Give Your IT Team a Break!

By: Sam Geary, Marketing Executive

Everyone deserves a break from work every now and then. After a long stretch of Mondays-Fridays, the thought of having a week off or even just a day off is pure bliss for many.

Having a break from work is all well and good- as long as your team members are kept in the loop.

If you rely on IT to carry out your daily or even weekly tasks, it’s important to be up and running all the time. If your servers were destroyed or if an accident happened involving your most business-critical laptop, where would that leave your business?

Downtime is bad. Up time is good. That’s something we’re all aware of.

Let just say the IT manager for your company (if you have one) was on holiday, would this cause an issue? Could someone else fill his/her shoes and do their job whilst they are away?

If the answer to that question is no, then you should probably consider a plan B or some external help.

Holiday periods during the year can become very busy and it’s times like these that your IT department can feel the extra strain.

Additional help and support never goes a miss and where IT is concerned- we can be that extra pair of hands. It may be that your current resource has a job that needs to be prioritised or maybe your IT team don’t possess the necessary skills to fulfill a specific job.

Whatever the reason, IT standstills happen, and additional help is sometimes necessary.

Days off due to illness and family emergencies often interfere with work. But, what if your IT manager took an unexpected day off, and on that very same day your servers decided to pack in?

That’s a situation that many businesses find themselves in, and unfortunately not much can be done in a scenario like this, especially if there is no one within your company capable of filling the IT skills that you need.

Other than it being a massive inconvenience, it could be detrimental to your business if your in-house IT went off the radar. It could leave your IT infrastructure and your business in a very vulnerable position.

Whatever the reason, IT standstills happen, and additional help is sometimes necessary.

The fact of the matter is- you need some form of IT management to keep your business running as smoothly as possible. Having a separate entity to manage your IT will help with not only your other day to day tasks but it also allows you to focus on other important aspects of your business.

PCS Interim Cover means you won’t need to worry about that member of staff taking time off or not being experienced enough to deal with certain issues.

PCS have the skills and expertise to manage your IT cover meaning that you won’t need to worry about the little (or big) things. Whether it’s complete management or added expertise – you have the full support of an entire team of IT experts.

Interim Cover:

Expert Engineers

Tailored Service

Remote Support

Fill resource gaps

Increased Productivity

Reduced pressure on your team

Outsource the full management of your IT function

Outsource your IT functions to us when your IT team are away, and we’ll support you for however long you need us for. This will reduce the pressure on you and your team meaning that everyone stays happy and productive.

We’ll support you when and where you need us. It’s as simple as that.

Want to find out more about out Interim Cover or any of our other IT managed services? Get in touch today and we’ll get back to you asap.

Meet The Author

Name:	Sam Geary
Employment Start Date:	August 2017
Job Title:	Marketing Executive
Years in Marketing	3

Check out Sam on Social Media:

PCS

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Registered in England No. 3082062

2-4 Northfield Point
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Kettering
Northamptonshie
NN16 9QJ

08452 41 41 55

The post Give your IT team a break. appeared first on PCS.

source https://www.pcs-systems.com/it-team-cover/

Part Five: Managed Encryption

By: Sam Geary, Marketing Executive

Finally, we’ve reached the last of our five blog posts on data safety.

The final topic we’ll be focusing on is encryption, so read on to find out why encryption is important for the safety of your data and your business.

If you’ve been keeping up to date with our blogs and our website in general, then you probably know that encryption has been a massive focal point for us recently. In fact data safety in general has been something we have really tried to educate people on, especially with the GDPR now in full force.

Encryption put simply is used to protect information and keep data safe. It involves taking information and coding it with a secret cipher. The cipher can be used to show the information, but to anyone the coded message would be complete gibberish. You can learn a bit more about encryption by clicking on here.

Encryption many only get a couple of lines in the GDPR, but that doesn’t reflect on its significance.

Data encryption is vital for your business, not only because it would be a huge inconvenience if your information was lost or stolen, but because it’s now part of the new data protection legislation we mentioned earlier – GDPR.

A lot of people think encryption is a complicated thing that only a genius can fully understand, but this isn’t the case. Encryption isn’t difficult to understand, in fact it relatively simple. Put plainly, it allows you to securely protect the data that you don’t want others to access.

Encryption has been around for many years. Without it, you could be left vulnerable if a smart enough cyber criminal attempted to hack into your most business-critical phone or laptop.

It offers you that safety blanket for your business, giving you the peace of mind you need, should any of your devices go missing.

Unfortunately, data breaches aren’t uncommon and if data isn’t being protected properly or devices are being left hanging around in unsecured places, then your business could face the backlash from the ICO.

This is where we come in.

Managed Encryption keeps your devices in safe hands, even if they fall into the wrong hands.

Our Managed Encryption service is a cloud based solution meaning that even if your most significant devices decide to go walkabouts, you can rest assured that your sensitive data stays safe and sound. It also means that you’ll never miss a non-compliant device because you can protect all the devices within your business.

A few benefits of having our Managed Encryption…

 

– Device Monitoring

– Administration and Reporting

– Password Management

– Encryption

– Data Wiping

– Remote Data Access Control

– Service Desk Support

– Customer Cloud Portal

To find out more about Managed Encryption get in touch with a member of the team or visit our encryption web page.

Meet The Author

Name:	Sam Geary
Employment Start Date:	August 2017
Job Title:	Marketing Executive
Years in Marketing	3

Check out Sam on Social Media:

PCS

About Us
Contact Us
Support Portal
Meet the Team
News & Security

Useful Links

Managed Services
Blog
Case Studies
Downloads
Terms & Conditions
Managed Service Brochure

Registered in England No. 3082062

2-4 Northfield Point
Cunliffe Drive
Kettering
Northamptonshie
NN16 9QJ

08452 41 41 55

The post Part Five: Managed Encryption appeared first on PCS.

source https://www.pcs-systems.com/part-five-managed-encryption/

Cyber Attacks: The Rundown

By: Sam Geary, Marketing Executive

I’d be surprised if you haven’t heard the term ‘cyber attack’ mentioned on the news, especially over the last few years.

 

I’d be surprised if you haven’t heard the term ‘cyber attack’ mentioned on the news, especially over the last few years.

Cyber attacks are becomming more frequent with all businesses (large, medium and small) being affected. But what is a cyber attack and why do you need to make sure your business is protected from them?

As technology advances, so do cyber attacks. Criminals are becoming more sophisticated and cyber attacks are no longer subject to businesses of a certain size.

Cyber attacks aren’t a new phenomenon. They have been around for years and continue getting bigger and better. With major ransomware campaigns including WannaCry, Bad Rabbit and NotPetya infecting a mass amount of infrastructure within the last year, understanding the importance of protecting yourself from cyber threats is fundamental. So, let’s start with the essentials…

 

What are cyber attacks? 

At its most basic, a cyber attack is a hacking from one computer against another, but they can also be attacks made from multiple computers against multiple computers all the way up to multiple computers attacking an entire network.

Did you know that nearly half of all businesses (46%) reported a cyber breach in the last year?

The type of cyber attack you hear about on the news is likely to be one of the larger scale attacks against banks, big corporations, or even governments. Cyber attacks can be perpetrated by anyone including individuals and groups.

Think about the time you could lose through having to fix your website or systems. Think about the potential loss of your customers and the damage to your reputation. The impact of a cyber attack can be huge and it’s more than just money you could lose.

If you want to improve the cyber security of your business, have a read of our ‘Protect Your Business’ guide. It focuses on the steps you should be taking to safeguard your business from cyber threats.

What are the different types?

Broadly speaking, there are two different types of cyber attack: those where the aim is to disable or disrupt a target computer or network, and those where the aim is to gain access to private information or important data. There are many different methods for achieving this including:

• Phishing emails – this refers to emails that are designed to trick people into giving up their private information such as their password.

 

• Malware – this is software that a user will download onto their computer that can do a whole range of different things. The most common kinds of malware include ransomware, which will encrypt all your files and bribe you into paying a fee to have them decrypted, and forms which can steal data like passwords and bank details.

 

• Denial of service attacks (DoS) – Denial of service attacks are when several computers make requests at the same time and to the same server. Flooding a server with traffic is designed to make it crash.

These are just three of the most popular techniques used, and they can be used in various combinations as well. For example, a user might get a phishing email which tricks them into downloading malware.

 

These are just three of the most popular techniques used, and they can be used in various combinations as well. For example, a user might get a phishing email which tricks them into downloading malware.

 

Why do you need to protect your business?

By now, it should be obvious why you need to make sure your business is protected from cyber attacks. As they become more frequent, it’s no longer huge companies that are at risk, even individuals can become targets. As mentioned early, criminals online have become more sophisticated and have realised that it’s easier to make money from smaller cyber attacks because the victim might not even notice!

For example, you might not notice £20 being taken from your bank one month, but if a criminal takes £20 from 100 people’s accounts, you can quickly see why small-scale attacks can be profitable.

It’s more than just protecting your own money and information. It’s now also the law to make sure you protect your clients’ data. The EU’s new data protection regulation, GDPR, obliges businesses to, among other things, ensure they have the necessary measure in place and it’s all in the name of data protection. Protecting against cyber-attacks is, therefore, part of making sure sensitive data stays safe.

You may or may not be prepared for a cyber attack. We’d start by recommending you get the basics right.

Hopefully this article has given you some clarity on what cyber attacks are and what forms they come in, whilst also explaining why it’s important to make sure your business is protected.

So, if you don’t already have one, make sure your business has a security strategy in place, and make sure it’s kept up to date. Technology is now moving faster than ever, and you want to make sure you’re not going to be the victim of change by having outdated security measures.

To find out more about cyber threats and securing your business, get in touch! Whether it’s a question you have, advice you need or one of our services you want. We can help!

Meet The Author

Name:	Samantha Geary
Employment Start Date:	August 2017
Job Title:	Marketing Executive
Years in Marketing	3

Check out Sam on Social Media:

PCS

About Us
Contact Us
Support Portal
Meet the Team
News & Security

Useful Links

Managed Services
Blog
Case Studies
Downloads
Terms & Conditions
Managed Service Brochure

Registered in England No. 3082062

2-4 Northfield Point
Cunliffe Drive
Kettering
Northamptonshie
NN16 9QJ

08452 41 41 55

The post Cyber-attacks: The Rundown appeared first on PCS.

source https://www.pcs-systems.com/cyberattacks-rundown/