Author: BB

Organisations are realising benefits from significantly simplified storage management and improved performance in cloud storage, disaster recovery, malware protection, multiple hypervisors, SQL, VDI and the like.

If you are already doing so, then congratulations, you have taken the first step in being the hero! However, you may be managing multiple appliances to handle the different environments.

What if you could use a SINGLE appliance to handle your tech stack?

There are numerous advantages of deploying Tintri VMstore:

• Smaller footprint replacing multiple appliances
• Reduce energy costs and resources
• Specifically designed for virtualised environments
• Easily deployed and managed

Take your approach to the next level.

▶ Download the Tintri VMstore datasheet

Want to find out more?

As a Tintri Partner, 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.

The Crime Prevention Warning from the PSNI is a reminder that QR code phishing attacks – or “Quishing” – are currently on the rise and present a significant threat to users and organisations alike.

As reported by the PSNI, we are seeing an increasing danger around QR code attacks as they become more sophisticated, complex and harder to detect.

Join this webinar where Barracuda experts will delve into this new threat. We will cover:

• Background on QR code attacks.
• What we are seeing in the market.
• How we can help protect against QR code attacks.
• Why incident response and zero trust access for account takeovers are vital to deploy.

Get up to speed with this sophisticated new attack and how you can prevent it.

📅 Thursday 16th November | 10:00AM GMT

▶ Register now.

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.

Print security has become a critical issue for business today. Due to an increased number of security threats, as well as legislation regarding privacy and data security, organisations need to focus on strategies for securing their printing functions.

According to Infosource, there were approximately 36 million printers and multifunction printing devices in use in Western Europe at the beginning of 2017. Considering most printing devices are also connected to a network, and are just as susceptible to malware and hacker attacks as computers, this equates to a significant threat to security.

Sensitive documents and information are regularly printed, and documents often remain unprotected in output trays long after print jobs have been completed. Printers may also store information that can be recalled or intercepted inappropriately, and have the potential to facilitate access to the wider network. They need to be managed and protected, just like the rest of the IT infrastructure.

This white paper from Brother explores why printers need to be managed and protected, just like the rest of the IT infrastructure.

▶ Download the guide.

Find out more

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

 

To help mark Cybersecurity Awareness Month, our partners Barracuda have been looking into some bad tech habits.

From setting strong passwords, keeping software updated, recognising phishing attacks, and other basic measures that underpin cybersecurity, it’s all solid advice. And it’s not just passwords and patching, humans have an unerring ability to ignore other technical advice even when they know it’s right.

Perhaps if we understood why, we could more clearly see our way round password security.

 Read this article from Barracuda to find out what we can learn from the tech advice we never listen to.

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.

Digital business demands are accelerating, and IT complexity is rising in response.

Organisations face an increasing number of systems which require real-time and continuous optimisation that relies on human intervention. Skilled infrastructure personnel are in high demand and becoming scarce. IT infrastructure must, therefore, become more intelligent and provide enough self-optimising capabilities to meet increased demands and free up personnel.

Intelligent infrastructure is designed to replace people-driven activities, which can be extensive, time consuming, costly, risky, and reliant on tribal knowledge with intelligent data-driven technologies that are validated, proven, integrated, and repeatable. This does not mean that people are replaced. Automation, and, specifically, autonomous AI-driven operations, close the skills gap, reduce operating expenses, and enable IT to focus on delivering agile services and responding to changes on demand.

▶ Read the Economic Survey Group Economic Validation Report.

Want to find out more?

As a Tintri Partner, 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.

Calls for the paperless office have been sounding since as far back as the 1970s, yet with the average employee using 10,000 sheets of paper a year, it’s clear that printing remains a core business function that’s showing no sign of declining.

However, that doesn’t mean that the current model is working effectively. For many SMBs, print spending has got out of hand. 52% of print decision makers have absolutely no idea how much they’re spending on printing, and 44% of those that do are spending over £10,000 a year. Clearly something needs to change.

This white paper from our partners Brother UK looks at the ways you might unknowingly be wasting money on printing and provides expert tips on how you can cut down on costs and time.

▶ Download the white paper.

Find out more

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

 

Data Subject Access Requests (DSARs) were first introduced in 1998, and digital technology has made requesting them easier over time. Why should IT care about them?

In short, companies and organisations of all sizes need to know what they are, and what to do if you receive one.

The problem is that incoming DSARs can become a hot potato and bounce around HR, legal, IT, data protection, compliance and even marketing departments without clear accountability or ownership.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) publishes a useful guide on preparing for subject access requests, with one of the requirements being that you carry out a “reasonable search for the requested information”. On top of that, the timeline to respond is one month.

So even if the Data Protection Officer (DPO) is ultimately accountable for the request, without the right processes or tools in place, finding the requested information can be a minefield. No prizes for guessing the first point of call to get that information!

Enter IT!

And that’s usually where IT teams become involved in order to locate the personal data, while ensuring that other legal obligations are not infringed in doing so.

According to Kingsley Napley, “technical support is frequently required to identify and review data, and legal input may be needed.” For example, if an ex-employee asks to see all emails and correspondence they were copied on over a two year period, this could be hundreds of thousands of emails, not to mention direct chats and team collaborations in platforms such as Microsoft Teams or Google Workspaces.

How else can IT get sucked in?

As well as the normal jobs of keeping the lights on, ensuring that everyone has working devices, the network is secure, all files are safely backed up, and everything else that goes on in a day, there’s worse news for IT teams.

That’s because these kinds of data requests may not even be limited to DSAR cases. IT are increasingly being asked to help with locating data for internal complaints or enquiries such as:

• One employee is accused of sexually harassing another via their organisation’s Microsoft Teams chats.
• Instances in which an organisation’s emails are being sent to an unusual address.
• A director suddenly starts getting lots of unsolicited calls from recruiters.
• A firm’s customers start being approached by its rival’s salespeople
• An industry news outlet gets hold of sensitive proprietary information about a company’s new product.
• After one company acquires another, ensure employees aren’t still using old terminology from the acquired business.

Find out more

Cryoserver enables organisations to quickly respond to requests and solve situations such as:

• Searching through conversations for keywords or information, and provide to your Legal team to use as evidence in a tribunal.
• Find out if an employee is sharing sensitive data (a breach of GDPR) with an unauthorised individual.
• Discover if an employee has emailed the director’s number to multiple contacts.
• See if the company’s confidential customer contact list has been attached to an employee’s email.
• Find evidence of information being leaked by a particular employee.
• There’s a claim of sexual harassment and you’re tasked with finding the emails in question
• HR has to come to you to find emails from a specific employee
• And many more cases!

These issues might not be fully IT’s responsibility, but it’s in your interest to find the services and technology elements to help when incidents do arise, and limit the organisation’s exposure in the process.

▶ Find out more about Cryoserver’s solutions.