An IT Support Blog from London

DDoS attacks are typically designed to inundate servers and entire networks by consuming computing resources through large volumes of traffic, connections, or requests. And so, because cloud infrastructures are assumed to be backed by a large assemblage of such resources, many people believe their servers are less susceptible to these types of attacks if they’re hosted in the cloud. But that’s not entirely true.

If your servers are hosted in a multitenant environment along with a bunch of other servers belonging to other organisations (which is usually the case in a public cloud), your servers could be at risk of collateral damage. If those other servers (note: not yours) are bombarded by a DDoS attack and your cloud service provider (CSP) attempts to absorb the attack, your own servers, which share the same underlying infrastructure with those other servers, could also suffer.

Only two months left before GDPR is implemented any eligible organisation not following the regulations could suffer colossal penalties, as much as four percent of the company's annual turnover or 20,000,000 Euro’s whichever is the Greater!

Does GDPR applies to you?

Only half of UK businesses are even aware of GDPR, whilst a solitary three percent are prepared for the upcoming Cut-off date. Many large organisations such as eBay, Yahoo and Adobe have had data breaches. Therefore many companies assume that the new regulations only apply to companies dealing with personal data -unfortunately this is not the case!

HTL Support's Business Briefing event on 23 February was a resounding success and offered delegates real insight into the EU General Data Protection Regulation legislation and its likely effects on the IT sector. Demand for the event was far in excess of available places and is an indication of just how relevant the impact of GDPR is to anyone working in IT.

There is one area on which everyone concentrates when it comes to getting the most out of an IT budget: squeezing the supplier. Though getting commodity items at the best prices and achieving the most value out of the services and IT support costs you pay for is important, there are many other areas where careful consideration can result in far more optimal IT spending.

Deloitte’s 2016-2017 CIO survey found that, on average across all industries, expenditure on IT packages, staff, and services accounts for 3.28% of a company’s turnover, with businesses in professional services industries commonly managing annual IT budgets of 6% of overall turnover. The importance of optimal spending is clearly very high. Here we outline a few of the top areas we think your business should focus on.

Let’s say you’ve already invested a fortune on network security. How do you determine that investment’s effectiveness in preventing a data leak or withstanding a deliberate cyber attack? Your best option would be to conduct a penetration test or pen test.

The reliability of the IT organisation plays a critical role in every enterprise, given how the use of technology has deeply entrenched itself into every business organisation. From being more of back office tools a few decades ago, IT systems are now front and center in many enterprises’ business activities.

With IT contributing significantly to customer-facing applications, analytics services, and even creating new revenue streams for the enterprise, it’s important for the IT group to maintains its operational and cost efficiency. One way to ensure that the IT network competently responds to business needs while keeping within budgets is to implement IT infrastructure standardisation.

Do we keep our IT services in-house, or do we outsource IT responsibilities? That is the question many management teams ask themselves when they look at the benefits of managed IT services. Outsourcing IT services save costs, introduces new knowledge and helps businesses focus. However fully outsourcing IT functions is not the best route for every organisation, and there are pros and cons to each approach. But how about opting for a mixed model?

Leading IT Support Company, HTL Support, has acquired Serviced Cloud – the long-established private Cloud Company.

HTL’s recent expansion has played a key role in the Serviced Cloud merger. The two companies have worked closely together for many years in what has been described as a natural partnership, providing a bespoke service for large and small business.  The merger represents a formalizing of the business arrangements, yet will be seamless for the special relationship with customers. There has been no disclosure relating to the costs to HTL in taking Serviced Cloud under its umbrella.   

It’s a back-and-forth sentiment that’s not uncommon in many organisations: business executives believe that IT is not doing enough to support business goals while IT leaders are of the opinion that management is holding out on IT investments, preventing them from doing more. In today’s ever-evolving business landscape where the right use of IT can give organisations a competitive edge, the need for aligning technology with business objectives has never been more important.

Both sides–management and the IT organisation – may assert that they are working towards the achievement of the company’s goals. But unless their efforts are aligned, i.e. IT contribution is clearly manifested in efficiency, productivity, and profitability, top management will be hard-pressed to see technology as an enabler of core business strategies and IT people will continue to feel underappreciated.

Because your main objective is to grow your business, it can be burdensome when you also need to allocate time to manage your IT assets - even if that can also translate into business benefits. The good news is that there’s a way to grow your business and manage your IT assets without spending much time on the latter. It’s called managed services.

This isn’t an article for explaining what managed services is. We’re assuming you already know what managed services is but are still looking for a good reason to hire one. This post should take care of that. In this article, we’ll discuss some of the major benefits of working with a managed services provider.