Coronavirus and cybersecurity – what’s the impact in the UK?

Arguably, the cyber security industry has never had a more important role to play than keeping mission-critical organisations and agencies safe from cyber attacks during the COVID-19 pandemic.

And this is especially true for the UK, which has by far the highest number of reported instances in the world of malicious spam emails with ‘coronavirus’ in the subject line.

This article was previously published here. On our COVID-19 resource hub, we have a range of cyber security options and services to keep your business’ valuable data safe on cloud applications, including BitDam for Microsoft Teams and Zoom, Barracuda firewalls, and Datto SaaS Protection for Office 365.

Cyber threat actors are actively attacking the World Health Organisation (WHO) and there has been a rise in scams touting fake cures for the novel coronavirus, said Paul Dwyer, CEO of Dublin-based Cyber Risk International, which specialises in developing corporate cyber defence programs. Dwyer was the guest on this week’s edition of Task Force Seven Radio, with host, George Rettas, the president and CEO of Task Force Seven Radio and Task Force Seven Technologies.

At the same time as the attacks are occurring, “we’re also seeing the ingenuity, the collaboration, the people putting egos to one side and just trying to work together to come up with solutions,’’ said Dwyer, who is also president of the International Cyber Threat Task Force.

He said cyber security professionals play an integral role in helping find a cure for the coronavirus. “At the end of the day, the solution is going to come from a line of code or some sort of system that has been supported from an IT perspective, and that means that it has to be secure,’’ Dwyer said.

There is also a realisation “that national borders don’t matter anymore,’’ he said. “It’s about humanity being connected and trying to deal with this threat, and the solution will lie in the ability to be able to communicate effectively, to be able to analyse data, to be able to distinguish between fake and real and be able to end this. I do believe it’s bringing out the best and the worst in people.”

Noting that there is a huge focus on hand washing right now, Rettas asked Dwyer to discuss the parallels that can be drawn between that and good cyber hygiene.

Just as there are contagion factors that can be caused by someone who is infected with the coronavirus, Dwyer said, a system can be infected malware when basic controls such as patching and applying updates are not practiced.

One small player can cause a widespread cyberattack, Dwyer said.

“I’m unfortunately putting out a bit of a negative message, a warning, to people saying all these bad guys … have been holding off,’’ he said. Then he issued a dire prediction.

“The big one is going to happen in relation to the financial sector in particular, because [hackers are] highly organised … The general defences of cyber hygiene stops most attacks as we all know, but the big organised guys, — we can see that they’re rubbing their hands and they’re getting ready to make moves and more sophisticated moves on the larger targets.”

But beyond the financial sector, Dwyer said he believes healthcare remains a big target too.

The Geopolitics Of Cyber Security

The conversation then turned political and after Dwyer mentioned he has interviewed National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, Rettas said he couldn’t “ squander the opportunity” and asked Dwyer for his thoughts about Snowden’s actions.

“I think he did the world a favour,’’ Dwyer replied. “I’ve interviewed him twice. Supremely nice and intelligent guy … I understand his motivations and his passion.”

Dwyer went on to say that Snowden brought “attention to the fact that things were going on that shouldn’t be going on,” and that “he’s done the world a favour and he’s given us a chance to reflect upon privacy,” which he said he advocates for.

In response to a question by Rettas about Snowden’s future, Dwyer said he believes he’s willing to come back to the US “as long as there’s a guarantee that he won’t be tortured.” He added that depending on becomes president after the 2020 election, he might even be pardoned.

Rettas then pivoted the conversation back to the fact that geopolitics plays a big role not only in issues like that, but in the country’s response to the COVID-19 virus as well. He asked whether it’s important for a CISO to understand geopolitics?

Dwyer responded that it absolutely is and noted that a lot of hackers’ actions are motivated by “national pride.”

He likened hackers to “being on the Olympic team of their country,” and said that “when we saw lots of hacking coming in from China and … still do obviously, a lot of this was about nationalistic pride. It wasn’t about making money. It wasn’t about scam artists … whether it was Russia, whether it was Nigeria, a lot of it was just about nationalistic pride.”

Dwyer also said he thinks in every crisis and every challenge, there’s an opportunity, and the COVID-19 virus presents both.

When he founded the International Cyber Threat Task Force, he said that “one of the goals was to form an organisation where all the good guys can work together” and share knowledge with “the right kinds of people” and train together with the goal of disrupting cyber attackers.

CISOs And Risk Management

Rettas noted that Dwyer advises CISOs all over the world, and that risk is a big part of their jobs, “but effective CISOs really map the residual risk of controls back to their business objectives.” This is a language that corporate boards understand, Rettas pointed out, and it also helps the CISO gain credibility. He asked Dwyer to discuss how a CISO determines what metrics should be communicated to the board and how the net message should be crafted? And, if a CISO is not a risk professional, can they even do their job?

Dwyer said that meaningful metrics are when a CISO is able to tie any residual risk identified back to the key objectives of the business. “So, if the business objective is it wants to roll out a new app or it wants to get X thousand customers onto an online system, and you’ve identified that there are cyber risks around that and you’re able to quantify those — not subjectively, but empirically actually put numbers on those and have science behind it — then the business will eat that up.”

The solution, he continued, “is to marry the principles of security risk management.” That means have security practices around confidentiality, integrity, and availability, and incorporating them into a risk management program that the business will understand, he said. To make this happen, CISOs absolutely have to understand the business they are in, Dwyer stressed. It’s not enough to say, “Oh, I’m business aligned. They don’t even know what business aligned means,” he said.

Admitting that what he was about to say makes him “lose friends,” Dwyer then posited that “cybersecurity doesn’t belong to the CISO. It belongs to the CEO … I always feel that cybersecurity should be integrated as part of the enterprise risk management program.”

And, he added that a CISO should not be working under the CIO since they’re trying to innovate and keep systems running.

A CISO should report to the enterprise risk manager, and ultimately, the executive board and the CEO, Dwyer said.

At the end of the day, the CISO “is as much a salesperson as a politician, as a subject matter expert. And it’s a business leader position,’’ he said. “That person needs to be able to sell ideas within the organisation … be able to collaborate, be able to join people together with different opinions, to be able to support and understand the business model.”

A CISO is “sometimes a person with a big personality, sometimes a person that’s good with people, a good communicator, good business [savvy],’’ he added. “They’re very important skills that a CISO should have.”

Help during the COVID-19 crisis

The expert team at Complete IT Systems are publishing a series of guidance and tips to help you and your business through this situation. This covers all aspects of quickly providing safe, comfortable and efficient home offices for your users, including data security, collaboration tools, laptops, desktops, print and consumables, support for critical IT tasks, and more. Click here for our central COVID-19 resource hub.

 

5 tips for effective remote working with Microsoft Teams

Many teams are having to quickly adjust to remote working, and if it’s not something they have done before it can take a bit of getting used to – especially the social side of work.

To this end, we’ve put these short tips together to share with your users if you’ve rolled out a new collaboration tool such as Microsoft Teams. This will help them replace the social and interactive elements of office life as best they can during the current crisis.

  1. Start the day with a “stand up meeting” – greet one another with videos on just as you would in a physical office. It gets everyone started for the day and you can chat about your evening
  2. Coffee breaks – get together mid-morning and mid-afternoon to chat and enjoy tea or coffee together as a team
  3. Randomly ping colleagues at various points during the day
  4. “Ask me anything” (within reason!) brainstorming sessions with managers and sub-teams
  5. Friday after work – enjoy a drink together online after you finish work on a Friday

In some ways, all of these actions could actually make teams more sociable than in an office!

Adjusting to homeworking during the COVID19 crisis

Over the coming days and weeks the expert team at Complete IT Systems are publishing a series of guidance and tips to help you and your business through this situation. This will cover all aspects of quickly providing safe, comfortable and efficient home offices for your users, including data security, collaboration tools, laptops, desktops, print and consumables, support for critical IT tasks, and more.

Get Microsoft Teams FREE for your users!

Connect on Teams anywhere with Windows, Mac, iOS and Android devices, or bring remote participants into meeting spaces of all sizes with Teams.

We know Microsoft can be a little daunting to navigate – we can guide you through the process. Just give us your email address and we’ll get you started.

Talk to us – we’re just at the end of a phone

Complete IT Systems Ltd have been providing these services to our customers for over 10 years and have many satisfied clients. For more information on how we can help, or just to get some general advice on IT and business supplies during the crisis, please call us on 01274 396 213. You can also see the full range of products and services we offer, or read more about our support services here.

Remote working that doesn’t feel remote

In the era of accidental homeworking, it’s vital to give your users the tools to enable them to remain productive, creative and efficient from remote locations – the trick is combining this flexibility with the requisite levels of security to prevent your customers’ data from falling into the wrong hands, or your core IT systems to be hacked.

The trick during the COVID-19 crisis (and for effective homeworking strategies in general) is to provide the right portfolio of collaboration tools to ensure that teams don’t become remote and isolated from one another, and that customers, prospects, suppliers and partners can be managed effectively.

Remote working that doesn’t feel remote…

The best initiatives come from meeting, talking and sharing ideas, so it’s crucial that your users working from different locations doesn’t mean that teams drift apart and become more siloed.

It’s therefore crucial that your users can connect, chat, collaborate and produce just as productively than they can in a face-to-face environment in an office.

Collaboration, virtual meetings and file sharing with Office 365

The Microsoft Office 365 portfolio provides the perfect way of handling these challenges of remote work – and in some ways make for an even more productive environment than that of an office environment!

The power of Microsoft combines to provide a best-in-class operating system, enterprise level security safeguards, and seamless integration between applications for optimal user efficiency.

Where to start?

We know that the Office 365 portfolio can be a bit daunting due to the number of options and variables. But that’s where the licensing experts at Complete IT Systems come in, and we can guide you on where to start based on your priorities and composition of your teams and users. We can also help you choose, deploy, use and maintain your solutions.

There’s no “off the shelf” fit for any business, but in short the Microsoft tools can be summarised into the following business needs:

  • Work hub: Teams provides a central “place” where employees, contractors and partners can talk, chat, hold meetings, and share files and apps for a fully collaborative working experience
  • Securely sharing and editing documents: OneDrive for Business and SharePoint enable seamless sharing and collaboration on presentations and other documents
  • Email and calendars: Online and offline with Outlook

Need some help quickly deploying homeworking for your business?

The expert team at Complete IT Systems are publishing a series of guidance and tips to help you and your business through this situation. This takes in all aspects of quickly providing safe, comfortable and efficient home offices for your users, including data security, collaboration tools, laptops, desktops, print and consumables, support for critical IT tasks, and more. Read more in our central COVID-19 crisis hub.

Talk to us – we’re just at the end of a phone

Complete IT Systems Ltd have been providing these services to our customers for over 10 years and have many satisfied clients. For more information on how we can help, or just to get some general advice on IT and business supplies during the crisis, please call us on 01274 396 213. You can also see the full range of products and services we offer, or read more about our support services here.

Get set for virtual meetings with the right headset for homeworking

In these times when your teams will likely be spending a lot of time on calls and virtual meetings, it’s important to give them the right tools for the job. One of these is a business-class headset for homeworking.

Why it’s a great fit for homeworking

The JEDEL JD-032 gaming headset is a fantastic choice and is certainly great value for money. Comfortable to wear all day long and includes an in-line volume control with 3.5mm Audio Jack connectivity.

The headset comes with two large 40mm magnetic neodymium driver to deliver high-fidelity audio and ensure excellent clarity through the entire frequency range, ideal for playing games, watching movies, listening to music or making calls.

Fully adjustable padded headband ensures perfect fit with different head sizes (both adults and kids) and wearing comfort. Breathable earpads reduce heat and moisture build-up to keep your ears comfortable during long, intense gaming sessions, they also block ambient noises to ensure full concentration.

The boom microphone with noise reduction function can be freely positioned to pick up your voice or keep silent when you do not want to be heard. The in-line volume control is attached to the cable at you hand for quick operation.

Resources for COVID-19 homeworking

The team at Complete IT Systems are publishing a series of guidance and tips to help you and your business through this situation with everything from IT security to collaboration tools – you can read more here.

Talk to us – we’re just at the end of a phone

Complete IT Systems Ltd have been providing these services to our customers for over 10 years and have many satisfied clients. For more information on how we can help, or just to get some general advice on IT and business supplies during the crisis, please call us on 01274 396 213. You can also see the full range of products and services we offer, or read more about our support services here.

COVID-19 homeworking for business: Quick guide

With the government publishing its coronavirus action plan earlier in March, and the more stringent measures that have come in since to enforce COVID-19 homeworking where possible, it’s quickly become vital for businesses to adopt homeworking arrangements for users. If your organisation isn’t familiar with this, it can be a daunting task, especially in a short space of time!

To help UK businesses prepare as effectively as possible , we’ve put together a short guide and a COVID-19 resources page that outlines some key points for adopting temporary homeworking – and making it work for your business and users.

Our experience

We’ve done this based on over 10 years experience helping our customers with remote workforces working in a secure, productive and efficient manner. So we’ve summarised some of the main IT considerations for COVID-19 homeworking into a simple checklist – addressing these before (or very quickly after) homeworking starts will ensure all parties are happy and comfortable with the new working arrangements, and ensures that business can function as smoothly as possible during the COVID-19 crisis.

COVID-19 homeworking checklist

  • Do your users have the right hardware for working remotely – high spec laptop, mobile, comfortable workstation, printer, etc?
  • How will you and your team collaborate for group meetings, workshops, customer demos, etc? Should you consider collaboration platforms such as Microsoft Teams? This means you can get together for formal meetings, but also have daily coffee breaks in front of your screens to catch up more informally
  • Can confidentiality and compliance with data protection regulations be satisfied from a homeworking environment?
  • Don’t forget to update email signatures with mobile numbers instead of office landlines if they will go unanswered while the office is closed (IT can do this centrally across all signatures in Outlook)
  • Are users able to work at home securely with access to servers, VPN, etc?
  • Have you provided the right file sharing, collaboration and filing tools such as SharePoint and OneDrive

Further guidance about work duties and how to support your homeworkers with tasks, breaks, regulations and so on can be found here.

Find out more

Complete IT Systems Ltd have been providing these services to our customers for over 10 years and have many satisfied clients. For more information on how we can help, please call us on 01274 396 213 or read more about our support services here.

Printers & consumables for home workers during the COVID-19 crisis

Home office

Whether you’re looking for a quick solution for printers for homeworking during COVID-19 crisis, or you’re looking to deploy a more strategic print refresh, Complete IT Systems provide full range and expertise on printers and consumables.

We offer competitive prices, expertise on many lines of printers, inks and toners from all the major brands, in addition re-manufactured and compatible cartridges to fit all budgets and requirements – most lines are stocked and available on a next-day business delivery service.

From small desk based ink jet systems up to the high end departmental multi-function lasers, we have your requirements covered.

Find out more

Complete IT Systems Ltd have been providing these services to our customers for over 10 years and have many satisfied clients. For more information on how we can help, please call us on 01274 396 213 or read more about the print and consumables brands we carry here.

More guidance for businesses trying to quickly setup to enable homeworking is available here, and we’ll be publishing many more tips and guidance over the coming days and weeks.

Extended IT Support Cover

Are you having issues around support & deployment during the Covid-19 crisis? If you have new users working from home or remote locations to contend with, engineers off sick or self-isolating, or are unable to access your office location, then flexible IT support is a great way of ensuring your organisation’s core IT systems remain up and running.

How can we help?

Complete IT Systems have skilled technicians available to help business of all sizes and types remotely at the end of the phone.

We can provide support with VPN, Connectivity, Remote working as well as Server configuration issues be that Virtual or Physical.

Our credentials

Complete IT Systems Ltd carry accreditations from all major vendors including VMware, Microsoft, HP, Dell, Datto, Barracuda, Sophos and Kaspersky to name just a few. We can support systems running all Windows variants and Software revisions, we have specialists covering Office 365/Teams/Exchange.

Find out more

Complete IT Systems Ltd have been providing these services to our customers for over 10 years and have many satisfied clients. For more information on how we can help, please call us on 01274 396 213 or read more about our support services here.