their organization’s logo and their email, the NCSC said.

All those affected by the latest NHS-based attacks will have been notified by today, NHS Digital claimed. It argued that since implementing a “new password approach” there has actually been a 94% decrease in phishing emails sent to NHSmail accounts over the past year.

“We are investigating this issue and have taken the precaution of asking all mailboxes that have a similar configuration to the compromised accounts to change their passwords with immediate effect,” NHS Digital concluded.

“We have worked with the organizations involved to isolate affected accounts, supported them to make any necessary changes and have advised affected individuals.”

 

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/

COVID19 Attacks Still Less Than 2% of Total Threats

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COVID-19-themed cyber-attacks comprised only a tiny amount of overall threat volumes over the past four months despite sensational headlines, according to Microsoft.

In comments echoing those it made at the start of the crisis, the Microsoft Threat Protection Intelligence Team claimed that even the peak of COVID-related attacks in the first two weeks of March was “barely a blip in the total volume of threats we typically see in a month.”

These were opportunistic attempts to exploit huge public interest in the virus via mainly localized phishing lures, which is why they increased 11-fold the week after the World Health Organization (WHO) officially named the pandemic “COVID-19.”

“This surge of COVID-19 themed attacks was really a repurposing from known attackers using existing infrastructure and malware with new lures,” said Microsoft. “In fact, the overall trend of malware detections worldwide did not vary significantly during this time.”

Although COVID-themed attacks remain higher than they were in early February and will continue as long as the virus does, the vast majority of threats are more typical phishing and identity compromise attempts, it continued.

The key takeaway for IT security teams is that while phishing lures can change quickly, the underlying malware remains the same.

They should therefore double down on enhanced user awareness training programs, “cross-domain signal analysis,” and patching, said Microsoft.

“These COVID-19 themed attacks show us that the threats our users face are constant on a global scale. Investments that raise the cost of attack or lower the likelihood of success are the optimal path forward,” it concluded.

“Focus on behaviors of attackers will be more effective than just examining indicators of compromise, which tend to be more signals in time than durable.”

Google claimed back in April that it is blocking 18 million malware and phishing emails linked to COVID each day, although it also admitted that “in many cases” these threats are not new but repurposed from other campaigns.

 

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/

Foodora Data Breach Impacts Customers in 14 Countries

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Online food delivery service Delivery Hero has confirmed a data breach affecting its Foodora brand.

The cybersecurity incident has exposed the account details of hundreds of thousands of customers in 14 different countries.

Delivery Hero told Infosecurity Magazine that the exposed data consists of “unique email addresses as well as certain customer details: encrypted password hashes, name, first name, delivery address, and phone number.”

The company confirmed that no financial data, clear-text passwords or geolocation data was exposed.

Data breached in the incident was found online on May 19, posted in a forum where stolen data is wont to show up, according to the Gov Infosecurity website. Whoever posted the data on the forum claims that Foodora was compromised in 2019.

A spokesperson for Delivery Hero said: “Unfortunately, we can confirm that a data breach has been identified concerning personal data dating back to 2016,” said a Delivery Hero spokesperson.

“The data originates from some countries across our current and previous markets.”

The compromised data appears to belong to Foodora users in Australia, Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Spain, and the United Arab Emirates.

Data breach expert and Have I Been Pwned website creator Troy Hunt said that over 600,000 unique email addresses were among the leaked data. According to Hunt’s research, the oldest Australian files exposed in the incident date back to August 2015.

“Our security teams validated that the exposed database contained approximately 480,000 email addresses,” a Delivery Hero spokesperson told Infosecurity Magazine.

“Some explanation for the real number being lower, is due to duplicates, email addresses used for staging and testing accounts, invalid emails addresses (as we did not use any verification of email addresses back then), email addresses of domains owned by DH.”

Delivery Hero was founded in 2011 by Niklas Östberg. The business is based in Berlin, Germany, and operates in over 40 countries internationally in Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East.

The company, which has around 22,000 employees, partners with more than 500,000 restaurants globally to deliver over 3 million food orders per day.

Delivery Hero is not yet sure how the breach occurred but is taking steps to find out.

A spokesperson said the company has “started a thorough internal investigation” and is “working closely with our security and data protection teams, as well as local authorities, to identify what caused the breach and inform the affected parties.”

The spokesperson added that the “relevant authorities” have been informed of the data breach.

 

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/

46% of SMEs Sharing Confidential Files by Email During Lockdown

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Nearly half (46%) of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) regularly share confidential files via email, including financial and employee data in spreadsheets, according to a new study from the Lanop Accountancy Group. This is despite the fact that 60% have not upgraded their organizations’ cybersecurity capabilities since shifting to remote working during COVID-19.

In a survey of 100 company owners of SMEs based in London, UK, which focused on their security habits during the pandemic, 59% revealed they had received an increase in phishing emails since lockdown began.

Cybersecurity expert Tim Sadler, CEO of Tessian, said: “Protecting people on email has to be a priority in this new hybrid world where employees can work from anywhere. All it takes is one simple mistake or typo for sensitive and confidential files to land in the wrong inbox and for a company to suffer a significant data breach.”

SMEs also outlined IT difficulties they have faced as a result of moving to a remote working model. A quarter said they share a Zoom account with another company, and one in five have been forced to cancel a meeting due to conference systems crashing. Meanwhile, 30% reported purchasing additional laptops, mobiles and tablets to manage remote working.

In addition, one third of company owners don’t believe they have the IT systems to continue remote working for a further three months, while 28% said their staff lack the digital skills to work from home.

Lanop also found nearly half (45%) plan to increase their IT spending in the near future, while 23% will not renew their office lease beyond the crisis.

Sridhar Iyengar, managing director of Zoho Europe, added: “The COVID-19 crisis has forced the majority of business owners to quickly implement remote working systems in order to continue trading despite strict lockdown measures. For many companies, successfully managing urgent projects, team meetings and company finances online against the backdrop of economic turmoil has brought with it a myriad of delays.”

A survey published last month by Bitglass found that most organizations are not sufficiently prepared to securely support remote working, even though 84% intend to continue this practice beyond the crisis.

 

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/

Our approach to Managed IT

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Who? What? Where?

We’re Cloudscape, a full-service IT company based in the heart of London.  Working primarily with small to medium-sized companies, we offer a full complement of IT support services covering all bases; from routine maintenance and remote monitoring to IT project management, consultancy and much more.

We draw on over 30 years of experience to deliver honest, dependable support that our clients rely on.  We have an excellent record of customer retention – many of our clients have been with us over for over a decade – as we put customer satisfaction at the heart of how we operate.

See below for a brief description of the services we provide, bearing in mind that we only propose solutions based on the requirements of our individual clients – we never promote unnecessary services or tech!

 

Cloud Services and Hosted VoIP

As a Cloud Service provider, we can help your business navigate the fairly new but exciting world of cloud computing.  ‘The Cloud’ broadly denotes computing services and resources accessed remotely via the internet rather than through in-house or local physical infrastructure.  ‘The Cloud’ lets you take advantage of computing power, security and scalability without the capital expense and maintenance hassle of physical infrastructure.   It also offers cost-efficiency and flexibility that is difficult to achieve with hardware, as the subscription-type nature of cloud services let you pay for the services and resources you need and dispense with those you don’t.

A common entry-point to the cloud is through Hosted email services, cloud-based backup solutions and cloud storage.  We can advise on the best blend of Cloud services and Physical infrastructure for your business that capitalises on the benefits of the Cloud and makes optimum use of the server infrastructure you may already have.  We even offer ‘Private cloud’ solutions for businesses wishing to operate their own hardware in the cloud.  This offers the benefits of the ‘public Cloud’ but with greater control and customisation potential.

We also set up ‘hosted’ (Cloud Based) VoIP phone systems.  Such systems offer the features of a traditional business phone system but with much easier and cheaper set up as well as many of the benefits inherent in cloud services such as scalability and convenience.

IT Support

All-encompassing IT support is the cornerstone of our offering.  We employ ‘prevention is better than cure approach’ using our advanced monitoring platform.  This lets us scour your network for signs that something is likely to go wrong (such as a Hard drive error message), allowing us to take action before harm can be inflicted.

You’ll be able to rest assured knowing that your data is backed up, the latest updates are installed and that your entire network is safeguarded by the most up-to-date malware and virus protection.

In addition to our Microsoft expertise, we are also recognised as the leading Apple Mac specialist in London and are committed to supporting Apple products.

Cyber Security consultancy

We can advise on and implement a host of Cybersecurity measures to safeguard your business’ applications, software, hardware and data from a range of online threats. From Antivirus software and firewalls to access management and web filtering, our expertise in the field of online security will add resilience to your business’ cyber defences and help you uphold your data protection obligations.

Additionally, with our threat monitoring and reporting tools, we can help you understand the sources of cyber threats, allowing preventative action to be taken to safeguard your network.

Other Services

We offer a range of other services in addition to our core offering.

Our relocation service takes the stress out of the logistical complexity of an office move.  With the provision of a dedicated IT relocation manager, we will take care of everything – backups, security, hardware installation, dealing with contractors etc. – ensuring your move is a smooth and stress-free experience.

In addition to the ongoing support services we also offer project management and consultancy services.  Whether you want to migrate services to the cloud, upgrade hardware, install telephony infrastructure or manage data more efficiently, you can be sure that our project consultancy will keep you on track with solutions that are a custom fit for your business.  We work with a variety of sectors – creative industries, banking, finance, hospitality, Law, retail and HR – and as such we have developed an understanding of the unique and often ‘sector-specific’ challenges that businesses face.  We employ this understanding when working with our clients to ensure we consistently deliver solutions that meet their needs and the unique operational challenges they encounter.

Lastly, as a ‘Cyber Essentials’ accredited IT company, data protection and security is at the core of everything we do.  We are well versed in the complexities of the EU’s GDPR legislation (soon to be adopted into UK law post-Brexit), and can help to ensure that your business is GDPR compliant using a range of strategies such as the implementation of Data privacy policies and introducing Cybersecurity procedures.

 

We’re Cloudscape

At Cloudscape, we know what technology means for your business.  While some IT companies live on cloud-nine, we are very much grounded and realise that for many firms IT is a vehicle for their business and not the destination itself.  We only deliver solutions that will get results and instead of dazzling our customers with jargon and shiny, new products at every opportunity we focus on plain-English guidance and an efficient, friendly and reliable support service that your business can have confidence in.

Cyber attack forces Aussie beer giant Lion to shut operations

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Australian brewery giant Lion announced Wednesday that it suffered a major cyberattack that forced it to shut down its IT systems, resulting in a disruption to the supplies of beer to suppliers and customers.

The lion is Australia’s largest brewer, brewing popular beer brands such as Corona, Budweiser, Guinness, and Becks as well as local brands such as XXXX GOLD, Tooheys, Speights, Steinlager, Lion Red and Brown. Owned by Japanese brewery Kirin Holdings, Lion faces stiff competition from Carlton & United Breweries (CUB) which is owned by Belgian brewery company Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev).

A statement issued by Lion on Wednesday suggested that its IT systems were still down even though the company was engaging cybersecurity specialists to diagnose the attack and work on a recovery plan. It said it had introduced a number of manual systems to continue to take orders and ship products to networks.

“We are working through the impacts. There is no evidence to date of any data breaches, but we are still investigating every aspect of this major incident. We recognise that this is not perfect and it is impacting our customers. We are doing everything possible under the circumstances.

“We have teams working around the clock to bring our systems back online safely. Again, we apologise for the inconvenience this has caused our suppliers, customers and our broader supply chain. We appreciate your patience and support during this challenging time. We are thankful to our team for responding so quickly, using the latest advanced tools to return systems safely as soon as possible,” Lion said.

“This attack could not have come at a worse time for Lion, particularly for our valued pub and club customers who are in the very early stages of recovery following the COVID-19 closures. They are in the early stages of rebuilding, restocking and reengaging their staff and in New Zealand are able to operate with no restrictions for the first time in months following the move to COVID-19 Alert Level 1 this week. This has been the most devastating time on record for the hospitality industry.

“Throughout the COVID shutdown, we were able to continue to brew beer safely, meaning we have a good supply of product for the time being. In saying that, this attack has impacted crucial aspects of the brewing process. We operate multiple large-scale breweries, which are heavily reliant on IT infrastructure,” it added.

The cyberattack comes not long after Lion entered into an agreement with China Mengniu Dairy Company to sell its dairy and drinks business for $600 million to the Chinese dairy giant, 16% of whose shares are owned by COFCO, a Chinese government-owned food company.

 

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.teiss.co.uk/

Five Tips to Secure Office 365

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If you’re moving to the Microsoft cloud, you’re not alone: Office 365 adoption continues to increase, with 180 million monthly active users. But while migrating your data to the cloud offers numerous collaboration and productivity benefits, it can also pose data protection and compliance challenges.

Here are five best practices you can follow to keep your data safe and accessible in Office 365.

 

  • Enforce least privileged access to SharePoint Online

Least privilege – ensuring each user only has access to the data they need to do their job – is simple in theory but can be difficult to execute. Start by organising user accounts into groups with similar job functions, and then grant data access permission in Office 365 to these groups. Keep things simple: never allow individual user accounts on access control lists (ACL) in Office 365.

IT is often responsible for making data access changes on behalf of users. It’s inconvenient and adds to their workload. Instead, assign a data owner, or a group owner, as the gatekeeper of each group’s membership (and, in turn, the group’s data access). The group owner can approve new group members and audit the group on a regular basis.

 

  • Classify sensitive data in SharePoint Online

You must scan and identify the data that lives in Office 365 for personally identifiable information (PII), data that falls under the constraints of GDPR, and confidential information, such as intellectual property, and other kinds of information that could result in a fine or competitive disadvantage, or put you at risk. After identifying files with sensitive information, ensure they are locked down to least privilege and labelled so your security tools can handle that data appropriately.

 

  • Prevent downloads from unmanaged devices

You must keep your team data in-house as much as possible. One way to do this is to prevent downloads to devices that your IT team doesn’t manage. If you have the appropriate authorisation, viewing the data in a browser from an unmanaged system is okay if you have the link and approval of the group owner.

 

  • Minimise and audit external sharing

When users create sharing links in Office 365, they might grant anyone with the link permission to access the file. Those links can get stolen, intercepted or potentially brute-forced to allow access to those files, or even folders.

You must prevent users from creating folder-sharing links that access multiple files. If a user must access files owned by another group, they should request access from the Group Owner.

Limit external sharing to only non-sensitive files. If you must share sensitive files with third parties, add them as guests in your Azure AD, and grant them appropriate access that way. Because they are guests and listed in the group membership, group owners will audit the list and remove any extra users when appropriate.

Finally, be sure to set all user-created links to expire. While this means that your users might need to generate multiple links to collaborate on a file, it also means you effectively and continuously remove risk.

 

  • Monitor SharePoint Online

Lastly, monitor Office 365 for data breaches by insiders and outside attackers by tracking file and folder activity, group membership changes, admin activity, and more. Correlate network traffic with monitored data to detect possible cyber-attacks in progress.

Varonis monitors Office 365 to protect your data in the Microsoft Cloud. You can classify your Office 365 data and more to identify your sensitive data. You can build a complete workflow to approve, deny and manage access to your data that makes the group owners the true keepers of their data. Varonis creates individual user behaviour baselines to detect abnormal Office 365 activity that indicates a potential insider or external 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.teiss.co.uk/

Covid-19 – IT support expectations

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Covid-19 and the subsequent lockdown has had a profound effect on all our lives and presented huge challenges to businesses great and small. Many businesses have been forced to close, and many of those able to continue trading have been forced to adapt-to-survive by adopting new technology and ways-of-working to facilitate remote operations.

While the crisis has affected all businesses to some extent, it is fair to say that the IT sector is better equipped than many to deal with the challenges posed by working from home and the need to keep physical contact to a minimum.  It is therefore fair to expect a certain level of service of your IT support provider despite the challenges posed by the pandemic.  This article reviews some of the expectations you should continue to have, and allow you to consider areas where your IT provider might be falling short.

 

So, what should I continue to expect in terms of IT support?

Uninterrupted maintenance and timely support when it’s needed.  Proactive systems maintenance should continue as before.  If your team are logging more support tickets than usual this may be a sign your IT provider isn’t being proactive, resulting in a greater number of issues arising.

Similarly, you should expect your provider’s Helpdesk to be manned and operational when you expect it.  Your IT support provider should continue to be responsive to support tickets, and while some delay in terms of resolution times may be acceptable due to increased demand, you shouldn’t be waiting days for simple issues to be resolved.

Consultancy and Appropriate/cost-efficient solutions.  If working from home is a new concept for your business (as it will be for many) then the transition could prove fairly stressful and daunting.  It’s important that your IT provider is able to guide you through the process and propose solutions that are appropriately scaled and cost.

Solutions should be realistic in terms of cost, but also shouldn’t be so compromised that your business isn’t able to operate effectively.  For example, if your business is ‘data heavy’ you may want to enable easy access to files through either remote access to your Office Network or by introducing a Business-Grade Cloud storage solution.

Similarly, if another priority is communication – both within your business and with clients and potential clients – your IT provider should be able to propose and implement solutions that enable video conferencing and perhaps the continued use of your office phone system by setting up cloud-based VoIP.

Ultimately, your support provider should know your business well enough and also know the technology well enough to provide solutions that are a good fit for your operation.

Solutions that are secure and compliant.  Whether you are required to follow industry-specific codes of conduct and regulation or you fall under the all-encompassing scope of GDPR, ensuring that you maintain data security and operate compliantly is as important now as ever.  The FCA, for example, stated that companies should ‘take all reasonable steps to meet their regulatory obligations,” in a statement before lockdown began.  You should expect your IT provider to only propose solutions that allow you to meet any regulatory obligations you currently have.

The use and storage of data is among the most common compliance considerations for businesses.  Your IT provider should be able to provide your team with secure, functional devices such as laptops or tablets.  They should ensure that such devices are backed up, maintained and run adequate anti-malware protection.  You may also want to consider remote device and application management to ensure access to data is tightly controlled – particularly relevant if you intend to allow staff to use their own devices.  Your provider should be able to talk you through the options available to you.

A Disaster recovery plan.  Any IT support company worth their salt should be able to explain how they’ll recover your data in the event of a disruptive event such as a cyber-attack or device damage/theft.  Ask your provider how they would recover your important files, databases, applications etc if such an event were to occur while your team are working remotely.

The above list is not exhaustive by any means but it does provide a basis from which to evaluate your IT provider’s performance through the Covid-19 crisis.  Many businesses outsource their IT for peace of mind, believing that their IT provider will act as a safety net to their business when disaster strikes.  Therefore, if your IT provider is falling well short of your expectations at the moment you should ask yourself whether they can be trusted to look after your business in the future.

 

We’re Cloudscape

At Cloudscape, we know what technology means for your business.  While some IT companies live on cloud-nine, we are very much grounded and realise that for many firms IT is a vehicle for their business and not the destination itself.  We only deliver solutions that will get results and instead of dazzling our customers with jargon and shiny, new products at every opportunity we focus on plain-English guidance and an efficient, friendly and reliable support service that your business can have confidence in.

Hackers steal secrets from US nuclear missile contractor

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Hackers have stolen confidential documents from a US military contractor which provides critical support for the country’s Minuteman III nuclear deterrent, Sky News has learnt.

After gaining access to Westech International’s computer network, the criminals encrypted the company’s machines and began to leak documents online to pressure the company to pay extortion.

It is unclear if the documents stolen by the criminals include military classified information, but files which have already been leaked online suggest the hackers had access to extremely sensitive data, including payroll and emails.

There are also concerns that Russian-speaking operators behind the attack could attempt to monetise their haul by selling information about the nuclear deterrent on to a hostile state.

Court documents in the US allege that Russian cyber criminals with a financial motivation have collaborated with the intelligence services in order to steal classified government documents.

A spokesperson for Westech confirmed to Sky News that the company had been hacked and its computers encrypted, and that investigations to identify what data the criminals had managed to steal were ongoing.

The company is involved with the nuclear deterrent as a sub-contractor for Northrup Grumman, providing engineering and maintenance support for the Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles.

 

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://news.sky.com/

Covid 19 – Is your IT support provider failing to deliver?

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The Covid-19 crisis has presented considerable challenges to most businesses.  For some it has meant having to close completely, while others have had to overcome severe operational challenges as they make every effort to maintain some sort of normal service to their clients.

With the recommended advice being to work from home wherever possible, many businesses have closed their offices and relied on the guidance and support of their IT provider to enable secure and effective remote operations.

Therefore, it is now more important than ever that you have an IT provider you can rely on. Your provider should continue to offer the same quality of support and maintenance you expect of them, but they should also have been able to help carry your business through this period of uncertainty by proposing and implementing new solutions that are fit for purpose and economically viable.

This article should help you consider whether or not your IT provider is doing enough to help your business through the crisis. Listed below are a few things to look out for.

 

Knowledge and Skills gaps

The upheaval and forced change caused by the crisis is a test for IT providers.  While many providers cope well in their day-to-day provision of IT services, they have now been forced to think on their feet and come up with new and inventive solutions for their clients which for some may lay bare knowledge and skills gaps.  If your provider is struggling to implement changes and you sense they are learning as they go this could indicate inexperience or a lack of continuous training and staff development. Technology never stops evolving and as a result IT companies should ensure that their staff are familiar with the latest developments so that they can deliver the most up-to-date solutions to their clients.

When you are looking for an IT provider don’t be afraid to ask about their experience, qualifications, accreditations and even things like client testimonials.  You may also want to consider whether they invest properly in staff training development, as conscientious firms will pay attention to this!  Lastly, while there are no doubt many capable young firms you shouldn’t be afraid to ask how long a provider has been in business for, as long-lived firms tend to be long-lived for good reason.

Failure to meet guaranteed response times

Pay particular attention to how long it’s taking your provider to register your request for support.  While not all companies offer response time guarantees they will likely have target figures so that their clients know roughly how quickly requests will be dealt with.  While support request has been higher than usual in the wake of lockdown restrictions being applied you should still have reasonably high expectations on this; after all ‘response time’ only refers to the time taken to acknowledge a support request, not actually resolve it.  Response times may vary depending on the level of support you have agreed with your provider and the level of priority assigned to different support requests but if you have been with your provider for a reasonable length of time you’ll likely know what to expect.

Failure to meet response time pledges or expectations may be a sign of an under-resourced helpdesk, a lack of organisation or it may be indicative of false promises that the company is not serious about sticking to.

Lax security Practices

Businesses generally assume that their IT provider applies the highest standards when it comes to security as ‘reducing risk’ is cited as a common reason for outsourcing IT in the first place.  The assumption of good security, however, can be dangerous, as assumptions often are, so it is important to know what to look out for to ensure that your provider considers security a top priority.

You might want to consider whether your provider holds ‘cyber essentials’ accreditation and whether they operate on the basis of a ‘no trust’ policy (whereby all individuals within and outside an organisation are considered a potential threat to security).  You should also be confident in your provider’s approach to preventative maintenance and backups.  Effective update and patch management will help safeguard against some forms of malware that exploit weaknesses in software, and regular backups will safeguard your files against attack provided that files are backed up in multiple locations.

They won’t accept blame

There is a certain amount of shared responsibility between IT providers and their clients, as no single party is fully responsible for ensuring systems run smoothly and that data is kept secure.  It’s your responsibility to take on board advice given to you by your provider and act in good faith, and it is their responsibility to ensure the solutions they implement pose an acceptably low level of risk to you and your business.

This relationship can be tested however when one party makes a mistake and fails to accept responsibility for it or blames the other party.  If your provider has a tendency to do this it may be time to look elsewhere for an IT partner who’ll treat you and your business with more respect.

You’re not learning anything

Your IT provider should function as a sort of ‘Tech guru’ in some capacity to your business.  Many businesses outsource their IT to tap into the expert guidance and knowledge of IT companies, seeing it as an opportunity to adopt new technology and learn while doing so.  If your provider leaves you to figure things out on your own and seems unwilling to provide proper guidance then it could be a sign that they don’t value their relationships with their clients.

They aren’t commercially savvy

For many businesses, IT is just a means to an end: a tool for managing client relationships and increasing revenue.  It’s therefore important that your IT provider has some understanding of how a particular Tech solution will affect your business’ performance and the implications for things like sales and financial performance.  If your provider never explains technology in the context of your business or businesses in your sector more generally and calls routinely sound like a sales pitch, it could signal that they don’t know your business very well and/or don’t understand your sector.

Poor Proactive maintenance

Reactive IT companies resolve problems after they have occurred whereas proactive IT companies monitor systems to anticipate issues before they arise, leading to less downtime and increased productivity.  You want the latter! Reactive IT support is a sign that your provider doesn’t have adequate insight into the ‘end-user experience’ either because they don’t have the tools in place for monitoring or because they aren’t actively carrying out preventative maintenance.  A proactive company, on the other hand, has the capability to tackle issues before they arise using monitoring tools and will be able to resolve issues often without you realising anything has taken place.

If your staff are logging an excessive number of tickets this could be a sign that preventative maintenance isn’t happening.  You might also want to ask your provider if they use a monitoring platform.

It’s understandable that IT support may not be your primary concern at the moment, however, the current crisis provides a valuable opportunity to evaluate your IT provider’s performance to determine whether they have what it takes to safeguard your business against cyber threats and the possibility of future crises.

 

We’re Cloudscape.

We believe you should have the best technology 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 you’re not getting the most from your IT Provider, please get in touch.