Who’s the Boss? Is cloud IT working for you or are you working for IT?

Who’s the Boss? Is cloud IT working for you or are you working for IT?

| | Cloud, IT Security, managed services
Who’s the Boss? Is Cloud IT working for you or are you working for IT? Since launching our Touch Cloud private compute service in 2016, it’s attracted commercial, public and third- sector customers that want a trusted partner to help specify their private/public cloud requirements. UK data sovereignty has also ... Read More
The Road to Five Nines

The Road to Five Nines

| | Intercity, IT Security
What is Five Nines When used to describe the availability of any system, Five Nines means 99.999%, which is equivalent to no more than about 5 minutes’ worth of unplanned or planned downtime in a rolling 12-month period. A system with Four Nines availability (99.99%) has no more than about ... Read More
Discovering Managed, cloud-based next-generation cybersecurity

Discovering managed, cloud-based next-generation cybersecurity

| | IT Security
Cloud computing is commonplace within the public sector, but have you considered the benefits of using cloud-based security to protect the perimeter of hybrid cloud computing and on-premise networks? You probably know about our managed firewall services but might not know about Touch Secure – our managed, cloud-based, next-generation firewall ... Read More
How statistics-based attacks work

How statistics-based attacks work

| | IT Security
Statistics-based attacks are characterized by excessive packet arrival rate. The objective of the attacker is to send unfulfillable requests to a host at such an extreme rate that the host becomes overwhelmed, so can no longer fulfill genuine requests – the classic Denial of Service or DoS attack (from a ... Read More
How do signature based attacks work?

How do signature-based attacks work?

| | IT Security
Recently, whilst delving under the bonnet to find out what firewalls really do I came across the unforgettably-named Ping of Death signature-based attack or PoD. This is what’s known as a signature-based attack because it’s relatively easy to recognise (so has a tell-tale signature). It’s also known as a ‘one/two-packet ... Read More
How do firewalls work

How do firewalls work

| | IT Security
Firewalls are something we take for granted, but as we’ve seen from some recent high profile security breaches, even the best firewalls are imperfect. A carefully-crafted Phishing email can be tricky to spot and attackers exploit the weakest link in the security chain, which is the end user clicking on ... Read More
The race for our attention - What do we really want to do in our lives?

The race for our attention – What do we really want to do in our lives?

The best way to get someone’s attention is to know how their mind works. If you have teenage children, you may be aware of Snapchat Streak, which keeps a record of the number of consecutive days on which somebody has communicated with one of their friends. This is something that ... Read More
NCSC Advice about ZTE Equipment & Services

NCSC Advice about ZTE Equipment & Services

| | IT Security
The National Cyber Security Centre (part of GCHQ) is the UK’s authority on cyber security. Its main purpose is to reduce the cyber security risk to the UK by improving its cyber security and cyber resilience. On 16th April 2018, the NCSC announced that its Technical Director, Dr Ian Levy, ... Read More