Base Connect

Compliance & Protection: Cyber Security

Challenge:
The cyber security landscape is always evolving, and more mature threats emerging. In the last few years, cyber-crime has increased by 600%. Despite being the most at risk of a cyber-attack, most SMBs are not adequately prepared to defend themselves from one.

Solution:
IT MSPs help small businesses improve cybersecurity, meet compliance requirements, and safeguard sensitive data against evolving threats.

o Risk Assessment and Compliance: MSPs perform thorough risk assessments to identify vulnerabilities and ensure compliance with regulations and data protection standards.

o Security Infrastructure Setup: MSPs design and implement a customised, robust cybersecurity infrastructure with firewalls, intrusion detection systems, antivirus software, and other tools to protect against cyber threats.

o Threat Monitoring and Detection: MSPs use advanced monitoring tools to continuously detect and respond to malicious activity, minimising its impact on your business.

o Endpoint Security: MSPs secure endpoints (laptops, desktops, mobile devices) with antivirus, encryption, and device management to protect against malware, breaches, and unauthorised access.

o Employee Training and Awareness: MSPs offer cybersecurity training to educate employees on best practices like identifying phishing and handling sensitive data securely.

o Data Backup and Recovery: as per previous post

o Response and Remediation: MSPs have response plans to quickly address and recover from cybersecurity incidents. They investigate, mitigate the impact, and implement preventive measures.

o Security Audits and Updates: MSPs conduct regular security audits to assess effectiveness, identify improvements, and ensure software and processes are up to date and compliant.

Cost of IT Support

*Challenge:
It is assumed that IT support means significant expenses related to technology, such as maintaining internal IT teams and investing in new solutions or hardware upgrades.
These costs can be burdensome, particularly considering the limited resources and smaller budgets typically associated with SMBs.

*Solution:
Outsource IT support team (MPS- managed service provider).
What are the benefits:

1. Lower cost- the cost could vary depending on the level of support required. Largely there are 4 main types of contracts:
o Monthly support- based on a fixed cost per user per month;
o PAYG- based on the actual number of hours of service provided;
o Project-based AND Consultancy- these two are usually as a top-up service for the existing IT team.

2. Greater value through:
o Access to a larger and more experienced team of engineers;
o Quicker turnaround and resolution times;
o Transparency and accountability- outsourced IT MPS would keep track of the issues logged and time recorded against them;
o Access to other resources- like an offsite backup. Deploying your own backup infrastructure may be costly for a small business, but your IT MSP may be able to offer that for you at a significantly reduced cost;
o Scalability – as your business needs change, outsourced MSP would be able to quickly react and adapt with you with no or little change to your business set-up:
o Compliance- you will be sharing responsibility for the compliance with your IT provider as it is their job to keep an eye on the policies, and compliance and advise you accordingly.

We continue sharing our list of useful features.

Let us know if you have other questions about ? - We would be very happy to answer them for you.

Today we are covering a hot topic of SECURING YOUR TEAMS MEETING

There are several ways you can secure your meeting and prevent unauthorised access:

1. Use a unique meeting link and a password.
- In the meeting options, enable the "Require meeting password" setting. Ideally, send the link and the password separately.

2. Enable meeting lobby. With the lobby enabled, you can review and admit participants before they can join the meeting. To enable the meeting lobby:
- After scheduling a meeting, you can modify the meeting options by clicking on the meeting in the Teams calendar or from the chat conversation.
- In the meeting options, under "Who can bypass lobby?", select "Only me" or "People in my organization" to require participants to wait in the lobby.
- To admit participants from the lobby, click on the "Admit" button next to their name.

3. Control meeting attendees’ actions:
- Screen sharing: it can be restricted to only the meeting organiser or specific individuals. In the meeting options, look for the "Who can present?" setting and select the appropriate option.
- Additionally, you can disable participants from unmuting themselves, disable meeting chat, and control other permissions based on your requirements.
- Admit or remove participants during a meeting:
- During a meeting, the organizer and co-organizers can manage participants by accessing the participant list.
- Click on the "Show participants" icon in the meeting controls to open the participant list.
- In the participant list, you can see who has joined the meeting and their status.
- To remove a participant from the meeting, hover over their name and click on the "Remove" button.

Unsplash

Any small business faces challenges.
And when it comes to IT and Technology, due to its technical element, those challenges may seem even greater to overcome. Especially as the shifts in technology and security today are challenging more than ever.

So we will try to help to deconstruct some of the perceptions about IT and discuss possible solutions.
Here are the top challenges associated with IT.

#1 IT Cost
#2: Compliance & Protection: Backup & Disaster Recovery
#3: Compliance & Protection: Cyber Security
#4: Compliance: Data Management
#5: Technology: Integration and Compatibility
#6: IT Strategy (limited or lack of it)
#7: Future Proofing: Set Up For Growth & New Technology
#8: Onboarding and User Training

Follow us, in the next couple of weeks we will discuss each of the above topics in greater detail.

Stay tuned!

We've complied a list of very useful features.
We shall post these throughout the next few days. So please stay tuned.

Let us know if you have other questions about ? - We would be very happy to answer them for you.

1. Priority Access:
Set priority access to specific individuals or groups by marking someone as a priority access contact, and their messages and notifications will always come through, even in busy or "do not disturb" status.
- Click on your profile pictures in Teams to open the drop-down menu
- Select "Settings" to open the Teams settings panel.
- In the settings panel, navigate to the "Notifications" tab, scroll down to the "Priority access" section and click on "Manage priority access."
- In the priority access settings, you'll see two options: "Contacts" and "Everyone else."
- Under the "Contacts" section, you can add specific people or groups by clicking on the "+" icon. A dialog box will appear where you can search for the contact or group you want to give priority access. Type their name, select them and click "Add."
- Customize their priority level by using the "Priority" slider. Sliding it to the right increases their priority.
- You can enable or disable the "Repeat notifications" option. When enabled, Teams will continue to send notifications for priority contacts until you acknowledge them.
- After setting up priority access, click "Done" to save the changes and exit the settings panel.

2. Keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl+E will take you to the search bar, Ctrl+Shift+M will mute/unmute your microphone, and Ctrl+Shift+O will turn your camera on/off.
- For more shortcuts click at (…) in the top right corner of the screen
- Drop down menu will appear- select ‘Keyboard Shortcuts’
- Click to view a full list of MS Teams shortcut commands

3. Meet Now: to quickly start an ad-hoc meeting- use the "Meet Now" feature.
- Click on the Meet Now button in the calendar section or the chat header to instantly initiate a meeting.