Futureproofing business with Brother

In what is likely to be one of the most enduring side effects of the pandemic, employees and organisations across the UK have felt the benefit of less commuting and more work-life balance.

With this, the more flexible employers can be, there is a realisation that they can be more effective. That means equipping people with solutions to remain productive, wherever they may be.

That includes an all-round resilient, flexible print solution that works at home, in a co-working hub, or in the office.

How Brother and Complete IT Systems help

Brother can tick all the boxes. For home users, Brother users can benefit from compact multifunction desktop devices that enable simple and secure printing and scanning.

In the office, touch-free decentralised printing means staff can reduce the risk of infection, respect social distancing and improve productivity at the same time.

In the hub, Brother’s print and scan devices mean you can create documents for meetings in serviced offices, for
example, without having to send them to shared printers using unfamiliar networks.

Remote IT support desk services, with a team of experts who can resolve any issues remotely, wherever they are.

Brother are working to design bespoke print solutions that are making businesses more resilient and ready to take on whatever challenges and opportunities the future might bring.

See how other organisations are adapting

To understand its importance, Brother UK recruited an expert panel of IT decision-makers, academics, and advisors to look at how firms are introducing new technology to build business resilience. Those businesses with robustness and agility will be best placed to survive both short-term shocks and longer periods of uncertainty.

The report helps in highlighting the role technology must play and help IT decision-makers with the choices they make in enabling their organisations to futureproof.

Find out more

Get in touch to find out how Brother solutions can help you improve your business’s resilience.

What is Zero Trust, and how to build your roadmap

Zero trust is an architectural approach where inherent trust in the network is removed. This means network is assumed hostile and each request is verified based on an access policy. It is a multi-layered approach to fending off modern cybersecurity threats. The National Cyber Security Centre provides a comprehensive Introduction to Zero Trust.

Now that remote work is the rule rather than the exception, it’s time to protect your assets and resources using modern Zero Trust protocols and solutions.

Implementing your Zero Trust strategy

Implementing a Zero Trust Network Access strategy is not overly complex or difficult. The key is to follow best practices and avoid the pitfalls that can leave digital resources exposed to threat actors.

Get the info you need to make it happen. Watch this on-demand webinar from Forrester to see what the experts from Forrester Research are saying about Zero Trust. The webinar summarises, unpacks, and presents the key findings in the report.

Click the image below to watch the webinar (you will be asked to enter your email address).

Want to learn more?

Complete IT Systems have a team of Barracuda specialists on hand. They can demo the solution, discuss business benefits and help you understand how the technology works for your organisation.

To get in touch or request a demo please contact us.

How to secure web applications against malicious files

Modern web applications have evolved into a primary form of data communication as well as a platform where end users can easily collaborate, upload documents, images, or other files. However, this has led to applications being able to accept file uploads with any extension or type, giving attackers the opportunity to upload malicious files into applications that exploit both the organisation and its clients. Therefore, filtering uploads by validating for file types or extensions is no longer an effective way of defending against such attacks.

In the recent past, in-house sandboxing techniques have been used in company networks to detect malware in files. However, deploying an appliance for sandboxing and analysing local network files is not scalable, and it also adds severe latency and administrative overhead, which results in badly implemented security.

Additionally, enhanced inspection techniques that send notifications and adequate logging are required to defend against today’s file injections. By immediately notifying the administrator when an attack occurs, they have a better chance of combating threats.

Why anti-virus scanning isn’t enough

Running a business is becoming more dynamic, yet more complex. Unfortunately, this also applies to the business of malware and ransomware. Popular types of malware are being used to target websites, and are rarely detected by traditional anti-virus services.

The origin of these infections is typically through simple actions like file uploads in web applications. Today’s threats spread at a high velocity, making it difficult to detect a threat, isolate the signature, add the signature to databases, and make it publicly and continually available in a very short time. By the time the database update is available, the threat has already compromised a network’s systems and has successfully covered up its tracks.

While these signature-based legacy systems are still important as a first line of defense for prefiltering network traffic, organisations still need an additional security layer to protect against targeted malware.

Read this whitepaper from Barracuda to find out how to secure web applications against malicious file injections.

Want to learn more?

Complete IT Systems have a team of Barracuda specialists on hand to demo the solution, discuss business benefits and help you understand how the technology works for your organisation.

To get in touch or request a demo please contact us.

Using print to deliver built-in flexibility to your business

Software as a service (SaaS) brings a range of benefits over installed applications, including flexibility and scalability. And the service provider can update their software centrally without any downtime for users, so the latest updates and security patches are in place, bringing peace of mind that systems are as secure as possible.

Research from IDC found that, by 2021, over half of software revenue will come from software sold as subscription and software as a service.

Adrian Bradley, of KPMG, said: “With COVID-19, firms that were already using cloud-based solutions at a sufficient scale experienced no great problems as they were able to easily scale up their operations online.

“But organisations that didn’t have the basic infrastructure in place and were heavily dependent on their premises found they had more bottlenecks to resolve.

Using the cloud also narrows the sphere of responsibility. It plays into reliability, compliance, safety and business continuity so leaders can devote their energy to other issues.

“But, understandably, many firms have focused on continuity, not resilience, so they will need to transform further.”

Automated technologies can also help to build in flexibility and business resilience. Joanna Swash of Moneypenny said: “Our clients faced an unprecedented volume of calls at the onset of lockdown, as people wanted to know about refunds, bookings and orders amid the chaos.

Our digital products including live chat and switchboard technologies helped them to effectively keep on top of enquiries where there wasn’t the physical manpower, preventing customer relationships from being damaged.”

Find out

To understand its importance, Brother UK recruited an expert panel of IT decision-makers, academics, and advisors to look at how firms are introducing new technology to build business resilience. Those businesses with robustness and agility will be best placed to survive both short-term shocks and longer periods of uncertainty.

The report helps in highlighting the role technology must play and help IT decision-makers with the choices they make in enabling their organisations to become more resilient.

Find out more

Get in touch to find out how Brother solutions can help you improve your business’s resilience.

 

2021 Data Protection Report

The last year has affected IT, Digital Transformation, and data protection strategy … in ways never seen before.

In December 2020, an independent research firm completed a survey of 3,000 enterprises across 28 countries
on what their data protection challenges and goals were, regardless of what their current or future data protection
vendor choices were.

The research project was commissioned by Veeam and helmed by two former industry analysts with a combined
60-years of experience in the data protection industry. The results and insights from the survey, as well as Veeam’s
perspective, are both offered in this report.

Find out more

As Veeam Silver partners, Complete IT Systems have the skills and resources to help your business. For more information on how Complete IT Systems and Veeam can help, call 01274 396 213 or email .

 

Recorded webinar: Datto RMM live demo

Complete IT Systems and Datto hosted a deep dive session on 4 November, 2021 about driving automation and efficiency with the Datto RMM solution.

During the session, Greg Jones and Mat Smith of Datto gave an overview of the next generation of software for modern businesses and show how RMM Automation can improve compliance and the security of your network.

How to protect & take your business to the next level with Datto RMM

The session covered:

  • What is an RMM tool?
  • Why do you need one?
  • Asset Management & Security
  • Compliance & Governance
  • Device security & Ransomware Detection/AV monitoring

Business & learning outcomes of this session:

  • How to Increase operational productivity
  • How to drive automation
Watch the recording now!

If you like what you see, you can request a 14-day FREE trial.

Find out more

As Datto Partners, Complete IT Systems can offer you expert advice on the solutions and how they could be effectively deployed in your business.

To find out more please call us on 01274 396 213 or use our contact form and we’ll arrange a good time to call you back.

Datto

Three ways to create a resilient print solution

Futureproofing your business has become all the more important with the changes forced upon us by the Covid-19 pandemic and digitisation trends.

Every business is different, but there are also commonalities.

With Complete IT Systems and Brother, you can create your all-round solution to suit every need with three simple steps:
  1. Comprehensive device options including industry-leading SMB laser printers for the office and compact multifunction desktop devices for home to enable simple and secure printing and scanning in any environment.
  2. Touch-free de-centralised printing with Secure print+, enabling social distancing and reducing the risk of infection in office, while improving productivity by making print processes quick and easy.
  3. Ensure users have access to remote IT support, with a team of experts who can resolve any issues remotely, wherever they are.
Find out more

Get in touch to find out how Brother solutions can help you improve your business’s resilience.

 

How the 3Cs of data protection help your business

Relying on legacy backup or babysitting repetitive backup tasks is not the best use of IT’s time.

When resources are constrained or more business value could be created by freeing up time, adopting the 3Cs approach can be a game-changer for British firms.

Check out this infographic from Veeam Software to see how the 3Cs approach can benefit your firm, and how to implement it.

Find out more

As Veeam Silver partners, Complete IT Systems have the skills and resources to help your business. For more information on how Complete IT Systems and Veeam can help, call 01274 396 213 or email .

 

How to: Reduce the burden of data management

UK businesses trying to operate as efficiently as possible can often suffer from sub-optimal processes through no fault of their own. Digital transformation takes time, and bringing processes online can result in bottlenecks or time-consuming tasks.

One of these is data management.

Firms such as Helston Garages in Cornwall were struggling to manage data backup processes manually. A small IT team, the firm found that routine backup tasks were taking up most of the time of one of their team. This involved physically managing tape storage, and transporting them to an offsite storage facility. But it was an essential task to protect thousands of customers’ data across the group’s 28 sites.

The lack of block-based backup was causing the most problems. This meant that even simple backups of small amounts of data were taking up disproportionate amounts of man-hours. From customer data to recovering emails, this meant that even recovering a single data object was a challenge.

Moving into the cloud

Realising the need to modernise backup policies and processes, Helston Garages assessed several cloud backup solutions.

Automating backup to Barracuda’s cloud has ended the repetitive burden of copying data to tapes. “The biggest benefit for us is a dramatic reduction in our physical management overheads. We don’t have to worry about tape autoloaders and people taking physical volumes off-site to be protected. We have a lot more confidence in our ability to backup and restore multiple versions. It’s far less of a headache for local staff to not have to take tapes away,” said Tom Moore, Group IT Director.

The solution also provides block-level backup. This means data usage is relatively low which helps counter slower network connectivity at some of the Group’s dealerships. Older data can now be archived off thanks to
unlimited cloud storage.

Read on to find out more about how Helston Garages benefited from Barracuda’s cloud backup solutios.

Want to learn more?

Complete IT Systems have a team of Barracuda specialists on hand to demo the solution, discuss business benefits and help you understand how the technology works for your organisation.

To get in touch or request a demo please contact us.

How do experts build business resilience?

IT professionals face significant challenges in adapting operations to new ways of working. Sara Diggle, Head of SMB print business unit at Brother UK recently spoke to technology experts from KPMG, Moneypenny, Weightmans, and Alliance Manchester Business School to produce a comprehensive report about where resilience priorities should lie.

Building resilient businesses in the post-pandemic economy

The magnitude and duration of the COVID-19 pandemic placed unforeseen pressures on even the most robust business continuity plans in organisations operating in every sector, from retail to professional services.

The economic and social repercussions have driven systemic changes in every business model, demanding leaders to inject greater flexibility and new resources to ensure they can respond quickly. From delivering reliable and secure remote working options to changing product offerings and shifting sales channels online, adaptability has continued to be a key factor for those organisations that have responded most effectively over the last 12 months.

And, technology has played an essential role in their success.

Overnight, the first lockdown forced the hands of many technologies and IT decision-makers, compelling them to rapidly adopt and integrate new solutions or face grinding to a halt. Many organisations shoehorned several years of digital transformation into just a few months, from rapidly scaling up cloud systems and rolling out new-generation hardware, to driving app development and introducing new security architecture.

But despite a return to normality being within society’s grasp, we can’t press pause. This renewed focus on resilience, enabled by technology, will not be a temporary shift. According to IDC, the market intelligence firm, enterprises that are focused on resiliency will be able to react to disruption 50% faster than rivals in the future.

2020 showed us that technology has a key role to play in making businesses more robust in the face of disruption, enabling them to quickly and seamlessly pivot to new ways of working.

To understand its importance, Brother UK recruited an expert panel of IT decision-makers, academics, and advisors to look at how firms are introducing new technology to build business resilience. Those businesses with robustness and agility will be best placed to survive both short-term shocks and longer periods of uncertainty.

The report helps in highlighting the role technology must play and help IT decision-makers with the choices they make in enabling their organisations to become more resilient.

Find out more

Get in touch to find out how Brother solutions can help you improve your business’s resilience.