Wednesday, 28 February 2018

What Is Encryption And Why Do You Need it?

What Is Encryption And Why Do You Need It?

By: Chris McQuade, Operations Manager

We have been focusing on encryption a lot recently…

You may have a basic knowledge of what it is and why it’s important. On the other hand, you may be puzzled at the thought of encryption and how it can help protect your businesses sensitive information. Either way this blog will let you know why encryption is vital for data protection.

Encryption is quite a commonly used word amongst IT folk, but you’ve probably never really given it a great amount of thought.

Let’s start with the basics, encryption is old. Very old. It has been used to protect important information for many years and was basically created to keep secret things secret. It was used mainly by governments and well-to-do individuals but now it’s part of our everyday lives and we it’s become something that we don’t even think twice about.

With so much of our personal information being put online, it’s important that you encrypt data and protect it from criminals who are after your details. Encryption can be as simple as using password protection on your PC, but it can also get extremely complex. The encryption of sensitive information like bank details and other data involves very complicated extents and many different types of authentication.

This may all sound quite tedious but put simply, encryption involves taking information and coding it with a secret cipher (a top-secret message of some sort). The cipher can be used to show the information, but to anyone the coded message would be complete gibberish. This is just one example but there’s so many different ways of encrypting information.

Encryption is never 100% secure.

I know I’m backtracking a little bit here by saying that encryption isn’t a failsafe method of data protection, but hear me out…

There are many ways to crack ciphers, although the better the cipher the harder it is.

Fortunately, most private companies that hold sensitive information (banks, insurance companies, social media sites, etc.) have their own systems in place to protect your information. For information stored on your PC though, a simple password on your user account isn’t going to cut it.

Saying this, there are options and other ways you can secure your sensitive data. You can encrypt individual files that have sensitive information in, or you can encrypt your entire hard drive. If you only encrypt individual files, it’s possible that those with access to your computer could still break into them and take your personal information.

Encrypting the entire drive means that even booting up the PC can be difficult if you don’t have the password, so this is clearly the more secure option. The flip side is that if there is any corruption on your hard drive, it may be harder to retrieve the data.

So, how can you encrypt your files?

Securing your information as an individual can be straightforward. There are many applications on the market which will help make it quick and easy for you to encrypt your files or your entire drive.

If you run a business though, doing this separately on each PC in your workplace can be incredibly time-consuming and outright boring! But, this is something that’s extremley necessary now because of the number of devices we have that store sensitive information. Not only are there PCs that require securing, but also phones and tablets.

Luckily, we offer our very own service- Managed Encryption

Luckily, we offer our very own service- Managed Encryption, so the worry is not on you to manage all your encrypted devices. We can deploy our Managed Encryption software remotely on all the devices on your company’s network and then manage it for you. This goes for phones and tablets, PCs, Macs, and portable drives. We basically take away the hassle of encrypting each of your individual devices and also take on the job of managing these devices.

Clearly this has a whole host of benefits for you and your business. First, it means you can rest assured that your information, and your customers information is safe. We are experts in the field of cyber-security, so you can be confident that your information will be well protected. Secondly, using our Managed Encryption service will save you a lot of time and stress. By having us manage your encryption means you’ll be able to focus on the things that really matter to your business.

Using our Managed Encryption service also provides many other benefits, such as the ability to outsource and remotely wipe, shut down and lock devices.

This means you’re covered if a device is stolen or an employee leaves your company but still has a device with them. With all the benefits of using our Managed Encryption service and the increasing risk involved in protecting private information, now might be the best time for your company to consider investing in our Managed Encryption service.

PCS

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The post What Is Encryption And Why Do You Need it? appeared first on PCS.

source https://www.pcs-systems.com/what-is-encryption-and-why-do-you-need-it/

Wednesday, 7 February 2018

First Hand Experience To 1st Line Support

By: Sam Geary, Marketing Executive

I’ve been at PCS for about half a year now and I’ve already learned so much. If someone asked me what my definition of IT managed services was before I started- I’d probably just look at them blankly. Although a lot of IT lingo still confuses me, I’m now far more clued-up on things that I never even considered learning about before.

Here at PCS all the Service Desk team are 3^rd line qualified. If you’re not well-versed in IT then you’re probably thinking ‘what does that mean?’ Well it means a lot. It’s the difference between a painless phone call and being stuck on the phone for an hour (or more).

Before I start my semi-rant, let me just give you the brief differences between first, second and third line support. (apologies if you’re not a novice like me).

1^st line support – General help desk. ‘Switch is off and on again’.
2^nd line support – Normally a remote team with more specific knowledge.
3^rd line support – They’ll get to the root of the problem, if not you’ll get onsite assistance.

I’m sure everyone has had their own soul-destroying experiences on the phone to a 1st line support team member. It’s repetitive, it’s frustrating and in my opinion, it’s a waste of resource. Unless you have a ‘turn it off and on-again issue’, 1st line engineers are not likely to get to the bottom of a technical issue.

I’m not knocking 1st line support, I’m sure it isn’t all bad and I’m not saying that you won’t get your problem solve by someone with this level of experience. This is purely a personal experience that I always tend to have when I talk to a 1st line qualified support team member.

Let me begin with my own personal experience of talking to a 1^st line support desk team member.

It was a Thursday, I was on my lunch break and thought I’d squeeze in a quick phone call to my phone manufacturer as I needed the battery replaced (I’m not going to name names). Anyhow, the website was so straight forward, I located the serial number on the phone and entered it into the required field, I put my phone number in and hey presto, I booked a phone call (this was required to get my phone sent off for repair).

I received a phone call straight away and was feeling positive as I’d only eaten into about 5 minutes of my hour lunch break. I was only on hold for a couple of minutes before I got through to a member of the team. She was polite and sounded like she was ready to help. In my head all I needed to do was book my phone in and arrange a date and time to send it off for repair.

This wasn’t the case. I was on the phone to this woman for almost an hour.

We were going around in circles and it actually made me laugh at one point because she was clearly reading off a script. She was asking me to perform a diagnostics test on my phone to check the battery life but didn’t seem to understand that the reason I was on the phone to her was because my phone battery wouldn’t last and therefore a diagnostics test was out of the question.

Anyway, we reached the point in our conversation where her script ran out and she had no option but to revert back to the beginning. This happened a fair few times and by about the third time I’d lost the will to live. I had to ask to speak to someone more senior.

I was passed onto a friendly man, Tony. He asked me exactly what I needed, told me there was a waiting time for the battery (which was fine) and sorted my issue out in under 5 minutes. He was more qualified than the previous employee I talked to and I had an all-round stress free and pleasant experience talking with him. The fact that I remembered his name says it all.

This made me think about (and appreciate) our Service Desk team here at PCS. They’re all 3^rd line qualified and don’t read from scripts which means they’ll never go around in circles. This is not to say if you have a 1^st line issue they won’t sort it. Of course, if ‘switching it off and on again’ solves the problem then great!

The fact of the matter is, if 1^st line support doesn’t resolve your issue it’s important to have that extra bit of knowledge and expertise to get to the root of the issue. This is exactly what the 3^rd line qualified service desk team does here at PCS.

PCS