An IT Support Blog from London

Read the latest IT news, tips and insights from IT Support pros at HTL Support

Cloud Trends: Some Developments That Benefit SMEs

Cloud trends that benefits small medium businesses

The cloud marches on… the question is where next?

The cloud is perhaps the fastest growing technology trend of the last decade. When the world was dealing with the aftermath of the credit crunch and reeling with the blows from The Great Recession, businesses still needed the latest technology tools to ensure they could be competitive.

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4417 Hits

Christmas and New Year IT Systems Review Checklist

Christmas and New Year IT Systems review checklist

An ideal time to catch up and set out a review

Many firms experience a pre-Christmas rush of finishing off work and projects in early and mid-December. For items in the workflow that are on-going, there is often a sense of ‘parking’ them over the Christmas - New Year transition period until the return to work in January. Many businesses are likely to have reduced workload and staffing numbers.

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3137 Hits

IT Support Maturity Model: What’s the Right Level for Your Business?

IT Support maturity model: What’s the right level for your business

Mapping IT Support services to a maturity model

If we apply maturity modelling to the IT Support function, we are able to produce an effective mapping that overlays the five levels of a traditional maturity model with five different service levels of support.

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6609 Hits

3 Things IT Managers Do Better When Support Is Outsourced to a Specialist Msp

IT managers do better when support is outsourced

Throwing off conventional thinking to re-imagine the IT manager role

In conventional patterns of thinking about jobs within businesses of 10 - 100 people, the role of IT manager is seen as the go-to person for anything related to technology.

Across an infrastructure demanding provision of business technology tools to a workforce of varying degrees of technological competence, this might include anything from a broken mouse to troubleshooting software server problems.

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Tackling the Security Risk Posed by ‘Shadow IT’

Shadow IT: Questionable practice in a business context

Shadow IT: Questionable practice in a business context

The vast majority of computer users routinely use cloud services of some description. Whether it’s a Gmail account or a file transfer service, almost all of us use free cloud-based tools. This might be OK for personal use, however, in a business context, such an approach is highly questionable. Why?

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The 3 Insider Threats User Activity Monitoring Helps Prevent

The 3 insider threats user activity monitoring helps prevent

Insider threats: An unsavoury but unavoidable truth

When it comes to productivity and information security, insider threats are perhaps some of the most unsavoury considerations for a firm. Any business owner or senior executive would prefer to think they can implicitly trust the people that they pay but, unfortunately, it simply isn’t possible to ignore the risk of employee misbehaviour.

User Activity Monitoring (UAM) is a process that is enabled by productivity monitoring software, PMS. These applications are designed to track and record every action performed by a user. The software outputs a log file in plain English (rather than technobabble) and a video file that enables the firm to view each user’s onscreen actions.

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3210 Hits

3 Ways Great IT Support Facilitates Fast Growth

IT Support provides effective service for businesses

Fast growth: A nice problem

Whatever the core business activity of a firm, fast growth is a nice problem to have. Although the doomsayers warn of the problems of rapid uncontrolled growth, such as resourcing gaps and overstretching with too many commitments, these are challenges that should be well within the capability of a company governed with good management practice.

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4081 Hits

Two Factor Authentication: It Just Works!

Serviced Cloud 2 Factor Authentication

The problem with simple passwords

The issue of passwords is something of an evergreen problem for technology users. People often choose obvious, simple passwords that are easy to remember. Research has shown that a group of 10,000 words are used by 98.8% of people as passwords. This means that a hacker with software written for the purpose could automate the process of trying every one of these, something known as a ‘brute force’ attack, and would be certain of being able to hack into almost 99 out of every 100 accounts.

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4317 Hits

5 Tell-tale Signs It’s Time to Outsource IT Support

Reasons for small and medium-sized business to outsource IT Support

If the writing isn’t quite on the wall the signs may well be there!

In many firms, IT is a tricky area. It’s complex, costly and impossible to ignore. It needs continual vigilance and good oversight to make sure it functions well. One of the biggest headaches is support.

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4466 Hits

Myth and Mist: Dispelling 5 Key Myths About the Cloud

Cloud Computing Myths

Clarity and truth on some cloud computing myths

A lot has been said and written about cloud computing. Some is true, and some is not. Here we help to provide clarity about the subject by dispelling 5 myths about the cloud.

Myth 1: The cloud is insecure

The myth persists that the cloud is somehow insecure. In fact, the cloud is more secure because security measures in place at properly secured cloud data centres exceed those found in the vast majority of ordinary business premises.

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4457 Hits

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