Team Partners Telecommunications

Have you ever wondered why phishing is spelled “phishing”? Well, we’ll tell you anyway, apparently the “ph” came about because there was an earlier word, “phreaking”. Obvious really. And phreaking? That involves the fraudulent use of an electronic device to avoid paying for telephone calls, it’s probably a shortened version of “phone freak’. Who knew?

We’ve spent a couple of months thinking about cyber security and the steps that all of us should take to protect ourselves and our businesses from interference.

We’re having a break-away this month, we’ll return to the subject of cyber-crime in November, but right now we want to alert you to something that caught our attention recently and that we feel should be shared widely.

In last month’s blog we talked around the subject of backing up, that is the computer and data variety rather than the automotive sort, and came to the conclusion that a Cloud back up is probably as secure a way to keep your data off-site and safe as any.

Where do you keep your back-up? Answer? Hopefully nowhere near your computer! That may sound obvious, but what may be less so is the importance of restricting access to the important information your backup contains.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, whilst the rest of us got on with enjoying the varied benefits of the IoT, the handiness of BYOD and the undoubted merits of AI, those nasty tricksters, the Cybercriminals, were left in the dust, still struggling to break our passwords?

As increasing numbers of us return to our offices to work, leaving a significant number working from home, we’re taking a break from our series on the cultural differences to expect when working with overseas companies and personnel to look instead at cyber-security and the risks involved with having a dispersed workforce.

Disasters are a part of life; floods, fire, illness, to name a few. That is why we have insurance. If we sit down and think about potential disasters and how they will affect our businesses, we can plan for them, reduce their disruption and even lower our insurance policies!

We’re doing something slightly different this month in that we’re reaching out to all those companies, specifically security companies, that provide CCTV services to building sites, temporary premises and any other sort of installation that cannot get fixed line broadband.

Truth is that we used to laugh when AI was mentioned at school, ‘Ho ho ho’, we sniggered, Artificial Insemination, “how funny is that!” and that was because AI stood for nothing else and anything even vaguely resembling sex was a subject to be laughed at.

It’s odd. Most of us will go to extraordinary lengths to protect our homes, sometimes choosing to live is a mini fortress of exterior lights, gates and high walls to keep out possible intruders, yet are almost contemptuously careless with the way we safeguard our property on-line.

Lost or misplaced your phone recently? How did that feel? Probably not good…and see how you immediately presumed we were referring to your mobile phone there?