10 steps to Cyber Security

The National Cyber Security Center have posted  their 10 Steps to Cyber Security which provides a good working baseline for all businesses:

1. Setup a Risk Management Regime relating to your IT systems supported at a senior level
2. Network Security - ensure your perimeter is secure
3. User education and awareness - don't assume; ensure that all your staff have the level of instruction and training required to keep them safe
4. Malware Prevention - ensure you have the required and up-to-date anti-malware installed on every device or a centralized system
5. Removable Media Controls - ensure that random USB flash drives and external hard drives are controlled and managed on your network
6. Secure Configuration - make sure that all software is patched and that a system inventory is maintained
7. Managing User Privileges - setup permissions and shares to only allow users access to what they need for their role and no more  
8. Incident Management - report incidents to the appropriate police authority - RCCU (Regional Cyber Crime Unit West Midlands) - and ensure internal reporting is carried out
9. Monitoring - establish procedures for the handling and management of incidents
10. Home and Mobile Working - develop procedures for this and enforce it. Protect data at rest and in transit.

If you are a business that uses and relies on IT then these 10 steps are the basics of what you should be putting in place or if you're not sure how to establish or implement then contact a reputable IT company such as ours to help, advise and carry out what you can't.

Office 365 security

I have been talking with potential customers this week over their requirements for future IT and it became obvious that a Cloud solution was what was needed - specifically Office 365.

One thing that has come up time and time again were the questions "how secure is it?" and "we work with clients who might not think this is secure enough - is it?".

So I have taken the time to research this and as you might think Microsoft has produced the most comprehensive and high quality information on this - so I have taken some of this from Microsoft and reproduced it here for people to have an overview of Office 365 security. You maybe sceptical about Microsoft telling you how great Microsoft Office 365 security is, but what they say here makes sense and is logical and relevant and I believe provides good detail and explanation to most security questions.



"With Office 365, it’s your data. You own it. You control it. And it is yours to take with you if you decide to leave the service. The core tenets of our approach to earning and maintaining your trust are:

 Built-in Security :

Office 365 is a security-hardened service, designed following the Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle. We bring together the best practices from two decades of building enterprise software and managing online services to give you an integrated software-as-a-service solution.

At the service level, Office 365 uses the defense-in-depth approach to provide physical, logical, and data layers of security features and operational best practices. In addition, Office 365 gives you enterprise-grade, user and admin controls to further secure your environment.

Service-level security through defense-in-depth

Customer controls within the service

Security hardening and operational best practices

 Privacy by design :

When you entrust your data to Office 365 you remain the sole owner of the data: you retain the rights, title, and interest in the data you store in Office 365. It’s our policy to not mine your data for advertising purposes or use your data except for purposes consistent with providing you cloud productivity services.

Your data is not used for advertising

You have extensive privacy controls

You can take your data with you when you want

Continuous Compliance

Office 365 is a global service and continuous compliance refers to our commitment to evolve the Office 365 controls and stay up to date with standards and regulations that apply to your industry and geography. Because regulations often share the same or similar controls, this makes it easier for Microsoft to meet the requirements of new regulations or those specific to your organization and industry.

In addition, Office 365 provides admin and user controls, including eDiscovery, legal hold, and data loss prevention, to help you meet internal compliance requirements. These require no additional on-premises infrastructure to use.

Proactive processes to meet your compliance needs

Customer controls for organizational compliance

Independently verified to meet evolving standards

Transparent Operations

Moving to a cloud service shouldn’t mean losing access to knowing what’s going on. With Office 365, it doesn’t. We aim to be transparent in our operations so you can monitor the state of your service, track issues, and have historical view of availability.

You know where your data resides and who has access

Visibility into availability and changes to the service

Financially backed guarantee of 99.9% uptime"

If you would like to read even more detail about the security that wraps Office 365 up then please go to https://products.office.com/en-us/business/office-365-trust-center-cloud-computing-security?tab=7d4bf5d5-8549-acb8-3852-a62cc997fb45

I hope this has reassured anybody who has previously had doubts about Office 365 Cloud security and now understands that a great deal has been done to make O365 a robust and secure product that can be used with safety and reassurance.

 

Raise your virtual glass to PukkaGenTek and say Cheers and Welcome!!!

Here's a toast to our newly re-branded business. Here is some of what we offer customers in varying sectors:

ENTERPRISE

For companies that are no longer start-ups, SOHO or micro businesses but would like the same friendly, professional support service.

For companies who would like to be able to have any member of their staff pick up their phone or send an e-mail requesting support an unlimited number of times for any supported IT problem; or if the need arose expect an engineer to attend onsite any number of times or fix it remotely if possible.

For companies who would like corporate standards of IT monitoring 24/7 with an allocated IT manager; but who can’t afford that.

We can provide solutions to all of the above by providing the unlimited support, monitored by professional systems constantly and managed by experienced and fully qualified engineers – who will also fix any problems you’re experiencing.

We can offer support in many shapes and types; whether you just want a one off ad hoc call for a problem or issue or need a bit more for consultancy to give you strategic help or support. We can also provide a more consistent, robust and prioritised contract IT support which means you’ll always be uppermost in our thoughts when you need urgent help.

When your business is under our care and attention with one of our service contracts you will realise the highest standards of customer care and technical support engineering. When your business has grown to this size you need it to keep working and growing and this is where we can help support that.

If you want a service that is uniquely local but regionally professional providing robust managed solutions to a business that has outgrown its roots then look no further but get in touch with us and we’ll take care of all your IT cares, worries and concerns.

SMALL BUSINESS

Would you like to operate your business as a larger business and take that step beyond Micro, SOHO or start-up but don’t believe you are ready; perhaps we can help, by providing one of the first essential steps which is a first class, amazing, corporate style IT support for business, yet at a reasonable price you can afford.

We are an IT support company that specialises in SME businesses and we believe that extends from 1-50 machines size businesses as well as its bigger brothers. So if you would like to have unlimited telephone advice and help taken with unlimited remote support and on-site engineers when required as well then you can. If you’d like to have experienced and fully qualified Microsoft engineers available to you for unlimited problems then you can. If you’d like to have all your systems monitored and managed using corporate end technology and running 24/7 then you can; and you can have all this for a price that would surprise you.

We can offer you rolling monthly, no tie-in contracts that provide you with all-encompassing service contracts that offer comprehensive IT support for all the IT devices and systems you might have within your offices. Unlike a lot of other IT support companies we won’t just offer you an insurance style contract but instead we will provide a pro-active, managed and 24/7 monitored system contract. Along with that we can go on to offer further services such as high quality, low cost backup solutions and the best in anti-virus installed products; again both of these provided under the pro-active managed and monitored solution service.

If you want to be able to experience the best in SME IT support for a reasonable cost no matter what your size then talk to us and we’ll show you how you can get on with your business; warm in the knowledge that all your IT concerns are taken care of.

HOME USERS

A lot of us buy a PC or a laptop, or maybe both or maybe in a family there are several of these; worse still whilst they’re re all working fine not a problem, but then you have problems with them. Perhaps you have a relation or friend, but they’re not qualified or completely sure or can’t look at it until next week or the following weekend?

We can provide a high quality service typically only available to businesses in the form of our qualified experienced engineers. A one off ad hoc fix or perhaps a review and health check of your IT stock? Perhaps you would like to be relieved of the worry and concerns around all these computers around your house just waiting to go wrong.

Maybe you would even care to take out insurance in the shape of a Home support contract which for a very reasonable no tie-in monthly payment could provide you with the comfort blanket of knowing you are under full IT support just like a big business.

As we offer the same contract and proactive cover and support that we provide to our business support customers we will constantly monitor and manage all aspects of your day to day computer usage, giving your computers a good housekeeping routine on a regular basis. Also, likewise we can offer further products such as business class backup routines and anti-virus software and a host of other products and services that you may need to keep that warm glowing feeling of being under support with us.

We will care for all your IT needs to stop life being a computer gamble, and provide that computer knowledge, help and advice that you can rely on and trust to be completely professional.

So if you need help now then contact us; or if you want to take the computer gamble out of everyday life then call to discuss how we can provide a leading, friendly and professional solution to this quandary.