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Tag Archive for: News Posts

How can the cloud industry adapt to a post-COVID world?

in Cyber Security, IT Tips

One of the unexpected silver linings to the global coronavirus crisis has been the rapid growth the cloud industry has enjoyed. The shift to remote working during the various lockdowns that have taken place over the course of 2020, was largely, if not entirely, facilitated by cloud services. This has meant that while other sectors have struggled and there has been an overall economic downturn, cloud companies have performed relatively well financially.

Although they wouldn’t want to characterise the past few months as profiting from the pandemic, the likes of Zoom and Microsoft Teams have surged in usage and revenue, with the latter surpassing 44 million users as early as March.  This period has also accelerated many digital transformation projects, with engineers more than capable of carrying out projects at pace and scale, including the traditionally lethargic public sector. This success, however, has been driven entirely by the effects of the pandemic, forcing the industry to question whether, and how, it can adapt once their services are no longer as highly sought after.

 

Shifting sands

While we all rejoiced at the news that a potential COVID-19 vaccine may be available for distribution before the end of the year, shares in a handful of companies dropped sharply in response, including at least 15% reduction in the valuation of Zoom.

Whether things go back to the way they were, or cloud companies continue to play a more pivotal role than ever, is yet to be determined. For independent cloud consultant Danielle Royston, the goal of going ‘back to normality’ in 2021 is misplaced. “There’s no point wasting time and energy trying to return to the halcyon days of pre-COVID,” she says. “Let’s focus instead on some of the positive ‘disruptions’ we’ve seen this year. In all the companies I’ve been at, I’ve promoted – and in some cases fully converted to – remote working. I saw this as the inevitable direction that work and society was going, as the cloud computing tools were already there. And it makes sense: A better quality of life for employees, ease of collaboration, cutting the costs of business travel.”

This is a trend that Tom Wrenn, cloud investment expert and partner at private equity firm ECI Partners, predicts will continue well into next year, telling IT Pro that COVID-19 forced many companies into rapidly adopting cloud-based operations. These, driven by government-enforced lockdowns, allowed them to continue operating remotely. “Now, having done a basic shift to cloud-based systems,” he adds, “2021 will be the year of full cloud adoption, with businesses starting to optimise all its benefits; for example, data analytics and AI. If rapid investment was needed in 2020, next year businesses will want to see a return on that investment and will expect to see more from their cloud computing providers.”

 

Remoting-in

Although the recent transition to remote working is a trend sparked by COVID-19, the consensus is that it’s the beginning of a wider cultural shift. Former IBM boss Ginni Rometty is among the latest to suggest as much, claiming mass remote working will continue in some form as part of a broader hybrid model in future. This may involve companies keeping some physical presence while establishing the infrastructure and equipment to allow workers to work remotely as and when desired.

Cisco CTO for UK and Ireland, Chintan Patel, agrees, telling IT Pro that remote working gained widespread acceptance during COVID-19, even in organisations where it was unthinkable before. This means cloud and software as a service (SaaS) tools will continue to remain a crucial part of many setups, even though businesses will mostly return to a form of ‘hybrid’ model. “For remote working, cloud plays a central role; think secure cloud-based collaboration, accessing cloud-based business applications, and extending the security perimeter to thousands of devices,” he explains. “It’s important to note, though, that cloud-based consumption models are not limited to remote working only. As to those returning to the offices, we see technology can help make the workplace more secure and efficient. As and when companies prepare for a return to office, they also need to optimise their space, address worker concerns about sanitation and social distancing and plan how to communicate policies and information clearly.”

Technology will play a major part in instigating the changes needed in future, with a key role to play for many of the firms that have enjoyed success during the pandemic. While demand for software such as video conferencing platforms may not be as sky-high as it was at the beginning of the pandemic, Wrenn argues the next big step is how cloud companies can eat further into the market share enjoyed by the traditional telephone industry. “More and more businesses are using Microsoft Teams or Zoom to interact,” he explains, “when previously they would have used conference lines or even called a person directly due to it being more convenient. Cloud providers need to think about how they can make the most of this opportunity as the way in which people interact changes.”

 

To infinity and beyond

To some extent, we should all consider ourselves lucky the global pandemic happened when it did, given that cloud computing has only in recent recently become as advanced as it is now. Thus, rather than ‘profiting from the pandemic’, this period has been the making of the industry. After all, “cloud storage, processing, and compute facilities are already set up, and ready to expand easily and automatically, as and when enterprises need,” according to Royston, who claims this wouldn’t have been the case ten to 15 years go. “It would’ve been an epic failure and caused even more disruption and long-term damage to global economies. This year, white-collar workers being able to quickly adapt to working from home in their millions is part of what’s helped many sectors stay afloat.  And it’s because of the investment and ongoing work of hyperscalers over the past few years that’s meant businesses can support workers in doing this.”

Connectivity, too, will continue to grow as organisations’ reliance SaaS tools increases too, Patel adds, with firms expecting more from these companies beyond provision. With cloud infrastructures becoming increasingly diverse, especially with applications adding more layers of complexity, businesses will be looking to strengthen their infrastructure. This will be achieved by gaining deeper visibility across their IT estates, ensuring workloads have continuous access to required resources and running systems that connect and protect at scale – from on-prem to hybrid cloud configurations. This is in addition to using technologies such as machine learning to give customers tools to manage their ever-growing data lakes. This is where providers can step in to guide customers on their migration journeys

As such, the greatest challenge facing cloud providers, in light of the above, will largely be customer retention, according to Tom Wrenn. “If we take online meeting services as an example, historically businesses would have had to invest in a service, such as [Cisco] WebEx, which is often costly and comes with a lot of equipment,” he says. “Today, however, businesses are using Zoom and Teams for this and can just turn services on and off with little upfront investment. This means that customers aren’t locked into providers in a way they once were. As a result, cloud computing providers will need to over-deliver for their clients, retaining a high level of customer service as well as ensuring that service levels don’t decline as they undergo a huge period of growth.”

 

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.itpro.co.uk

https://cloudscapeit.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/happy-woman-with-laptop-working-at-home-or-office-PEH6BFS.jpg 800 1200 Mike Casey https://cloudscapeit.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/cloudscape_logo_white.png Mike Casey2020-12-16 14:12:242020-12-16 14:19:29How can the cloud industry adapt to a post-COVID world?

Twitter Fined Half a Million Dollars for Privacy Violation

in Cyber Security, IT Tips

Twitter has been fined over half a million dollars for violating European Union data protection laws in the first EU-wide privacy case.

The EU’s chief data watchdog today announced that it has issued an administrative fine of 450,000 euros ($547,000) to the social media titan for being too slow to notify Android phone users located across the EU of a data breach that threatened their privacy.

A further finding of the investigation into the breach by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) was that Twitter failed to adequately document the security incident.

The DPC’s investigation into the incident commenced in January 2019 following receipt of a breach notification from Twitter. On Tuesday, the DPC stated that Twitter “infringed Article 33(1) and 33(5) of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in terms of a failure to notify the breach on time to the DPC and a failure to adequately document the breach.”

Under EU data protection rules, it is a requirement to report a breach within 72 hours of discovery.

The commission described the not insignificant financial penalty levied on the American company as “an effective, proportionate and dissuasive measure.”

According to the Binding Decision of the Board, the data breach arose from a bug in Twitter’s design that caused the protected tweets of Android device users to become unprotected without their consent if users changed the email address associated with their Twitter account.

The bug, which affected 88,726 EU and EEA users between September 2017 and January 2019, was traced back to a code change made on November 4, 2014. It was discovered on December 26, 2018, by the external contractor managing Twitter’s bug bounty program.

Referencing the significance of the Twitter inquiry, the DPC stated: “The draft decision in this inquiry, having been submitted to other Concerned Supervisory Authorities under Article 60 of the GDPR in May of this year, was the first one to go through the Article 65 (‘dispute resolution’) process since the introduction of the GDPR and was the first Draft Decision in a ‘big tech’ case on which all EU supervisory authorities were consulted as Concerned Supervisory Authorities.”

 

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/

https://cloudscapeit.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/computer-coding-shoot-P84MWYU.jpg 800 1200 Mike Casey https://cloudscapeit.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/cloudscape_logo_white.png Mike Casey2020-12-16 14:04:342020-12-16 14:09:03Twitter Fined Half a Million Dollars for Privacy Violation

Spotify Resets Passwords After Leaking User Data to Partners

in Cyber Security, IT Tips

Spotify has been forced to issue a password reset for users after admitting that their information was exposed to some of the firm’s third-party business partners.

The music streaming giant said in a customer data breach notification sent to the California attorney general that the privacy snafu was only discovered and fixed after seven months.

“On Thursday November 12, Spotify discovered a vulnerability in our system that inadvertently exposed your Spotify account registration information, which may have included email address, your preferred display name, password, gender, and date of birth only to certain business partners of Spotify,” it explained.

“Spotify did not make this information publicly accessible. We estimate that this vulnerability existed as of April 9, 2020 until we discovered it on November 12, 2020, when we took immediate steps to correct it.”

Spotify said it has contacted all of those partners to ensure they delete the exposed customer information, and has reset the passwords of affected users.

“We have no reason to believe that any unauthorized use of your information has or will occur, however, we urge you to change the passwords of all other online accounts for which you use the same email address and password,” it added.

This is the third security incident affecting the firm in recent months. A few days ago a hacktivist calling themselves ‘Daniel’ hijacked the Spotify for Artists page, posting messages in support of Taylor Swift and Donald Trump.

A few days before that, in late November, security researchers discovered a leaky cloud database containing logins for up to 350,000 Spotify users likely to have been part of a credential stuffing campaign.

Laurence Pitt, technical security lead at Juniper Networks, urged internet users to use a password manager to help them store strong, unique credentials for each online account.

“Many people pay for premium Spotify services and with access to a password, anyone would be able to redirect a subscription for their own use,” he added.

“Password re-use is dangerous because if any of the data from this exposure does fall into the wrong hands, then it will end up in brute-force attack databases providing valid username/password combinations for access to other services.”

 

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/

https://cloudscapeit.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/diverse-computer-hacking-shoot-P9GQEKS.jpg 800 1200 Mike Casey https://cloudscapeit.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/cloudscape_logo_white.png Mike Casey2020-12-16 14:00:142020-12-16 14:02:26Spotify Resets Passwords After Leaking User Data to Partners

Remote work is here to stay — but it will not be cheap or easy

in Cyber Security, IT Tips

Square Enix shifting to permanent remote work makes the transition seem inevitable, but it needs to be embraced for the right reasons

This week, Square Enix’s Japanese operations announced that the remote working arrangements put into place to cope with COVID-19 are being made permanent. It’s unlikely that this will be the last such announcement; many companies around the industry are grappling with the question of what to do regarding remote work, and what the “new normal” after the pandemic will actually look like.

Many employees will be happy to see game companies starting to take this kind of flexible working arrangement seriously. In truth, remote working has been popular with enough staff that it was always going to be extremely hard to go entirely back to the old way of working. The cat’s out of the bag; it’s clear that the industry’s business doesn’t entirely fall apart when people work remotely, and thus convincing everyone to go back to their old style of work was never going to fly.

Moreover, having been forced to do so by COVID-19, a lot of companies are actually seeing benefits from certain aspects of remote work. A certain degree of cruft and overhead has been cut out of working practices — as someone at a major studio told me recently, “after spending years complaining about meetings that could have been emails, we’re actually finding out which meetings really do work as emails” — and while it’s too early to make any sweeping pronouncements about productivity yet, it’s not terribly controversial to suggest that employees who are happy about getting to spend more time with family and relaxing will also be more focused during working hours as a consequence.

These are good reasons to integrate remote working as a key part of how a studio or publishing business functions — employee satisfaction and work-life balance, and improvements to process and productivity. Unfortunately, however, there are also bad reasons out there; and as companies try to figure out how to shift gears from remote work being a crisis response to remote work being a long-term change in workplace policy, the reasons underlying that decision-making process are going to be make-or-break for the medium- to long-term viability of those workplaces.

The worst reason is, unfortunately, one that I hear pretty often: cost-saving. Lots of executives — not just in the games industry but in every other industry you can mention — are starry-eyed at the prospect of downsizing their office space and staffing overheads by moving to a largely remote working style. Some companies have already begun the process, cutting back on office floor-space and shifting what remains over to a hot-desk environment; the notion being that employees largely work from home and just take an available desk to pop their laptop onto when they come into the office.

There is a pretty wide spectrum of ways to implement things like hot-desking, of course, and some are worse than others — the worst I’ve come across thus far was a kind of hot-desking absolutist approach wherein employees didn’t even get lockers or small storage spaces in the office and their departments were billed whenever they used a desk — but the concept could certainly have some limited applications even for game companies.

Again, the problem is motivation. A company that wants to move to hot-desking as a sensible way to use resources to support employees and their projects in a largely remote working environment can probably come up with sensible ways to make it work, even for tricky situations like a game nearing an important milestone. This is likely to see much of that team move temporarily to in-person working, thus annexing a lot of the hot-desk resources and potentially disrupting the work of other teams if there’s no plan to handle such a situation. If a company sees hot-desking merely as a way to cut down on the rent and bills for office space, it’s setting itself up for failure.

Here’s the thing; there’s almost certainly no actual cost saving to moving to a remote work paradigm. In fact, if a company is taking this seriously, it should be budgeting a slightly higher per-employee cost for remote workers than for in-office workers, because keeping staff together in an office effectively combines and discounts a lot of costs that will now be distributed across individual staff members.

Oh, what, you thought that employees would just pay for their own broadband, lighting, heating, in-home office space and high-quality office furniture and equipment? Sure, many staff have been doing just that this year, but this year was a crisis — a one-off, hopefully. If remote work becomes a default way of working, that grace period will quickly expire.

Freelancers get tax deductions to help cover those costs, which they then spread across multiple clients; salaried employees do not, and in many if not most jurisdictions it’s likely that the courts will back them to the hilt when they demand that their employer cover their home office costs. As this kind of working rolls out across many industries, we’ll also likely start to see legislation being proposed in many countries that forces companies to properly pony up for safe, healthy and suitable work environments for their remote employees — and I guarantee that’s going to work out more costly per-head than a regular office.

That doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do; it just means that it’s not going to be a short-cut to cost savings, and it means that planning for remote work needs to be executed from the perspective of productivity and employee satisfaction, not penny-pinching. Moreover, it also needs to take into account thorny questions about workplace culture to which, honestly, no real answers exist just yet.

There has been a tendency as this year has drawn on for some people to get a bit fundamentalist about remote work. Perhaps fearing a return to the old status quo after the pandemic, those who have been enjoying the new arrangement will loudly declaim anyone who questions it. Their enjoyment of the new flexibility — the ability to spend more time with family, to cut out the commute and ultimately to move out of the city and save costs while still living in a larger home, etc. — leads them to assume that this must be what everyone desires, to the point that I’ve heard many people suggesting that the coming decades will see an emptying out of major cities at a grand scale.

I’ll make the actually not terribly bold prediction here that COVID-19, for all that it’s been disruptive, is not going to reverse thousands of years of gradual urbanisation, much of which rather predated widespread office work. Taking full advantage of the flexibility offered by remote work will appeal to a great many people, but for many others city living is actually a pleasure, rather than an evil to be tolerated for the sake of gainful employment. As companies roll out remote working provisions, a cultural divide between those two groups of employees is going to emerge that’s going to need to be handled and managed very closely.

Some staff will stay in close proximity and go to the office often, as much for the social aspects as through necessity for work. Others will take the “remote” aspect of remote working to heart, and appear in the office very infrequently. It will take significant effort and careful management to ensure that those divides don’t solidify into cliques — that remote workers, in particular, don’t find themselves locked out of decision making processes and opportunities. Balancing that against the genuine advantage of having people physically working together and bouncing ideas off one another — essential in many creative processes — will be a very tough problem to solve.

Ultimately, as companies start this process of integrating remote work as a core part of their practices, it’s going to be worth going back to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s comments quite early in the pandemic, when he observed (paraphrasing here) that many firms who had switched to remote work were spending social capital they had no way of recharging.

This has held true through experiences related from many companies that have been trying to figure out remote working this year; old employees who have been colleagues for years fare far better than new staff who struggle to establish social relationships with people they only ever see on Zoom. Teams working on long-running projects with well-established goals do pretty well; teams trying to start new projects grind to a halt as the technology for online collaboration slows or entirely stops effective brainstorming. Combine this with the cost aspects — it won’t be cheap, let alone being a saving — and the trickiness of managing social relationships within a company where some staff are remote and some maintain in-person contact, and you’ve got a very major challenge ahead for this industry and others like it.

Yet in the end, it will be worth doing — and it’s probably unavoidable, because those staff who have had a taste of how effective remote working can be aren’t going to willingly go back to the old paradigm. Remote work will, and must, find a place alongside other styles of work as an established, accepted and well-considered part of how companies function. Those that succeed will be those who approach remote work policies with the right objectives in mind, a sense of flexibility, and a willingness to put in the elbow grease to get these policies and systems to work well for everyone involved.

 

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.moneymarketing.co.uk

https://cloudscapeit.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/successful-young-businessman-at-laptop-working-sit-R5NAY44.jpg 800 1200 Mike Casey https://cloudscapeit.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/cloudscape_logo_white.png Mike Casey2020-12-07 11:42:492020-12-07 11:45:49Remote work is here to stay — but it will not be cheap or easy

Is remote working putting you at regulatory risk?

in Cyber Security, IT Tips

The world has seemed a better place lately, with improved optimism around an effective Covid vaccine. As one expert commented, we are not out of the woods yet but it seems like we are on the right path.

What is becoming more apparent, though, is that, while firms are looking at their return to office plans as various lockdowns come to an end, a pre-March 2020 working environment for the majority in the financial services world is very unlikely.

Discussions we have had over recent weeks indicate most businesses are looking at a hybrid approach, with staff spending two to three days in the office and the balance working from home. The pandemic has had an impact on behaviours and conduct and allowed people to re-evaluate what is important to them.

This year, we have seen quite a few firms change their leadership teams, enrol new recruits and undertake fit and proper assessments on their staff, all via remote technology.

So, how are we managing our businesses in this virtual environment and how do we adapt to the anticipated dual world of office and home?

Bear in mind that, with the first lockdown, no one knew how long it was going to last. Business continuity plans just happened, firms got on with it and by and large, from a pure operational perspective, it worked.

It is only now, as the permanency of remote working becomes the reality, that senior managers are thinking about what risks they are facing.

Let’s start with operational risk. The control and protection of data in remote environments can be very challenging, so we are seeing more firms undertake an impact assessment on how their staff operate day to day.

This is particularly acute if people are sharing accommodation and working in communal places where it is difficult to keep screens locked, or are required to attend meetings when others are in the room.

People risk is another worrying consideration, with the long-term mental and physical health impacts from prolonged isolation very real. Can your team and one-to-one discussions really establish if someone is struggling

Spotting personality or behavioural traits from a screen, as opposed to face to face, is so much more difficult, so managers have had to adapt, become more empathetic, tolerant and prepared to listen. Driving a genuine “speak-up” culture has been the objective of many firms.

The FCA has issued a number of guidance notes on meeting regulatory expectations at this time, topped up with speeches from senior heads reiterating the need for efficient and effective supervision of staff and fair treatment of customers.

We have seen a number of instances where staff have either become stranded overseas or taken the opportunity over the summer months to base themselves abroad.

While such situations may have a personal tax implication, it can pose a dilemma from a regulatory position, particularly if the individual is the money laundering reporting officer or compliance officer, where the expectation is that they would normally be UK based.

Management of these sensitive staff and regulatory matters throw increasing challenges into the mix for those running a business.

Being fair and consistent is key, not only from a wider reputational standpoint but also in how well you are regarded by your people.

Empathy and flexibility now is likely to engender loyalty and hard work for the months to come.

 

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.moneymarketing.co.uk

https://cloudscapeit.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/working-at-home-WJSC5N9.jpg 800 1200 Mike Casey https://cloudscapeit.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/cloudscape_logo_white.png Mike Casey2020-12-07 11:32:582020-12-07 11:42:13Is remote working putting you at regulatory risk?

5 Ways To Make Remote Working Your New And Better Normal

in Cyber Security, IT Tips

The pandemic has changed so much about our lives, including how we work. COVID-19 forced companies to switch to remote working quickly, but as more and more people work from home for more extended periods, many believe it will become the new normal for the way work gets done.

A study by global digital consultancy Publicis Sapient found that remote workers want the flexibility to work from home in some capacity even after offices reopen. Close to 40% of US respondents said they’d prefer to work remotely full-time, and only 16% said they would want to go into the office every day.

But even with reports of greater satisfaction and productivity, remote work is not without its challenges. Distractions at home, isolation from colleagues, difficulty separating work and personal lives, and reduced guidance from managers are a few of the more common problems remote workers face. So here are five ways to help overcome these challenges and make remote working your new and better normal

 

Clearly Defined Physical and Mental Workspaces

Separating your work and home life is one of the biggest remote work challenges. If you never fully disconnect from work, you might also be increasing your risk for burnout.

Ideally, you should have a dedicated workspace to work from home, but only 20% of remote workers have an at-home office.  Instead, most people repurpose a desk in a bedroom or living room, work from a couch, a kitchen table, or anything in-between. The benefit of a clear and dedicated workspace in your home, though, is that you can feel as though you are physically “entering” and “leaving” each day. This separation will help you turn “on” at the beginning of the day and turn “off” when the day is done.

Just as you define your physical workspace, it’s also important to clarify what times you are working and when you’re not. You should also be transparent to team members, your manager, and those around you at home about your hours so you can establish boundaries, reduce distractions, and be more “present” within both your work and home life.

 

Carve Out Time for Transitions

Most people view the lack of a commute as one of the significant benefits of working remotely. In fact, 67% of remote workers feel the time lost each day from commuting and getting ready for work is a drawback of returning to the office. But one overlooked benefit of the daily commute is that it gives your brain time to transition between your home life and the workday. That time you spend in the car or on the train also allows you to mentally prepare for your day before you start or decompress once the workday is over. This extra time is an important buffer to help you make the mental shift each day, so without a physical commute, you still need to create that transition time for yourself. Build a daily habit of listening to music, working out, taking a walk, or any activity that signals to you that you are switching from home to work, and vice versa.

 

Strong Team Communication

Without in-person, real-time office communication with colleagues, communication can feel fragmented, impacting team collaboration, and productivity. Managing your communications through messaging platforms, using document share and collaboration platforms, and video chats for daily connection points are critical to making sure you stay connected, updated, and can handle issues and solve problems as they occur.

 

Regular Connection with Boss

One prevailing fear that many companies had of remote work was that employees would be less productive without constant physical oversight. The good news is that there is strong evidence for the opposite—surprisingly large numbers of employees said they have been able to maintain or even improve their productivity. You want to make sure that you are not out of sight, out of mind, so regular check-ins with your boss serve a few purposes. One is to let them know what you are working on and to receive feedback. Another goal is to recap your accomplishments so that your achievements do not go unnoticed and you remain top-of-mind for new opportunities.

 

Stay Socially Connected

As humans, we are wired for connection. For all of the benefits of working remotely, one of the downsides is the lack of spontaneous brainstorms, lunches, or conversations that occur when you are physically co-located with your colleagues. These human touchpoints reduce isolation, break up the monotony of repetitive tasks, and provides motivation when needed.

A few ways to stay connected with your colleagues is to set aside time for activities such as virtual lunches, social hours, and book clubs. These kinds of social connections are now more important than ever as we continue to navigate and adapt to uncertain times.

 

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.forbes.com/

https://cloudscapeit.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/23.2.jpg 800 1200 Mike Casey https://cloudscapeit.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/cloudscape_logo_white.png Mike Casey2020-11-23 11:16:402020-11-23 11:19:565 Ways To Make Remote Working Your New And Better Normal

How hybrid work models are altering cloud strategies

in Cyber Security, IT Tips

Companies around the globe had to quickly adjust to a new kind of work environment when the Covid-19 pandemic forced a massive shift to remote work. Several months later, organisations and employees around the world are still adjusting to remote and hybrid work business models. In addition to the personal and organisational adjustments that must be made, IT strategies have also been forced to make adjustments.

 

Adjusting to the hybrid workforce

A recent Gallup poll reported that 59% of US workers would like to continue working from home “as much as possible” after the pandemic subsides. And only 41% would return to working at the office as much as they did pre-pandemic. Some companies like Google have said employees will work remotely until next year, and others have said they’ll enact it as a permanent option.

Still, not everyone can work from home – there will always be positions that require a presence in an office or some other work site. And of course, not everyone wants to work from home if given the choice. Research from Barclays found that less than 10% of Americans actually want to work remotely all the time. The more common desire is for flexibility and the option to come into the office a few days a week.

That means a hybrid work approach is likely to continue, in which some people work remotely, and others work in a more traditional environment. As such, companies must shift their security and cloud strategies accordingly

 

The cloud strategy for hybrid work

The pandemic accelerated cloud adoption but the immediacy of the pandemic meant that many companies had to move quickly, sometimes letting security take a back seat to other concerns like agility, productivity and efficiency.

The past several months have seen the acceleration of multi-cloud implementations. In addition to using private clouds, employees working remotely are also accessing applications from public clouds and consuming services delivered from the cloud.

The traditional data centre-server, hub and spoke model has been replaced by the end-user as the centre of focus – sitting on an endpoint on the LAN edge accessing resources in multiple private and public clouds. Hybrid clouds and distributed computing will be standard for the foreseeable future.

Accelerated cloud adoption and the need for branch offices and other remote locations to access multiple clouds is exacerbating the limitations of traditional WAN solutions. Lack of centralised management, complexity, expense and cumbersome implementations are just a few reasons why so many enterprises are adopting SD-WAN for networking and secure access server edge (SASE) for cloud-based integration of networking and security.

The need to move beyond traditional hub and spoke architectures in which back-hauled traffic is bottle-necked at the corporate data centre is highlighting the emergence of hybrid hardware and software defined networks. It’s quite clear that digital infrastructure success requires an integrated network and security approach. In order to achieve business outcomes and deliver enhanced end-user experiences, security and network management must be integrated from the outset to deliver security, as well as network and application performance.

The shift to cloud based resources and emergence of more and more network edges in the LAN, WAN and cloud, has given rise to what Gartner calls SASE, an emerging offering that combines comprehensive network security functions with comprehensive WAN capabilities. Gartner believes that SASE will be foundational to enterprise networking in the next few years. SASE pairs network security functions with WAN networking strategy to support organisations’ dynamic secure access and compute needs. Accelerated multi-cloud adoption is one of the forces driving growth in SD-WAN, SD-Branch and SASE.

Increased complexity is a natural byproduct when a high percentage of an organisation’s workforce suddenly moves to remote working and accesses corporate resources across multiple clouds. Security teams should plan for extending visibility and control across the LAN, WAN and cloud edges. This requires a security platform that is broad, integrated and automated – as well as open to support multiple vendors.

 

The convergence of security and networking

Our notions of work as something we do rather than just a place we commute to and from, has been forever changed by the pandemic. The pandemic has accelerated digital transformation trends – making some form remote work a permanent fixture in organisations of all sizes.

IT leaders must be ready for the long-term effects of the hybrid workforce and how to continue to keep their customers, networks and employees secure. Business outcomes and user experiences are becoming dependent on the standard of Zero Trust and integrated security and networking. This is becoming the foundation for security-driven networking – the convergence of multiple areas of expertise that creates the agility, security and capabilities that today’s organisations need.

 

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News Source: https://cloudcomputing-news.net/

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Top metrics for effective multicloud management

in Cyber Security, IT Tips

When it comes to effectively managing a multicloud environment, there are a ton of network and application metrics that enterprise customers should be watching.

Among enterprises, the trend is toward multicloud environments, which can include workloads running on-premises and in public clouds run by multiple cloud providers such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, IBM/Red Hat, Google Cloud Platform and others. Gartner predicts by 2021, more than 75% of midsize and large organizations will have adopted some form of a multicloud and/or hybrid IT strategy. Likewise, IDC predicts that by 2022, more than 90% of enterprises worldwide will be relying on a mix of on-premises/dedicated private clouds, multiple public clouds, and legacy platforms to meet their infrastructure needs.

“As enterprises increasingly embrace multicloud, they must consider what KPIs [key performance indicators] will best measure their success in managing multicloud environments,” said Briana Frank, director of product management with IBM Cloud.

“There’s a variety of KPIs that can help evaluate success, including financial metrics, such as cost, return on investment, and rate of change in the reduction of total cost of ownership,” Frank said. “However, enterprises should go beyond financial metrics alone and also consider measures of other critical causes for concern, such as downtime caused by outages and security breaches,” Frank added.

Useful KPIs in a multicloud setting include those that measure costs and billing, network and application performance, said Roy Ritthaler, vice president of product marketing in VMware’s cloud management business unit.

 

Financial KPIs

Optimizing multicloud costs and eliminating waste are key goals for IT and lines of business, and metrics should include budget tracking and detailed spend analysis, Ritthaler said.

“They should also provide capabilities to uncover hidden costs, flag anomalies, reallocate cloud spend for showback and chargeback, and provide proactive recommendations to purchase and exchange reservations and savings plans,” Ritthaler said.

Common multicloud KPIs include looking at the cost of all untagged resources, such as databases that might be using resources. Tagged resources can include myriad items such as the owner of a resource, the environment its operating in, and project name, for example. The idea is to most effectively identify, manage and support resources.

Customer experience – the CIO’s perspective

CIOs are uniquely placed to influence or drive customer experience in the increasingly digital business.

Other financial KPIs include a look at the percentage of infrastructure running on demand and the percentage of total bill charged back, Ritthaler said.

 

Security and network KPIs

Visualizing the security posture of the connectivity in a multicloud network is absolutely necessary, as there are too many components to consider individually, Ritthaler said.

“Identifying bad actors or bad security posture is handled in a single tool for monitoring and guarding,” Ritthaler said. “Capabilities include monitoring traffic to detect vulnerabilities and to design app-centric security and generating recommended firewall rules to implement application security.”

Some common KPIs include measuring security incidents per month by team, the number of security lapses, and the time to remediate security violations measured in hours, Ritthaler said.

 

What comes next? Preparing for the future of IT

Security is critical, but so it getting a handle on access policies, managing QoS, and providing consistent measuring capabilities across such a diverse group of systems, said Nabil Bukhari, chief technology officer with Extreme Networks. “Applications are the star of the multicloud show, but getting a handle on network performance metrics – like latency, packet loss– is important too,” Bukhari said.

Additional network-related KPIs include measuring response time, bandwidth usage and throughput.

Network monitoring must include end-to-end network visibility across physical and virtual environments, and it’s built from flow-based traffic monitoring using NetFlow, sFlow and SNMP device monitoring, Ritthaler said.

 

Application performance KPIs

On the applications side, each application will have its own performance metrics to monitor, and it’s important to have tools that can tie these applications to the infrastructure that they’re running on, to deliver an end-to-end picture of the infrastructure.

“Many organizations already have multiple application performance monitoring tools. However, these tools do not provide the end-to-end visibility that you need to troubleshoot over different teams,” Ritthaler said. “Being able to consolidate those tools into a single solution brings teams together when problems occur.”

Ritthaler said some common application KPIs include user experience measurements from APM (application performance management) packages; configured versus used resource consumption (such as CPU and memory); response times; and connection counts.

“Applications tend to spread out over multiple clouds; the path of least resistance will typically be taken. Documentation will fall behind, and this is where automatic discovery is necessary,” Ritthaler said. “Application discovery works over the multicloud architecture to make organizations aware of where their applications are running, who they are talking to, what application dependencies there are, and how they are secured.”

 

Compliance KPIs

Compliance is another area that requires management attention, experts say.

“Compliance KPIs require continuously inspecting cloud-resource configurations and benchmarking them against cloud, industry and custom security and compliance standards. It should track compliance score, violations, and resolution progress,” Ritthaler said.

Customers need to safeguard the health of hybrid and public cloud services using logs and metrics to proactively monitor and troubleshoot issues with native cloud services as they occur and suggest remediation steps, Ritthaler 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.networkworld.com/

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IBM expands the role of its hybrid-cloud security package

in Cyber Security, IT Tips

IBM is expanding the role of its security-software package for hybrid-cloud deployments by improving the gathering of security data collected within customer networks and drawing on third-party threat-intelligence feeds, among other upgrades.

IBM’s Cloud Pak for Security, which features open-source technology for hunting threats and automation capabilities to speed response to cyberattacks, can bring together on a single console data gathered by customers’ existing security point products.

IBM Cloud Paks are bundles of Red Hat’s Kubernetes-based OpenShift Container Platform along with Red Hat Linux and a variety of connecting technologies to let enterprise customers deploy and manage containers on their choice of private or public infrastructure, including AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Alibaba and IBM Cloud.

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“Customers are overwhelmed with point security products—the average customer has more than 50—that make gaining insights and quickly responding to threats and attacks difficult,” said Justin Youngblood, vice president of IBM Security.

Cloud Pak for security was rolled out about a year ago, and a new release expands its integration capabilities to include feeds from data stored and accessed from distributed locations. The system now supports IBM’s Security Guardian system that Big Blue offers to protect databases, data warehouses and big data environments such as Hadoop.

With that information, the security team can determine where sensitive data resides across hybrid-cloud environments, as well as who has access to it, how it is used and the best way to protect it, Youngblood said.

Historically, customers have had different, siloed teams such as security operations management and data management that take care of databases, for example, and getting the information from those two groups to solve problems was slow and difficult, Youngblood said. Cloud Pak for Security coordinates security and data on one console so customers can more quickly remediate problems or define automated responses to threats, Youngblood said.

IBM said that the current Cloud Pak for Security release includes 25 pre-built connections to IBM and third-party data sources as well as 165 case-management integrations which describe out-of-the-box automation and orchestration playbooks to streamline response actions for security teams.

What comes next? Preparing for the future of IT

The new release also includes support for multivendor threat-intelligence databases.  Aside from its own X-Force Threat Intelligence Feed, the platform will also include pre-built integration with  AlienVault OTX, Cisco Threatgrid, MaxMind Geolocation, SANS Internet StormCenter and Virustotal.

“The idea is to help customers get enriched, up-to-date threat information from as many sources as possible so they can accurately and quickly respond to a threat situation,” Youngblood said. He said the continued integration of security intelligence is important as customers tie in more resources from cloud providers and support growing COVID-era remote-network workloads.

IBM said it will also offer a new managed service offering based on Cloud Pak for Security that would offer enterprise customers or other service providers a turnkey platform to support end-to-end threat management.

 

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.networkworld.com/

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The 5 Biggest Cloud Computing Trends In 2021

in Cyber Security, IT Tips

The events of 2020 have turned most predictions for 2021 on their head. Top trends such as artificial intelligence (AI) and the internet of things (IoT) will still define the ways in which tech reshapes our lives in the next year. However, the most significant use cases now involve helping us to adapt and survive in the changing times we are living through.

No trend is more relevant to this than cloud computing. Cloud is the backbone of the data-driven, app-based tech ecosystem that has been vital in helping us manage this change. Everything from contact tracing to home delivery services, remote medicine, and working (and playing) from home has been revolutionized by cloud services.

Throughout 2021, we can expect to see the rate of this change accelerate as more businesses get to grips with adopting cloud models, and delivery of data from the cloud to our devices becomes more integral to our daily lives. Here are some of the ways in which I can see this playing out over the course of 2021:

 

1. Multi-cloud approaches will lead to a breakdown of barriers between providers

Currently, the big public cloud providers – Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and so on – take something of a walled garden approach to the services they provide. And why not? Their business model has involved promoting their platforms as one-stop-shops, covering all of an organization’s cloud, data, and compute requirements. In practice, however, the industry is increasingly turning to hybrid or multi-cloud environments (see below), with requirements for infrastructure to be deployed across multiple models.

What this means is that there are growing calls for the big providers to create bridges between their platforms. This runs contrary to their business models, which are reliant on an ability to upsell greater cloud capacity as well as additional services as their customer’s scale. Adopting a more collaborative approach doesn’t just enable customers to take greater advantage of the fast-growing multi-cloud trend, though. It will also benefit organizations needing to share data and access with partners in their supply chain, which may all be working across diverse applications and data standards. This is also space where we are likely to see growing levels of innovation from startups, creating services that simplify the process of operating between different public cloud platforms.

 

2. AI will improve the efficiency and speed of cloud computing

As far as the cloud goes, AI is a key enabler of several ways in which we can expect technology to adapt to our needs throughout 2021. Cloud-based as-a-service platforms enable users on just about any budget and with any level of skill to access machine learning functions such as image recognition tools, language processing, and recommendation engines. Cloud will continue to allow these revolutionary toolsets to become more widely deployed by enterprises of all sizes and in all fields, leading to increased productivity and efficiency.

Autonomous vehicles, smart city infrastructure, and pandemic response planning are all fields of research where the effects of smarter algorithms delivered through cloud services will be felt. Machine learning also plays a big part in the logistics processes that keep cloud data centres up and running. Cooling systems, networks of hardware, and power usage in these delicate and expensive environments can all be monitored and managed by AI algorithms in order to optimize running efficiency and minimize their impact on the environment. Research and development in this field are likely to continue to lead to new breakthroughs in data centre speed and efficiency.

 

3. Gaming will be increasingly delivered from the cloud, just like music and movies 

Amazon most recently joined the ranks of tech giants and startups offering their own platform for cloud gaming. Just as with music and video streaming before it, cloud gaming promises to revolutionize the way we consume entertainment media by offering instant access to vast libraries of games that can be played for a monthly subscription. During 2020, services were launched by Google, Microsoft, and Nvidia, while Sony’s has been available for several years now. Even though new Xbox and Playstation consoles are being developed, costing around $500, industry experts are predicting that the days when we need to spend hundreds on new hardware every few years to stay at the cutting edge of gaming may be drawing to a close, thanks to the coming-of-age of cloud gaming.

 

4. Hybrid and on-premise cloud solutions grow in popularity

Choosing between a public, private, or hybrid cloud environment has proved challenging for some organizations. Each route offers advantages and disadvantages when it comes to flexibility, performance, security, and compliance. But as cloud ecosystems have matured, many have found there’s no magic one-size-fits-all solution on the shelves. Hybrid or multi-cloud environments, where users pick and choose the individual elements of service providers’ offerings that suit their needs, have grown in popularity, leading to a situation where those providers have begun to reassess their models of delivery.

Amazon and Google, for example, have traditionally been market leaders that relied on selling their customers space on their public cloud platforms, whereas Microsoft and IBM have been more flexible with enabling users to deploy their cloud tools and technologies across their existing, on-premises networks. Now it seems that these providers have woken up to the need for different platforms and approaches within organizations – perhaps utilizing the public cloud to provide content delivery while storing and processing customer data and other controlled information via private or on-premise solutions. There will also be a growing demand for “bare metal” cloud space – raw storage and compute power where businesses can simply “lift and shift” their existing systems into the cloud without having to adapt them to run on pre-installed software or services. The need to consolidate these user requirements will be a driving force behind the direction in which cloud services evolve throughout 2021.

 

5. More of us will be working on Virtual Cloud Desktops

This is basically where the entire environment of our workstation is delivered as a managed cloud service to our laptop or desktop screen where we work. This means that organizations can take advantage of by-the-hour subscriptions for the time their employees spend working at their machines, eliminating the cost of hardware updates and the need to dispose of redundant technology.

Sometimes known as desktop-as-a-service, this model of computing is offered by Amazon via the Workspaces platform and Microsoft with Windows Virtual Desktop. Google also offers functionality through its Chromebook devices. In practice, this can increase efficiency across a workforce by ensuring everyone is using up-to-date, synchronized technology. It also benefits security as all devices can be managed in a centralized way, rather than having to make sure everyone on the network is following best practice. When people join or leave a company, the cost simply scales up as the number of hours spent using the platform increases or decreases. This flexible functionality means virtual desktop services are likely to become increasingly popular in the coming years.

 

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.forbes.com/

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