As we delve into another economically challenging year, it can be overwhelming knowing how to progress. So, is now the time to invest in your IT systems?

Whether you’re considering cost-saving initiatives, dealing with high load on servers, need network or data infrastructure resiliency for business expansion or if you’re wanting to futureproof your digital strategy, digital transformation might have been a term that’s been thrown around the IT department.

So, what’s the fuss with digital transformation and how can it increase both profit and efficiency across your entire business in a particularly tough market?

Drive Business Strategy

Digital transformation and business strategy go hand in hand. Any attempt to decrease operating expenses and inefficiencies requires technology to be put at the heart of the business. Taking a single strategic approach to technological decisions, makes it so much easier to achieve any future growth ambitions, letting your operations grow with you.

Putting digital transformation at the core of every department in your business can be challenging, however it can promote a digital culture shift which is critical for businesses who want to sustain growth well into the future. This encourages upskilling and digital learning across all departments, taking full advantage of the benefits of new, slicker processes and tools.

Streamline IT Functions

The key to efficiency in IT is consolidation. So many businesses struggle with disparate applications and systems, some of which carry out similar processes and take up space. Creating a centralised and integrated approach and moving to the cloud can help streamline IT processes and increase agility. As digital transformation encompasses every department in a business, streamlining systems can increase efficiency and innovation across all units, setting the pathway for future growth.

Modernise Processes

A major system you invested in ten years ago probably doesn’t suit your size, working practices, or your objectives today. Your employees need modern tools to suit today’s working practices and your customers expect an on-demand service with easy access and a memorable experience. Not only is it impacting productivity, but if the system goes unsupported, it becomes a security risk.

If your old tools are slowing down processes, are manual and lack the integrations and agility of more modern tools, it’s time to switch it up. Moving to cloud platforms offers a cost-efficient way to launch new services and applications, reducing capital expenditures and minimising the costs associated with maintaining on-premise hardware and software.

The cloud provides access to the latest technologies and tools, helping you to stay ahead of the competition and future-proof your operations. This gives you the ability to scale operations quickly and effectively, enabling you to respond to changes in the market and drive growth.

With a variety of economic pressures to distract you, it's essential to maintain a reliable and efficient IT infrastructure to support your business operations and customer experience. But managing technology in-house can be time-consuming and costly.

With Retail Assist's technical services, you can focus on running your business while leaving the management of your tech to the pros. Find out more here.

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Last week marked two years since we entered lockdown in the UK and packed up our offices to work remotely. Now that we've reached the light at the end of the tunnel, you might expect that businesses' heightened levels of angst towards cyber security challenges could ease. Unfortunately, that's just not the case.

As the world has welcomed hybrid working norms, the threat from cyber security criminals continues to evolve, placing businesses under an even greater level of threat. Here are 8 challenges that your business should consider when assessing fundamental cyber security measures:

70% of remote workers who click on suspicious links don't report it to IT

Phishing attacks are accountable for 90% of all IT security breaches for businesses. The risk is higher in organisations who have not trained their staff in best practice, making your own employees a potential cyber security threat to your business.

4 in 10 businesses report having cyber security breaches or attacks in the last 12 months

Hybrid working means more devices accessing your network remotely, some of which you might not know about. With an increased number of endpoints there are more points of access than ever for criminals to get into your infrastructure.

77% of IT teams say they fear teams will burnout and consider quitting

Increased threat levels mean increased workloads for your internal IT teams who are already stretched. Tech jobs saw the highest level of resignations throughout the 'Great Resignation' and increasingly, businesses are finding themselves without in-house teams to support systems that underpin business critical processes, never mind the increase in security workloads.

79% of IT teams say their rebuild rate has increased

If your team is already stretched, which critical business processes will they have to neglect in order to deal with a potential cyber security breach, or worse, attack?

1 in 5 end up losing money, data or other assets

It's expected that cyber crime will cost organisations across the world a total of £7.95 trillion a year by 2025. But it's not just money you'll lose, reputational damage, loss of intellectual property and low productivity are just a few more risks to consider.

44% of all retail & education organisations worldwide were impacted by ransomware attacks in 2020

A ransomware attack can severely impact an organisation's infrastructure, devices and operations. A lot of the data encrypted during a ransomware attack cannot be recovered, so not only do businesses face a financial hit, they also risk losing critical data.

77% of retailers believe that the number of cyber-attacks they face will surge in the next 12 months

As online penetration grows, retail is a prime target for cyber criminals who are no longer just accessing data but hacking entire supply chains, causing chaos across the industry.

Only 35% of retailers are addressing all of the gaps or weak links in their cybersecurity defences

86% of retailers have identified weaknesses in their cyber security defence, however worryingly only 35% have addressed them, leaving vulnerabilities open to exploitation.

With high-profile attacks being regularly reported in the media, businesses need to ensure they are more prepared than ever to identify and nullify cyber-attacks, as they just become part of life.

At Retail Assist, we protect our clients against internal and external threats to lower risk instantly through end point management, patch management and cyber security risk assessments. Find out more here >

Sources:
HP Wolf Security: Out of Mind and Out of Sight Report, 2021 
Gov.uk Official Statistics: Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2021
Keeper Security 2021 UK Cybersecurity Census Report
Sophos The State of Ransomware in Retail 2021

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Flexible working has become the norm for many businesses since 2020 and the trend isn’t showing any signs of slowing down. With more and more people adopting either a flexible or entirely remote way of working, companies need to ensure that their teams are up to date with and aware of cyber safety at home.

Whether you’re a business that deals with sensitive information, or you just want to make sure your  credentials are protected from cyber-attacks, here’s how to guarantee a safe remote working environment.

Dangers of remote access

While remote access has paved the way for happier employees in terms of work/life balance, the dangers of remote access from an employer’s point of view aren’t as straightforward. While many businesses have pivoted to a flexible working pattern recently, that doesn’t mean that the right processes and tools are necessarily in place. With that said, let’s look at some of the most common working from home risks when it comes to cyber security.

Phishing schemes

Arguably the biggest threat to your network’s security comes from your employees, who can unknowingly fall into the trap of cyber criminals and hackers who are looking to gain access to your network and potentially sensitive data. A prime example of this is phishing schemes.

Did you know that at least one person has clicked a phishing link in 86% of businesses and that phishing scams account for around 90% of data breaches?

Phishing schemes are usually via email and involve a hacker posing as a legitimate contact, whether that be another colleague, stakeholder or a trusted partner. These emails can trick people into giving up data and/or information that can be used to hack into accounts, steal data, commit fraud and so on. Modern-day phishing emails are getting harder and harder to spot which means they are more likely to be successful.

Passwords

One of the easiest ways for hackers to start mining your data is through weak passwords. They will use a variety of different methods to crack passwords and most of them involve preying on human error. For example, hackers will have a bank of common passwords that they can adapt and change. They are also known to use code written especially to continuously attempt password variations without any manual intervention at all. Once they have it cracked, they can access, download and share your data. 

Personal devices

As more people move to fully remote or hybrid working, the more they move between their devices at home. For example, sending files between work and personal laptops or phones, or using an unsecured VPN on a tablet to access documents.

When it comes to cyber safety at home, people don’t think about the need to encrypt their personal devices, especially smartphones. But it’s all too easy for people to sign into a platform or email while on their phone which leaves things like phone calls, log-in details and other data vulnerable to hacking. Similarly, if an employee leaves a company, they may unintentionally be storing business information and data on their devices.

Cyber security tips

While all of that can sound quite scary and worrying, there are luckily lots of ways businesses can address these common issues, including:

Make relevant platforms and tools known

To stop the risk of data from being accessed by criminals, everyone in your company must know the tools and platforms they should be using, including on-site and remote employees.

They should only be accessing approved tools, platforms and conference software and shouldn’t be signing up to anything new without running it past your IT team. Any new software should be brought to the attention of the relevant person who can look into how safe it is and how it can be safely incorporated into your business.

Firewalls for remote access

Including firewalls for remote access will prevent unauthorised access by monitoring network traffic and blocking anything that looks suspicious. A firewall is a really important tool that can protect your remote endpoints from all kinds of cyber threats. Firewalls protect the computer itself from being corrupted. You’ll need a VPN if you want to protect shared networks, like cloud storage.

Use a VPN

All the devices being used by your employees should be accessing Wi-Fi via a secure VPN. That means your employees should be telling you if they are using multiple devices to work on at home, including any personal or company property.

A VPN manages traffic from your private network. Unlike a trusted firewall, a secure VPN means that anyone who tries to intercept the encrypted data won’t be able to read it. This protects your employees and your  shared network or cloud storage.

Provide cyber security awareness training for staff

 Prevention is better than cure, and this couldn’t be truer when it comes to cyber security. Unfortunately, a lot of hackers and cyber threats rely on human error. That’s your weak passwords, swapping between personal devices and clicking on links in phishing emails. While these are harmless mistakes, they can easily be prevented with proper training.

The first step of IT security for home workers starts with understanding what could go wrong. So, use a specialist company to educate and inform your teams on how to identify threats, prevent them from happening and take the right steps to avoid them in the first place.

Are you worried about the cyber-related working from home risks? Get in touch today to find out how our cyber security services can help your business.

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Clicked on a bad link? Does the sender look familiar but been directed to a dodgy website? Both standard examples of phishing attacks, luring you in by getting you to open a seemingly legitimate email or URL and leaving your company’s entire network exposed to hackers. 

What are the biggest security risks to businesses?

Unfortunately, criminals have got smarter and it's getting harder for employees and businesses to recognise a serious threat to digital security. Phishing attacks disguised as scam emails or phone calls are designed to personally target victims, often pretending to be from an organisation who has suffered a breach themselves.

These attacks are never isolated incidents, criminals send them out in their millions and regrettably, some are successful. Phishing attacks are accountable for 90% of all security breaches for businesses. The risk is higher in organisations who have not trained their staff in best practice, making your own employees a potential threat to your business.

Any attack on security poses a threat to your business' network security and data, but phishing attacks are the most difficult to fight because they use social engineering to target your own employees. This means that your systems can be as secure as Fort Knox, but if your employees haven't been trained and tested appropriately, they're your biggest risk.

What kind of threat do these risks pose?

A phishing threat is most likely to take place following a data breach, but they also cause data breaches. The type of scam messages will usually ask for some level of personal details on a subtle manner or will install malware on devices once a URL is clicked. For such meaningless action the consequences are huge.

A phishing attack compromises your business' IT security. The destructive impact includes reputational damage, losing customers, share price falling, fines and potentially leaked information and intellectual property theft, not to mention the general disruption felt by everyone across the business.

What can be done to mitigate these attacks?

Thankfully, there's a wealth of strategies available to reduce your business' exposure and vulnerability to cyber-attacks, lowering the risk instantly:

• End point management: ensures all devices are visible, controlled, consistent and secure.
• Patch management: ensures all known weaknesses are protected and vulnerabilities reduced.
• Cyber security risk assessments: carried out regularly and in addition to the previous two strategies which can be automated, you could mitigate the risk of not detecting a security breach before it's too late.

Whilst looking at services for technological management and protection is a priority, you should also be considering training for your employees. These can take form as phishing simulation and training campaigns, targeting employees and revealing your level of risk. The benefits are not only heightened sensitivity to IT security risks, but they also help to create a culture where employees feel comfortable in reporting potential risks.

Outsourcing these functions to a services provider like Retail Assist means you can focus on what you do best whilst we deploy our specialist expertise. This extra support benefits your internal IT teams and protects their workloads, whilst creating a supportive environment that encourages employees to learn and increase their awareness of potential cyber security risks.

Why choose Retail Assist?

Our IT security model provides a combination of human and sophisticated search intelligence that enables us to prevent cyber security threats. We do this by identifying, analysing and proactively monitoring your organisation’s compromised or stolen data. We provide end-point management and IT security risk assessments to prevent attacks across all your systems and devices from any potential threat.

Our cyber security services team will introduce annual IT security training with all the engaging content and quizzes provided as well as regular phishing simulation and training campaigns. This will keep your data systems safe from any potential insider threats.

Don’t leave it until it’s too late! Contact us today to schedule your IT security risk assessment and find out how our cyber security services can help.

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