What is your approach to external IT support? Do you take the view of: “we’ll do what we can by ourselves, and get outside help only when we can’t handle something or if something goes wrong?”
Missed opportunities
Does your company view external IT support services as a kind of “on-off” service? Too often, business owners see IT support companies as a solution to specific, one-off requirements, brought in “as-needed.
Companies that adopted cloud-based technologies for business communications plus general productivity and operations were better prepared for remote working during the Covid-19 pandemic. This adoption is expected to continue and having hosted voice telephony is a key part of digital transformation for small and medium sized businesses.
These days we all use our smartphones to organise many aspects of our lives. We access both our personal and business emails, we interact via instant messaging with friends, family and colleagues and we will sometimes access documents and data from our business networks.
The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) came into effect on May 25th 2018. It imposes the toughest data privacy and security laws anywhere in the world on any organisation that targets or collects data related to people in the EU.
Personal data is at the core of these stringent regulations.
Most of us already know that we are supposed to use strong, individual passwords for every account we have. Creating, remembering and using strong passwords for a multitude of sites leads many of us to use just one or two, tried and tested memorable passwords.
We hear a lot about the importance of encryption and encrypted data these days. Search engines, for example, encrypt search data to protect users’ information and every time we use our mobile phones, credit cards and carry out online transactions encryption is used to ensure these transactions are safe and secure.
Cyber threats and cyber security have been hot topics in the news due to reported increases in various forms of cyber attack. Around 68% of business leaders think that their cyber security risks are increasing and 62% of businesses actually experienced phishing and social engineering attacks in 2018. Yet remarkably, on average, only around 5% of companies’ data folders are properly protected.
After a year like no other, we hope all our clients have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Please find below our opening times for the festive period.
Christmas and New Year Opening Hours 2020/21
During the Christmas period, the Riverbank offices will be open as usual on normal working days, but closed on bank holidays:
CLOSED
Friday 25th December – Christmas Day
Monday 28th December – Boxing Day (substitute Bank Holiday)
Friday 1st January – New Year’s Day
OPEN
Thursday 24th December – Christmas Eve
Tuesday 29th – Thursday 31st December
From Monday 4th January 2021 onwards
Requesting support
You can contact us and request support as usual whilst we are open.
We are pleased to announce that Riverbank IT Management is now part of the Air IT group.
Who are Air IT?
Based in Nottingham, Air IT is an award-winning Managed Service Provider with a strong reputation for delivering outstanding customer service and forward-thinking IT and communications services.
How IT security is moving beyond passwords
If any part of your IT security depends on a username and password, it is simply not good enough. It must be considered at risk. To reduce that risk, Multi-Factor Authentication – MFA – could be the solution you need.