TECH TALK: BILL MAGEE
A disaster recovery plan sounds like something out of a Holywood action movie. DRP is proving vital for business continuity, especially now we’re all hoping to power back commercially on all cyber-cylinders. Yes, we might be getting ever-closer to the COVID recovery ward exit sign, well out of pandemic intensive care harm’s way, but with another Greek alphabet-labelled viral form ready to pounce, there remains an urgent need of a digital assessment booster shot.
Two vital DRP steps to take are disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS), and backup as a service (BaaS). Both will ensure an organisation maintains essential functions and, if the worst occurs, losses are minimised and data restored.
If the worst occurs, plain and simple, such moves ensure that in the aftermath, losses are minimised and data restored.
Bloomberg reports UK business closures rose 14% during the final quarter of 2021, compared with the same time the previous year, totalling 102,700 firms.
A strong contributory factor for around half was late payments, according to research from Quickbook, adding the average British company is owed £31,055. Hopefully change is afoot. From April 1 new rules will require businesses to pay 90% of invoices owed within 60 days or risk being excluded from public contracts. The Office for National Statistics says the pandemic has affected every industrial group especially transport and storage. Only finance and insurance have bucked the trend.
Traditionally, business continuity has concentrated on threat of fire, flood, theft and other crises that can have a major impact on an organisation’s operations.
Nowadays, in an “always on” internet/mobile working environment, we’re increasingly dependent on commercial disaster and backup solutions to meet new cyber threats faced on a daily basis.
We’ve all heard of them and, unfortunately, many have been on the wrong end of an attack, such as phishing, ransomware and numerous other malware.
With all of that in mind, it may come as something of a surprise that IT staff consistently rank among the most likely to fail a cyber security exercise, according to new research.
F-Secure tested 80,000 professionals in different business sectors with internal phishing tests at work.
The most technically competent employees came out the worst when it came to opening a pseudo phishing email, failing to report it as a phish and often clicking through on links within the email body.
Perhaps it’s to be expected. DevOps and other dedicated tech staff have “privileged access” to an organisation’s infrastructure. They click more often than other colleagues, making them prone to be targeted. But they know this, and shouldn’t need reminding of the threat.
F-Secure discovered a distinct difference in those companies whose email providers offered a simple, easy-to-use “report phish” button throughout an organisation.
Such a simple move makes the reporting process easier for employees. Thus avoiding careless action that severely disrupts attempts at business continuity and commercial survival.
National Cyber Security Centre has issued a timely warning to bolster online/mobile security resilience in response to malicious online incidents. The latest involves in and around Ukraine but is likely to have a knock-on global impact.
Best to check out now on how to prepare for, implement and optimise the right disaster recovery and backup solution to meet new cyber threats a modern business faces.
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