telanova Blog

telanova: the outsourced IT team that feels like your own

Providing advice, consultancy, helpdesk, monitoring and maintenance, updates, upgrades, security: all the things your in-house team would do, but better and at a fraction of the cost and hassle.

IT supply chain attacks

Often robbers don’t break directly into a bank, but via the coffee shop next door.

IT supply chain attacks are like that. Hackers don’t gain access to a target directly but via a less secure supplier. So organisations assess their suppliers’ security arrangements.

Larger organisations are demanding their smaller suppliers comply with security policies and prove that they are safe to do business with.

We will:

  • Audit your security and suggest sensible changes and policies to make sure your business is secure.
  • Prove that you are secure, by gaining accreditations such as Cyber Essentials.
  • Guide you through any security requirements your customers may require from you
  • Implement policies to make sure your suppliers are secure - making sure they are not the weakest link either.

Managing email signatures

Making sure your employees have set an email signature with the same style, branding and information can be a major hassle. It’s manageable when you’re small, but as you start to grow, it’s a real time waster, especially as employees typically send email from multiple devices - laptops, mobile phones and tablets.

That's why we set up our customers with the Exclaimer cloud email signature service. Each employee gets the business’s signature added to every email, whatever device it's sent from.

With Exclaimer it’s very simple to promote new products or show off an award. Just update the central template and everybody’s emails will immediately go out with the new information. Exclaimer works with both Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) and Google Workspaces (formerly Google G Suite).

Contact us if you want your employees to have professional email signatures.

Email attachments are too dangerous!

Email attachments are too dangerous! Email filters, Antivirus, UTM (Unified Threat Management) appliances etc, all attempt to mitigate that risk, but they won’t catch the very latest attacks. Allowing everyone on the internet to send you attachments is like leaving your door unlocked and only tackling the bad guys when they’re halfway up the stairs!

Email attachments were invented in the early days of the internet when the internet was a far safer place, and they haven’t been improved since. It’s time to replace them with something better.

Most cloud storage products (Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox etc) have two features that replace the role of emailed attachments with something far safer.

  • When you want to send someone a file, “Share” the file/folder with them.
  • When you want a file from someone, send a “File Request”. The recipient will receive a link they can use to upload the files to you.

There are other advantages too

  • Guaranteed encryption in transit
  • Set a time limit for access, e.g. 30 days
  • Made a mistake? Revoke access at any time
  • Track when files are accessed

Once your colleagues and business contacts have become familiar with the new way of working you can block email attachments outright, allowing file sharing only via your approved platforms (eg Office 365, G suite, Citrix Sharefile, or the specific platform relevant to your industry)

We have successfully implemented this for several of our customers with compliance requirements in the fields of Finance, Accounting etc.

Contact us to manage the whole process for you, training, implementation, and blocking.

Tales from our helpdesk: server failure on Christmas eve

In the early hours of Christmas Eve our monitoring platform alerted us that a server was offline - Paul diagnosed a faulty RAM module.

He was quickly onsite, verified that the RAM was faulty and liaised with the manufacturer to get a replacement. He removed the faulty RAM and booted the server - adjusting resource limits to allow everyone to work.

As soon as the replacement RAM arrived, we went onsite to install it and re-adjust the resources back to normal.

This could have been a much worse outage, but for our customers:

  • We spec servers to be able to cope with the failure of a component.
  • We supply equipment with business class warranties, which means technical help and spare parts are readily available from the manufacturer.
  • Our 24/7 monitoring system is deployed, configured to detect the failure and alert us.
  • We configure and test out-of-band tools that allow us to identify issues even if the server is off.
  • Our out-of-hours engineers are experts in identifying issues, temporary workarounds and making replacements.
  • Our engineers speak the language of manufacturers, which allows us to rapidly get parts dispatched.

Without the services we provide outages would last significantly longer.

Some people might think that they’re fine with just the manufacturer’s on-site response. However:

  • The manufacturer will often just ship out the replacement part and expect the customer to replace it - would you know how?
  • The manufacturer doesn’t know how the customer’s systems are set up and aren’t responsible for other components, whereas we do know and we’ll get the system back up and running while we’re waiting for the replacement part
  • Replacing the part doesn’t always get you back up and running - we resolve the knock-on effects, for example reinstalling software or restoring from backup

For peace of mind, engage telanova as your IT team

Fobbed off!

A customer had issues with their main software application, the one that actually ran their business. When they called their vendor’s helpdesk they were given the runaround: “it’s not our software at fault, it’s your PC”. This response didn’t really help the customer!

We looked at the issue, made sure we could reproduce it ourselves, then told our client to leave it with us. Our client was then able to get on with their job while we dealt with the vendor. We set up a brand new test system, installed and configured the software on it, and were still able to reproduce the issue. Finally, the vendor admitted it was their software application that needed fixing, not the PC!

Are you fed up with getting the runaround from the vendors of your software applications?

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