An IT Support Blog from London

Data backups are among the top cyber security countermeasures against ransomware, flood, fire, and other threats to data availability. As long as you have backup copies of your data, your business will have a pretty good chance of recovering from almost any major disaster. But what kind of data backup solution is the best?

It depends on your specific requirements. These days, backup solutions can be grouped into two - online backups and offline backups. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. Knowing when to select one over the other can help you maximise your financial resources when spending on a backup solution.

Since a comprehensive comparison of these two sets of solutions can be quite long, we’ve decided to focus first on online backups. In this post, we’ll help identify situations when an online backup would be a better fit. But before we do that, let me make sure our definitions of these terms are the same.

Like many software applications these days, Microsoft’s flagship office suite is now being offered as a cloud-based service. User files can be stored on OneDrive, making them available online. There are other online and collaboration features as well. But is Microsoft online Office really a better alternative to the on-premise MS Office we’ve all been used too? What are the possible reasons why Microsoft took this path?

Of all the types of malware wreaking havoc these days, one clearly stands out - Ransomware. This troublesome malware appears to be gaining a lot of fans in the cybercrime community and has, in turn, caused considerable stretches of downtime on a large number of organisations.

It is without question a risky affair: allowing employees to use their personal devices to access your network and valuable, often confidential company data. Yet despite the risks BYOD (bring your own device) marches on and companies and organisations around the world are adopting tactics and technologies to make it work.

Server virtualisation has been a viable IT strategy for some time. Virtualisation has its origins as a technical concept in the 1960s, but it is more recently that the virtualisation of servers has become commonplace, and it is a matter of priority for many IT managers: the 2017 Spiceworks State of IT survey suggests virtualisation is at the top of the list for software investment. The reason for this is simple: by making use of virtual server hosting UK companies are saving on expenditure and seeing the implementation and management of software applications becoming much more flexible.

The growth in the adoption of the Microsoft Office 365 platform is staggering. Though deeply dependent on the inertia of the eponymous desktop application suite, it is also the mix of complementary services Microsoft continuously adds which is making this particular cloud productivity platform very popular. Microsoft Office 365 hit 100 million active business users in 2017, but it is not uncommon for many businesses to merely scratch the surface of what Office 365 has to offer. Here are five ideas to help you make better use of Office 365.

There used to be a time when it was relatively easier to prevent malware from infecting our systems. We’d install an antivirus, keep its database updated, and equip end users with a laundry list of things to avoid - like suspicious email attachments and unfamiliar websites. Today, drive by downloads are making malware avoidance a more challenging task.

A drive-by download is a malware infection procedure that doesn’t require the user to download anything or even click a link. For his/her system to get infected, the user only has to visit a site that’s been compromised. The infection process then takes place behind the scenes, without the user ever noticing anything unusual.

Information technology risks range from the very apparent to the silent and hidden. The majority of businesses mitigate the most obvious risks: only an irresponsible IT operation will do without network firewalls in place or skip on regularly updating operating systems and software. Yet it is the less obvious risks which can trip up even carefully run IT functions – and which can cause progressive or indeed sudden harm to your business.

Data centre optimisation and consequential benefits for businesses

With so much focus on hacking and internet security, many firms of 10 - 100 people will feel that they have put a lot of effort into making their data as secure as possible. Unfortunately, internet security is a moving target, where the threat may be characterised as agile and continually evolving. Consequently, it is impossible for networks to remain impenetrable.

Standard IT best practice, such as upgrading and patching operating systems and applications, and maintaining a reliable backup and Disaster Recovery capability, are all layers that help to ensure that a firm is in a position to resume normal operations within an acceptable timeframe, should it be the victim of an attack.

Continually reviewing your vital signs

Remote monitoring is one of the most powerful IT support tools available. Most importantly, rather than just detecting hardware and software faults in real-time, it is also able to provide the capability to predict failure.

By analysing log files created by hardware devices and active services, remote monitoring applications are able to identify events and conditions which precede failure. This is exceptionally beneficial because it frequently allows remediation of minor problems that are precursors of bigger failures.