An IT Support Blog from London

The brunt of COVID19 has come and gone, but some adaptive approaches implemented at the height of the pandemic remain in its aftermath. Responding to employees’ preference of working from anywhere, many organisations are continuing remote work and/or hybrid work arrangements for suitable roles and duties. Remote IT support for instance, is one service that can be performed optimally with the right tools and solutions. 

Whether for IT support or other departments, the remote work setup has been a welcome move for many employees. But it has also opened up many challenges for IT teams, particularly in the area of cyber security. To address these concerns, enterprises have turned to a proven reliable solution for secure remote work: Virtual Desktop Infrastructure or VDI. VDI allows offsite employees to access a virtual desktop environment hosted on a centralised server. This is a more secure alternative than storing data on individual devices, thus keeping sensitive information off personal laptops and desktops.

According to Gartner predictions, 45% of organisations will fall victim to a software supply chain attack by 2025—three times as many as that of 2021. And that’s not even counting other types of cyber threats such as levelled-up social engineering/phishing schemes, ransomware, and even nation-state attacks for certain industries. Truly, the value of reliable cyber security in every enterprise can not be emphasised enough.

Most companies are well aware of which aspects of their business operations they should fortify. The key areas most susceptible to malware and other cyber attacks in an organisation are:

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has transformed the dynamics of many organisations across almost every industry. Companies and the leaders at the helm of these businesses have long realised the benefits of harnessing AI algorithms in their daily operations. From automating and streamlining various business processes to preventing fraud to enhancing data analytics for targeted marketing and better decision making, the impact of AI on enterprises has been nothing short of groundbreaking.

Now while AI development and technological advancement in general has paved the way for various innovations, it has also opened many opportunities for malicious actors to exploit. This is why artificial intelligence has been a major boon but somewhat a bane as well to the IT security industry. Let’s start with the negative ways that AI has affected online security.

There’s been a lot of technological advancement going on in the past decade or so, and it’s all organisations could do to keep pace. But it’s essential that they do. After all, leveraging new technologies and tools while ensuring that their IT infrastructure is equipped for such demand is key to having enterprises operate efficiently, maximising profits, and remaining competitive in their field.

Managing all these however, can easily get overwhelming for small and mid-sized businesses who don’t have a full-time IT staff on board. This is where IT managed services providers have proven to be invaluable. Managed services providers (MSPs) take on the crucial tasks of monitoring and maintaining IT systems—networks, servers, workstations, etc.; installing and updating software; hardware maintenance, security and compliance management, managed IT support, and more. And just as technology is evolving, so are the services of MSPs.

In this post, we'll explore some of the latest trends in IT managed services, including how emerging technologies like AI and automation are being utilised, the growing importance of cybersecurity, and the rise of cloud-based services.

How do you eliminate a threat if you don’t know it’s there? Threat actors are increasingly incorporating evasive tactics into their malware, and traditional cyber security solutions are having a hard time detecting them. The moment you realise you’ve been attacked by an evasive malware, your systems would have long been compromised.

It’s important to know your adversary and understand how they operate in order to formulate appropriate countermeasures. That’s why we’re publishing this blog post. We hope to educate you about evasive malware, what they are, what level of threat they pose, what evasive tactics they employ, and what you can do to prevent them from taking hold of your systems.

While every business has its own unique operational requirements, it’s common for finance managers to try to save on costs and slash budgets in whichever area they can. This should not be the case for an organisation’s cybersecurity budget, though. If anything, companies should be spending for security based on an in-depth assessment of needs, rather than simply throwing in cyber security solutions to fit into a fixed budget.

In this post, we look at three key points that companies should take into account when building the framework for IT security spending.

Ransomware attacks are incredibly prevalent – and can also be very damaging. Successful attacks occur all the time – this year alone, a major infrastructure company in the US was hit with an attack that came with a US$ 4.4m demand for ransom. Closer to home, Doncaster-based One Call Insurance found itself unable to service customer requests after a computer system blackout due to ransomware.

As a business, you need to invest in internet security to protect your systems against ransomware – but at the same time, also assume the worst-case scenario: that a successful attack can occur. Responding rapidly and effectively is critical – the better your response, the lower the cumulative cost of the ransomware attack – and the less disruption your clients or customers will experience.

As organisations gradually shift to the new normal, we see corresponding changes in the cybersecurity threat landscape that warrants adjustments in how businesses should frame their security strategy. While some of the older threats certainly still remain, there are a couple of new entrants that have only emerged as a byproduct of the new work environment.

Readers of this blog will be intimately familiar with the way technology delivery has changed over the years. Locally-hosted server racks are history. Instead, companies rely on cloud vendors large and small to deliver essential business services via web apps – or software as a service (SaaS).

Web apps, however, bring a whole new challenge to cyber security solutions. In this article, we outline why web app security matters and what your company can do to ensure that the web apps it uses remain secure.

Enterprises are well aware of threat attacks that pose a huge challenge to IT security, perpetrated by technical hackers who infiltrate computer systems to steal protected data. The truth is, however, that many of the most effective cyber-attacks are not directly inflicted upon hardware or software, but instead, are targeted on people.