Category Archives: Technology

Cybersecurity, Law, Technology

What businesses can learn from the Travelex cyber attack

Foreign currency seller Travelex was forced to take down its website following a cyber-attack on New Year’s Eve with hackers still holding the company to ransom more than a week later.

Although the company said an early investigation “shows no indication that any personal or customer data has been compromised” Travelex has resorted to carrying out transactions manually.

Susan Hall a specialist in information and communications technology said the company’s response to the attack has been spot on and other businesses should take note.

Susan, a partner in the intellectual property team at national law firm Clarke Willmott LLP, said:

“Initial indications suggest that Travelex are doing the right thing. Businesses, particularly ones in the financial services sector, have to be prepared to be the focus of a cyber-attack, and this is an example, working through in real time, of what seems to be a disaster recovery plan swinging into operation.

“There is a manual alternative to keep services running, clear communication to the public and reassurance about data security.

“It’s particularly admirable since it’s multinational and occurring at a time where there are likely to be a lot of people off on holiday.”

Susan believes Travelex has demonstrated a good model of practice and has given a five-point plan for businesses to protect themselves in similar circumstances.

1) First step is to develop a good disaster recovery plan for your business. This plan should be constantly refined and updated and most importantly it should be tested to check it is fit for purpose.
2) Response team should be on call 24/7 – cyber criminals don’t sleep so your team can’t either!
3) Causation, Correction and Communication: analyse what went wrong, correct what went wrong and communicate what you’re doing.
4) Lead from the top: make sure that communications come from a senior source who acts as the company spokesman. It is therefore important to ensure that whoever is on the frontline is appropriately media trained and confident in dealing with press and public enquiries.
5) Don’t skimp on resources – throw everything at it that’s needed.

Clarke Willmott LLP is a national law firm with seven offices across the country in Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, London, Manchester, Southampton and Taunton.

For more information visit www.clarkewillmott.com

Apps, Education, News, Technology

Launch of Sophia aims to drive regulation in £2 Billion Private Tuition Sector

The private tutor market will be getting a boost with the launch of Sophia, a mobile application that provides students of all ages with tutors that have not only been meticulously security and experienced checked, but are required to fulfil a paid-for Safeguarding Awareness course to ensure both students and tutors are protected.

Sophia fills the gap for a mobile solution that provides secure, flexible face-to-face, on-demand private education. Through the app, users will have highly qualified tutors on tap, who will come to your home, office or public space, and who have been subject to an in-depth school-level vetting process. What’s more, in a UK first; all sessions booked on the platform are covered by Professional Indemnity and Public Liability insurance, provided free by Sophia.

The private tuition market has been growing over the last few years and now over a quarter of secondary school children have supplementary private education support. Current spend in the UK on private tuition is sitting at £2 billion, with the global market looking to grow to £176 billion by 2026. In London alone, 41% of students have had some form of tutoring.

However, unlike classroom teachers, private tutors do not need to be DBS checked, which means that many families are welcoming tutors into their homes without any knowledge of their background or qualifications.

Sophia is a simple to use application that provides a number of useful features, which accurately match tutor to student, depending on subject, suitability and location. Users of the app can:
– Choose a tutor based on location, time and subject, and can search by name of tutor if required
– Access private tuition for students from primary school through to university and adult education level
– Book months in advance or on the day, depending on availability
– Provide reviews and ratings on tutors
– Receive and deliver automatic feedback, as tutors are instructed to provide an update after every session. This enables students to progress and appreciate improvements in their studies.

The team behind Sophia has 50+ years’ teaching experience between them and developed the app with the knowledge that there is a huge gap in the market for the tuition market to adopt the same rigorous checks that any educational establishment would demand before putting students with tutors.

Founder of Sophia, Melissa McBride is a mum of three and has worked for many years in the education system as a head teacher, education director and advisor. She comments:

“There are now over 360,000 children in the UK receiving private tuition and shockingly, even though they are working with children, these tutors do not need to provide a background check. As a mum and ex-teacher, I appreciate the value extra tuition can give your child, but I would like to be reassured that I am not putting my child at any risk.”

Melissa adds:
“Regulation in the private tuition sector is backed by organisations, like The Tutors Association, and we believe our application will be welcomed by the industry, parents and students alike.”

To reassure parents and students, Sophia carries out a comprehensive assessment of all of its tutors before they are approved and registered on the app. This includes interviews and verification of references, qualifications, ID and address. Tutors are subject to both enhanced DBS, national Police and overseas checks (if so required) and obliged to complete a Safeguarding Awareness course, which is paid for by Sophia. All tutors are also obliged to sign a Code of Ethics.

Cost of tuition is per hour and there are three levels of tuition depending on the qualification, background and experience of the tutor.

Sophia will initially be available in London, with expansion across the UK forecast as more new tutors are enlisted.

For more information about Sophia and its tutoring service, please visit: https://www.sophia.app/index.html

Brexit, News, Technology

Brexit to widen the tech gap between agile businesses and those that will struggle to survive

British business leaders do not believe their organisations are fully up to speed with developing technologies – with only around half (53%) saying they are fully utilising their technology advantage to win business, run efficient systems and attract the best talent, according to new research from ThoughtWorks.

With businesses concerned about how Brexit could have an impact on data protection, changing regulation and supply chain disruption,[1] ThoughtWorks asked a nationally representative sample of 1,026 business owners how fully they used technology to achieve growth and competitive advantage. The findings suggested that many businesses were increasingly concerned that they were falling behind in terms of technological development.

Tech agility linked to post-Brexit growth outlook

For the 47% of businesses that admitted their use of technology was not that sophisticated, 41% said they were trying to improve their business’s technological capabilities but were still in some way behind the competition. Furthermore, 6% of respondents said that their lack of technological development was holding their business back from growing.

Significantly, the level of tech agility of UK businesses correlated directly with how they thought Brexit would impact their business in 2020. Those agile, tech-driven businesses were far more likely to see Brexit as an opportunity to grow – 47% predicting growth opportunities to move into new markets and 19% believing they would be able to grow market share in existing markets. In contrast, those businesses that said their tech maturity was holding them back were far more likely to say Brexit would force them to put growth plans on hold (16%) or to downsize – and to pull out of some key markets (10%). The research suggests Brexit could be a catalyst that widens the tech gap in Britain, between those agile enterprises that will grow in 2020 and those struggling with technology that will fall further behind.

Bleak mid-Winter ahead for retail

With the demise of Mothercare, and Marks & Spencer reporting a fresh slump in clothing sales[2], ThoughtWorks’ research shows retail emerging as the sector where fewest business leaders believe they are fully using technology to win business, run efficient systems and attract the best people (35%). Linking tech agility to Brexit outlook again, retail was also the sector where most business leaders said that, in the 12-months following Brexit, they were preparing to downsize and for the prospect of losing business.

While it is perhaps unsurprising that businesses in the media and tech sector were the most likely to say they fully utilised their technological advantage, even here more than a fifth (23%) of businesses admitted that they were behind the leaders in their market and could take steps to improve their agility.

Tech on the Tyne

The ThoughtWorks study also explored business opinion across the UK’s major cities. Whilst London and the South East have traditionally dominated the regions for tech investment – with London companies securing $4.8bn (£3.8bn) in 2018[3] – the new research shows that Newcastle is the city where the highest proportion of business leaders say their business makes full use of their technology assets in terms of winning business, improving systems and attracting the best people (77%). Indeed, London only just beats Birmingham into second place (66% Vs. 65%).

Tech gap in Scotland

While most cities in England and Wales (apart from Liverpool) saw at least half their businesses taking full advantage of their technology assets, businesses north of the border seemed to be lagging behind. Only 47% of businesses in Glasgow – and 42% in Edinburgh – said they were fully utilising their technology advantage. Whilst political considerations around Brexit have been a cause of acute concern in Scotland, the new research suggests tech agility is also playing a big role in shaping business outlook for the period after Brexit – with businesses in Glasgow and Edinburgh least likely of the 11 cities surveyed to predict opportunities to grow into new markets in 2020 (Glasgow 18%, Edinburgh 17%).

Luke Vinogradov, Digital Transformation Principal, ThoughtWorks commented:

“Surrounded by change and uncertainty, organisations are realising they may not be taking full advantage of technology. Some have yet to start, others have focussed narrowly on digital customer experience, because it’s very visible and actually it’s a great first step. However, modern digital businesses already at the top of their game know that the kind of capabilities that have driven their success don’t stop there.

“Across the organisation, making tech work for you means making choices. New ways of working can align your whole business around customer value; data can help you to build engagement and advantage; platform thinking and a test-and-learn approach will maximise the impact of your investments; and a delivery mindset will help you cut through the complexity and get things done.

“All of these digital capabilities can help you keep up – the right balance will ensure you get ahead.

“As a trusted partner for many leading organisations on their digital transformation journey, ThoughtWorks can help you make the right choices, not only addressing today’s challenges but giving you the capabilities you need for a confident future.”

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-49980327

[2] Marks & Spencer profits plunge as clothing sales continue to fall – https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/nov/06/marks-and-spencer-profits-plunge-clothing-sales-fall

[3] https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/business/business-news/record-tech-investment-sees-newcastle-16379007

Environment, Technology

Christmas e-waste proving devastating to the environment

With Brits set to spend millions of pounds on new electrical items and appliances over the festive period, one environmentally conscious company is calling for consumers to consider the devastating impact of their seasonal spending.

Almost 1.4 million tonnes of e-waste is landfilled in the UK every year – a weight 100 times heavier than the Eiffel Tower. December is said to be one of the worst months for waste, with kerbside collection volumes increasing by c.25%.

Unfortunately, without decisive action, eSpares believe e-waste rates will continue to escalate. Head of brand, Ad Casey commented:

“According to our latest research, 75% of Brits don’t attempt to fix appliances when they break down, while 10% prefer to throw away appliances when they became dated and unfashionable. Entirely damning stats when you consider that 70% of all e-waste is classified as ‘unaccounted for’.

“While splashing out at Christmas is somewhat of a British tradition, we can’t overlook the implications of our wasteful behaviour. In fact, the latest stats suggest that every UK resident creates more than 15kg of e-waste per annum.”

The message from eSpares is clear. Think twice this Christmas about whether or not you need to buy new – it’s almost always easier and cheaper to repair rather than replace.

To inspire a national movement when it comes to fixing broken appliances, eSpares has launched #FixFirst – an initiative that provides householders with FREE comprehensive information on how to fix appliances and help protect the environment. The company’s Advice Centre features more than 500 ‘how to’ videos, 700 fault fix articles and 9,000 appliance manuals, all of which help consumers to fix – not throw away.

For more information about the #FixFirst campaign, visit https://espares.co.uk/fixfirst.

Apps, Cleaning & Facilities Management, Technology

Launch of innovative app is boost for housekeepers

Fast-growing InnuScience UK, which has pioneered the use of smartphone training apps for the past five years with the vision of making training simple and enjoyable, has launched a new hospitality training app.

The information-packed app features a COSHH (Control of Substances Hazardous to Health) quiz to be used for the training of housekeepers as well as a training video for users of the InnuScience Trio Kleen programme in a Housekeeping environment. It is available to be downloaded from iTunes and Google Play Store.

Nick Winstone, UK Managing Director of InnuScience, said:

“For ease of use and accessibility we have ensured the app is free and no passwords are needed. The training process involves watching a video via the app, taking a simple quiz, and once complete, staff are issued with a certificate of completion. Through this innovative and structured approach, we have been able to cater for our growing customer base – issuing over 1,500 certificates a month.

“We have invested in ensuring all our product equipment have colour coded stickers, that they match up to the products and the product labels, so that after training staff can easily use the products.

“At InnuScience understanding our clients’ needs, as well as their customers, is key for us. Therefore, we have made it our mission to ensure the staff using our products are fully trained and equipped with all the information they require to carry out their tasks to the highest standards.”

InnuScience UK, headquartered in Milton Keynes, is now an established global leader in commercial cleaning systems based on biotechnology, and has products competitively priced compared to conventional cleaning products – for instance, the cost in use of its flagship Connected Cleaning product can be from as little as two pence per litre.

InnuScience is the youngest and fastest-growing of the top 15 manufacturers in the UK, supplying biotechnology-based cleaning products to the Hospitality, Facilities Management, Building and Care Sectors.

Case Studies, Technology

Partners in Enterprise heads to the cloud with help from Curve IT

Technology specialist Curve IT has completed a digital transformation project for fellow Brighton business Partners in Enterprise.

The company, which offers accounting and financial management services across Brighton and the South East, has now fully migrated its key IT platforms to cloud-based services, using Microsoft’s Office 365. It has also begun using a range of cloud-based productivity and communication applications, including SharePoint, Yammer and Teams to foster greater collaboration and information-sharing. Collectively, these applications have enabled Partners in Enterprise to build a centralised hub for communications and information storage.

The project also involved replacing an unreliable voice over IP (VoIP) telephone platform with a new system, to improve call quality and reliability. Curve IT also provided full training on the new system, ensuring that all Partners in Enterprise’s staff were rapidly brought up to speed.

In practice, this means the accountancy firm’s staff can now access their documents and data from anywhere, and work in teams on the same documents or projects. In turn, this enables more flexible working practices, smarter teamwork and more robust information security protocols, because data is not stored directly on staff devices.

Ryan Headlam, managing director at Partners in Enterprise, said: “It was a very easy choice to work with Curve IT – the company has so much experience in helping organisations migrate to the cloud and understood exactly the working practices and benefits we wanted to get out of it. We’ve gone from a telephony system which was no longer fit for purpose to having a really unified and collaborative approach to communications, which is helping our staff to work together more effectively and will provide a solid platform for growth.”

Simon O’Hare, Managing Director of Curve IT, added: “We’re really pleased to have helped Partners in Enterprise take this important step into the cloud. Office 365 and the additional applications the firm has deployed offer a huge amount of flexibility and the ability to really tailor the applications to individual needs. The move to cloud services will support the firm for years to come.”

Cybersecurity, Data, Midlands News

23% of Midlands workers who mishandled sensitive information lost their job

Office workers in the West Midlands have experienced the most serious consequences from the mishandling of sensitive information at work, with nearly a quarter (23 per cent) admitting to having lost their job as a result of their mistake.

The national survey, commissioned by information security specialist Shred-it, found that 13 per cent of workers in the West Midlands had made a catastrophic error at work by leaving sensitive information lying around or losing something important.

Furthermore, 42 per cent of West Midlands-based workers admitted that their company had lost money or customers as a result of their losing private or sensitive information, compared with 25 per cent in the North West, 36 per cent in the North East and 26 per cent in the South West.

When asked if they had reported the loss of sensitive data to their company, 23 per cent of West Midlands workers said they had, whereas this figure was higher in other key regions, including 35 per cent in the North West, 38 per cent in the South East and 55 per cent in London.

The research also looked at the most common workplace errors, and revealed that 30 per cent of workers in the West Midlands had copied in the wrong person to an email, while 38 per cent had left their computer screen unlocked while they were away from their desk, leaving them and their company exposed to a potential data breach.

Ian Osborne, VP UK & Ireland for Shred-it, commented:

“This survey shows the different attitudes to handling sensitive information at work and when travelling to and from the office between workers across different regions of the UK. It is interesting to see that nearly a quarter of workers from the West Midlands had experienced the most extreme consequence of losing their job as a result of mishandling sensitive information at work.

“It’s all too easy to leave a laptop open without password protection or to throw sensitive documents in the bin, however these seemingly small errors can have serious repercussions, both for companies and their employees, no matter where they are located, potentially resulting in hefty fines or – as we have seen – even job losses.

“Companies must have strict policies on data protection that are communicated clearly to all employees and updated whenever necessary, to avoid potential breaches and to ensure compliance at all levels. Data protection is an important element to all businesses and one that cannot be ignored.”

For more information about Shred-IT, who authored the survey, please visit https://www.shredit.co.uk/en-gb/home

Apps

The MoM of all apps

As everyone is looking to raise a little extra cash, a new app is helping parents do exactly that, while helping to support a leading premature baby charity at the same time.

Market of Mums is the ultimate social selling platform for parents. Designed to help mums and dads to quickly and easily buy and sell their children’s unwanted clothes and toys, it enables parents to declutter, make money and grab a bargain in the time it takes to change a nappy.

A firm favourite with celebrity parents, users can snap up exclusive high-end, celebrity one-offs, with items listed by the likes of Ferne McCann, Billie Faiers, Emma McVey and Chloe Simms, as well as Cally Jane Beech, who helped to develop the platform.

Brand ambassador, Cally Jane Beech says:

“As a mum, it can be difficult to juggle everything. Me and my daughter are always on the go and it can be expensive too. I wanted to help make it quicker and easier for parents to buy and sell items their children have outgrown, supporting other parents in the process. MoM goes even further, enabling like-minded parents to connect, providing an opportunity to support incredibly worthy causes.”

Products are free to list through Market of Mums, and every sale helps to support children’s charities. The chosen charity this year is Bliss, the leading UK organisation helping over 100,000 babies born needing neonatal care each year. Funds raised by Market of Mums will contribute to vital research, used to improve the lives of babies born premature or ill, as well as giving parents essential information and support regarding their baby’s care.

Developed by parents for parents, Market of Mums helps to take the pain away and make shopping easy.

Mums can download the app at https://www.marketofmums.com

Business Advice, Technology

How to manage the tension between autonomy and control in growing organisations

Gary Blower, Solutions Architect, Clearvision, discusses how to manage the tech challenges that often accompany business expansion and growth.

As organisations scale it’s inevitable that internal tensions develop as some groups push for autonomy and self-governance, while others push for control and consolidation. With control and consolidation, you get the benefits of cost savings, centralised management and compliance – but if an organisation consolidates too much, they can find that corporate tools and standards can lead to a lack of flexibility, ultimately resulting in reduced innovation.

Enterprising departments rebel, sidestepping corporate policy to do their own thing to tailor their product and ways of working to better meet customer demand. This leads to shadow IT. But then what happens when these autonomous groups need to collaborate, or cannot bear the costs of managing their own estate?

Organisations address these competing needs in a variety of ways including consolidated, federated and hybrid approaches. Each model has its strengths and weaknesses, and each leads to constraints, complexity, and the overheads of operation.

Project management tools

While the dilemma of how to address competing needs is universal across the software estate, it’s particularly acute in the domain of productivity tools like the Atlassian stack and in particular Jira, one of the most popular project management tools for software teams who need to organise and track their work.

The Consolidated approach

The simplest way to manage a Jira estate is to have a single consolidated instance. This provides centralised administrative features, interoperability, high availability and consolidated performance. This is the least complicated approach, providing simplicity in both licensing and infrastructure. So far so good.

However, while on paper a consolidated approach may be the simplest to operate and manage (and indeed according to research the vast majority of enterprises believe that all of their users can operate from a single consolidated environment), within a short space of time the majority will end up with more than two instances of the same tool, immediately creating a federated environment.

As with many products with a low price point and practical value, Jira often starts in a single team and then spreads throughout an organisation, with new teams spinning up their own server. A company can also find itself managing several instances through a merger or acquisition, or different departments within a company may run their own IT organisation, leading to parallel Jira systems.

The federated approach

While many organisations find themselves operating a federated environment unintentionally, federation also provides a number of distinct benefits that a consolidated approach lacks:

• Greater flexibility: In a large enterprise, different business units may tailor Jira in a multitude of ways. For instance, an HR department might use Jira Service Desk and a number of Atlassian Marketplace apps to provide an enterprise service management portal for the organisation. Where different departments need specific configurations or Atlassian Marketplace apps, it does not make sense to license Marketplace apps across the entire enterprise when only one business unit uses it. In addition, business units may want the flexibility of their own Jira colours and branding, data segregation, or customisation for other business requirements.

• Mitigates operational risk: Large centralised instances require additional hardware scaling, take longer to upgrade and may have more impact in the event of an incident. Mitigating a large and monolithic central instance by having a federated model decreases operational risk, performance and load impact.

• Enables public and private instances: Within Jira it is possible to make content exclusively accessible to identified groups through permission schemes and user groups. Many customers however (including Atlassian), prefer to run internal content on a separate instance inside the firewall. A dedicated instance is then set up to host external content, making it accessible to both customers and partners. It’s common to use Atlassian Cloud or hosted solutions in Azure or AWS for public Jira Service Desk and Confluence knowledge bases while having Jira Software development teams on their own dedicated instance potentially behind a firewall.

• Meets compliance and legal limitations: Legal concerns such as data privacy laws, jurisdiction over servers or compliance, may lead to a decision to have dedicated servers in separate jurisdictions for specific Jira projects.

The Hybrid approach

A hybrid solution is another approach to counteract the limitations of a consolidated model. In this model, a centralised instance is responsible for supporting the majority of workers, providing economies of scale, performance and the resilience that these users demand. Users with complex needs then run on federated instances which support their particular department or programme of work.

Whichever approach is used, organisations need to find the right balance of autonomy and control, yet still allow for innovation to help the business not only operate efficiently but also innovate and grow. They also need to understand which approach is best for their business, and they need the resources to efficiently manage their chosen environment.

Managed service solutions can help

With all this complexity companies may consider managed services as being out of reach, or that they would be forced into a one-size-fits-all straitjacket limiting innovation. But in fact, today’s advanced managed solution providers offer flexible and value-add expertise that support all three models – whether that be consolidated, federated or hybrid environments – allowing organisations the freedom to manage their Jira estate how they want.

For example, with a managed service solution federated instances can take advantage of SaaS solutions such as our ClearHost and Atlassian Cloud to bring them into service quickly without over-burdening IT departments by employing short-term administration services. These can also include our Clearvision consultants and ClearHub contractors who can help configure the platform and provide ongoing strategic support. Training can also be provided covering the full software development lifecycle, collaboration strategies, project management and more. Whichever model you choose, our consultants and associates are on hand to work with you through the migration and beyond.

Balancing autonomy and control is the number one concern of growing businesses today. With a managed service solution you can now give this challenge your full attention rather than being constantly pulled away to build and operate all the underlying technology.

Absence Management, Business Software

Winter woes more than double staff absence rates

Staff take more than twice as much unplanned leave in winter compared to summer, with a peak in the second week of December, according to statistics provided by e-days, a leader in global absence management solutions.

Data from 1,000 surveyed organisations shows that people took more than twice the monthly amount of unplanned leave last winter (the period December 2018 – March 2019), with the average absence rates at 1.25%, compared to 0.61% this summer (April to September 2019).

e-days data from December 2018 also sounds a warning for organisations this year. It showed that staff took most unplanned leave in the second week of December, with absence rates peaking at 2.26% on 12th December. ‘Dire December’ correlates with NHS employee sickness absence figures from 2018, where absence peaked at 4.41% – an all-time high over the year.

Steve Arnold, founder & CEO of e-days, commented:

“The fact that companies are facing double the strain on their workforce during winter months is a big challenge for businesses to manage, and December is clearly a climax for these challenges, with factors like office parties, last minute shopping and winter bugs creating a perfect storm of absence. Understanding and planning for these trends will enable companies to be more proactive around these times of the year and help fix some of the pressures these winter woes create.”

Astonishingly, further e-days research shows that only 84.2% of planned leave is taken in a typical year, meaning 15.8% of annual leave entitlement is discarded.

“Encouraging staff to take the remainder of planned leave towards the end of the year is a simple remedy, but most organisations aren’t even aware that staff aren’t taking holiday to maintain work-life balance,” added Arnold.

This year e-days created a Workplace Wellbeing Guide to tackle some of the issues relating to staff sickness and unplanned leave, and help businesses to identify the underlying causes of stress, anxiety and unhappiness.