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.

Some businesses would like to think that doing things the traditional way is best. Well, this may be true for certain tasks, but in general, technology has allowed processes to be done much faster and more efficiently—and that’s with the help of business automation.

Automation strategies have proven to be very effective for many enterprises, so much so that Gartner, Inc. speculates that 69% of managers’ current workload could be fully automated by 2024. If your organisation is not yet making full use of automation tools, this post should enlighten you on how your business can benefit from an automation strategy.

The world continues to grapple with the long term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and organisations are compelled to sustain remote working arrangements for their employees. In the haste to quickly adapt to the new and evolving work environment however, it appears that one essential concern has taken a back seat: security.

IT company Hewlett-Packard recently released Blurred Lines & Blindspots—a comprehensive global study assessing organisational cyber risk in today’s remote working era, and in it, a number of worrying, albeit unsurprising, findings were revealed. Of the over 8,000 office workers surveyed:

Technology has always moved rapidly –even more so in today’s cloud-centric world where the next major feature is an automatic update away. Needless to say, the companies that can make the most of the technology available to them are likely to enjoy a competitive advantage over their peers.

How can businesses stay ahead of the technology curve – making maximum use of the technology available to them, while ensuring that competitors never gain a competitive advantage due to their greater ability to harness the latest technology? Let’s take a look.

Like any other form of crime, when it comes to cybercrime, there’s always the temptation to take the view that “it would never happen to us”. However given that, every single day, more than 65,000 attempts are made to hack an SME in the UK, the risk of cybercrime is real for UK businesses – no matter their size, or their position in the market.

In this article, we outline some of the key points SMEs in the UK should think about around IT security. While most businesses would take at least some precautions, it’s nonetheless worth taking a more structured approach to IT security – even if your business is not enterprise-scale.

The widespread adoption of cloud computing has added a lot of acronyms into our vocabulary, the most common of which are SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS. Indeed, the era has ushered in cloud solutions that deliver software, platform, and infrastructure to consumers and businesses on an on-demand, pay-as-you-go basis.

Now here’s an added cloud computing offering (and another acronym) that you may not be as familiar with but one that many organisations are already benefiting from: Desktop-as-a-Service or DaaS.

Technology has become an integral part of every organisation today, and business executives have learned that IT investments allocated wisely pay off in spades. But just as technology is essential to ensure effective business operations, IT support services play an integral part to that efficiency as well.

Reliable tech support helps your employees and customers deal with the everyday challenges that they may encounter, particularly those concerning digital hardware, IT solutions, and tech products. If your business is located in the UK, a secure and smoothly-running system, thanks to good IT support in London, allows you and your staff to focus on the core tasks at hand.

Microsoft 365, which encapsulates Office 365, is incredibly popular – and one of its most commonly used components is Exchange Online and Outlook – Microsoft’s online email server and desktop and mobile email client, respectively.

When it comes to email, security is a big concern – with one particular email security topic increasingly making the headlines. We’re talking about phishing, a frustratingly effective e-mail attack that’s experienced by 86% of businesses, according to the 2020 UK Cyber Security Breaches Survey.

In this article, we will outline what a phishing attack is – and explain how Microsoft 365 and its component email services can help protect your company against phishing attacks.

Managed services is a sector that’s growing rapidly – according to a MarketsAndMarkets metric, managed services will grow from a global value of USD 223bn in 2020 to USD 329bn to 2025. This is clearly outsize growth, which indicates the growing popularity of outsourcing IT – for businesses large and small.

But why is managed IT embraced by so many companies around the world – and at such a scale? In this article we will look at some of the various benefits of managed IT services, showing why, when seeking IT support London companies often choose managed services.

We also cover some of the things you should watch out for when hiring managed IT services and point to a possible compromise that may fit companies that have unique IT requirements: augmenting in-house IT with managed services.

Organisations wouldn’t change their IT support provider if they can help it, thinking that putting up with the subpar quality of service is better than being left in chaos with the absence of tech support. After all, finding out that your managed services provider (MSP) is not as dependable as their service level agreement (SLA) would have you believe is something that you would rather not act on because changing providers could mean significant business disruption.

Still, staying in a disadvantageous partnership with an unprofessional service provider will do your business more harm than good in the long run. Whether it’s your MSP’s lack of concern for cybersecurity, slow response to reported issues, unwillingness or inability to adapt to your changing needs as a company — and everything else in between, these incompetencies are costing your business time, money, and opportunities.

But what shortcomings should you consider as ultimate deal breakers in IT support London or elsewhere? If you’re not quite sure whether it’s still worth waiting for your service provider to improve their service, here are 5 signs that will tell you that yes, your business deserves better quality IT support.