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Cyber Essentials Certification

Fri, 24 Oct 2025 17:00:59 GMT

Cyber Essentials Certification Achieved

Big News! We’ve Achieved Cyber Essentials Certification

We're excited to announce a significant milestone in our commitment to security: we have officially achieved Cyber Essentials certification!

This achievement validates that our organization has implemented effective and affordable technical controls, a UK government-backed scheme designed to protect against the vast majority of basic cyber-attacks. As the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) advises, most attacks are like "a thief trying your front door to see if it's unlocked," and our certification locks that door.

What This Means For You

For our clients and partners, this certification is a concrete demonstration of our dedication to cyber resilience and data protection . Achieving Cyber Essentials means we are proactive, and it gives you immediate assurance that:

Customer Reassurance: You can be confident that we are actively securing our IT against cyber-crime, protecting your valuable data.
Increased Trust: Our certification signals to potential new customers that we have essential, government-mandated security safeguards in place from day one.
A Security Baseline: Our entire team has a clear understanding of our security status and the essential controls required to protect the business.

We have been independently verified against the scheme's five essential technical controls, which are in place to manage our risk profile:

Firewalls and Routers: Protecting our internet-connected devices.
Secure Configuration: Preventing unauthorized access to our systems by hackers.
User Access Control: Limiting opportunities for unauthorized access to sensitive data.
Malware Protection: Shielding our business from viruses and malicious software.
Software Updates: Ensuring our critical systems and applications are updated to rectify known weaknesses.

In today’s digital landscape, security isn't optional—it’s foundational. Achieving Cyber Essentials is a testament to the hard work of our entire team in implementing robust security measures that protect both our systems and, most importantly, your data .

We look forward to continuing to build trust and deliver secure services as we maintain this high standard.

The Critical Importance of Cybersecurity in Business

Fri, 16 May 2025 11:25:09 GMT

“Not if but when” is the resounding statement from Cybersecurity specialists in light of the recent cyberattacks on major UK companies like Marks & Spencer (M&S) and the Co-op. It serves as a stark reminder of the critical importance of robust cybersecurity measures in today's interconnected world. These incidents have not only disrupted business operations but have also raised serious concerns about data security and business continuity. Clearwave is currently exploring additional measures that it can take to protect itself and its clients should the worse happen.

Below we are outlining what has happened recently and why it is important to be aware and what measures should be taken to bolster your defences. Most importantly our Pegasus support system is a secure way for us to receive your support requests and for Clearwave to securely communicate with you.

The Recent Attacks

In April and May 2025, both M&S and the Co-op experienced significant cyberattacks.

Marks & Spencer: M&S faced a ransomware attack that caused widespread disruption, including issues with contactless payments, online orders, and even stock shortages. The attack is believed to have been carried out by the Scattered Spider group, and involved the use of DragonForce ransomware and bad actors posing as IT Support personnel which allow them to reset users passwords.
The Co-op: The Co-op also suffered a cyberattack, which led to the shutdown of some IT systems and the theft of customer data, including names and contact details, from a system used for current and former members.

Why These Attacks Matter

These attacks highlight several key vulnerabilities and the potential consequences of inadequate cybersecurity:

Disruption of Operations: Cyberattacks can disrupt critical business operations, including online sales, supply chain management, and in-store services. This can lead to significant financial losses and damage to a company's reputation.
Cost of recovery: The costs associated with recovering from a ransomware attack can be substantial and for smaller business it may well be catastrophic
Data Breaches and Loss of Trust: When client data is compromised, it can lead to a loss of trust and damage the businesses relationship with its clients. This can have long-term consequences for client loyalty and business performance.
Supply Chain Vulnerabilities : These attacks highlight the interconnectedness of supply chains, and how a breach at one point can impact a much larger network.
Social Engineering: The attacks have shown the effectiveness of social engineering tactics, where attackers manipulate employees to gain access to systems.

The Importance of Cybersecurity Measures and practices

In light of these events, it is clear that all businesses must prioritise cybersecurity. Key measures include:

Strong Password Policies and Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): Implementing strong password policies and MFA can significantly reduce the risk of unauthorized access to systems. The attacks on M&S and Co-op involved social engineering tactics to reset passwords, highlighting the importance of MFA.
Employee Training: Training employees to recognize and avoid phishing attempts and other social engineering tactics is crucial.
Regular Security Audits and Vulnerability Assessments: Regularly assessing systems for vulnerabilities and conducting security audits can help identify and address potential weaknesses before they can be exploited.
Incident Response Planning: Having a well-defined incident response plan in place is essential for minimizing the impact of a cyberattack and ensuring a swift recovery. M&S had issues with their incident response, according to some reports.
Data Encryption: Encrypting sensitive data, both in transit and at rest, can help protect it from unauthorized access.
Network Segmentation: Dividing networks into smaller, isolated segments can limit the spread of an attack if one segment is compromised.
Investment in Security Technology: Investing in up-to-date security technologies, such as intrusion detection and prevention systems, firewalls, and anti-malware software, is essential.
Third-Party Risk Management: Businesses need to carefully assess the security practices of their third-party suppliers and partners, as vulnerabilities in the supply chain can be exploited by attackers.
Cybersecurity Awareness: Promoting a culture of cybersecurity awareness within the organization is crucial.
Zero Trust Architecture: Implementing a Zero Trust security model, which assumes that no user or device should be trusted by default, can enhance security.

The Broader Context

These attacks are part of a growing trend of cyberattacks across the globe. Factors contributing to this trend include:

Increased Reliance on Technology: Businesses are increasingly reliant on technology for everything from online sales to supply chain management, which expands the attack surface.
The Growth of E-commerce: The growth of e-commerce has increased the amount of online transactions and the volume of client data that businesses handle.
Sophisticated Cybercriminals: Cybercriminals are becoming increasingly sophisticated, using advanced techniques such as ransomware, phishing, and social engineering to target organizations.
Talent Shortage: The shortage of skilled cybersecurity professionals makes it more challenging for organizations to defend against cyberattacks.

In summary

The cyberattacks on M&S and the Co-op serve as a wake-up call for UK Businesses. Organisations must recognize that cybersecurity is not just an IT issue but a business imperative. By investing in robust cybersecurity measures, businesses can protect their operations, safeguard client data, and maintain the trust of their clients. Failure to do so can have severe consequences, including financial losses, reputational damage, and legal liabilities.

The benefits of cloud services

Thu, 28 Nov 2024 17:57:37 GMT

In recent years, there has been a shift in the way businesses operate. Thanks to technological advances, companies can now take advantage of the cloud to increase efficiency and productivity. Here are a few of the cloud-based options now available to the average business owner:

Cloud-based accounting software
Cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) software
Cloud-based digital workspaces
Cloud-based project management software
Cloud-based file sharing and storage services
Cloud-based email services
Cloud-based computing
Cloud-based marketing tools
Cloud-based data storage
Cloud-based ecommerce platforms

Cloud Services-two definitions

When you do an internet search for “cloud services," you will come across two definitions. The first definition of cloud services has to do with the services offered by cloud platforms to the business. Some of these cloud-based options are outlined in the list above.
The second definition you will come across in your search will say something like, “The services provided by an IT professional to help businesses secure, streamline, and optimise their cloud-based operational assets.” This is what we refer to as our Cloud Services offering.
In this article, we will use the words “cloud” or “cloud assets” to describe the first category and “Cloud Services” to describe how a Managed IT Services provider helps companies like yours take full advantage of their cloud-based workflow and storage.

How does an MSP help a small business in utilizing the cloud?

Our team can help small businesses move to the cloud and manage their cloud assets. We work with your business to assess your needs, develop a migration plan, and manage your cloud assets. We’ll also provide monitoring and support for ongoing data security and operational stability.

Here are a few pro-business benefits of using the cloud assets combined with our Cloud Services

Increased Flexibility and Scalability

One of the biggest benefits of cloud assets is their increased flexibility and scalability. With on-premise solutions, you're limited by the amount of hardware and software you have on-site. If you want to add more users or increase capacity, you should purchase additional hardware and software, which can be expensive.
Our team leverages our Cloud Services offering to help you scale up or down as needed. This makes it easier to forecast growth costs and scale predictably.

Improved Collaboration and Communication

Another benefit of using the cloud for business processes is that it can improve collaboration and communication within your team. Utilizing the cloud, team members can easily access shared files and documents from anywhere in the world, making it easier to stay connected and work together on projects.
Through our Cloud Services offering, we help companies make the most of the collaboration potential of their cloud-based assets within their workflow.

Enhanced Security

Regarding security, many businesses are hesitant to move to the cloud because they worry about data breaches. However, cloud providers have prioritized security and invest heavily in their infrastructure to help ensure that data is protected from threats like DDoS attacks, malware, and ransomware. In fact, sometimes cloud-based solutions can be more secure than on-premise ones because they're constantly updated with the latest security patches and features.
But even with the baked-in security features that come along with cloud-based business assets, monitoring and cybersecurity risk management of your assets within the cloud is still your responsibility. We help you understand cloud asset cybersecurity by putting industry best practices in place and being there for you if any negative event does impact your workflow.

The cloud offers many benefits for small-to-mid-size businesses that want to grow without investing in on-site hardware or software. Hiring an experienced Managed Services Provider for Cloud Services can deliver the support and expertise needed to leverage cloud-based workflow.

How much does it cost to have an MSP manage my cloud assets?

The cost of having an MSP manage your cloud assets depends on the individual Cloud Services you need and the provider you choose. Generally, Managed Services Providers charge a monthly fee that may include all the services you need.

Are there any disadvantages to using the cloud for my business operations?

A main disadvantage of using cloud-based platforms for day-to-day business operations is that cloud assets require an internet connection. If your internet goes down, so do your cloud-based applications and access to stored data. Additionally, Cloud Services can be more expensive than on-premise solutions if you need a massive amount of storage or bandwidth. Check in with our team to help you evaluate what cloud strategy could be right for your business.

Conclusion:

There are plenty of reasons to consider using the cloud for your small to mid-size business. From increased flexibility and scalability to enhanced security, many benefits come with switching to the cloud. If you're ready to take your business to the next level with cloud technologies, contact us to learn more about our Cloud Services offerings. We can help.

Maximise business benefits through Your IT Support Provider

Sun, 03 Nov 2024 16:36:38 GMT

A strong relationship with your IT support provider isn't just beneficial-it's essential for staying ahead. Too often, businesses view their IT support services as a mere necessity, a background function that keeps operations running.

However, this partnership can dramatically support business innovation, efficiency, and growth when leveraged correctly.

Before we discuss tips for your relationship with your IT Services team, let's quickly review the top 10 benefits that Managed IT Services can deliver for a company like yours.

Cost Predictability: Outsourcing IT functions can be much more cost-effective and cost-stable than hiring and maintaining an in-house team.
Increased Efficiency: Managed IT Services providers (like our team) specialize in optimizing business processes and implementing the latest technology, resulting in improved productivity and streamlined operations.

Proactive Maintenance: With constant monitoring and regular maintenance, Managed IT Services providers can help identify and address potential IT issues before they become problems causing downtime.

Access to Expertise: Partnering with an IT support provider gives businesses access to a team of highly skilled and experienced professionals without the cost of hiring and training in-house staff.

24/7 Support: Managed IT Services providers offer round-the-clock support, helping to ensure that your business is always up and running.

Scalability: As your business grows or experiences changes in demand, an IT partner can easily adjust the services and resources provided to meet your needs.

Strategic Planning: A good IT support provider will work closely with your business to develop a strategic plan for technology that is in line with your goals and helps drive growth.

Improved Security: With cyber threats constantly evolving, having a strong IT support provider can help protect your business from potential attacks and data breaches.

Access to Latest Technology: Managed IT Service providers stay current with the latest technology trends and can provide businesses like yours with access to new tools and solutions that can improve operations.

Peace of Mind: By outsourcing IT functions to a trusted partner, you can focus on other important aspects of your company without worrying about IT issues.

Now that we've covered the main benefits of partnering with a Managed IT Services provider, let's discuss how to maximize these benefits through a strong relationship with your IT support team.

Here are five key strategies we suggest to help ensure you're deriving the maximum business benefit from your relationship with your IT support provider.

1. Establish Clear Communication Channels
Clear, open, and effective communication is the bedrock of any successful partnership. Start by working with your IT partner to establish predefined channels and processes for reporting issues, requesting support, and receiving updates. This will not only streamline problem resolution but also foster a relationship of trust and transparency. A monthly or quarterly review meeting can keep both parties aligned on expectations and service delivery, ensuring that your business needs are being met promptly and efficiently.

2. Regularly Review Performance Metrics
The old adage "What gets measured gets managed" seems particularly true here. Together with your IT support provider, identify key performance indicators (KPIs) that are in keeping with your business objectives. These could include metrics such as response times, resolution rates, and user satisfaction scores. Regularly reviewing these metrics allows you to objectively assess the value your provider brings to your business. It creates an opportunity for continuous improvement, helping guarantee that the services delivered are not only of high quality but also in line with your evolving business needs.

3. Foster a Collaborative Relationship
View your IT support provider not just as a vendor but as a strategic partner who plays a central role in achieving your business objectives. By fostering a collaborative relationship, you encourage them to gain a deeper understanding of your business processes, challenges, and objectives. This, in turn, enables them tailor their services more effectively to your needs, suggesting improvements and aligning their efforts with your long-term business strategy.

4. Prioritize Proactive Support
In an ideal scenario, your IT support provider helps you avoid IT-related issues before they arise, not just fix them when they do. This proactive approach involves regular system audits, monitoring, and maintenance to identify potential vulnerabilities or inefficiencies. By prioritizing preventative measures, you can minimize downtime, improve system reliability, and lower your exposure to cybercriminal threat. This proactive support also frees up your team to focus on core business activities rather than firefighting IT issues.

5. Invest in Ongoing Training and Education
To fully leverage the benefits of your IT support services, your team must stay informed about the latest technologies and best practices. Encourage your provider to offer regular training and education sessions for your staff - especially in the realm of cybersecurity awareness.

Conclusion
A thoughtfully managed relationship with your IT support provider can yield significant benefits beyond just keeping your systems running. By establishing clear communication channels, regularly reviewing performance, fostering collaboration, prioritizing proactive support, and investing in ongoing training, you can transform your IT support from a simple line-item expense into a powerful driver of business success.

Want to know more about the benefits of outsourced IT support for a business like yours? Our team would be happy to have a no-obligation conversation with you. Let’s talk.

Scammers can easily phish your multi-factor authentication codes. Here’s how to avoid it

Thu, 30 May 2024 16:12:19 GMT

More and more websites and services are making multi-factor-authentication (MFA) mandatory, which makes it much harder for cybercriminals to access your accounts. That’s a great thing. But as security evolves, so do cybercriminals who are always looking for new ways to scam us.

A type of phishing we’re calling authentication-in-the-middle is showing up in online media. While these techniques, named after man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks , have existed for a while, they appear to be gaining traction now.

It works like this: A user gets lured to a phishing site masquerading as a site they normally use, such as a bank, email or social media account. Once the user enters their login into the fake site, that information gets redirected by the cybercriminals to the actual site, without the user knowing.

The user is then prompted for their MFA step. They complete this, usually by entering a code or accepting a push notification, and this information is then relayed to the criminals, allowing them to login to the site.

Once the criminals are into an account, they can start changing settings like the account’s email address, phone number, and password, so the user can no longer log in, or they can simply clean out a bank account. This may help you understand why many platforms ask for your PIN or other authentication again when you try to change one of these important settings.

Victims are lured to phishing sites like these via links from social media or emails where it can be hard to identify the real link. Phishing sites can even show up in sponsored search results, in the same way as we reported about tech support scams.

How to protect yourself from authentication-in-the-middle attacks

Keep your wits about you. Being aware of how scammers work is the first step to avoiding them. Don’t assume sponsored search results are legit, and trust that if something seems suspicious then it probably is.
Use security software. Many security programs block known phishing sites, although domains are often short-lived and get rotated quickly. Malwarebytes Browser Guard can help protect you.
Use a password manager. Password managers will not auto-fill a password to a fake site, even if it looks like the real deal to you.
Consider passkeys. Multi-factor authentication is still super-important to enable, and will protect you from many types of attacks, so please continue to use it. However, authentication-in-the-middle attacks only work with certain types of MFA, and passkeys won’t allow the cybercriminals to login to your account in this way. Many services have already begun using passkeys and they’re no doubt here to stay.

Source : Scammers can easily phish your multi-factor authentication codes. Here's how to avoid it | Malwarebytes

Top Data Security Issues for Remote Work

Sat, 23 Dec 2023 11:55:56 GMT

The surge in remote work has brought about intense concerns regarding data security including unsecured home networks and the increased use of personal devices pose significant challenges.

You’re living in an era where traditional office spaces are rapidly becoming a thing of the past . The advent of technology and the internet has brought about a paradigm shift in the way you work. This shift, however, has also ushered in new challenges, especially concerning data security. Data is the lifeblood of modern businesses, and its security should be a top priority.

The shift to remote work has only increased the need for robust data security measures. With employees accessing confidential information from a variety of locations and devices, the risk of data breaches has never been higher. Therefore, it’s important to understand these risks and implement effective measures to mitigate them.

In this article, you’ll explore the top data security issues of remote work and how to manage them effectively. Let’s begin.

The Growth of Remote Work

While the return-to-office initiative is on the rise, many organizations still allow remote or hybrid work arrangements. In 2023 alone, 28.2% of full-time employees use a hybrid approach, while 12.7% work from home. The flexibility offered by remote work is a big draw for many employees, and businesses are finding that it can also lead to increased productivity and cost savings.

However, as the number of remote workers increases, so does the risk of data security issues. Working from home often means using less secure home networks and personal devices, which can be a goldmine for cybercriminals. Furthermore, the lack of direct supervision makes enforcing corporate policies and regulatory requirements harder.

Top Remote Work Data Security Issues

One of remote work’s most significant data security issues is the risk of data breaches. In a traditional office setting, physical security measures can prevent unauthorized access to sensitive data. However, in a remote work setting, these measures are often absent. Moreover, the increased use of cloud services for collaboration and data storage also presents additional risks.

Another major issue is the vulnerability of home networks, which frequently lack the security measures found in corporate environments. Home networks, unlike corporate networks, frequently lack strict firewalls and antivirus software, making them a prime target. Cybercriminals can easily exploit these security flaws, putting personal information and data at risk. As a result, strengthening home network security is critical.

Other security issues to keep in mind include:

Use of Personal Devices: Remote employees frequently use personal devices for work, which can jeopardize data security. These devices may lack the same level of security as company-supplied equipment, making them more vulnerable to cyber threats and data breaches.

Enforcing Corporate Policies and Regulatory Requirements – Enforcing corporate policies and regulatory requirements is another major challenge with remote work. Ensuring compliance with data security policies can be difficult without the physical presence of supervisors and IT staff.

Increased Risk of Phishing, Malware, and Social Engineering – Remote workers are also more susceptible to phishing, malware, and social engineering attacks. These attacks often exploit human error and can lead to significant data breaches. Therefore, educating remote workers about these threats and how to avoid them is essential.

Inadequate Secure Wi-Fi Networks: Remote workers typically connect to corporate networks through unsecured or public Wi-Fi networks, which poses a significant security risk. Cybercriminals can easily exploit these networks by intercepting data transmission or injecting malware, potentially resulting in data breaches or system compromises.

Managing the Data Security Issues of Remote Work

Regardless of these challenges, there are ways to effectively manage the data security issues associated with remote work. Implementing a data protection platform and zero-trust security controls are two of the most effective solutions.

A data protection platform is an essential component of today’s cybersecurity strategies. It offers a comprehensive solution for safeguarding sensitive data while meticulously monitoring and controlling data access. Its sophisticated mechanisms ensure that only authorized individuals have access to sensitive data, preserving data integrity and confidentiality. This platform is vital for preventing data breaches, improving regulatory compliance, and providing businesses with a secure digital environment.

Zero-trust security controls, on the other hand, are founded on a fundamental principle: by default, trust no user or device. Because of this, each access request is thoroughly verified before it can be approved. It is not a case of being overly suspicious, but of being proactive in terms of security. By scrutinizing every request, these controls significantly reduce the likelihood of data breaches. This method is extremely effective in preventing unauthorized access while also maintaining the integrity and confidentiality of sensitive data.

Other benefits of using data security tools for remote work include:

Improved Visibility and Control: Data security tools provide real-time visibility into all data movement, allowing businesses to monitor and control data access effectively.
Improved Compliance: These tools help to meet regulatory requirements by ensuring that data is handled and stored in a compliant manner, lowering the risk of penalties.
Data Loss Risk is Reduced: Data protection tools include features like automatic backups and encryption, which reduce the risk of data loss due to accidents or cyber-attacks.
Advanced Threat Detection: Some tools use artificial intelligence and machine learning to detect suspicious activity or anomalies, preventing potential breaches.
Increased Productivity: In a secure environment, employees can focus on their work without being concerned about potential data breaches, resulting in increased productivity.
Improved Remote Work Security: Data security tools include features like secure VPNs and multi-factor authentication, significantly enhancing network security by making it more difficult for unauthorized individuals to access sensitive information.
Cost-Effective: Implementing these tools can lead to long-term cost savings by preventing costly data breaches and reducing the time and resources spent on recovery after a breach.

Ultimately, remote work presents distinct data security challenges. These challenges, however, can be effectively managed with the right strategies and tools. A solid data protection platform that provides a secure foundation for your digital assets is extremely important.

Coupled with zero-trust security controls, you can ensure solid safeguards for your valuable data. These safeguards are essential to maintaining business continuity, especially in this day and age when remote work is becoming more common. With careful planning and implementation, you can weather the storm of data security threats in a remote work scenario.

Source : Top Data Security Issues of Remote Work (hackread.com)

An introduction to Business Process Management for Small Business

Tue, 25 Jul 2023 16:37:10 GMT

What is the definition of a business process. Essentially it is a sequence of events or tasks that must be performed for a business to operate.

Business Process Management (BPM) is focused on repetitive and ongoing processes that follow a predictable pattern. Often businesses can have duplicated and wasteful processes requiring unnecessary resources. These require process management because if they are left unorganised and unsystematised, it will lead to mayhem and chaos in the business.

BPM is not isolated to focusing on individual tasks or project flow which is generally a one-time or unpredictable flow. BPM is a way of looking at and then controlling the processes that are present in an organisation. In its most simple form BPM is geared for the full effects of a process, where it starts and ends, the key data needed, and where potential bottlenecks and inefficiencies lie.

What is a business process management system?

BPM tools and systems adopt a systematic approach and methodology to optimise business processes. These systems are used to model, implement, and automate business workflows with the goal of improving performance by minimising errors, inefficiencies, and miscommunication. The idea is to streamline the way things operate to maximise efficiency.

BPM Categories

BPM systems can be categorised based on the types of processes, programmes, and platforms that a business is performing, essentially these are:

a) Integration-Centric BPM

This handles processes that are primarily used between existing systems with minimal human involvement. Integration-centric business process management systems have extensive connectors and application interfaces to be able to create quicker processes.

b) Human-Centric BPM

This is for those processes executed by humans driven by approvals and tasks performed by individuals. These platforms excel at being a user-friendly interface, displaying easy notifications, and quick tracking.

c) Document-Centric BPM

This is used when a document (e.g. a contract or agreement) is at the heart of the process. They enable routing, formatting, verifying, and getting the document signed as the tasks pass along the workflow.

Most business process management systems will be able to incorporate elements of each of these, but each one will usually have one core component.

How does business process management work?

Business process management framework is a discipline in operations management which uses various methods to discover, model, analyse, measure, improve, optimise, and automate business processes. BPM focuses on improving organisational performance by optimising and managing business processes.

The five steps in business process management:

Step 1: Design.

Identifies who performs and owns existing processes and the design of “to-be” processes, aiming to ensure a correct and efficient new design.

Step 2: Model.

Represents the process in a workflow showing a visual layout or a theoretical design and introduce a combination of variables or conditions giving a clear idea of the sequence of events, and the flow of data through the process to determine how the process might operate under different circumstances. It may also involve running “what-if analysis.”

Step 3: Execute.

Test the process with a small group first and then open it up to all users.

Step 4: Monitor.

Keep an eye on the process as it runs through the workflow. Use the right metrics to identify progress, measure efficiency and locate in the case there are any issues.

Step 5: Optimise.

Identify any changes that need to be done to workflow to make them more efficient. Consider business process improvement steps.

The current trend with BPMs is to perform an analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (called SWOT analysis) which are being used by some key companies.The three most popular types are Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) and Remote Desktop Services (RDS).

What is the purpose of BPM?

BPM has a few beneficial purposes. It aims to gain control of chaotic and wasteful resourcing and processes.

BPM is used for:

• digital transformation

• process standardisation

• tracking individual items and assigning ownership as they move through a workflow.

BPM enables continuous change so the improvements can be extended and propagated over time, this is called the “BPM life cycle” where process improvement repeats continuously for the life of the process. This introduces a culture of continual process improvement into the organisation in a structured but easy to use way.

Key Goals of BPM

It streamlines the way things run within the organisation to maximise efficiency, some of the methodology is different depending on the type of BPM.

• For human or document centric BPMs

it’s essentially a process to create, map, analyse, and improve or automate business processes to ensure everyday operations run more efficiently to realise bigger organisational goals. Usually driven by business rules, it involves a lot of operational analysis and flow charting, to identify bottlenecks or other issues related to either people or underlying infrastructure.

• For system centric BPMs

it’s about getting information to where it needs to go when it needs to go there. Having those insights communicated to you in an immediately usable format. This is what reporting and querying software is all about. Success depends in large measure on how well you label the data so it can be identified and included when an appropriate query comes along. A major boost toward accomplishing this goal exists in data warehousing and business intelligence tools that can leverage to successfully interchange shared metadata. It is based on three standards (modelling, repository, interchange).

BPM itself is perhaps the “ultra” process improvement technique because it explicitly addresses the complexity of inter-application and cross-repository processes, and incorporates data-driven, as well as content-driven processes – all on an ongoing basis.

Clearwave has experience in the research and implementation of BPM and can offer support and training programs for your business. Clearwave has concrete evidence of BPM knowledge and experience; learning new concepts/best practices; and benefiting from its experience and trainers/mentors.

Modern businesses that want to thrive, are embracing and harnessing Business Process Management.

What is a Virtual Desktop anyway?

Fri, 26 May 2023 09:46:34 GMT

Since the pandemic, Remote and hybrid working adoption has increased tremendously and the idea of going to work or going to the office has changed forever. Traditionally staff would go to the office to connect to their network and IT systems but with the need to work from home adoption of remote working technology has increased. That’s largely thanks to the efficiency of virtual desktops. Designed to enable remote access to your office machine, a virtual desktop allows users to access their computers or applications from anywhere that has an internet connection.

In this article, we’ll explain why your company should consider moving to virtual desktops and highlight the benefits of using different types of virtual desktops.

Why would you need a Virtual Desktop?

Changing from physical to virtual desktops is something lots of businesses are considering because the benefits are hard to ignore. Especially since virtual desktops add an extra layer of security and flexibility to organisations of all sizes.

Virtual desktops have also proved to be a great way of reducing costs. Whether that’s the cost of equipment and space for IT infrastructure, the cost of the energy to run it, or the cost of the staff to support and maintain it. So, the argument for ditching the traditional desktop in favour of the hosted version has never been stronger.

How do Virtual Desktops work?

Essentially this involves moving the computing power from the local computer and making accessible from the cloud. In simple terms, a hosted virtual desktop is a user interface that replicates the functionality of a standard desktop machine. But rather than having a physical machine, a software-based version of the desktop is stored in the cloud.

A Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) provides end-users with remote desktops, with all the benefits that provides. That means the convenience of remote working with a familiar desktop interface, and easy access to applications, software, documents, files, and data. In any location, on any device. As such, multiple people can share an operating system that runs several desktops. So, there's an obvious cost-saving attached to hosted desktops too.

Types of Virtual Desktops

The three most popular types are Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) and Remote Desktop Services (RDS).

VDI : This allows businesses to run desktop operating systems on Virtual Machines using on-site servers. Businesses will need to commit a lot of resources (servers, hardware, software, and administrators) to make sure their VDI runs smoothly.

DaaS : Offerings the same functionality as VDI, but in the cloud. DaaS shifts the burden of providing desktop virtualization to service providers, like Clearwave, which lessens the IT burden of providing virtual desktops through cost-effective solutions.

RDS : Remote Desktop Services are often used when a limited number of applications need to be virtualized, rather than a full desktop. Microsoft Remote Desktop Services allows users to remotely access applications that are streamed to local devices which run their own OS. Since it’s just the apps being virtualized, RDS systems can offer a higher density of users per Virtual Machine.

Benefits of Virtual Desktops

1. Work where you want

DaaS – also known as a hosted desktop or virtual desktop or even cloud desktop – allows users to access the apps, files, and documents they use for their work, from any location with an internet connection. So, users can work just like they always do, from wherever and whenever they want.

2. Work on any device

DaaS is a real asset for remote working. It runs on any device and any OS. On PC or laptop, iPad, or tablet. So, employees can not only work where and when they want but also how they want. On a PC in their home office, on a laptop on their knees or on a smartphone on the train. It doesn’t matter what device they work on; they’ll find their desktop is the same as always.

3. Work more securely

Multi-factor authentication provides an additional layer of security. It ensures DaaS provides greater protection against cyberattacks than a traditional desktop which relies solely on a password for access. DaaS users must employ several ways of verifying their identity – such as a username, a password, and a PIN texted to a phone – before they can gain access to a network, an app, or a file.

4. Keep everything up to date

Applying security patches and software upgrades across an extensive I.T. estate can be time-consuming. DaaS makes it quicker and easier. Any patch, upgrade or other change carried out just once on the dedicated hosted desktop server will automatically go live for all users across all endpoints in the organisation’s infrastructure.

5. Enjoy more resilience and reliability

Only the very largest organisations can afford to invest in the most sophisticated hardware to meet the ongoing cost of keeping it up to date. However, by using DaaS, even the smallest business can benefit from cutting-edge, fault-tolerant, highly reliable infrastructure, in state-of-the-art data centres.

6. Lower your TCO

If you don’t own your server infrastructure, the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is going to be lower. With the additional costs of the data centre space, the cooling, the licences, the power, and the people to run it, there are significant savings to be made from not bearing the whole cost.

7. Keep things simple

The one-off installation of patches and updates is just one way that DaaS simplifies desktop management. Because hosting allows virtually all management tasks to be centralised, IT support staff can spend less time on management and more time on supporting critical business processes or developing new projects.

8. Boost uptime, reduce downtime

For regular, day-to-day operations, DaaS reduces downtime. That’s because most maintenance and software installation is carried out in the data centre rather than on the physical machine on the desk. Even if a ransomware attack or a fire puts multiple desktops out of action, a hosted desktop environment makes it quicker and easier to get back to normal operations. So, workers can keep on working even if the worst happens

9. Reduce time to market

Whether it’s rolling out a new service or opening a new office, DaaS makes it faster. It eliminates the need to build, install, configure, and deploy multiple new desktops. Just do it once and download it as many times as required.

10. Be greener

DaaS allows one server and one set of back-office hardware to service numerous desktops across multiple organisations. That reduces the carbon footprint of every one of the businesses being served.

Clearwave's solution for Virtual Desktop

Clearwave Affinity Desktop provide your users with a virtual office hosted and managed in Azure. Our remote access solution provides a consistent, modern desktop experience regardless of the device they are using, which is not only fast and seamless but is also inherently safe and secure.

The Importance Of Replacing Computer Hardware

Sun, 30 Apr 2023 17:04:05 GMT

Computer hardware is a crucial component of any computer system. It includes all the physical components that make up a computer, such as the motherboard, processor, hard drive, RAM, and other peripherals. The importance of replacing computer hardware cannot be overstated since it plays a significant role in the overall performance and lifespan of a computer. One of the primary reasons why replacing computer hardware is essential is to improve its performance.

As technology continues to advance rapidly, older hardware may not be able to keep up with newer software and applications. This can result in slow or unstable performance that can significantly impact productivity and efficiency. By upgrading or replacing outdated hardware components, users can experience faster processing speeds and smoother system operation. Another reason why it's vital to replace computer hardware is to ensure compatibility with new software and applications.

As new versions of software are released, they often require more powerful hardware specifications than previous versions. If users fail to update their hardware accordingly, they may not be able to run the latest software properly or at all. This can lead to compatibility issues that make it challenging for users to complete tasks effectively. Moreover, replacing computer hardware allows for better security measures against cyber threats.

Old systems may not have the latest security features that protect against malware attacks or hacking attempts. Outdated systems are more vulnerable since hackers often find vulnerabilities in older systems that have not been updated with security patches or anti-virus software updates. In addition to improved performance and better security measures, replacing computer hardware also extends its lifespan. Over time, computers experience wear and tear due to constant use which results in wear on internal components such as hard drives or RAM sticks leading them eventually failing altogether.

Replacing damaged parts promptly prolongs the life span of your device while preventing potential data loss from broken parts that could cause further damage if left unchecked for too long. Furthermore, by upgrading your system's components regularly (such as adding more memory), you can keep pace with technological advancements and avoid the need for a complete system overhaul in the future, which can be costly and time-consuming.

Replacing computer hardware also reduces downtime caused by hardware failures. When a computer's hardware fails, it can take hours or even days to repair or replace the damaged components. This results in lost productivity and revenue for businesses that rely on computers for their operations. By replacing faulty parts promptly, users can minimise downtime and ensure that their systems are running smoothly.

Apart from these practical reasons, replacing computer hardware also has environmental benefits. Old systems often consume more power than newer ones, which increases energy costs and harms the environment. By upgrading to more energy-efficient components, users can reduce their carbon footprint while saving money on their electricity bills. In conclusion, the importance of replacing computer hardware cannot be overstated since it plays a significant role in the overall performance and lifespan of a computer.

Upgrading outdated components ensures compatibility with new software and applications while improving security measures against cyber threats. Additionally, upgrading to more energy-efficient components can help reduce energy costs while minimizing downtime due to hardware failures. Therefore, it is essential to invest in regular upgrades or replacements of your system's components to keep pace with technological advancements and enjoy optimal performance from your device.Moreover, replacing computer hardware can also improve the user experience.

As technology advances, new hardware components are designed to provide a better and more convenient user experience. For example, newer processors offer faster speeds and more cores, which can handle multiple tasks simultaneously without any lag or slowdown. Additionally, new graphics cards provide better visual quality and performance for gaming or video editing applications. By upgrading to newer hardware components, users can enjoy a more efficient and enjoyable computing experience.

Another reason why replacing computer hardware is essential is to avoid obsolescence. Technology evolves at a rapid pace, and what was considered cutting-edge just a few years ago may now be obsolete. Using outdated hardware components means that your system may not be able to keep up with the latest technology trends, leading to decreased productivity and efficiency. Replacing computer hardware allows users to customise their systems according to their specific needs.

For instance, if you are a gamer who wants to play the latest games with high graphic settings, you may need to upgrade your graphics card or add more RAM for optimal performance. Similarly, if you are a designer who works with large files or complex software programs like Adobe Photoshop or AutoCAD, you may require additional storage space or faster processing speeds.

In addition to these benefits of replacing computer hardware mentioned above, upgrading your system's components also adds value in terms of resellability. If you plan on selling your computer in the future, having updated hardware will make it more attractive to potential buyers since they will be getting a device that is up-to-date and meets current standards. Lastly, replacing computer hardware ensures that users stay ahead of potential technological disruptions that could impact their ability to use their devices effectively.

For example, older computers may not have the necessary USB ports for new peripherals like VR headsets or external SSDs (Solid State Drives) that use USB-C connections exclusively - this could limit your ability as an individual using such devices. In conclusion, the importance of replacing computer hardware cannot be overstated since it plays a crucial role in the overall performance, lifespan, and user experience of a computer.

By upgrading or replacing outdated components regularly, users can enjoy faster processing speeds, better compatibility with new software and applications, improved security measures against cyber threats, reduced downtime due to hardware failures, and reduced energy consumption. It also helps users stay ahead of potential technological disruptions and adds value in terms of resellability. Therefore, it is vital to invest in regular upgrades or replacements of your system's components to keep pace with technological advancements and enjoy optimal performance from your device.

How to Solve the People Problem in Cybersecurity

Wed, 15 Mar 2023 12:55:08 GMT

You may think this article is going to discuss how users are one of the biggest challenges to cybersecurity. After all, employees are known to click on unverified links, download malicious files and neglect to change their passwords. And then there are those who use their personal devices for business purposes and put the network at risk.

Yes, all those people can cause issues for cybersecurity. But the people who are usually blamed for cybersecurity issues wouldn’t have such an impact if organizational leadership — not only the CISO or IT department — prioritised cybersecurity.

If you are a company leader, this article is for you. You know cybersecurity is very important. Every leader does. But do you keep it at the forefront of every decision? And do you constantly share that message with your employees? Even the most cyber-aware leader likely has room for improvement. There is a difference between saying cybersecurity is important and backing up this belief with your actions and decisions.

Your employees and other leaders value your opinion and listen to you. If you don’t prioritize the security of your data, apps and infrastructure, your employees won’t either. Even your small actions and decisions make an impact on the entire company’s risk of a cybersecurity attack.

It’s not an easy shift to make, and it’s hard to admit that you are part of the problem. But you aren’t alone — almost every company leader can improve their advocacy and prioritization of cybersecurity in some way.

Here are three keys to solving the people problem in cybersecurity.

Understand the Business Value of Cybersecurity

Real change in cybersecurity only happens when an organization realizes its business success depends on its cybersecurity practices. Having the most amazing product only takes you so far, especially if customers take their business elsewhere after their personal data is stolen. The best salespeople in the world can’t overcome customer distrust after a highly publicized breach. And customer loyalty only goes so far when your business is continually disrupted due to cyberattacks.

In today’s climate, breaches are a “when not if” proposition. The IBM 2022 Cost of a Data Breach report found that 83% of companies had more than one data breach, with the average cost of a breach at $4.35 million. Additionally, 60% of organizations raised prices for customers after the breach due to increased costs. The study also found that the cost of breaches was much higher than average, at $5.57 million for organizations with high levels of compliance failures.

When your organization suffers a breach, it’s not simply an IT problem but a major company-wide issue. The first step to fully protecting your organization is truly understanding the business impact of a breach or cybersecurity attack, as well as the value of a proactive cybersecurity initiative. With a proactive mindset, you can make the decisions necessary to fully protect your organization.

Create a Culture of Cybersecurity

The next step is to impart the mindset of cybersecurity to your employees. Leaders create the organisation’s culture. By proactively creating a culture of cybersecurity along with your company’s core culture, your organization can significantly reduce its cybersecurity risk.

Instead of employees viewing cybersecurity as the IT department’s job, each employee and team must feel personally responsible for cybersecurity. Employees need to understand that their actions — even something as simple as not updating software patches on their phones — can cause a major cybersecurity attack that costs the company millions of dollars.

Teams must place cybersecurity as a top priority when designing new processes, products and services. The cybersecurity team and IT department are available to provide expertise, but the employees on the front lines are the ones in the position to make the most difference.

Creating and maintaining a cybersecurity culture doesn’t mean talking about it once a year at mandatory cybersecurity training. Yes, employees need training, but it should be more frequent and interspersed throughout the year. By continually talking about cybersecurity, such as giving reminders of good cybersecurity hygiene and updates on current threats, leaders can help employees keep security issues at the top of their minds.

Allocate the Resources

Mindset and culture set the stage and the foundation for a successful cybersecurity program. Without both of those in place, you cannot and will not make the business decisions needed to create an effective cybersecurity framework. But your organisation can only protect its apps, data and infrastructure when the right resources — both human and technology — are in place. Leaders must fully buy into the importance of cybersecurity; only then will they make the business decisions necessary to protect the organisation.

Having the right technology on board makes a significant difference in the impact of any breach. With a zero trust approach, organisations reduce both their risk of a breach and the impact when one occurs. Organisations with a mature zero trust deployment versus early adoption of zero trust saved an average of $1.51 million after a breach. Additionally, organizations with Extended Detection and Response (XDR) technology identified and contained breaches an average of 29 days earlier than those without.

When it comes to cybersecurity, it’s easy to focus on technology and strategies. But the biggest issue with cybersecurity really does come down to people. And the only way to make a difference in the actions and attitudes of those on the front lines is for leaders like yourself to approach each day with cybersecurity as a priority.

The future of your business depends on you as a company leader taking the message of cybersecurity to heart. Your mindset and attitude on cybersecurity are on stage for every person in your company to see. By prioritizing cybersecurity, you have the ability to make a positive impact on your entire company.

Source - How to Solve the People Problem in Cybersecurity (securityintelligence.com)

Why Small Businesses Need a Technology Strategy

Sun, 12 Mar 2023 22:20:05 GMT

Why Small Businesses Need a Technology Strategy

In today's fast-paced business environment, technology has become a critical component for any organisation's success, regardless of its size. However, small businesses often overlook the importance of having a technology strategy in place, considering it as an unnecessary expense. In this blog post, we will discuss why small businesses need a technology strategy and how it can help them to grow and succeed.

Improve Efficiency

A technology strategy can help small businesses to improve their operations and streamline their processes. By leveraging technology, small businesses can automate repetitive tasks, reduce manual labour, and free up their resources to focus on core business activities. This, in turn, can help small businesses to operate more efficiently and save time and money.

Enhance Customer Experience

Small businesses can use technology to improve their customer experience by offering a more personalized and efficient service. For instance, using customer relationship management (CRM) software can help small businesses to manage their customer data effectively and provide more targeted marketing campaigns. This can help small businesses to build stronger relationships with their customers and increase customer loyalty.

Stay Competitive

Small businesses that embrace technology can gain a competitive advantage over their peers. By leveraging the latest technologies, small businesses can offer innovative products and services, reduce costs, and enhance their brand image. This can help small businesses to stay ahead of the curve and stand out in a crowded marketplace.

Manage Risks

Small businesses face various risks, including cybersecurity threats, data breaches, and system failures. Having a technology strategy in place can help small businesses to mitigate these risks by implementing robust security measures, data backup solutions, and disaster recovery plans. This can help small businesses to protect their assets, avoid costly downtime, and safeguard their reputation.

Enable Growth

Finally, a technology strategy can help small businesses to grow and scale up their operations. By investing in technology, small businesses can expand their customer base, enter new markets, and explore new business opportunities. This can help small businesses to achieve long-term success and create more jobs and economic growth.

All small businesses need and would benefit from having a technology strategy to stay competitive, enhance customer experience, manage risks, and enable growth. A technology strategy can help small businesses to leverage the latest technologies, streamline their operations, and achieve their business goals. As such, small businesses should invest in a technology strategy and work with a trusted technology partner to stay ahead of the curve.

If you'd like to discuss how your business can take advantage of modern technologies then contact us today to start a conversation.

Clearwave – Technology Simplified 

As organisations grow and evolve, it’s not uncommon for business objectives and IT to drift apart. When this is allowed to continue it can result in poor-performing, insecure and awkward business technology that inhibits your growth and frustrates employees and customers alike. Reconfiguring your IT to better support your aims and aspirations and work in harmony with your business processes is what’s required, but we know that doing so can seem an insurmountable challenge without the proper support.

Clearwave’s time-tested technology assessment process will help you identify where your IT is at odds with your business’s goals. We’ll survey your network to determine what works and where there’s room for improvement, and provide recommended actions to help bring your network up to the required standard. We offer a full-suite of managed IT services centred around our  Total Affinity  product line: a unique set of IT tools covering all bases, from highspeed business internet and cost-effective VoIP telephony to versatile cloud-based desktops and our all-in-one business management platform ‘Integra.’

Why API cyber attacks are one of the biggest threats this year

Tue, 28 Feb 2023 15:49:03 GMT

API growth is presenting opportunity for cyber criminals

APIs are big business with the adoption of application programming interfaces (APIs) estimated to grow dramatically this year. According to Forrester Research, commissioned by Imperva, half (49%) of organizations have between 25 and 250 internally published APIs, and 60% have the same number of public APIs, with these numbers set to increase this year.

APIs are regarded as essential to digitalization, enabling applications, containers, and microservices to exchange data and information quickly so customers experience more convenience on their digital devices. In the same Imperva report, more than three-quarters (78%) of business leaders say APIs are important to keep the business competitive, particularly for connecting with customers (88%) and for improving data ownership and management (83%). 

This is all great stuff for business productivity and performance, but the flip side is that with this growth in APIs comes greater opportunities for cyber criminals.

In the past 12 months 95% of companies have had an API security incident based on figures from Salt Security, with API attack traffic growing by 681%. API vulnerabilities is costing businesses up to $75bn annually.

How threat actors are utilizing APIs

Last year alone we witnessed some high-profile breaches where hackers utilized API vulnerabilities as an effective attack method. The Optus breach saw 2.1 million users’ personal information stolen, Twitter had 5.4 million users’ data exfiltrated, and Lego’s BrickLink API vulnerability, found by Salt Security, demonstrated the commonality of vulnerabilities inherent in Open API’s.

As we become ever more connected through digital mediums, APIs are becoming part of our daily communications. Once in, APIs act as a route for hackers to obtain business critical information or penetrate laterally through the organizational network.

Attackers gain access to an API relatively easily through several techniques, some more sophisticated than others. Injection attacks, DDoS hacks, authentication hijacking or man in the middle (MITM) attacks are the most common, however, failing to have proper cyber security governance is also a huge contributing factor to the problem.

For at least the last five years shadow IT has been a real problem, not to buck this trend we are finding shadow API is becoming as big an issue. The drivers behind this are from the lack of internal communication between developers, network and security, as well as, having insufficient visibility into the corporate sphere.

Individuals and departments need to conduct their job in the most efficient way possible but publishing APIs without security reviews or controls together with too much internal bureaucracy and governance leads to employees regularly obtaining unsanctioned third-party software or applications, leaving doors unlocked for cyber criminals to crawl through.

How to defend against API cyber attacks

To help keep these API doors firmly shut, there are steps businesses can take.

API infrastructure

First and foremost, have a deep understanding of your API infrastructure. Security hygiene is often overlooked but should be a task which is regularly carried out to ensure no missed configurations or patches may have been missed. Patch management tools and vulnerability scanners can help overloaded security and help network teams automate some of these tasks.

Applying a role-based access control policy is a straightforward way to limit an individual or group access to internal resources. You can do this through Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA), where security teams can quickly apply controls that limit employees to certain internal assets, restricting them only to the data they need to do their job effectively.

Moving to a zero trust architecture limits movement and access of data. There are many principles which make up zero trust, however, in its simplistic form the philosophy is; trust no device or connection on your network and limit the movement between devices and applications by implementing segmentation and authentication throughout every interaction. It works much like an onion by putting additional protections around and in each segment. Employee access can be further limited depending on where the individual is geographically, the device they use, their internal permissions and the data they are trying to acquire.

Visibility

Secondly, visibility is a given - you can’t defend against what you can’t see, and you can’t take action on vulnerabilities unless you understand what is connected and communicating in your network. Network Detection and Response (NDR) platforms provide great insight into assets on the network and the communication patterns between systems and users. Add in machine learning and you can quickly identify any anomalies or nefarious behavior to take quick, appropriate action.

Collaboration of teams

Ensuring that your SecOps team partners with your DevOps team is key to the integration of automation security testing tools and the benefits of machine learning to differentiate normal API behavior from malicious traffic.

And of course, there are specific tools which can be deployed to monitor and control code being developed by DevOps teams before it is pushed out into the production environment. These systems are controlled and monitored by security but it’s important to give flexibility to DevOps by providing predefined secure code templates or scanning the code prior to its release. These systems can also scan the dependencies connecting to the API to ensure secure connections between containers, operating systems, and applications before it allows the flow of traffic.

Cybersecurity is ever evolving and so are the threats we face with APIs now high on the list of attack methods. It is important for security teams to understand the company infrastructure in detail and the associated threats in their industry to guide them in making the best-informed decisions based on their technology and knowledge gaps. The only way we can reduce our risk is to apply a layered approach.

Source - Why API cyber attacks are one of the biggest threats this year

The threat to cyber security in 2022 and how zero trust can combat this

Tue, 28 Feb 2023 15:32:12 GMT

Preventing human error

85% of cybersecurity incidents contain an element of human error and, with the pandemic shifting the workplace outside the confines of the traditional office space, organizations across the world now lack the visibility over employee activity that they had grown accustomed to.

At best this has a knock-on effect on productivity. At worst, this makes organizations even more vulnerable to cyber criminals.

Increased surface area for cyber criminals to attack

Remote working means there is suddenly a huge increase in the surface area available to attack; employees are now accessing sensitive data from multiple locations across multiple devices and the traditional perimeter has now become blurred.

A single stolen or lost laptop, which is not encrypted or password protected, can give an unauthorized password access to the entire set of data in all apps if a user remains logged in to cloud apps. This becomes even more of a concern at scale; even within SMBs that may only have 100 employees, the number of potential access points can exceed 5000 if there are 50 different cloud apps being used.

Siege mentality no longer works in deflecting external threats and there are multiple access points that cyber criminals can target. It is impossible for IT policies to be enforced on third-party WiFi networks, and the traditional method of using an IP address as a form of verification becomes obsolete in a workplace that is transient in nature.

Outbound (and inbound) employees

Alongside dealing with the current workforce, organizations are now faced with much more complicated considerations when it comes to inbound and outbound employees too. During the pandemic, more than one in four employees in the UK were furloughed, with 8% of these not returning to their employer once furlough ended. With the majority of these employees still retaining access to at least one sensitive business system after they have left their role, they pose a real threat when it comes to data breaches.

Similar considerations need to be made for inbound employees; many often bring with them legacy behavior and a lack of digital hygiene. One example of this is a reliance on personal apps that may not have the necessary level of security to comply with IT policies; a recent study by Verizon found that data breaches through such applications have doubled in frequency since 2019.

The cost of cyber-attacks

One of the major concerns for any organizations are the costs associated with cyber-attacks.

With a DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack, systems could be offline for a few hours, resulting in loss of revenues and a disrupted workforce. If a cyber-attack infects an organization's systems with ransomware, then this could cripple them for days or even weeks. Along with potential ransom payments, the cost of recovery could result in losses of millions of pounds. A Ponemon Institute study found that organizations spend almost £3 million per incident; a not-insignificant number.

There is also the issue of data; if potentially sensitive and personal information is stolen in a data breach, it can not only tarnish the reputation of a business, but also affect customer retention or lead to hefty fines from the authorities.

Zero Trust as a solution

With the indiscriminate nature of cyber-attacks, the most obvious solution for an organization is to implement 'Never trust, Always verify' security measures across it’s networks. This is particularly important when we consider just how many areas of a business can be targeted; by working under the assumption that every connection – whether “secure” or unsecure – could be a threat, this approach to security is proactive rather than reactive, preventing a potential cyber-attack before it can even take place.

Managing these IT policies under a single-system platform, such as that offered by Zelt, helps to unify operations across both IT and HR departments, ensuring that employees are only able to access data that they need at that given time for their given role in the company. For those leaving a company, permissions can quickly be revoked, protecting any potential access to sensitive data. This can be time-intensive, and so it also helps to automate the system in order to manage resources.

Of course, for Zero Trust to effectively combat the threat of cyber-attacks, every single employee of a company needs to be behaving in the same way. Again, by automatically implementing a policy through a single-system platform, there is less room for error and every employee must, by default, operate under the same rules. This can also remove any potential friction between the employer and the employee when monitoring and implementing various permissions; the Zero Trust process becomes a policy rather than any form of judgement.

Source - The threat to cyber security in 2022 and how zero trust can combat this

The Top 5 Ways to Protect Your Reputation and Ensure Compliance

Tue, 07 Feb 2023 10:14:56 GMT

In our online age, digitisation and business success have become intrinsically linked, and customers have come to expect a high degree of digital literacy from the companies they interact with. Digital transformation is a win-win for all parties, with customers enjoying new, innovative ways to access products and services, and businesses equipped with technology that helps streamline workflows for more efficient operations, however it is not without its risks.

According to the UK Cyber Breaches Survey 2022, 39% of businesses surveyed identified a cyber attack incident in the previous year. Of those attacked, 1 in 5 reported negative effects directly resulting from an attack, and for those reporting material losses the average cost of an attack was found to be £4200. Needless to say, when it comes to data security the stakes are high, with the effects of breaches ranging from ICO-issued monetary penalties to long-term reputational damage which in the worst cases can threaten business viability.

So how can you ensure compliance and consequently safeguard your business’s reputation?

As you’ll be well aware if your business handles personal information, the UK’s General data protection regulation (GDPR) contains seven principles with the aim of protecting the interests of data subjects. One of these, known as the ‘integrity and confidentiality’ principle is particularly relevant in relation to your business’s IT, as it sets out your responsibilities in terms of safeguarding the personal data your hold against external threats. It states that personal data should be:

‘processed in a manner that ensures appropriate security of the personal data, including protection against unauthorised or unlawful processing and against accidental loss, destruction or damage, using appropriate technical or organisational measures’

So what ‘technical or organisational measures’ does the legislation specify? Well, none specifically. The legislation allows data controllers and processors to use their judgement to apply measures which are proportionate in cost and sophistication to the level of risk involved. Article 32(1) states:

‘Taking into account the state of the art, the costs of implementation and the nature, scope, context and purposes of processing as well as the risk of varying likelihood and severity for the rights and freedoms of natural persons, the controller and the processor shall implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure a level of security appropriate to the risk’

In respect of ‘technical measures,’ which are particularly pertinent to your business’s IT, the legislation only refers to two specific examples: encryption and pseudonymisation. While useful, these should be used alongside a much greater package of protections that takes a holistic view of data security. So what data security measures should you consider to stay complaint and defend your business’s reputation? Here are 5 key ways to ensure compliance that all businesses should explore:

Create information security policy documents

With around 80% of data breaches traceable to end user action, employees can represent a huge risk to corporate data, especially when they don’t fully understand their data protection responsibilities.

Information security policies are a great way to formalise cyber security guidance and give employees clearly defined boundaries when it comes to their security obligations. When creating policy documents, consider activities, processes and devices that subject data to elevated risk, and create a policy document for each. Here are a few of the most common information security policy subjects you may want to consider:

· Remote Access. Without the appropriate measures in place, accessing data remotely can present increased security challenges. Consider setting out clear guidance on the use of public WiFi and set boundaries on the security standards of devices being used to access your organisation’s network.

· Passwords. Compromised user accounts are among the most common causes of data breaches, with many attributable to basic, easily- guessed passwords. Unless your business uses a centralized identity management system, then it’s essential to have a password policy that outlines best practice. Consider requiring passwords to be a combination of letters, numbers and special characters, urge users to create unique passwords for each account and stress that passwords should never be written down.

· Removable storage media. Although less common in the age of cloud storage, many businesses continue to use removable devices such as USB drives to store and transfer data. With many more secure alternatives available, consider an information security policy that prohibits the use of removable media, or restrict their use to a small number of permitted devices which are regularly screened by your IT team.

· Clean Desk Policy. A clean desk policy typically requires employees to remove and securely store documents, small devices and other items when they aren’t at their workstation. It’s important to remember that the GDPR relates to personal data stored on any format, so implementing a clean desk policy could help you meet your obligations.

Establish a business continuity plan

A business continuity plan is a strategy for recovering from and minimising the damage caused by a disruptive event, such as a cyber-attack, natural disaster, office fire or theft. When disaster strikes, your customers will judge your response, so it’s vital to have a comprehensive plan in place that protects the data security interests of your customers and allows for swift service resumption.

A business continuity plan also has a role to play in ensuring compliance. For example, in the event of a cyber-attack, your continuity plan should outline measures for neutralising the threat and limiting the possibility of the breach spreading laterally across your network, thus limiting the amount of data that is exposed to the attacker. It should also feature extensive details on the use of data backup systems, essential to ensure that personal data can be recovered following the likes of a ransomware attack.

The plan should include a list of all the elements in its scope (hardware, software and other systems), the failover systems and backup services that will aid in the recovery process, as well as the employees tasked with coordinating each aspect of the plan.

Implement secure remote access

With around 22% of UK workers working remotely at least one day per week, providing secure remote access to company data remains an important consideration for many businesses, and is a vital aspect of ensuring GDPR compliance.

‘Secure remote access’ defines technical solutions that allow employees to access either a corporate network or files and resources in a secure, managed way. Although not stipulated in UK GDPR, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) recommends that organisations consider applying access controls to ensure data is held securely, which is exactly what secure remote access solutions seek to achieve.

Various security measures can be defined as secure remote access solutions, with some of the most notable including:

· Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). VPNs create an authenticated and encrypted connection to an office network over the internet, allowing corporate resources to be accessed remotely. Affordable and secure, VPNs are a great way to grant access to network resources without compromising data security.

· Mobile Device Management (MDM). MDM platforms allow IT security personnel to govern and manage remote devices, ensuring that the most recent updates are applied, authentication measures are enforced and that the devices are configured for maximum security.

· Microsoft 365. Featuring generous cloud storage allowances via subscription pricing, Microsoft 365 has become a popular way for businesses to enable remote working. Containing numerous compliance features such document sensitivity labels and the ability to apply file access, use and download restrictions, Microsoft 365 makes data governance easy.

Use technical measures to counter online threats

‘Technical measures’ defines infrastructure level-controls designed to protect data from loss, corruption, malicious intrusion or compromise. The technical controls you use should be proportionate to the sensitivity of the data you process and the likely harm that would result from that data falling into the wrong hands. Some measures, such as those prescribed by the government’s Cyber Essentials scheme, should be implemented by all businesses handling personal data in order to mitigate against the majority of online security threats. Known as the ‘5 Controls,’ these measures include:

· Firewalls. Configurable at device level or at the edge of a network, firewalls moderate web traffic in a way that reduces the likelihood of users encountering malware hosted on malicious sites.

· Secure Configuration. Auditing devices to ensure the most secure settings are activated is vital to maintaining the integrity of your security posture. Consider removing unnecessary applications to limit the ‘attack surface’ available to hackers, and change default passwords in favour of something more secure.

· Apply access controls. Extend user privileges and network access on a strictly as-necessary basis to limit the risk posed by account takeovers. ‘Admin’ accounts are prime targets for hackers, so try to reduce accounts with such privileges to as few as possible.

· Use anti-malware measures. Malware such as ransomware, keyloggers, worms and viruses present an omnipresent danger to corporate data, with the ability to corrupt files, steal login credentials and inflict network-wide damage. Anti-malware software designed to detect

and eliminate malicious code should be used across all endpoint devices and email filters with in-built anti-malware capabilities should be used to screen inbound mail.

· Maintain and secure software. As software manufacturers become aware of vulnerabilities in their programmes they release ‘patches’ or ‘security updates’ designed to rectify them. These should be applied diligently and swiftly to prevent criminals exploiting these newly discovered weaknesses, and unsupported programmes should cease to be used.

Develop a strong cyber security culture

As we’ve mentioned, the majority of data breaches can be attributed to user error, so engendering a culture of cyber security awareness can be a great way to reduce your overall risk profile.

Cyber Security awareness training can be a great way to build knowledge and give your employees the confidence to spot and act against suspicious activity. Often delivered via online learning portals, third party training providers offer a range of programmes with test exercises and learning modules designed to deliver incremental learning that doesn’t impact on the working day.

You could also consider sharing cyber security news with your employees on a regular basis. This will help familiarise them with the online threats that exist and keep them mindful of the harm that data theft can cause both at a business and individual level.

Conclusion

Data security is never a single-fix action, with risks and dangers that evolve over time and change according to the activities and processes a business undertakes. By considering the guidance above however, you’ll demonstrate your ability to manage and mitigate data security risks, inspiring confidence in your customers and maintaining ongoing compliance with your data security obligations.

Clearwave – Technology Simplified

In today’s data-rich workplace, achieving compliance objectives while juggling the many moving parts of a modern business can be a tricky challenge. It’s made even more difficult when your business’s technology evolves over time, resulting in dispersed data stores and poor data visibility that makes proper information governance near-impossible. However, with data breaches often resulting in crippling financial penalties and severe reputational harm, data security is something you simply cannot leave to chance.

Clearwave’s tried and tested technology assessment process will bring your business’s technology back in line with your compliance goals. We can survey your infrastructure to root out the systems and data that escape your control and identify opportunities for security enhancements to keep the bad actors away from your sensitive information.

Facts & Figures - Case Study

Tue, 07 Feb 2023 09:42:58 GMT

IT & Comms Solutions from Clearwave

When Facts & Figures were nearing the end of life for their server, they approached Clearwave for a solution.

How did you first hear about Clearwave, and what made you decide to use them?

“It may have been Google, I can’t remember! I spoke to three or four different companies, and although Clearwave wasn't the cheapest, Elliott seemed like a more personable person than anyone I'd spoken to. We chose Clearwave because we didn't know what on Earth we were doing, and he seemed like the person who would be best able to help us and handhold us through the process.”

What solution did Clearwave put in place for you, and how has it helped your business?

“Clearwave moved our entire IT estate into the Cloud and provided us with thin clients. We don’t need to worry about doing anything locally. If and when things break, they’re replaced, and we can continue as if nothing happened”

How would you describe your relationship with the team at Clearwave?

“Elliott is more than just our “IT Guy”. The whole team are willing to provide assistance when it’s needed and are quick to respond to tickets. It is clear they know what they are doing.”

“We didn’t know what on Earth we were doing, what we could or couldn’t do on the Cloud,

Elliott was able to handhold us through the process from start to finish.”

Jamie Brown, Director

https://factsandfigures.co.uk

Acorus - Case Study

Tue, 07 Feb 2023 09:30:15 GMT

Solving Processes & Problems, not just IT

After the management brought out of ADAS Rural Property Services, Acorus required an IT provider who would help them transition systems and become a single point of contact for all their IT needs.

How did you first hear about Clearwave, and what made you decide to start using them?

“We’ve been with Elliott for nearly 20 years – he used to work for the Forestry Commission, who were next door to us in Exeter. When we went through our management buyout, we had to find other providers and found out he was starting out on his own, so we gave him a go.”

What challenges did you encounter after the management buyout, and how did Clearwave help?

“We were just on the back of coming off a government system, so we needed to decide what we wanted to use going forward, Elliot worked with us to find a solution that worked – we were probably one of the early adopters of the Cloud because of him.”

How have the services Clearwave put in place improved your business?

“Clearwave provide all of our IT provision. Being completely cloud-based with Affinity Desktop, means that our staff can work from various locations and still be connected as if they were in the office. We do use local AutoCAD software; however, they’ve put in place a very good back-up and shared service, so that all of our documents from there can be easily shared.”

How would you describe your relationship with Clearwave?

“With Elliott, our relationship have become more of a friendship as well as a business acquaintance. He’s very forward thinking and is happy to give us advice when we need it. We’ve had a very good relationship since day one.”

“We’ve been very happy with their services and would recommend them to others.

They’re knowledgeable, professional, and always willing to help.”

Mike Bamforth, Director

Fake DHL emails allow hackers to breach Microsoft 365 accounts

PH210642 — Wed, 01 Feb 2023 10:05:05 GMT

New phishing campaign is impersonating the delivery giant

A new phishing campaign has been uncovered impersonating logistics giant DHL to try and steal Microsoft 365 credentials from victims in the education industry, experts has claimed.

Cybersecurity researchers from Armorblox recently discovered a major phishing campaign, with more than 10,000 emails sent to inboxes belonging to a “private education institution”.

The email is made to look as if it’s coming from DHL: it carries the company branding as well as tone of voice one might associate with the shipping giant. In the email, titled “DHL Shipping Document/Invoice Receipt” the recipient is informed that a customer sent a parcel to the wrong address and that the correct delivery address needs to be provided.

Fake login popup

The email obviously comes with an attachment, conveniently titled “Shipping Document Invoice Receipt” which, if opened, looks like a blurred-out preview of a Microsoft Excel file.

Over the blurred-out document pops up a Microsoft login page, trying to trick the victims into thinking they need to log into their Microsoft 365 accounts in order to view the contents of the file. Should the victims provide the login credentials, they’d go straight to the attackers.

“The email attack used language as the main attack vector in order to bypass both Microsoft Office 365 and EOP email security controls,” Armorblox explained. “These native email security layers are able to block mass spam and phishing campaigns and known malware and bad URLs. However, this targeted email attack bypassed Microsoft email security because it did not include any bad URLs or links and included an HTML file that included a malicious phishing form.”

As the researchers said, the attackers used a valid domain which allowed them to bypass Microsoft’s email authentication checks.

The best way for businesses to protect against phishing attacks is to train their employees to spot red flags in their inboxes, such as the sender’s email address, typos and spelling errors in the email, the sense of urgency (legitimate emails will almost never require the user to react urgently), and unexpected links/attachments.

Source: www.techradar.com

Microsoft just rolled out its most secure Microsoft 365 version yet

PH210642 — Wed, 01 Feb 2023 10:05:02 GMT

Microsoft Office 365 Government Secret Cloud, a secure environment for the company’s flagship collaboration tool , is now generally available.

In an announcement on the Microsoft 365 (M365) Blog, Microsoft claimed that the release, which offers especially secure variants of email clients Exchange and Outlook alongside its office software suite, brings a level of security and compliance to its productivity tools suitable for government use.

The clearest application of the new environment for M365 is to keep data secure. Microsoft admits that the bulk of government data is stored via on-prem servers, but believes its latest release means this work can now move exclusively to cloud storage via its software as a service.

Productivity tools in government

M365 is now the only set of business productivity tools to offer “an Impact Level 6 (IL6) environment”, a data handling protocol designed by the Department of Defense’s Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), to protect cloud-stored data in the hands of government agencies all the way “up to the SECRET level”.

This allows M365 Government Secret Cloud to bring "cloud based collaboration and communication” to classified environments which, according to Microsoft, is another first.

The company can feel confident in making that claim, with M365’s new capabilities bolstering the efforts of Azure Government Secret and Top Secret, “air-gapped” regions of its cloud infrastructure offering tightened security and increased data visibility.

Announcing Azure Government Top Secret in August 2021, Microsoft pitched the unique Azure regions to “mission leaders”, claiming that it would enable them to draw insights from data faster and offer “unified cybersecurity capabilities” to protect the nation’s most critical data.

Source: www.techradar.com

Achieving More With Less – 4 Value-Adding Tech Solutions You Should Consider in 2023

Tue, 10 Jan 2023 16:15:30 GMT

With the current economic climate placing great strain on businesses across all sectors it’s more important than ever that your IT investments represent a profit-boosting investment rather than a financial burden. Thankfully, today’s innovative digital solutions make it easier than ever to untap your business’s productivity potential with platforms and services that can be scaled to align with the ever-evolving demands of your organisation.

Previously , we examined some of the qualities common to the most cost-competitive tech solutions. Now, let’s explore 4 solutions that, in our opinion, offer the most compelling cost/benefit payoff.

Cloud-Hosting

In the past, running a business IT service such as an email service, website or enterprise software programme, meant acquiring the necessary server hardware and housing and maintaining the setup in your office. Thanks to the cloud, such computing resources can now be acquired without the hassle, setup costs and inconvenience traditional IT projects could often entail. Cloud-hosting can offer numerous benefits compared to on-premise hosting, these include:

Scalability. With cloud-hosting compute resources such as bandwidth, RAM and storage can be easily added or subtracted in line with the changing demands of a website or application – you only pay for what you need. In a traditional setup, performance and capacity is limited by the spec of the equipment being used.
Enhanced reliability. Applications and services are hosted in ‘multi server’ environments. This avoids having a single-point-of-failure which can lead to service downtime with a traditional setup. Should one server fail, the rest of the server network will take over ensuring seamless service continuity.
Cost-efficiency. We’ve already mentioned that cloud-hosting offers the ability to scale resource provision to closely match demand, but the potential for cost savings goes much deeper than that. Cloud data centres often thousands of tenant applications, allowing hardware costs, heating/cooling provision, physical and cyber security measures and ongoing maintenance costs to be distributed among the many organisations using the site. The result: hosting that’s far more cost-efficient (in most cases) than an on-premise setup.

Microsoft 365

Microsoft 365 was released in 2011 as the cloud-focussed evolution of Microsoft’s perennial ‘Office’ suite. Microsoft 365 features the familiar Office applications such as Excel, Word and PowerPoint, and supplements them with a range of ground-breaking and innovative platforms designed to equip remote workforces and improve workplace productivity.

With over 300 million users worldwide, Microsoft 365 has helped millions of business modernise their operations and remain effective throughout the pandemic. Here’s a quick rundown of the suite’s core platforms:

Teams

Featuring an intuitive messaging interface, class-leading video-conferencing, live document co-authoring and integrations with hundreds of third party apps and services, Teams is a true all-in-one collaboration platform that’s suitable for remote and office-based teams alike.

SharePoint

SharePoint allows users to create sites that can act as focal points for group projects or virtual noticeboards for business departments. Useful for consolidating project-relevant news, data and documents in a single location that can be easily accessed by all contributors.

Outlook

With over half a billion users worldwide, Microsoft’s Outlook email service is a staple of office life across the globe and forms an integral part of the Microsoft 365 user experience. Loaded with features that streamline email handling and featuring deep integration with the rest of Microsoft 365 it’s easy to understand why Outlook is the second most popular business email service out there.

Microsoft 365 is the archetypal SaaS (software-as-a-service) offering, with numerous packages available at varying price-points charged on a per-user basis. This makes it easy to tailor the subscription in-line with the changing needs of your business.

Cloud-Hosted VoIP

With the UK’s copper-based telephony infrastructure (and the products it supports) set to be fully shut down by the end of 2025, many organisations have already made the switch to a futureproof, IP-based phone system. Cloud-hosted VoIP is a future-ready alternative to the phone systems of old, offering scalability, flexibility and value unmatched by traditional telephony products.

Thanks to the mobility afforded by the cloud, Cloud-hosted VoIP systems can be accessed from any location provided a stable internet connection is available, allowing a single contact number to be leveraged for all employees regardless of location. There are also minimal hardware considerations: no need to set up a private branch exchange server or install new phone lines, and you can even access the phone system on existing internet-capable devices.

Modern VoIP phone systems come laden with a wealth of call-handling features as standard. Expect the likes of call queues, auto attendants, voicemail to email and countless other capabilities designed to make light work of call management. Many systems also enable the integration of multiple communication channels into their interface - a concept known as ‘unified communications’ – resulting in a more ergonomic and convenient end user experience.

You might think such convenience would come at a cost, but hosted VoIP actually compares favourably with traditional telephony products thanks to flexible subscription-based pricing and competitive call bundles that offer vast savings – particularly when calling abroad.

Managed Security Services

Establishing the security infrastructure and instituting the information security policies necessary to safeguard data can be a time-intensive business, which when combined with the daily pressures of running a business can leave little time for activities which aid business development. Seeking the support of a managed security service provider can alleviate the administrative burden of cyber security, and give you time to focus on activities that add value to your business.

A managed security provider can scan your network for vulnerabilities, establish defences to protect against malicious intrusion and monitor your environment 24/7 for emergent threats. They’ll also be able to develop and deploy a comprehensive data backup and continuity strategy designed to help your business recover disruptive events. Doing all of the above in-house is of course possible, but for small to medium sized organisations with limited IT budgets outsourcing IT security functions typically makes far greater commercial sense.

Clearwave – Technology Simplified 

Achieve More With Less – How to Spot Cost-Saving Tech Solutions

Tue, 10 Jan 2023 16:07:57 GMT

Recent years have seen businesses across all sectors subject to numerous economic and operational pressures. From the practical challenges presented by lockdown to the current cost of living crisis, organisations are under immense pressure to remain competitive, resilient and above all: profitable.

If your business is exploring cost saving initiatives, conducting a root and branch review of your IT strategy could be a great place to start. The IT marketplace has changed beyond all recognition over the last 2 decades, with technologies and capabilities that were once the preserve of large corporations now available to small firms and even individuals. Updating your IT in 2023 could make your business more resilient, agile and productive, with solutions that vastly outperform yesterday’s legacy systems both in terms of cost and functionality.

Let’s examine some of the features and traits shared by these new technologies to help you choose the right systems for your business.

Flexible Pricing

Thanks to the cloud, IT projects are no longer defined by costly hardware investments and rigid, inflexible infrastructure that struggles to adapt to changing business demands. Software, infrastructure and development platforms for projects of any scale and level of ambition can now be obtained through cloud service providers on a subscription-type basis. This approach means that you can provision computing resources, data storage, enterprise software, development platforms and even security services such as backup solutions in a way that closely matches point-in-time demand: resulting in a monthly IT spend that’s as lean as possible.

Hardware-minimisation

Modern businesses demand plug-and-play IT capabilities from solutions that require little-to-no costly and potentially disruptive hardware installations. Thanks again to the Cloud, organisations of all sizes can deploy everything from corporate email services to feature-rich VoIP phone systems without having to spend a single pound on expensive, inflexible on-premise hardware. Cloud service providers handle everything from software maintenance to the powering, cooling and security of the underlying server infrastructure, thus reducing the burden on internal IT teams and giving you more time to focus value-adding endeavours.

Remote Capabilities

With almost 50% of UK employees working remotely at the height of the covid pandemic, there’s a good chance your business has become acquainted with remote-capable technology in recent years. Today, almost one in eight workers continue to work from home on a full-time basis, with many employers keen on the cost savings and improved staff morale that flexible working practices can bring about. Enabling remote working on a full or even partial basis can allow office desk space to be used more efficiently through a practice known as ‘hotdesking,’ and could allow your business to operate from a smaller, more affordable office suite.

Studies suggest that the vast majority of employees would like to work remotely at least on a partial basis, with improved work-life balance, boosted productivity and enhanced wellbeing cited as some of the benefits of the practice.

Built-in automation

‘Automation’ has been a common buzzword in the business technology realm for some time, with interest in automated technologies growing in recent years as businesses seek to become more efficient. From accounting and payroll to marketing and recruitment, automation has found its way into the enterprise software businesses use on a daily basis, with cloud-hosted solutions that can draw together data from multiple locations in order to eliminate the burden of time-consuming manual data handling.

By eradicating low-value menial tasks through automation you can give your employees more time to focus on activities that bring value to your business.

Advanced Cyber Security

At first thought, Cyber Security and cost savings may not seem intrinsically linked. However, with the average data breach costing UK firms £1200 on average, having the right cyber security architecture in place could mean the difference between recovery and ruin.

From next-generation email security tools which use AI and behavioural analytics to XDR (extended detection and response) platforms which enable IT teams to take real-time measures to counter threats, a new fleet of security platforms is now available to help organisations stay one step ahead of the cyber criminal underworld.

It’s worth remembering that under UK GDPR all organisations in possession of personal data are required to take ‘appropriate technical and organisational measures’ to protect it. Fines, legal action and reputational harm could ensue if you don’t have the correct measures in place to meet this obligation.

We hope this has given you food-for-thought as to how digital transformation could help your business remain effective, profitable and resilient through these difficult times. Stay tuned for our next article where we’ll explore 4 cost-efficient solutions all businesses should consider.

Clearwave – Technology Simplified 

What Is Green Computing?

Tue, 10 Jan 2023 13:51:26 GMT

Green computing, also called sustainable computing, aims to maximize energy efficiency and minimize environmental impact in the ways computer chips, systems and software are designed and used.

Everyone wants green computing.

Mobile users demand maximum performance and battery life. Businesses and governments increasingly require systems that are powerful yet environmentally friendly. And cloud services must respond to global demands without making the grid stutter.

For these reasons and more, green computing has evolved rapidly over the past three decades, and it’s here to stay.

What Is Green Computing?

Green computing, or sustainable computing, is the practice of maximizing energy efficiency and minimizing environmental impact in the ways computer chips, systems and software are designed and used.

Also called green information technology, green IT or sustainable IT, green computing spans concerns across the supply chain, from the raw materials used to make computers to how systems get recycled.

In their working lives, green computers must deliver the most work for the least energy, typically measured by performance per watt.

Why Is Green Computing Important?

Green computing is a significant tool to combat climate change, the existential threat of our time.

Global temperatures have risen about 1.2°C over the last century. As a result, ice caps are melting, causing sea levels to rise about 20 centimeters and increasing the number and severity of extreme weather events.

The rising use of electricity is one of the causes of global warming. Data centers represent a small fraction of total electricity use, about 1% or 200 terawatt-hours per year, but they’re a growing factor that demands attention.

Powerful, energy-efficient computers are part of the solution. They’re advancing science and our quality of life, including the ways we understand and respond to climate change.

What Are the Elements of Green Computing?

Engineers know green computing is a holistic discipline.

“Energy efficiency is a full-stack issue, from the software down to the chips,” said Sachin Idgunji, co-chair of the power working group for the industry’s MLPerf AI benchmark and a distinguished engineer working on performance analysis at NVIDIA.

For example, in one analysis he found NVIDIA DGX A100 systems delivered a nearly 5x improvement in energy efficiency in scale-out AI training benchmarks compared to the prior generation.

“My primary role is analyzing and improving energy efficiency of AI applications at everything from the GPU and the system node to the full data center scale,” he said.

Idgunji’s work is a job description for a growing cadre of engineers building products from smartphones to supercomputers.

What’s the History of Green Computing?

Green computing hit the public spotlight in 1992, when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency launched Energy Star, a program for identifying consumer electronics that met standards in energy efficiency.

A 2017 report found nearly 100 government and industry programs across 22 countries promoting what it called green ICTs, sustainable information and communication technologies.

One such organization, the Green Electronics Council, provides the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool, a registry of systems and their energy-efficiency levels. The council claims it’s saved nearly 400 million megawatt-hours of electricity through use of 1.5 billion green products it’s recommended to date.

Work on green computing continues across the industry at every level.

For example, some large data centers use liquid-cooling while others locate data centers where they can use cool ambient air. Schneider Electric recently released a whitepaper recommending 23 metrics for determining the sustainability level of data centers.

A Pioneer in Energy Efficiency

Wu Feng, a computer science professor at Virginia Tech, built a career pushing the limits of green computing. It started out of necessity while he was working at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

A computer cluster for open science research he maintained in an external warehouse had twice as many failures in summers versus winters. So, he built a lower-power system that wouldn’t generate as much heat.

He demoed the system, dubbed Green Destiny, at the Supercomputing conference in 2001. Covered by the BBC, CNN and the New York Times, among others, it sparked years of talks and debates in the HPC community about the potential reliability as well as efficiency of green computing.

Interest rose as supercomputers and data centers grew, pushing their boundaries in power consumption. In November 2007, after working with some 30 HPC luminaries and gathering community feedback, Feng launched the first Green500 List, the industry’s benchmark for energy-efficient supercomputing.

A Green Computing Benchmark

The Green500 became a rallying point for a community that needed to reign in power consumption while taking performance to new heights.

“Energy efficiency increased exponentially, flops per watt doubled about every year and a half for the greenest supercomputer at the top of the list,” said Feng.

By some measures, the results showed the energy efficiency of the world’s greenest systems increased two orders of magnitude in the last 14 years.

Feng attributes the gains mainly to the use of accelerators such as GPUs, now common among the world’s fastest systems.

“Accelerators added the capability to execute code in a massively parallel way without a lot of overhead — they let us run blazingly fast,” he said.

He cited two generations of the Tsubame supercomputers in Japan as early examples. They used NVIDIA Kepler and Pascal architecture GPUs to lead the Green500 list in 2014 and 2017, part of a procession of GPU-accelerated systems on the list.

“Accelerators have had a huge impact throughout the list,” said Feng, who will receive an award for his green supercomputing work at the Supercomputing event in November.

“Notably, NVIDIA was fantastic in its engagement and support of the Green500 by ensuring its energy-efficiency numbers were reported, thus helping energy efficiency become a first-class citizen in how supercomputers are designed today,” he added.

AI and Networking Get More Efficient

Today, GPUs and data processing units (DPUs) are bringing greater energy efficiency to AI and networking tasks, as well as HPC jobs like simulations run on supercomputers and enterprise data centers.

AI, the most powerful technology of our time, will become a part of every business. McKinsey & Co. estimates AI will add a staggering $13 trillion to global GDP by 2030 as deployments grow.

NVIDIA estimates data centers could save a whopping 19 terawatt-hours of electricity a year if all AI, HPC and networking offloads were run on GPU and DPU accelerators (see the charts below). That’s the equivalent of the energy consumption of 2.9 million passenger cars driven for a year.

It’s an eye-popping measure of the potential for energy efficiency with accelerated computing.

AI Benchmark Measures Efficiency

Because AI represents a growing part of enterprise workloads, the MLPerf industry benchmarks for AI have been measuring performance per watt on submissions for data center and edge inference since February 2021.

“The next frontier for us is to measure energy efficiency for AI on larger distributed systems, for HPC workloads and for AI training — it’s similar to the Green500 work,” said Idgunji, whose power group at MLPerf includes members from six other chip and systems companies.

The public results motivate participants to make significant improvements with each product generation. They also help engineers and developers understand ways to balance performance and efficiency across the major AI workloads that MLPerf tests.

“Software optimizations are a big part of work because they can lead to large impacts in energy efficiency, and if your system is energy efficient, it’s more reliable, too,” Idgunji said.

Green Computing for Consumers

In PCs and laptops, “we’ve been investing in efficiency for a long time because it’s the right thing to do,” said Narayan Kulshrestha, a GPU power architect at NVIDIA who’s been working in the field nearly two decades.

For example, Dynamic Boost 2.0 uses deep learning to automatically direct power to a CPU, a GPU or a GPU’s memory to increase system efficiency. In addition, NVIDIA created a system-level design for laptops, called Max-Q, to optimize and balance energy efficiency and performance.

Building a Cyclical Economy

When a user replaces a system, the standard practice in green computing is that the old system gets broken down and recycled. But Matt Hull sees better possibilities.

“Our vision is a cyclical economy that enables everyone with AI at a variety of price points,” said Hull, the vice president of sales for data center AI products at NVIDIA.

So he aims to find the system a new home with users in developing countries who find it useful and affordable. It’s a work in progress seeking the right partner and writing a new chapter in an existing lifecycle management process.

Green Computing Fights Climate Change

Energy-efficient computers are among the sharpest tools fighting climate change.

Scientists in government labs and universities have long used GPUs to model climate scenarios and predict weather patterns. Recent advances in AI, driven by NVIDIA GPUs, can now help model weather forecasting 100,000x quicker than traditional models. Watch the following video for details:

In an effort to accelerate climate science, NVIDIA announced plans to build Earth-2, an AI supercomputer dedicated to predicting the impacts of climate change. It will use NVIDIA Omniverse, a 3D design collaboration and simulation platform, to build a digital twin of Earth so scientists can model climates in ultra-high resolution.

In addition, NVIDIA is working with the United Nations Satellite Centre to accelerate climate-disaster management and train data scientists across the globe in using AI to improve flood detection.

Meanwhile, utilities are embracing machine learning to move toward a green, resilient and smart grid. Power plants are using digital twins to predict costly maintenance and model new energy sources, such as fusion-reactor designs.

What’s Ahead in Green Computing?

Feng sees the core technology behind green computing moving forward on multiple fronts.

In the short term, he’s working on what’s called energy proportionality, that is, ways to make sure systems get peak power when they need peak performance and scale gracefully down to zero power as they slow to an idle, like a modern car engine that slows its RPMs and then shuts down at a red light.

Long term, he’s exploring ways to minimize data movement inside and between computer chips to reduce their energy consumption. And he’s among many researchers studying the promise of quantum computing to deliver new kinds of acceleration.

It’s all part of the ongoing work of green computing, delivering ever more performance at ever greater efficiency.

Source: What Is Green Computing? | NVIDIA Blog

IBM goes big on quantum-computer hardware, software

Tue, 10 Jan 2023 13:39:25 GMT

IBM's most powerful quantum computer yet, Osprey, is a 433-qubit machine, and the company is enlisting partners to identify quantum-computing use cases for businesses.

IBM has rolled out its most powerful quantum-computing system so far—the Osprey, a 433-qubit machine that supports three times more qubits than its current Eagle system, and reiterated its plan to have a 1,121-qubit processor, called Condor, out in 2023.

At the IBM Quantum Summit 2022, the company also said it was continuing development of a modular quantum platform called System Two that will combine multiple processors into a single system with new communication links that IBM says will use hybrid-cloud middleware to integrate quantum and classical workflows.

In addition IBM said it will continue to prototype quantum software applications for specific use cases. By 2025, IBM said, developers will be able to explore quantum machine-learning applications and more.

Big Blue is following the quantum roadmap it laid out earlier this year that set long-term goals. It included the development of a 4,000+ qubit system by 2025 built with clusters of quantum processors and, with partners, develop, software that can control quantum systems and network them together while eliminating errors that can drag down quantum work.

“We see three main application areas for quantum computers today: simulating nature, such as materials and chemistry; solving problems around data with structure such as some problems in optimization and machine learning; and problems in pure math and number theory,” said Oliver Dial, chief hardware architect with IBM Quantum. “This is where we see the immediate use cases. But the more people use quantum, the more use cases will be unearthed.”

While hardware advances move the quantum needle forward, software will play a big role in advancing the technology.

This week IBM also released a beta update to Qiskit Runtime, which IBM calls “a quantum-computing service and programming model that allows users to optimize workloads and efficiently execute them on quantum systems at scale.” With the update it now includes a feature that lets users trade speed for reduced error count with a simple change in the API.

“Because of the delicate nature of quantum states, quantum computers have error rates that are higher than classical computers,” Dial said. “We typically talk about gate fidelities—approximately what percentage of time a quantum computer will give the correct answer after a single operation. State of the art today is about 99.9%, or one error per thousand gates,” Dial said.

“Techniques like error mitigation allow us to enhance the effective fidelity of our devices by running circuits multiple times and combining the answers, allowing us to create a trade-off between quality and scale/speed. For users, that makes quantum much more flexible to use. They can decide what combination of quality and scale/ speed works best for them,” Dial said.

The goal is full quantum error correction. In the meantime, these techniques let users derive real value out of quantum machines in the near-term, Dial said.

Industry partners will also play a big role in developing quantum systems. This week IBM said it had partnered with Vodafone to develop a quantum use cases for telecommunications. The telecom vendor will also deploy IBM Quantum Safe cryptological technology in its systems.

Vodaphone will be part of IBM’s Quantum Network, which includes 200 organizations and more than 450,000 users. In addition to Vodaphone, the network added French bank Crédit Mutuel to explore use cases in financial services, and Swiss research and development outfit uptownBasel to boost quantum skills development.

Source: IBM goes big on quantum-computer hardware, software | Network World

Common Ways Technology Falls Out of Sync

Tue, 13 Dec 2022 09:36:52 GMT

As an organisation grows, it’s common for its IT systems to degrade over time, and fall out of alignment with business objectives. This can happen for a number of reasons as we discussed in our previous article, but it’s important to correct such misalignment to ensure technology continues to support your business’s goals and growth ambitions.

Business-IT alignment and modernisation often go hand-in-hand, and it’s often not possible to achieve one without considering the other. Keeping your technology current and optimised can bring many business advantages, these include:

Lower Costs

Grappling with outdated legacy hardware long term can be a costly endeavour in terms of maintenance. As the expertise required to maintain legacy systems becomes increasingly scarce, these costs are only likely to increase.

Cloud services permit access to computing power, ready-to-use-software, and platforms for the likes of web development and the creation of relational databases on a subscription-type basis, with often little to no upfront costs.

Improved operational efficiency

Outdated software that features little in the way of automation and leaves data in isolated siloes can be a real productivity drain, resulting in countless hours of staff time lost to manual data handling.

Modern alternatives often allow workflows to be connected across platforms and the seamless transfer of data via app and service integrations. The result is a more agile and productive workplace, where less time is spent on menial, low-value tasks.

Enhanced data security

Unsupported software or poorly maintained operating systems are prime targets for cyber criminals, with glaring security vulnerabilities presenting opportunities for malware intrusion into networks. Ensuring software and operating systems are current, supported and properly maintained is vital to ensuring the integrity of your network.

Less downtime

Depending on the nature and scale of your business, a single minute of IT system downtime could result in hundreds or even thousands of pounds of financial damage. Modernising hardware to ensure it’s specced appropriately to cope with demand, and applying a rigorous regime of preventative maintenance can go some way to reducing occurrences of disruptive downtime.

Common ways business objectives and IT fall out of sync

Over the years Clearwave has conducted countless technology assessments to help organisations coordinate their IT deployments in ways that support and facilitate organisational objectives. This experience has allowed us to observe and note some of the ways IT and a business’s strategic objectives become misaligned over time. Consider whether some of these may apply to your organisation.

Computing Hardware

Over time, desktop computers and servers often struggle to cope with the demands placed on them. This isn’t necessarily because of hardware degradation (although that can be a factor) but simply because a specification that was considered ‘high performance’ in 2014, will be considered pedestrian today, and struggle to provide the RAM and processing power necessary for some of today’s most demanding enterprise software programmes.

In recent years, due largely to the covid pandemic, there has been a rapid increase in remote working across most sectors. With many employees continuing to work from home (at least in part) to this day, organisations are starting to question the value of on-premise legacy phone systems which don’t permit enterprise mobility (they’re only of use when an employee is in the office). Additionally, with the UK’s copper-based telephony infrastructure set to be fully decommissioned in the coming years, many of such phone systems are set to become obsolete.

As businesses grow and change, new devices are often added which don’t conform to data security norms and aren’t integrated into IT management and support plans. While these devices are often used for limited and specific purposes, they can present a serious risk to network integrity and data security.

Software Programmes

Over time, devices often accrue a vast array of software applications, many of which fall out of favour or are simply no longer required. These applications can present security vulnerabilities, especially if they aren’t subject to regular updates, and as such should be removed or disabled to maintain a strong cyber security posture.

Occasionally, data isolation occurs due to the hosting of software locally rather than on an organisation’s central server. This often occurs for short-term convenience, but the practice can also make it harder to enforce a cohesive information management strategy.

Organisations often fail to apply operating system updates and in worst-case scenarios even run unsupported variants. Doing so can greatly increase cyber vulnerability and can even lead to cross-network compatibility issues.

It’s not uncommon for applications to be introduced to aid specific objectives and for these programmes to be excluded from the scope of an organisation’s data recovery strategy. Such programmes should be assessed to determine whether there is a requirement for data backup, and should be incorporated into the business continuity strategy if there is found to be a need.

Network and connectivity

As organisations scale up their networks - adding new switches and routers to accommodate increasing user demand - they often neglect to implement some form of network management and monitoring. Such capabilities are critical to optimising the performance of complex networks, as they grant network administrators access to key data that allows data traffic bottlenecks to be remedied and preventative measures to be taken to avoid outages.

Over recent decades digitalisation has continued apace, with more and more businesses moving business-critical services online. Despite this, surprisingly few organisations have contingencies in place for the failure of their business broadband service. To aid in business resilience objectives, a failover internet connection should be considered to support business operations in the event of the main connection failing.

Security and Business Continuity

Despite the increasing prevalence and sophistication of cyber threats it’s not uncommon for organisations to apply cyber defence measures in an inconsistent or flawed manner, particularly when new devices are added hastily. Ensuring the consistent deployment of anti-virus software and firewall protections network-wide is critical to the overall security of the IT environment.

The majority of data breaches originate from the email inbox. Despite this, many organisation fail to implement security measures to counter email-based scams and hacking attempts. Email filtering should be in place to help prevent malicious emails landing in company inboxes and email encryption should be considered to safeguard sensitive information in transit. Security training should focus heavily on email-based threats, particularly phishing scams.

In the misguided belief that anti-virus software is all that’s required to counter the threat posed by malware, many organisations neglect to deploy web protection measures to guard against malware intrusion from rogue sites - with such malware often able to circumvent desktop anti-virus software. Firewall protections should be configured to prohibit access to untrusted sites that are more likely to be vectors of malware.

With many organisations discovering the benefits offered by remote working practices in recent years, an increasing number of portable devices are now being used for work purposes. Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon to see such devices left out of the scope of support and management plans, with cyber security measures and patch management loosely enforced. Mobile device management software can aid in remote device governance, ensuring portable devices feature the latest software updates and have the necessary mechanisms configured to aid data security objectives. Device encryption should also be considered to protect device-held data in the event of theft.

Operating an effective data backup requires a high degree of diligence and vigilance. Most organisations understand the importance of backing up data in relation to their business continuity objectives, but sadly it’s not uncommon to see data backup activities performed in an inconsistent way, with little to no routine checks performed to test efficacy. Business-critical data should be backed up to 3 locations, and one of these should be off-site to ensure recoverability. Backups should be routinely tested in order to detect faulty equipment at the earliest opportunity.

Clearwave – Technology Simplified

Clearwave’s time-tested technology assessment process will help you identify where your IT is at odds with your business’s goals. We’ll survey your network to determine what works and where there’s room for improvement, and provide recommended actions to help bring your network up to the required standard. We offer a full-suite of managed IT services centred around our Total Affinity product line: a unique set of IT tools covering all bases, from highspeed business internet and cost-effective VoIP telephony to versatile cloud-based desktops and our all-in-one business management platform ‘Integra.’

Get in touch today, to find out how Clearwave could help simplify your business technology.

Achieving Alignment Between Your Business & Technology

Tue, 13 Dec 2022 09:24:39 GMT

In our digital world, IT plays a critical role in the vast majority of businesses. From HR and finance to marketing and customer service, there isn’t a single business domain untouched by the proliferation of business technology in the 21st century. While in the not-so-distant past, simply using digital technologies granted businesses a competitive advantage, today organisations of all sizes must optimise their use of such technology for maximum value and commercial reward.

The process is referred to by some as ‘business-IT alignment,’ and involves harmonising technology with business objectives in order to achieve commercial and operational goals and the best possible service outcome/end product for customers.

Establish your main business objectives

To consider how well your IT system serves your business’s goals, it can be helpful to set out your business’s main objectives and the strategies you have in mind for achieving them. These objectives should be defined within a set timeframe, and it can also be beneficial to consider the initiatives and resources you will deploy in relation to each of them. Consider establishing your objectives in relation to:

Customer Service

Customer retention is vital to the success of most businesses, and it relies on the consistent delivery of good customer service. Consider how you deliver upon and quantify your customer service objectives.

Profitability

Profitable businesses are dynamic and resilient. Consider how you’ll keep costs under control and maximise revenue going forward, and set achievable, near-future profitability targets.

Productivity

Workplace productivity supports many other primary objectives – such as profitability – and is vital to maintaining a competitive advantage. Consider how you gauge productivity in your business and the resources you’ll need to deploy to maintain or enhance your team’s productivity.

Reliability/consistency

This objective relates to the ways you guarantee the reliable delivery of your business’s product or service. Think about how you might measure reliability in your business, and consider the contingencies that could be instated to improve the robustness of your service delivery.

Quality

A high-quality end product is crucial to the reputation of any business and will help you generate a loyal customer base. Think about how you quantify the quality of your end product and the steps you can take to ensure its quality at each stage of fulfilment. Pay attention to the systems and resources that are fundamental to quality maintenance.

Integrating IT with your business objectives

Once you have your business objectives established it’s time to examine how well they’re supported by your current IT infrastructure. Carry out the following to help you do this…

Perform a technology needs assessment

A technology needs assessment is a process designed to evaluate your IT infrastructure in its current state and determine how it may need to be adapted in order to achieve future aims. In addition to helping you steer your business-IT alignment, a technology needs assessment can also shine a light of IT components that are a serious productivity drain as well as security vulnerabilities that have gone undetected by your tech team. Having a third-party provider perform the assessment can be beneficial, as they’ll be able to review your technology with a fresh set of eyes, free from the bias that may colour an internally-performed assessment.

Identify critical business processes and the tech that underpins them

No organisation has a limitless IT budget, so it’s important to prioritise the processes that are most critical to achieving your business objectives and the technology that supports them. If for example, your primary objective is improving efficiency, think about the technology you’re using to minimise waste and streamline your processes. Is there scope for introducing ERP (Enterprise resource planning) software, and how would this integrate into your current tech stack?

Liaise with partners, clients and suppliers

Seeking the perspective of an external party can be helpful in understanding ‘pain points’ that may not be apparent from within your company.

Using the insights gained from customer/partner feedback and the technology needs assessment you can adapt your future technology strategy to properly support your top-priority business objectives.

Why businesses fail to align their IT with their objectives

We know from experience however that business-IT misalignment often occurs over time, and for various reasons. Common causes include:

Cost

Organisations often remain saddled with sub-optimal legacy technology due to the costs associated with migrating to more modern alternatives.

The ‘money’s worth’ paradox

Some businesses stay loyal to legacy technology, believing that getting maximum value from it means using it for as long as possible. The flaw in this argument is that outdated technology can often be a financial liability rather than an asset.

Stop-gap solutions

As minor operational changes occur, organisations often deploy quick workarounds that aren’t aligned with any greater IT strategy. Examples can include laptops used for remote working that aren’t incorporated into IT management structures and software programmes downloaded for specific, short-term purposes that go on to be abandoned and unused.

Fear of upheaval

Businesses often express fears that making changes to their technology will upset the apple cart and cause disruption to processes and service delivery. Using outdated technology - especially that which isn’t supported - can also be a risky business however, with security vulnerabilities and hardware degradation likely to lead to a devastating data breach or outage at some stage.

In our next article we’ll explore some of business advantages that can be gained from bringing technology in line with your business’s goals and aspirations. We’ll also examine some ways ‘business-IT misalignment’ can manifest over time, and the problems such misalignment can trigger.

Clearwave – Technology Simplified

Clearwave’s time-tested technology assessment process will help you identify where your IT is at odds with your business’s goals. We’ll survey your network to determine what works and where there’s room for improvement, and provide recommended actions to help bring your network up to the required standard. We offer a full-suite of managed IT services centred around our Total Affinity product line: a unique set of IT tools covering all bases, from highspeed business internet and cost-effective VoIP telephony to versatile cloud-based desktops and our all-in-one business management platform ‘Integra.’

Get in touch today, to find out how Clearwave could help simplify your business technology.

New quantum computing feat is a modern twist on a 150-year-old thought experiment

Mon, 12 Dec 2022 14:28:51 GMT

A team of quantum engineers at UNSW Sydney has developed a method to reset a quantum computer—that is, to prepare a quantum bit in the '0' state—with very high confidence, as needed for reliable quantum computations. The method is surprisingly simple: it is related to the old concept of 'Maxwell's demon', an omniscient being that can separate a gas into hot and cold by watching the speed of the individual molecules.

"Here we used a much more modern 'demon'—a fast digital voltmeter—to watch the temperature of an electron drawn at random from a warm pool of electrons. In doing so, we made it much colder than the pool it came from, and this corresponds to a high certainty of it being in the '0' computational state," says Professor Andrea Morello of UNSW, who led the team.

"Quantum computers are only useful if they can reach the final result with very low probability of errors. And one can have near-perfect quantum operations, but if the calculation started from the wrong code, the final result will be wrong too. Our digital 'Maxwell's demon' gives us a 20x improvement in how accurately we can set the start of the computation."

Watching an electron to make it colder

Prof. Morello's team has pioneered the use of electron spins in silicon to encode and manipulate quantum information , and demonstrated record-high fidelity—that is, very low probability of errors—in performing quantum operations. The last remaining hurdle for efficient quantum computations with electrons was the fidelity of preparing the electron in a known state as the starting point of the calculation.

"The normal way to prepare the quantum state of an electron is go to extremely low temperatures, close to absolute zero, and hope that the electrons all relax to the low-energy '0' state," explains Dr. Mark Johnson, the lead experimental author on the paper. "Unfortunately, even using the most powerful refrigerators, we still had a 20 percent chance of preparing the electron in the '1' state by mistake. That was not acceptable, we had to do better than that."

Dr. Johnson, a UNSW graduate in Electrical Engineering, decided to use a very fast digital measurement instrument to 'watch' the state of the electron, and use real-time decision-making processor within the instrument to decide whether to keep that electron and use it for further computations. The effect of this process was to reduce the probability of error from 20 percent to 1 percent.

A new spin on an old idea

"When we started writing up our results and thought about how best to explain them, we realized that what we had done was a modern twist on the old idea of the 'Maxwell's demon'," Prof. Morello says.

The concept of 'Maxwell's demon' dates back to 1867, when James Clerk Maxwell imagined a creature with the capacity to know the velocity of each individual molecule in a gas. He would take a box full of gas, with a dividing wall in the middle, and a door that can be opened and closed quickly. With his knowledge of each molecule's speed, the demon can open the door to let the slow (cold) molecules pile up on one side, and the fast (hot) ones on the other.

"The demon was a thought experiment , to debate the possibility of violating the second law of thermodynamics, but of course no such demon ever existed," Prof. Morello says.

"Now, using fast digital electronics, we have in some sense created one. We tasked him with the job of watching just one electron, and making sure it's as cold as it can be. Here, 'cold' translates directly in it being in the '0' state of the quantum computer we want to build and operate."

The implications of this result are very important for the viability of quantum computers. Such a machine can be built with the ability to tolerate some errors, but only if they are sufficiently rare. The typical threshold for error tolerance is around 1 percent. This applies to all errors, including preparation, operation, and readout of the final result.

This electronic version of a 'Maxwell's demon' allowed the UNSW team to reduce the preparation errors twenty-fold, from 20 percent to 1 percent.

"Just by using a modern electronic instrument, with no additional complexity in the quantum hardware layer, we've been able to prepare our electron quantum bits within good enough accuracy to permit a reliable subsequent computation," Dr. Johnson says.

"This is an important result for the future of quantum computing. And it's quite peculiar that it also represents the embodiment of an idea from 150 years ago!"

Source: New quantum computing feat is a modern twist on a 150-year-old thought experiment (phys.org)

Chats in Google Messages are about to get even more secure

Mon, 12 Dec 2022 14:09:00 GMT

End-to-end encryption en route

Google has announced that it's bringing end-to-end encryption to group chats in the Google Messages app. The security upgrade is heading to beta users first before being rolled out more widely.

End-to-end encryption means no one, not even Google, can read the content of messages. It's already supported in the Google Messages app for one-to-one chats, but now it's going to be added to group conversations as well.

"End-to-end encryption is starting to roll out for group chats and will be available to some users in the open beta program over the coming weeks," Google says . "This shouldn’t even be a thought – just an expectation and something anyone texting should not have to worry about."

From SMS to RCS

In the same announcement blog post, Google revealed that the ability to quickly react to a message with any emoji is coming to Google Messages soon as well. At the moment, only a selection of emojis can be used as reactions.

Alongside a mention of these new features, Google also continued to push hard for RCS (Rich Communication Services) to become the new standard for everyone – the technology, an upgrade on SMS, is now widely available but has yet to be adopted by Apple on its iPhones.

Google's post also acknowledged the 30th anniversary of the SMS , a milestone which emphasizes how old the technology is as well as how overdue we now are for a standard that can fully replace it.

Analysis: SMS should really be history

The arrival of SMS three decades ago helped to transform the way that we communicate with each other – even if the messages were limited in terms of characters, and many phones could only store a limited number of texts at any one time.

Now, apps like WhatsApp and Slack have taken us far, far beyond those limitations. Messages can be much longer and include photos, videos or audio, and we can even tell when recipients have opened up the messages we send them.

It's benefits like these that make RCS a worthwhile upgrade, improving the security of messages and making features such as group chats much better. Google didn't create the standard, but it is heavily promoting it.

However, whenever an iPhone user texts an Android user, SMS is still the protocol used. Google wants that to change, but it's unlikely that Apple ever will – Apple knows that iMessage is one of the key reasons that people stick with iPhones.

Source: Chats in Google Messages are about to get even more secure | TechRadar

Make the most of the season by following these simple guidelines

websitebuilder-hub@names.co.uk — Mon, 12 Dec 2022 13:55:45 GMT

The new season is a great reason to make and keep resolutions. Whether it’s eating well or cleaning out the garage, here are some tips for making and keeping resolutions.

Make a list

Lists are great ways to stay on track. Write down some big things you want to accomplish and some smaller things, too.

Check the list regularly

Don’t forget to check in and see how you’re doing. Just because you don’t achieve the big goals right away doesn’t mean you’re not making progress.

Reward yourself

When you succeed in achieving a goal, be it a big one or a small one, make sure to pat yourself on the back.

Think positively

Positive thinking is a major factor in success. So instead of mulling over things that didn’t go quite right, remind yourself of things that did.

Keep in touch with site visitors and boost loyalty

websitebuilder-hub@names.co.uk — Mon, 12 Dec 2022 13:55:45 GMT

There are so many good reasons to communicate with site visitors. Tell them about sales and new products or update them with tips and information.

Here are some reasons to make blogging part of your regular routine.

Blogging is an easy way to engage with site visitors

Writing a blog post is easy once you get the hang of it. Posts don’t need to be long or complicated. Just write about what you know and do your best to write well.

Show customers your personality

When you write a blog post, you can really let your personality shine through. This can be a great tool for showing your distinct personality.

Blogging is a terrific form of communication

Blogs are a great communication tool. They tend to be longer than social media posts, which gives you plenty of space for sharing insights, handy tips and more.

It’s a great way to support and boost SEO

Search engines like sites that regularly post fresh content and a blog is a great way of doing this. With relevant metadata for every post so search engines can find your content.

Drive traffic to your site

Every time you add a new post, people who have subscribed to it will have a reason to come back to your site. If the post is a good read, they’ll share it with others, bringing even more traffic!

Blogging is free

Maintaining a blog on your site is absolutely free. You can hire bloggers if you like or assign regularly blogging tasks to everyone in your company.

A natural way to build your brand

A blog is a wonderful way to build your brand’s distinct voice. Write about issues that are related to your industry and your customers.

Tips for writing great posts that increase your site traffic

websitebuilder-hub@names.co.uk — Mon, 12 Dec 2022 13:55:44 GMT

Write about something you know. If you don’t know much about a specific topic that will interest your readers, invite an expert to write about it.

Speak to your audience

You know your audience better than anyone else, so keep them in mind as you write your blog posts. Write about things they care about. If you have a company Facebook page, look here to find topics to write about

Take a few moments to plan your post

Once you have a great idea for a post, write the first draft. Some people like to start with the title and then work on the paragraphs. Other people like to start with subtitles and go from there. Choose the method that works for you.

Don’t forget to add images

Be sure to include a few high-quality images in your blog. Images break up the text and make it more readable. They can also convey emotions or ideas that are hard to put into words.

Edit carefully before posting

Once you’re happy with the text, put it aside for a day or two, and then re-read it. You’ll probably find a few things you want to add and a couple more that you want to remove. Have a friend or colleague look it over to make sure there are no mistakes. When your post is error-free, set it up in your blog and publish.