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Microsoft 365, previously called Office 365, is a cloud-based way of working that aims to give businesses the tools to be productive from anywhere. Fortunately,
Microsoft 365, previously called Office 365, is a cloud-based way of working that aims to give businesses the tools to be productive from anywhere. Fortunately,
Below is an infographic summarising the key stats, predictions and facts on Cyber Security. Here are the key facts on cyber security for 2022 Cybersecurity
The chances are you are using email for your business. It is a way of life and most of us are completely reliant on email to keep in touch with the customers and suppliers. You might well be asking, what is Business Email and why should I be using it?
From updates to backups, anti virus to website security. What are the cyber security top 10 steps to improve your business security?
One question I get asked more often than not is “what do you use for …” so I have decided that I should write a series of short articles on the software I use and why I use it to solve various problems within the business and beyond.
2FA stands for 2 Factor Authentication. If you’ve used bank software or accountancy systems you are probably familiar with the concept. You might even have a bank fob somewhere, or the Google Authenticator application on your phone.
By now most business owners worth their salt have heard about the new GDPR. The really savvy ones might have even started putting measures in place to get ready for it. Sadly, most of the businesses who fell into that last category are the ‘big businesses’.
Earlier this month, Google once again sent waves through the tech world at their Made By Google event. We saw a lot of new products for the very first time, from a complete revamp of the Pixel phone to a tiny clip on camera that uses Ai to take perfect photos for you. And as dedicated techies, we were of course tuning in live for every second. So without further ado, here’s a roundup of all the snazzy new things Google has in store.
As the awareness of cyber criminals who are targeting businesses increases, so do the measures businesses are taking to protect their most precious asset – their data. But before you go installing extra firewalls and investing in other security solutions, it’s worth finding out exactly where the gaps in your security are, so that you know what solutions to implement. Otherwise, it’s like putting your whole hand in bandages because you cut your finger – overkill and sometimes less effective. That’s where PEN testing comes in.
Even the best concept for a small business won’t go anywhere if the IT supporting it isn’t right. This includes the software you’re using, and more importantly, the hardware it’s running on. But how much hardware does your small business need to invest in? Of course, the specifics of what you need will be different depending on what your business does, but there are a few IT staples that every business needs in order to operate.
We’ve been talking an awful lot about cyber security lately (partly because there have been so many good stories to share with you). So this week, we wanted to go back to our roots and talk about something different. If you’re a small or medium sized business, you’ve probably been advised at some point or another to opt for hosted IT services for your business. You might even use some cloud hosted programmes on a day to day basis. But there is a difference between cloud-based solutions like Dropbox and Google Drive and hosted solutions offered by IT service companies. Today, we want to tell you a bit about what the term ‘hosted services’ means, and what the benefits are to your business.
We’ve all heard the old adage, it’s better to work smarter than harder. And what that means is that you shouldn’t be looking to spend all of your time working your fingers to the bone to achieve your goals, when you could be utilising tools and technologies to help you work more efficiently. Technology is one of the things that has driven this idea, yet is it astounding to us that so many business owners still work 20 hour days when they don’t have to. So to help you work smarter and not harder, we bring you 5 of our favourite efficiency hacks driven by IT.
When you’re a small business owner, you tend to keep a very tight handle on the purse strings while focussing on doing what you do best. But when you’re so consumed with doing the job, planning for your business can often fall by the wayside. One of the most common elements that we see small business owners neglecting is IT and cyber security, either because they don’t have the time, the resources or the knowledge to do it themselves. That’s why we recommend working with an external IT support company like us. But what are the benefits of small business IT support?
Over the last year, Trump has been at the centre of all sorts of scandals, publicity and discord. Despite being elected as the President of the United States, issues still seem to be following in the mans footsteps. Trump has spent his years trying to build up an empire, and this month yet another blow has been struck to damage it. We’re talking, of course, about news of a cyber attack which targeted Trump Hotels, leaving their system open for hackers to plunder for credit card information. But what happened, and what could this mean for the POTUS?
A little while ago, we wrote a blog about IT’s biggest downfall – the people involved. That post talked about the NHS mass email fiasco, and was in itself inspired by 2 IT disasters – some printers in the US that started spewing anti-Semitic messages and a Twitter AI bot who had a meltdown and ‘learnt’ how to be a racist, hate filled internet citizen. I’m not going to tell you any more about those 2 posts, you can go and read them any time you like and have a good giggle. But now, we have another, slightly more serious scenario that has really brought it home to many people just how much of a risk the human factor is. I’m talking, of course, about BA.
So there has been a bit of controversy going around the tech world over the last few weeks. Nothing new there really, there’s always some new cutting edge process or piece of software coming out that causes a lot of discussion. But this time the controversy isn’t about a new system, but a new policy to be rolled out by Google called ‘Funding Choices’. This initiative is due to be rolled out in North America, the UK, Germany, Australia and New Zealand over the next few months, and will require Google users who use ad-blockers to either enable advertising or make a payment to view content without ads. That’s all well and good, but what does it mean in real English?
Ok, I’m going to jump on the bandwagon here, but only because it’s an important thing to address. But let the record show, I feel like I’ve been writing way too much about high profile cyber security breaches recently. The recent ransomware attack on the NHS has stirred up quite a lot of press coverage and concern among the public. It’s also sparked many people and business owners to go back to their systems and make sure they are all up to date with the right security – so in a way the NHS attack has spawned some good things. But, you know, also it’s a pretty nasty thing to happen to one of our countries greatest institutions. So let’s look at what happened, and why.
Earlier this month, Google sent users into shock when it reported that a phishing scam had been targeting their users. The emails were sent out to millions of users, claiming to be from Google itself and doing a very good impression of the emails automatically generated by Google when someone shares a Google Doc with you. The links in the email, if clicked (don’t), took users to a genuine Google page asking for widespread permissions across your Google accounts. If victims allowed this request, it granted hackers access to a vast amount of personal data stored within the accounts. From examination, hackers can only gain access if you grant these permissions, but if you click on the link in the email it does sent it on to everyone in your contacts list, spreading the scam further. So what can we learn from this?
Ok, so this might be a topic we’ve covered before (just a few times)! But it is a message that bears repeating, not least because there has been an excellent example of why users need to install security and software update patches when they come out. We know they can be a nuisance, and they always pop up when you’re in the middle of something really important, but they are there for a reason.
Meet Betty. Betty works in the finance department of Teapots Inc., and is responsible for managing payments to their suppliers. Last Tuesday she received an email from his boss, saying that a new supplier needed paying urgently to help secure a very important teapot contract. The sum was £50,000, and it needed to happen as soon as possible because he was on holiday and didn’t want to worry about it anymore. This all seemed legitimate to Betty. She knew her boss was on holiday, as she had seen photos of his Caribbean getaway posted on Facebook just yesterday. The email it came from looked genuine, so she had no reason to believe it wasn’t really her boss.
Cyber security is one of the biggest growing concerns in the UK business world. While many organisations have been making the effort to get smart recently, the bad guys have always been one step ahead. Studies of business cyber security has shown that current improvements, while taking great steps forward, have not been keeping pace with the growing sophistication of motivated hackers. So how could you possibly keep up?
So I know we touched on scams and viruses of 2017 very recently, but once again the cyber criminals are ahead of the curve. Over the last 2 weeks we have seen a spate of particularly slick looking scam emails, which aim to gather your credit card information through fear. To help you avoid this and similar phishing emails that around doing the rounds right now, we’ve captured some images and information about how it works, and how to combat it.
As business IT support specialists, around 70% of what we do every day is troubleshooting. From helping guide users through basic set up wizards for software they’ve downloaded to going in and working out why the systems we designed have started misbehaving, troubleshooting is a big part of what we do. But sometimes, we find no good reason for the problem or the new behaviour, and in these situations, we become convinced that computers really do have minds of their own. Thankfully this doesn’t happen too often, or we would be worried computers are going to take over the world! But in the same vein, here are a few examples of what we mean by ‘troubleshooting’.
It’s a new year, a new you, and a new landscape for cyber criminals who want to steal your data. Every year the cybercrime landscape is constantly changing, with IT professionals playing a permanent game of cat and mouse with the criminals, determined to stay one step ahead. While I can’t speak for the whole of 2017, there are already some worrying new scams and strains of malware ravaging computers and networks alike in 2017. And we’re only in month 2! To help you avoid falling foul of these issues, I’ve collected some of the more devious or dangerous scams, malware and issues that are already plaguing 2017. Here’s what you need to look out for…
If you’re a Lloyds customer, you may have noticed a few issues with your online banking around 2 weeks ago. Think back. Maybe it was a bit slow logging on, or possibly you weren’t able to access it at all, instead being told to try again later. Well, the good news is it wasn’t anything to do with your internet or you forgetting the passwords. The bad news is that the issues came as the result of a targeted DOS attack on the Lloyds group.
I know what you’re thinking – every year the tech bods roll out hundreds of predications for wat’s going to be hot the next year. We did it ourselves last year, predicating the rise of robotics and more adaptive, naturalised security measures. But now, we tear our eyes away from the smoking ruins of 2016 and turn them towards a more hopeful, prosperous 2017. So, what do we think will be happening this year in the world of technology and IT?
Wow, where did 2016 go! It seems like only yesterday we were writing up our predictions for where the tech world would go in 2016, and yet here we are on the brink of another new year. So, to match our post from around this time last year, we wanted to revisit the tech trends to rule 2016 (maybe), and see if any of them came true.
Security is a bit of a hot button topic this year, with lots of high profile businesses falling prey to hacking of their drives and servers. But all businesses have data to store, so what do you use? Cloud storage is now a go-to option for most businesses, as it offers a built in backup for disaster recovery purposes. But which option is your most secure, and what will work best for you?
Way back in April (I know, it’s a fair way back to remember) we wrote about the importance of having a human involved in your IT. This came off the back of 2 disaster stories at the time – some printers in the US that started spewing out anti-Semitic messages and a Twitter AI bot who had a meltdown and ‘learnt’ how to be a racist, hate filled citizen of the internet. We still very much agree with our sentiment at the time. Technology should never be left to self-programme or self-govern – that’s how Terminators are born! But sometimes humans can also cause more problems when they solve when it comes to IT. Case in point, last week’s fiasco at the NHS.
We’ve talked before about a particularly nasty strain of malware know as ransomware – a programme that ‘locks’ your files and only allows access once you pay a fee. Ransomware is very difficult to detect and get rid of, and paying it usually won’t work either – it will simply lock up again the next time you start your computer. But now there’s a new strain of ransomware on the block – and for a lot of business owners it’s their worst nightmare. Instead of revoking access to your files, this virus threatens to publish your files to the Internet if you don’t pay up.
As long as there have been businesses, there have been insurances. In today’s market being insured is an absolute essential, but the degree of coverage and type of insurance can change depending on your field. But now that cybercrime and digital theft are becoming such a prevalent problem, a new type of insurance has swaggered onto the block to help out smaller businesses. Cyber liability (or cyber security) insurance aims to combat the potentially devastating effects of a cyber-attack.
It’s not been a good month for communications giant TalkTalk. You might remember the incident last year, when TalkTalk lost hundreds of thousands of customer records and data to hackers who took advantage of their lax security measures. But that wasn’t the end of it, as TalkTalk customers were dealt another blow in October – they’d been hacked again. This ‘significant and sustained’ cyberattack did a lot of damage to Talk Talk’s brand, one they’ve been desperately trying to recover from ever since. But earlier this month the UK Independent Commissioner’s Office fined TalkTalk £400k for the security failings that allowed this attack to happen.
Business owners today are facing a lot of pressure to get their business ‘on the cloud’. Whether it’s because the barriers to access and costs are so low for setting up, because the cloud is the only thing that can cope with their explosion of growth or simply the fact that they read somewhere that they should. Whatever the reason, more and more businesses are adopting the cloud (or hybrid cloud) in a rough and ready way that fits their business needs about as well as a badly tailored suit. So instead of jumping into it, we wanted to explain what the ‘hybrid cloud’ solution is and the positive and negative effects it could have on your business.
Does your business use a computer or the Internet? If you’re reading this, the answer is probably yes! Pretty much every business out there now uses technology in some form or another, and yet there are thousands of businesses out there who still do not have any IT policies in place to protect their data. These policies not only help your employees to understand what’s expected and required of them when using technology provided by their employer, but they also protect you by having governance policies in place. For most businesses a complicated set of rules is not needed, and can instead be boiled down to these 5 basic policies.
By now you should all have heard about Office 365 – it’s been around quite a while. In fact, we’ve talked out it and some of its cool hidden features before. You might have even looked at all of the tools and features and decided to give it a go. But there are still businesses out there who aren’t sure how switching to Office 365 could benefit them. Let us clear this up for you – Office 365 can help your employees work together in new and efficient ways, utilising new tools for productivity and embracing a new way of working. Still not sure? Here are a few pros of using Office 365 in your business.
There’s a saying I often hear from customers – ‘a computer is only as smart as the person who programmed it’. For context, this is usually what I hear when things start to go wrong. But the fact is that while this was true in the beginning, computers and applications have come a long way and learnt a lot in the process. Today, it’s the humans who need to keep up with the computers, and in order to do that, we need to understand how they work and how we can use them to improve our work. This month we’ve rounded up 5 of our favourite computer and mobile applications that can boost your productivity, do some jobs for you and make your life a little easier with the click of a few buttons.
One of the first things I hear whenever I say I work in IT support is ‘ooh, my computer is running a bit slowly, can you help me?’ Usually this is a quick and easy fix, and quite often something they could do themselves. Computers start to slow down for many reasons, from malware to old age, but there are a few common reasons why you will be experiencing slow performance from your computer.
You might have seen the slightly terrifying headline from the BBC proclaiming that up to 10 million android phones have been infected with a particularly nasty kind of malware. The malware (christened ‘HummingBad’) generates fake clicks for adverts and therefore click revenue for the advert owners. In fact it’s currently estimated to be making around £232,000 a month from those infected devices. At the moment the majority of the infected phones are in China, but with widespread fear of human diseases being easily spread by travel and trade, it is understandable that this spike in malware has caused some concern for British Android users.
In the early days of your business, IT may have been the simplest thing you had to manage. Many businesses now are starting out with a collection of computers all sharing similar storage, with websites and other hosted solutions all being taken care of by managed hosting providers. But as your business grows, so will your asset footprint and your IT requirements. You start to move beyond a couple of workstations into the world of servers, network devices and other equipment and infrastructure otherwise known as endpoints. So the task of managing and maintaining the needs of larger, sprawling systems becomes a challenge.
When was the last time you checked your phone? Odds are, you did as soon as you read that sentence. Our mobile phones have become an absolute necessity in our lives. They are often the first thing we reach for when we wake up, use them during our breaks, as a go to resource for research and we even use them as a substitute for face to face communication. The average person checks their device 85 times a day, half the time without even realising they are doing it. It’s not surprising then that businesses are starting to embrace this relationship with our mobile devices in order to produce better results for the business. Big companies are seeing fantastic results from embracing mobile technology, but in actual fact it’s the small and medium sized businesses who could really see the benefits.
We throw the term ‘the cloud’ around a lot these days, to the point where it has almost lost meaning to us. If something is in ‘the cloud’ it’s floating in some kind of digital nether space above our heads, almost like real clouds. Cloud computing is something many of us have welcomed into our day to day lives, with our phones and computers often programmed to hook in and back up automatically. But unless you speak techie, how on earth are you supposed to know what the cloud is or how it works? By reading this blog of course.
It’s the final post in our malware extravaganza this month, and this one is designed to help you out should the worst happen. You turn on your computer one day and discover it is infected with malware. This could be a lock out virus, a Trojan that could steal your data or a worm that has left your files ruined. Whatever it is, all you know if that you want it off and sharpish! So here are a few easy steps to get rid of malware and viruses and restore your computer to normal.
Whenever we talk about security you will usually see us throwing the term malware around. But what exactly do we mean by malware? The official definition of the term ‘malware’ is the general term for software which is specifically designed to disrupt or damage a computer system. Its full name is ‘malicious software’ and it is what is says on the box – software with malicious intent. Malware is used to gain access to computers in order to damage them, take them over or gain access to sensitive information without the knowledge of the owner. There are many different types of malware, so in the first of a 2-part series on malware we explore the different types of malware out there and what they do.
Last month we started our epic journey into the world of malware by looking at what exactly malware is. We talked about the types of malware and what they do to your computer if they find their way in. All in all, it was a bit of a scary post. So in this one, we are going to look at various ways of protecting your computer against malware that won’t cost the earth. There are a few different options available to you, but our best advice is to follow every one of the steps below to ensure you are completely protected.
With the biggest cause of problems in IT still being down to basic human error, it’s not surprising that solutions are developed to mitigate the potential for human involvement, and therefore error. After all, what’s the worst that can happen when the human element is bypassed, or even removed altogether?
When we usually talk about backups, we talk about how important it is to back up all of that essential and valuable business data to a secure space and locking it away so that it’s safe should ever need it. For the most part, people are fairly good at backing up their computers, but the same cannot be said for their phones. It’s astounding how many people leave it months without backing up their phone. Just imagine loosing all of that data, all because you forgot to plug your phone into your computer and hit ‘backup’. After chatting to quite a few people it became clear that there was 1 main reason that people weren’t as vigilant about backing up their phones as they were with their computers. They didn’t think they would ever need to restore from a backup. To clear this up, here are just a few (certainly not all) of the reasons you might need to access your phone backups.
At All Your Computers we are big advocates of Office 365 for business. If you use Office yourself, you’ve probably had it for a while now. If you haven’t, why not? It’s a little different from normal cloud based software, as this is cloud software that you also install onto your computer, giving you the best of both worlds. But it’s quite a big bit of software, and it can take some time to go through and find all the features and functionality. So this month we want to share with you our 5 favourite things you probably didn’t know Office 365 could do.
Today marks the start of lent. A time of year when a lot of people promise to give up chocolate or alcohol for 40 days in an attempt to better themselves. The sad thing is, most of the time these promises don’t work, because quitting these addictive substances cold turkey is challenging. So this year, why not challenge yourself to shake those bad tech habits and set yourself up for a more productive and secure 2016.
According to research, the term ‘Internet of Things’ is something 87% of people haven’t ever heard of. Today I hope to rectify that. As we march into yet another year of technological development, the phrase is going to start cropping up more and more, both in workplaces and in the home. But what impact is the Internet of Things going to have on your day to day life, if any? Before we launch into the explanations, lets set the scene first.
Well now Christmas has come and gone and the ball has dropped on 2016, it’s time to start thinking about what the year has in store for us. In my life everything is about technology, and my business makes it important to stay on top of everything tech related, sometimes before it’s even happened. So to kick off 2016, I’ve picked my favourite 3 tech predictions for this year.
It’s an age old debate, and one that has been known to cause some heated debates in offices, pubs and homes over the world. Is Mac better than PC, or vice versa? As a supplier of both Mac and PC hardware, it’s a question we often get asked, and today we wanted to present you with some of the facts, and what the real differences are between modern Macs and modern PC’s.
I’m going to be clear from the offset here – this post is mainly for those who work from home. That doesn’t just mean you work at home full time – but also if you work from home occasionally, or have a machine hooked up to your home power that you work on. At this time of year, our homes use an average of 260 kWh extra power over the month, which (apart from racketing up your energy bills) will have a significant effect on your home electrics. Most homes will start experiencing higher rates of power surges at this time of year, and while this might just be an inconvenience for some and others might not even notice, you’ll start to feel the pressure if you run your business from home. So how can you protect your home from power surges?
When it comes to disaster recovery, a lot of businesses start to cringe. It’s a policy that we all know we need in place, but it’s surprising how few businesses actually have one in place. It doesn’t matter if you are a one-man band or a 100 strong business, it’s still important to plan for the worst. To help you understand what a disaster recovery plan is, we’ve put together this mini guide, showing the sections that should be included in every disaster recovery plan.
For modern businesses, we would be nowhere without our data. Even the most service oriented business relies on their data to keep them operational, and so making sure it’s protected is an essential business practice. Regardless of how it happens – whether by hardware failure, theft, virus or just human error – data loss can be a very costly problem. If you lose data unique to your business, like financial reports, client information or system instructions, your business could be down for days, face fines or total closure. This month All Your Computers brings you 5 simple and cost effective steps to avoid data loss in your business, letting you focus on running your business instead.
The modern world is all about technology, and unlike 20 years ago, a huge amount of our lives are spent online. That’s why October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month. It’s a time when us industry professionals can get together and share our knowledge of cyber security, and how you can stay safer online. More hackers are active today than every before, and new viruses are being launched into the world every day, all with the aim of stealing your data. From our perspective, you should treat your cyber security the same way to treat your home security – as you could lose just as much if either is compromised.
It’s National Cyber Security Awareness Month, so we wanted to talk a bit about passwords this month. No matter where you go online, you will find a hundred different rules for creating a secure password. With MailChimp for example, you have to use punctuation in your passwords, with Gmail you must use at least one capital letter and one special character. And while these are all advisable things to do, they do not necessarily mean you have a secure password, just that you have met their criteria. So here are a few tips from All Your Computers on how to create, and remember, a strong, secure password.
When we think about remote file sharing, there are usually one or 2 of the big brands that pop into our heads. While these systems might be great for sharing some holiday snaps or managing budget spreadsheets for the home, there are some serious concerns when it comes to security from a business point of view.
Backup is one of those things that everybody knows they should be doing, but not many people actually do. And if they do, odds are they are not paying as much attention as they should be. But not only do your backups keep your IT department happy, but they also make your business more secure, and will save you from a lot of extra costs, lost revenue and lots of stressful time spent trying to fix broken computers.
Updates can be the bane of your life sometimes. They pop up on your phone, tablet and computer and demand to be installed. Sometimes this means restarting your device, which is just another annoyance, and sometimes (particularly with phones) they seem to do more harm than good. This opinion has stopped several people from installing updates and security patches on their computers, for fear of inconvenience. But really, a security patch isn’t just a developer trying to interrupt your day – it’s actually an incredibly important part of keeping your devices and your data safe from viruses and malware, all of which could cause you much more trouble than the patch itself.
It’s fair to say that Windows 10 hasn’t got off to a flying start. In fact, so far it has caused a mix of reactions, from disappointment to pure, hair-pulling rage. The software giant Microsoft has spent the better part of half a year talking about the rollout of Windows 10, all the amazing things it will do and their new slow rollout process to catch the bugs quickly. But news that the new interface will be bringing back the start bar has got a lot of users excited, so Windows 10 is being installed by a lot of people. The launch has been done in phases, so that Microsoft can find and address bugs as quickly as it can, without them affecting large amount of people. So before you install, you should take a look at some of the potential problems you could encounter.
The chances are you have lots of different bits of software loaded onto your machine, that you are using for the express purposes of running your business. What you probably don’t know is that if you have the wrong version you could very well be breaking the law and heavy fines could ensue if you got caught.
After the dismal failure that was Windows Vista, many of us would have been forgiven for thinking that Microsoft were back on track with Windows 7. However, having installed Windows 8, I can’t help but think that they have learnt nothing from their past failures. It really has to be said that the new way of working in Windows 8 is just plain awful, and they seem to have completely lost the plot again.
It really has to be said with the growth of the internet and “cloud technology” has left us with an increasing number of passwords and trying to choose and remember good ones can be a total nightmare. The chances are that you have an account on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or any of an increasing range of online retailers, such as Amazon or Play, and they all require passwords. This can very quickly add up to a very long list. In the past week alone, I have logged into at least 40 different websites.
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