Shadow IT during Covid-19: Do not let your employees decide which apps and tools to use

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Category: Cyber Security (Personal)

Published: 01 June 2020

If you don't take control, your remote-working teams may be putting your IT infrastructure at risk of hacking or loss of data. Take these simple steps to ensure your company's assets and confidential information remain secure.

Even during the best of times, employees, especially the geekier ones, will use their own geeky SaaS services – some of which the average cybersecurity bod has never heard of, let alone seen before. Since teams are mostly working at home, there is no physical visibility and a reduced virtual monitoring – some people may for instance be doing everything on Office365 email or OneDrive without using a VPN, which is still not ideal. Unregulated use of SaaS services can very quickly mean you lose 100% control of your data as well as storage jurisdictions.

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About moi on pre-college: you do not need a degree to get somewhere - thank you Mrs Sloane!

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Category: My Career Story

Published: 28 May 2020

At the start of every training course I deliver, I introduce myself and the detail of the introduction depends on the audience. Under 18s = short, adults = medium and apprentices = longest. Apprentices being 18+ are mainly starting off in life so it is good to tell them how I got here nearly sixteen years later. Luck? Potentially but more always going beyond the call of duty and showing passion. N.B. People in your early career do not go into a job interview like these articles or it may slow you down!

Born in the eighties in London, I went to a decent state infant & junior school near my home. Life was good and from an early age I liked to be practical and make or take stuff apart. Typically, I was the youngest in the class which maybe slowed me down a little. Year six ended and it was time to jump into big school, also known as secondary or high school. One funny fact. I was “bribed” as a ten-year-old to go to a non-private secondary school further away. The bribe? A SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System) from the extinct Blockbuster store.

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My partner is a landscape gardener - who would want to hack me?

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Category: Cyber Security (Personal)

Published: 03 February 2020

You may think your small business would not be interesting to global cyber crooks. But you may have a client or supplier who may be of interest. Graeme Batsman explains so-called "supply-chain security" and why you should guard sensitive information closely.

What is supply-chain security?
In the world of cybersecurity, supply-chain security means that every business, big or small, in an organisation's supply chain must have proper cybersecurity measures in place, otherwise cyber attackers could get to a big organisation via a vulnerability in their supplier network.

Supply-chain security is something we hear about all the time. One famous example of poor supply-chain security is the “Target vendor, Fazio Mechanical, confirms being victim of attack” case where attackers in the Former Soviet Union broke in through a small company specialising in refrigeration and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC). According to Nextgov, such supply-chain attacks increased 78% in 2018. So what about the smaller fish? Your employees or the one-man-band who services an estate of a billionaire?

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