Remote Working - 5 Ways to Make Hybrid Working Easier For Everyone

Hybrid working is here to stay as the world learns to live alongside COVID.

The workforce has gotten used to staying at home and the benefits it comes with, but it’s new ground for a lot of businesses. How do you manage big groups of employees remotely? Where do you begin with remote IT support when everyone works at home? What do you do if you’re not tech-savvy?

Hybrid working can be a minefield for business owners. But if we’ve learnt anything from the last year it’s that technology is the key to keeping up home productivity and minimising any down times. That’s why we’ve put together the 5 things you can do to make hybrid working actually work for your business.

1: The Right Hardware

Everyone had teething problems when the first wave of remote working hit. One of the biggest issues stemmed from not having the right hardware.

If you’re running a fast-paced business the last thing you want is for your remote employee’s ancient laptop to crash and lose important information. We’ve all been there - you don’t save and your computer dies at just the wrong time, losing everything.

Having the proper hardware can avoid problems like this. Ensuring your remote team have the right devices and suitable, reliable internet connectivity is going to give you the edge in hybrid working.

2: The Right Software

Just like hardware, having the right software can make or break your move into hybrid home working. Not sure which software could make a difference to remote working?

You have a lot of options for useful and essential software nowadays.

You’re probably already set up with online meeting software like Zoom, Google Meets or Skype, but have you evaluated whether the one you’re using is the right one for your needs? It could be worth shopping around and checking out the competition.

When it comes to productivity and workflow, you’re spoilt for choice. Project and team management software can literally make or break your hybrid working success. The right software, implemented correctly will allow your team to collaborate and communicate seamlessly, regardless of whether they’re in the office or at home. Popular choices include Trello, Slack and ClickUp but they each have their own style and user experience, so be sure to do some research before you commit to one. Once you’re in and set up, migrating to a new system is a pain you won’t want to go through.

3: Proper Cloud Solutions

Even if you’re only working remotely sometimes, secure cloud solutions will be your best friend.

When it comes to accessing your files from work on your home computer, document storage through a cloud service will work best. You’re probably already set up with Microsoft Teams, Google Drive or Dropbox but is it really working for you?

For a seamless hybrid working experience don’t be afraid to reassess and look at the other options - getting the right solutions in place might be painful initially, but can save you time, money and stress in the long run.

4: Good Training

This is probably the one thing that most businesses get wrong. Chuck your employees in at the deep end with remote working and you could get disastrous or hilarious results - like the lawyer who accidentally turned on a cat filter while on an official court video call!

Good training takes time and patience. But if you’re planning to stick to hybrid working for the foreseeable future, it’s well worth the investment. Train your home workforce on the systems you’re using and the software so that they can use everything confidently. No cat filters necessary.

5: Excellent Remote IT Support

Your aim with all of the steps above is to make hybrid working run smoothly, but that’s not always the reality no matter how prepared you are.

Things go wrong, someone can’t log in or someone thinks their laptop has a virus. Good training makes sure that everyone knows the basic solutions, but sometimes you need an expert to call.

Remote IT support is ideal in these situations because it doesn’t matter whether you’re in the office or at home, you can have a professional figure it out for you over a call.

For any technophobes in your business, just knowing an IT expert is just a call away can give them the confidence to work from home.

But rest assured, with the right hardware, software, cloud solutions, training and of course remote IT support, you’ll be ready to take on anything hybrid working can throw at you.

If you like the sound of having an IT expert just a call away for your team, contact Data Innovations to find out more about remote IT support.

Ransomware: Is Your Business At Risk of Losing Everything?

In the first half of 2021 over 1097 organisations in the UK were hit by ransomware attacks. But what is ransomware? How does it happen? And are you at risk? Keep reading to find out…

You’re about to get a crash course on everything you need to know.

Every year businesses lose hundreds of thousands to ransomware that could have been easily avoided. And every year the ransomware evolves, targeting vulnerable industries that rely on computer systems and cloud storage.

The whole ordeal of a ransomware attack wastes your valuable time, costs your business not just the ransom amount - but even more if the software doesn’t actually give you access to your data after you’ve paid their ransom!

Sounds nightmarish, right? More like a Die Hard movie plot than something business owners should have to worry about.

But you need to understand what ransomware is and how it happens so you know how to properly protect your business and your data.

What is Ransomware

In a nutshell, ransomware attacks are a type of unwanted software that makes its way into your computer system or network. Once it’s in there, the software locks down your data and files behind a digital wall, only giving you access again once a ransom is paid.

Imagine the computer system in your business filled with the most important information you have in your digital records - maybe that’s client data or core files? Now visualise that system being locked up, giving you no access to that information until you pay a fee of anything from £500 to £150,000.

Luckily, you can keep all that from happening pretty easily. Ransomware can be prevented completely, and it doesn’t have to cost you a ransom either (sorry, couldn’t resist).

How It Happens

The key to preventing ransomware attacks is knowing exactly how they happen.

By getting into your device or network, ransomware locks the data stored there until you pay for it. But how does that work?

It all starts with a tipping point...

To begin with, the ransomware has to make its way onto your device. Things like email phishing scams, virus downloads and links from unknown sources are all the usual suspects for letting ransomware in.

Once the software is on your device it basically holds your data hostage.

The Chaos It Causes

Once a malware attack like this has started, it can be intense and stressful. You wouldn’t be able to access your data, so your business would grind to a halt. Depending on how data-dependent your business is you could find yourself locked out of your emails, your files and even your client contact details.

While you might be able to afford to pay the ransom amount, the software doesn’t often just go away, so it can put a real spanner in the works.

Businesses sometimes take months to get back up to speed after big data loss like that.

You’ve probably had a day or two where the system went down for one reason or another, and it puts everyone out of flow. Emails go unanswered, info can’t be retrieved. If nothing else, it really is a pain to regroup from all the havoc of a cyber attack like ransomware.

The True Cost Of Recovery

Of course, before you can start recovering from an attack on your computer system, you’ve got to get out of it first.

Let’s talk about the cost of ransomware.

Ransomware is costing UK companies £346 million a year. Now, paying the ransom asked is a pretty bad idea, because as we mentioned it’s unlikely the cyber criminals are going to actually give up the goods when they get your money.

The best way to save your money? And your business?

Keep your business protected from the start.

How To Protect Your Business

Surprisingly, it doesn’t take a lot to protect your business from ransomware attacks.

What you can do:

• Use antivirus software (and keep it updated).

• Backup your data using a cloud service so information isn’t held solely on your system.

• Set up recovery with your backup so that even if you lose all of your data you can retrieve it.

• Use a managed anti-virus solution, where a team of IT experts constantly monitor your system and report regularly on your cyber security.

If you want to avoid ransomware nightmares - and we’re guessing you probably do- don’t worry. There are plenty of affordable and simple steps you can take to protect your computer system and your business alike.

Give our expert team (always on hand to help) a call at Data Innovations, and keep those ransomers at bay.

Consent phishing: New phishing techniques that can bypass 2FA

Consent phishing is an emerging technique attackers are using to compromise user accounts, even if they have Multi-factor Authentication (MFA or 2FA) enabled. With more platforms adding support for Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) and users increasingly adopting it to secure their accounts, attackers are adapting and moving to new methods of compromising user accounts and bypassing MFA/2FA.

Imagine yourself sitting down at your desk first thing on a Monday morning, cup of coffee steaming next to your keyboard as you click through your backlog of emails. You open the below email and you see that Karl has shared a financial report with you.

Maybe you’ve been waiting for the latest financials or you suspect this was sent erroneously but you’re curious and want to take a peak. When you click the link you are presented with a prompt that with your Monday brain looks just like the “Yes give me access” prompt you’ve clicked through a thousand times. I mean, it's a microsoftonline.com domain, it's https and there’s a green tick in the corner so everything looks fine.

If you’d looked closely you may have noticed that this was in fact asking you to approve access rather than granting you access. But with your muscle memory in full control you click “Accept” before even glancing at the screen. You wait for the spreadsheet to open but are presented with a generic “File does not exist” error page. Oh well, apparently Karl realised his mistake and deleted the file or revoked your access. Onto the next email.

And just like that you’ve been consent phished. You’ve just granted the attackers permanent access to your account, which they retain even if you change your password or have MFA enabled. Chances are the attacker’s tools will immediately start downloading every piece of data you just granted them access to, which they can then explore at their leisure.

To spot this you need to audit the apps you’ve approved, something you are doing regularly, right? Seriously though, this isn’t something many people check. These integrations are designed to be as seamless as possible and not to get in your way. But if this has piqued your interest you can check what access you have personally granted on Google Workspace and Microsoft 365.

If you’d been paying attention when you clicked “Accept” you might have noticed that you were granting some pretty serious permissions here. These permissions allow the attackers to read and write any files you have access to - they could download all these files and then delete them. The attackers also got permission to send emails as you. They could send emails to your colleagues from you and phish them too, this isn’t impersonation where the email just “looks” like it came from you, the email DID come from you. Lastly the attackers asked for permission to manipulate your Outlook settings, with this they could set up a mail forwarding rule so that they get copies of all your emails forwarded to them directly without even having to log in. And all of this happens until you delete the underlying OAuth app.

Consent phishing is still an emerging technique, and we believe that it has not reached peak usage by attackers yet. We will continue to actively research this attack technique as it continues to evolve.