An IT Support Blog from London

IT outsourcing often wins the debate between in-house IT or outsourcing technology requirements to an IT support company, businesses commonly opt for the latter because outsourcing reduces costs, draws in more expertise, and allows businesses to focus on core competencies.

Sometimes, however, companies decide to take IT back in-house or do not consider outsourcing. A few horror stories or a bad outsourcing experience can often sour the mood around outsourced IT. Like a lot of things in business and technology, getting the most out of IT outsourcing – and avoiding the horror stories – just involves a degree of awareness and the right steps.

When evaluating cybersecurity risk, we tend to focus on technological factors: patches and upgrades, vulnerabilities, attack vectors, and so forth. Yes – technology solutions are vulnerable, and cybersecurity breaches are usually facilitated by advanced hacking technology.

However, the perpetrators behind cyber-attacks are human. These human actors have human motivations: greed, or a political agenda. Furthermore, cyberattacks often rely on human weaknesses – socially engineered cyberattacks, for example.

Data breaches can be very costly. Costs can include the usual financial consequences such as response and remediation, customer breach notification, litigation expenses, and regulatory fines, but can also include less obvious consequences such as the cost of business disruptions, loss of customer trust, and higher insurance premiums.

Clearly, it’s imperative for businesses to find ways to avoid a data breach, and here is how it can be done.

In the current digital economy, data is the new oil, so an organisation can’t have too much of it. Today’s company executives are turning to data when making crucial business decisions in sales/marketing, operations, human resources, and just about every aspect of the enterprise.

More data is becoming available in large volumes and from various sources, but turning plain data into actual usable information—i.e. facts, trends, and statistical numbers, can be a complicated and tedious process. So, businesses have a choice. They could continue to acquire whatever data they can, then simply leave out what they can’t store, or they could invest in data warehouse technologies to process data faster and get the right information more quickly.

Technology is central to your business, but your business may not necessarily be in the business of technology. That’s why you rely on an IT support company to conduct the day to day maintenance of the tech that supports your business.

Over time, however, there may come a need for a change in support providers. Your business may grow, presenting increasingly complex technology needs that your existing supplier cannot cope with. Or, your support company may simply drop the ball too frequently.

What are the signs that your company should consider switching, and how should you go about making this switch? Read on to find out!

An organisation’s primary and immediate line of defense against malware is typically the antivirus software installed in each of their users’ endpoint devices. It works in the background, checks data being received for known malware signatures, and warns users of possible threats. Antivirus software does contribute greatly to an organisation’s online security, but it is not enough to mitigate all malware threats when you consider how advanced these threats have become.

A rapidly growing pool of productivity data is aggregated by Microsoft thanks to the broad adoption of cloud productivity suites. Indeed, Office 365 is leading the field with triple the market share of its closest competitor, G Suite.

Office 365 and the Azure cloud platform is therefore a rich source of information detailing how employees conduct their daily work routine, and this has led Microsoft to launch Workplace Analytics. But who gets access to Workplace Analytics, and can it provide real insights for your business?

We all love comparisons. One of the oldest comparisons or debates in the history of IT is that which pits Windows against Linux. It’s a subplot of another debate with a much wider scope: proprietary vs open source, but just as relevant for businesses.

For as long as we can recall, Windows has been the OS of choice for most businesses, especially for their PCs and laptops. Linux usage, on the other hand, has been limited to servers and a few departments in certain organisations like research agencies, startups and universities. Does this still hold true in? Let’s talk about it.

When it comes to IT services, many businesses still go for the fix-it-when-it-breaks approach. And why not? They think that getting the services of an IT support company only when a problem actually arises will save them money. But does it really?

If you also think that saving your financial resources for a time when something breaks down is the right way to manage your organisation's IT ecosystem, then it's time for you to know all about reactive and proactive IT support. This should help you to determine which would work best for your business. But first, on to the definitions.

For many businesses, the adoption of cloud-hosted services is no longer a question, cloud provisioning is an accepted fact. As a result, Software as a Service (SaaS) has grown enormously and is now adopted widely, even at enterprise level. That said, some businesses are still operating via the traditional licencing model.

The reason for the shift to the cloud and Software as a Service is simple: the benefits of the SaaS model greatly outweigh the disadvantages. We’ve written this article to remind readers that adopting SaaS was the right choice and to encourage businesses operating a traditional model to finally make the switch.