We’re all aware that we need to be vigilant of our own cyber security and it goes without saying that this should be of paramount importance to any business. The news of the recent Microsoft hack is a stark reminder of just how vital it is to have cyber security monitoring in place.
The shift towards remote working, has meant we spend a huge amount of time in either Microsoft Teams meeting or Zoom calls etc. One of the things that we all do, is present! PowerPoint has become an application that really makes it easy to share compelling stories. However, sharing a presentation has been “not easy”.
Microsoft Teams is an application that has significantly been developed over the last year, this is a trend that is going to continue. Some of the updates include customisable praise badges, together mode, presenter spotlighting, and updates coming soon include Dynamic view, SharePoint home app, increased meeting sizes, out of office scheduling in Teams and a branded lobby.
We are excited to announce our partnership with Locate in Kent on their Future Forward initiative. We will be working with SMEs across Kent and Medway to align their strategies with technology and to help enable them to plan for the future through digital transformation.
There is an issue that has become apparent to me recently, one that I previously did not realise existed and is probably affecting us more than ever before:
To understand where our customers are with their processes we use a six stage maturity model. Before we can start to assess anything, we need to be clear what a business process actually is.
I realise this is an odd thing for a Digital Transformation Consultant to say. It's also an odd thing to say in a pandemic when many people - myself included - have bemoaned the lack of human interaction. In fact, I have promoted some forms, in particular the digital lunch.
Christmas is upon us and big man in the red suit has given us the yearly call for our services! So, it is a good idea that we share with all our Service Desk opening hours:
We are so proud of our team for implementing and maintaining good practices and processes that we all use every day. From our information security procedures and comprehensive operational processes, to our Training and Skills Matrix, the auditor was suitably impressed after the four day review. It is great to know that our infrastructure and systems are robust and secure, giving us and our clients peace of mind.
Everywhere you look these days you see posts, articles and books about how you need to change your business. While for people who have spent a lifetime building a business that’s not always an easy message to hear, I think 2020 has showed that increased agility, productivity and mobility will be important. As we normalise life after COVID-19, or perhaps live permanently with it, the changes it forced upon us will have a long impact.
We are all adapting to working remotely and we’ve seen a number of new phrases enter the language this year – “Work from anywhere” is one we like a lot, and one you’ll be seeing more of next year is the “virtual commute”, the time in the morning preparing for work and in the evening winding down.
I was talking with a colleague the other day about security breaches and in particular business email compromises. Just to set the scene, a business email compromise is where a criminal (or threat actor as they're called in the infosec world) gets in the middle of a chain of email communications to divert funds. There are several ways this can happen and I'll cover those as we go, but in this instance a user had received an email notifying them of a change of bank details so they could pay an outstanding invoice. The email came from a known contact and followed an existing thread.