If you transfer your Business to the Cloud, you’d better be sure they know what they’re doing A lot of business are considering moving some or all of their Information Systems to hosted environments in the Cloud. This has a lot of attractions: The start-up costs are a lot less than having your own hardware…
The consequences of Data Loss can affect others as well as your own company. Consider this in your Business Continuity Planning. A client of mine had an interesting story to tell the other day that should serve to highlight the importance of Business Continuity Planning. I look after their IT systems and he rang to ask…
Do you pay as much attention to your cyber security as your physical security? A Register article warning of ‘disturbing’ levels of cyber-raids prompts me to remind you that it’s not just physical security that the modern business needs to take seriously. I doubt that you leave the office unlocked at night and I daresay…
Do you outsource your IT support? Read on Are you in a regulated industry or do you hold any information that can be classed as being confidential? Have you outsourced your IT support? Then you have a critical question to answer. Has your IT support company signed a Non Disclosure Agreement that binds them to…
Do you change system passwords when an IT person leaves? If not, why not? An article in today’s Register highlights the need to have a Leavers’ policy within all organisations and for that policy to be enforced. The article relates a recent court case where an ex-employee logged into his previous employer’s computer network and…
Systems fail at the most inconvenient time. Having a plan to follow will reduce down-time and stress. If you have computers in your business, and I bet you do, you will know from personal experience that sometimes they go wrong. Usually this will cause only minor inconvenience but occasionally it can result in significant disruption…
Security is a lot easier to implement in the modern digital world, but enforcing it over the long term needs thought, and procedures that are adhered to. In the old days, security was simple. The main access control method was physical keys: to the building; to desks and filing cabinets; to the safe and strongroom….
It’s pointless storing all that data on your backup tapes if you can’t restore them later. Many organisations continue to store their backup data on magnetic tape. This is mainly because of volume versus cost and/or portability issues: the ability to transport tapes off-site for safe keeping. In any complex electro-mechnical environment it is usually…
Archives exist to hold the long term memory of an organisation. They need to be managed properly and in accordance with defined processes. There seems to be a lot of confusion about the term Archiving, particularly in the digital world, where it gets confused with Backup. I hope this post will clarify matters. Archived Records…
Using the same, poor, password on multiple sites exposes you to risk How many web sites do you have accounts on? 10? 100? 1000? If you are anything like me, the answer is probably several hundred. Actually, I just checked and found the figure is at least 628! Another question: how many of those accounts use…
