Upgrading to improve productivity & Security:

It’s hard to know where to start when prioritising the upgrade of hardware. Here are the top things we see that businesses could upgrade to improve productivity and add security.

Upgrading those ‘old school’ phones

First, let’s start with those traditional landline phones. Sure, they’ve done their job well for decades, but switching to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) has many advantages. Don’t overlook the benefits of:

  • streamlining voice and data services to save on bills and long distance;
  • employees using VoIP communications wherever they have access to an internet connection;
  • accessing features such as call waiting, screening, recording, auto attendant, and voicemail transcription;
  • gaining greater flexibility to scale up and down as needed so you don’t need to pay for phone lines you don’t need;
  • integrating calls with customer relationship management software for better data insights.

Saving, Sharing, and Revising Documents

Next up, those filing cabinets. For one, they may be an eyesore, plus, they’re taking up valuable real estate in your space. Today, many printers allow you to scan many pages at once and easily scan documents into content management software.

Moving to online document management also opens you up to many productivity gains. The software often supports optical character recognition (OCR), which makes scanned content searchable. Plus, the documents are available online, where and when employees need them. This is helpful in remote or hybrid work setups, but it also helps ensure you have a backup of critical documents if disaster strikes.

If you’re still filing documents in cabinets, you may have paper-based processes, too. Forms and folders get passed around for different people to sign off at various stages. This makes it easy for workflow to bottleneck or, worse, for documentation to get lost in the physical shuffle from place to place.

In a step up from this, a business might at least move documents around via email attachments. Everyone gets a chance to see the document and make comments. Then, some poor soul takes all responses and correlates them for the next round of revisions.

Replace these old-school approaches with online business tools built to enable collaboration. Microsoft 365, for example, allows people to work on documents at the same time. There are no more worries about version control, and everyone can track the file’s progress.

Enabling Remote/Hybrid Work

Cloud-based collaboration software not only helps with document exchange. Microsoft 365 also allows users to communicate efficiently via the Teams channels. They can also start video meetings, share screens, and co-work on files and PowerPoints. Plus, integrating Outlook contacts and calendars helps efficiency and scheduling.

All this helps support employees working remotely or coming into the office only some of the time. With online documents and databases, everyone can get work done without coming on-site. Plus, VoIP business calls forward directly to phones or laptops for seamless communication.

Put Away the Post-its, Too

One last thing we’d love to see people replace in their offices? Those Post-its with handwritten passwords stuck to the bottom of computer monitors or oh-so-stealthily under the paperclip organizer in their top desk drawers.

We all have many passwords, and we understand the impulse to write them down, but a safer strategy is to use a password manager. A password manager stores, generates, and manages passwords in an encrypted database. A password management solution – such as Keeper, LastPass, or LogMeOnce – is more cyber secure than that sticky notes.

Feel free to reach out here to discuss any questions you may have about your individual business needs.

Written by Gill Brown

Cyber Security: Expect the best – prepare for the worst!

Cyber Security – “It will never happen to me!”

“Expect the best –  prepare for the worst”

Paul* runs a medium sized business in Northland.  He honestly never thought that he would be the victim of a cyber-attack. After huge expense, and lost productivity, he now speaks to anyone that he can about the importance of sorting out cyber security.

“I just wish that I had taken the time to get it sorted, as it’s so simple and yet it had such an impact on our business, costing us money in lost productivity”

Whilst we don’t want to scare anyone, cyber security is a huge concern for our clients right across Northland. Here are some recent statistics:

The weekly average number of ransomware attacks detected in June of 2021 was more than 149,000. A year prior, it was only 14,000 – making an increase of 966%!

(Source: Fortinet’s FortiGuard Labs 1H 2021 Global Threat Landscape Report)

Most companies now recognise the urgency around sorting out cyber security, however, these are still some common objections that we hear:

Top Four Reasons New Zealand businesses don’t sort out their Cyber Security:

  1. It’s just not a priority.
  2. It will never happen to me, as it only happens to large overseas companies.  
  3. It costs too much money.
  4. I don’t know where to start.

#1. It’s not a priority:

“It’s just not a priority for me right now, and I don’t have time to deal with all of that!”

Believe us when we say, we hear this often from Northland companies. We totally get it. You are doing a thousand things, time is precious, and cyber security just feels like another overwhelming ‘thing’ to take care of.

Many of our clients have felt the same way. What they have found however, is that the time it requires to be on the front foot and take care of security is far less time than it takes to sort out issues caused by attacks.

In fact, we often hear from clients who wish that their I.T provider had warned them, nagged them, and actually made them sort it out!

By the time they have had an attack, they come to us with days, weeks, and even months of lost productivity, plus the costs of having to sort the issues out.

“There was this horrible moment when I realized there was absolutely nothing I could do”

Amy Pascal, the former co-chairman of Sony Pictures on the cyber-attack on the studio that revealed her private emails.

#2. It will never happen to me:

“I’m putting my head in the sand and covering my ears singing lalalalala.  Cyber security attacks only happen to big companies – and definitely not here in little old New Zealand.”

We all want to think the best about life, and positivity is wonderful. But sometimes it is best to ‘expect the best, but prepare for the worst’. 

We know you are a great person, you work hard, and you live in New Zealand. However, Cyber-attacks do not discern where you live, what industry you work in, or how nice a person you are.

Cyber-attacks prey on those that are overly trusting, can’t be bothered, and think that it will never happen to them.

“If you spend more on coffee than on IT security, you will be hacked. What’s more, you deserve to be hacked.”

Richard Clarke – White House Cybersecurity Advisor 1992-2003

#3. It costs too much money:

“Sorting out my security costs too much”

Let’s break this down a little. What are the actual costs of a Cyber-Security attack?

  • In the UK, the average cost of all the cyber security breaches these businesses have experienced in the past 12 months is estimated to be £8,460.
  • For medium and large firms combined, this average cost is higher, at £13,400
  • 35% of businesses report being negatively impacted because they require new post-breach measures, have staff time diverted or suffer wider business disruption.

(DCMS Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2021).

Plus, there are the other costs like:

  • Loss of reputation
  • Loss of productivity – meaning clients may have to go elsewhere for a while until you get sorted out. They may not come back.
  • Loss of good faith and trust in your company especially if you are involved in confidential information.

The cost of taking the most prudent and essential steps might be a lot less than you think. By getting a couple of things done, many businesses could significantly increase their level of safety.

#4. I don’t know where to start…

“I’m confused, overwhelmed and have no idea where to start!”

We hear this often from clients and we absolutely understand how overwhelming it can all feel.

Here at the ITA, we have years of experience of looking after cyber security for many different companies, across varying sectors. 

The first step is for us to make a time to sit down with you for a complimentary chat, specific to your business.

This is a great starting point in order for you to get an overview.

Once we’ve discussed your individual needs, we can devise a plan together, working out what your priorities are specific to your business, any legal requirements surrounding security, and a budget and time-frame to instigate this plan.

Too easy!

Contact us here to make a time to have a complimentary chat about your own security requirements.

(*Name changed for confidentiality)

Feel free to reach out here to discuss any questions you may have about your individual business needs.

Written by I.T Alliance