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…
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…
Not all backup systems are created equally, make sure yours is fit for purpose Backup systems seem like pretty boring things to most people. Sure, the people understand the need to protect their data and they have taken the step of backing up their data; but why should they care about what sort of backup…
It’s no good having an emergency plan that isn’t accessible in an emergency For the purposes of this week’s tip, I’m making the assumption that you produced a plan, or series of plans, for your organisation. If you haven’t, why not take a look at my simple 10-step Plan for creating your own Business Continuity…
Investing in IT Service Continuity without first undertaking a Business Impact Analysis risks wasting money I’ve written this post to rebuff the actions of a number of IT product and service companies who promote their wares under the banner “Business Continuity”. To my mind, and that of ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library – a UK…
Going for the latest and greatest smartphone does come with its risks. Slack attention to security could expose you to data theft and cyber attack. A recent report (PDF) from McAfee contains an important warning to business owners. McAfee report a rapid increase in “targeted attacks, increases in sophistication and increases in the number of…
Humans forget: machines rarely do I want to stress the importance of ensuring that your backup process is as close to automatic as possible and runs with no human intervention. I know of far too many cases where the failure to back data up using a manual process has caused data to be lost. When…
Accepting risks unknowingly and without understanding the possible consequences is a mug’s game Most businesses, apart from some social enterprises, exist to make a return for their investors by delivering something of value to its clients and customers. Unfortunately, to make the return, too many businesses accept what should be an untenable level of risk….
The Universe is out to destroy your data. Make sure your shields are up! In this post I hope to demonstrate the importance of thinking carefully about how you do your backups rather than just installing some software and doing them. I also hope to help you understand why archives need to be treated differently…
