Happy Halloween!! Most will know the team here at Cambridge Support have been in the industry for many years, so as you can imagine we have encountered quite a few horror stories in our time. We thought what better way to acknowledge Halloween than by sharing some terrifying situations to avoid.
We even dropped in some movies names to make it fun, how many can you find?
Dr. Frankenstein’s Cabling
This one may be a little obvious, we have seen some real horror stories around cabling over the years. Whether it was just simple patching that’s been done badly, or the whole server cabinet that was a tangled mess, we have seen it all.
Having an organised and managed cable set up, with planned wiring around the cabinet allows your IT and business to run more smoothly and it becomes easy to make changes that are needed.
If your cabinet is not well maintained, you risk a lot of things going wrong. We have seen cases of ransomware infecting client’s infrastructure through network routes that people did not even know were still connected. The company didn’t realise until it was too late, and everything was unrecoverable. Ok, this is the ultimate American Horror Story and potentially shows a worst-case scenario, however we still see issues with tracing cables due to the Labyrinth left to build, or connections being pulled loose due to the weight of cables left hanging bundled together.
Just think, if it looks like a mess from the outside, what mess is it causing internally?
The Invisible (Security) Man
There is no doubt that security has become a massive term in the world of IT in recent years. Within the world of cyber security, specialists are always playing catchup because they can only fix what they know about. Companies will often believe they have a great setup with excellent security in place, but is that true? We’ve seen many organisations that believe this, but we find terrifyingly simple passwords which can be easily be guessed and broken in to. We even Saw cases where passwords are written down next to the computer or server, that is setup for a Texas Chainsaw Massacre!
If computers with personal customer data are only protected with weak passwords (or worse), they are at massive risk to data loss or theft, which can lead to a massive GDPR fine and that in itself is enough to make people Scream?
Demon Broadband
We have assisted clients who have been suffering with disastrous broadband/Wi-Fi that is creating no-end of nightmares for the business and their current providers can be Insidious in their efforts to resolve.
Internet access is vital for any modern business, elements that fluctuate the service or speed can be hard to deal with or Identity. Significant internet downtime is just not acceptable as a business.
It’s not just the service and speed that we’ve found ourselves helping clients with, sometimes it can be the actual security. We have seen Wi-Fi log-in details shared on meeting room walls, fine if it’s the guest network but not when it’s the main corporate details! That is just advertising The Devil’s Doorway into your environment to allow malicious activity to take place. Keep your network details secure!
Data Lost to the Grim Reaper
Let’s be simple and honest, data loss can be catastrophic to a business and depending on what’s lost it could be the final nail in the coffin for a business. We know we can be a pain to our customer’s by constantly repeating warnings around backups and suggesting upgrades or improvements, but it is that critical. If you lose an odd file, or maybe the data on 1 workstation, then you might say it’s not too big a problem. However, now imagine that happens on your server and you lose a year’s worth of data, or more, that would be a Nightmare on Elm Street.
In our role as an MSP and IT administrator for many clients, we know the value in a comprehensive backup solution. If the worst were to happen, you know that everything is safe and secure without the business going back to the Dawn of the Dead.
Zombie Hardware
We see quite a few cases of organisations not evolving and moving on from old obsolete hardware and software. While the company can feel like they are saving time and money by “getting by” with an old system, it is a false economy. The main issue with ancient hardware is the speed and lack of support. Users will end up wasting time due to long load times, or slow updates all of which will cost the employer wages and productivity. The Shining and new machines will perform better and often increase employee productivity.
Aside from just the device being too old to perform at a suitable level, the software will also have evolved. Whether the software be completely obsolete and unsupported, or whether there is a mountain of updates and patches, the result is the software causing as many issues as the hardware.
For Example, we know people are still running on Windows 7 based hardware, when support on this expired back in January 2020 meaning no security updates since then presenting a Secret Window to hackers.
If you read any of the above and think that your organisation is suffering from any of these problems, then feel free to get in touch. Our team of Ghostbusters are ready to come and help bust your IT nightmares.