Limbtec Limited > Blog > 2022 > June

Your business is losing hours to spam!

20th June 2022
Your business is losing hours to spam every year

Your Business is losing hours to spam every year, probably 100’s of hours of wasted productivity.

Having to clear the spam from your inbox is a productivity killer.

A recent report found that each one of your employees could be losing up to 80 hours each year, thanks to filtering and deleting spam emails.

That’s a LOT of lost productivity.

How Much Time!

The report stated that between 45% and 95% of emails were spam. Every day somewhere between nearly half and all email are spam. More concerning is that this also includes malicious emails.

If one of your employees gets 30 external emails a day, they’d get around 30 spam emails each week. That would work out to around 5 hours each year wasted on sorting through and deleting them.

For an employee who gets up to 60 emails a day, it would be around 11 hours a year wasted.

And for someone who gets more than 100 emails each day, you’re looking at around 80 hours of lost productivity.

Now add that up for each one of your team and you could be looking at a big number.

Not only that, but since a proportion of these emails will be phishing attempts (that’s where the sender wants you to take an action that will secretly give them access to sensitive data), it’s also a big risk to your data security too.

What can be done

Of course, there are a few things you can do to cut down the time spent on dealing with spam emails. The first is to make use of the spam and junk email filters available from your email service.

You may also consider bringing in dedicated anti-spam and anti-phishing tools.

Finally, you can make your people aware of the risks of spam, how to spot spam emails, and the best way to deal with it to save time and minimise the risk of malware or a data breach.

If that kind of training is something you’d like some help with, get in touch.

Published with permission from Your Tech Updates.

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Google Chrome is going to block notifications

13th June 2022
disruptive notifications banner image

Google are looking to block disruptive notifications, we explore what they are, and why Google is doing this.

When you’re browsing it can feel like you’re being bombarded with things other people want you to see.

Not only do we have to click on permissions for cookies and tracking, but now a lot of websites ask for our permission to send us notifications.

And while many of these notifications are harmless – news updates, latest recipes, product releases – sometimes they can be outright spam.

It’s distracting, it’s making us less productive at work, and it’s just really annoying.

It’s called ‘notification spam’ and it’s becoming a problem. In fact, Google says it’s one of the top complaint reports from people using its Chrome browser.

So now the tech giant has decided to do more about it disruptive notifications.

Back in October 2020, Google first acted on harmful notifications by exposing websites that misled people into giving permission. It created its own prompts to warn people the website may have malicious intent.

Now, Google intends to take things a step further if it feels the website is ‘abusive’ or ‘disruptive’. It’ll revoke a website’s permission to send notifications, and even block attempts to request permission.

Even if you’ve accidentally allowed a malicious site to send notifications. Chrome will be able to step in and block the alerts.

While it’s not yet clear how Google will define websites as ‘abusive’ or ‘disruptive’, it feels like a good move towards reducing the amount of spam we’re exposed to.

Google has explained that this new feature works to strengthen its ‘Developer Terms of Service’ that pledge not to use the company’s API to send any form of spam. It shouldn’t affect the majority of websites, but instead should go some way to keeping your Chrome notifications spam-free.

Development on Chrome’s notification spam block protection has only just started, so we don’t yet have a release date for the new feature.

As always, get in touch if you would like help to protect yourself.

Published with permission from Your Tech Updates.

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3 common cyber security mistakes?

6th June 2022
3 common cyber security mistake

As a security first IT services company we know our customers are being warned almost daily from many sources about Cyber Security.

Well that is because last year, ransomware attacks alone affected 73% of UK businesses.

And the cost of cyber-crime is estimated to hit $10.5 trillion by 2025, according to the ‘2022 Cybersecurity Almanac’.

But we’re still seeing far too many businesses that aren’t taking action, we firmly believe this is simply because this may all be far too overwhelming.

However it’s not only your data that you could lose if your company falls victim to a cyber-attack. The cost of remediation or mitigation can run into tens of thousands of £££.

And at the same time you’ll suffer an average of 21 days downtime after a cyber-attack. Imagine… 21 days without being able to use all your business technology as normal. It doesn’t bear thinking about.

That’s not to mention the loss of trust your clients have in you, which could lead to you losing their custom.

It’s really important that your business is taking appropriate steps to keep your data safe and secure.

That most likely means a layered approach to your security. This is where several solutions are used, which work together to give you a level of protection appropriate to your business.

This reduces your risk of being attacked. And makes recovery easier should you fall victim.

It’s worth pointing out that you will never be able to keep your business 100% protected from cyber-attacks. Not without totally locking down every system, to the point where it would be very difficult to do business (and your staff would constantly be looking for ways around the enhanced security).

No, the key to excellent cyber security is striking the right balance between protection and usability.

There are three mistakes that are most commonly made by businesses – and they’re also some of the most dangerous mistakes to make.

Is your business making any of these?

Mistake 1) Not restricting access

Different employees will have different needs when accessing company files and applications. If you allow everyone access to everything it opens up your entire network to criminals.

You should also make sure to change access rights when someone changes roles, and revoke them when they leave.

Mistake 2) Allowing lateral movement

If cyber criminals gain access to a computer used by a member of your admin team, that in itself might not be a disaster.

But what if they could move from your admin system to your invoicing system… and from there to your CRM… and then into someone’s email account?

This is known as lateral movement. The criminals gain access to one system and work their way into more sensitive systems.

If they can get into the email of someone who has admin rights to other systems or even the company bank account, they can start resetting passwords and locking out other people.

Scary stuff.

One strategy against this is called air gapping. It means that there’s no direct access from one part of your network to another.

Mistake 3) Not planning and protecting

Businesses that work closely with their IT partner to prepare and protect are less likely to be attacked in the first place.

And will be back on their feet faster if the worst does happen.

You should also have an up-to-date plan in place that details what to do, should an attack happen.

This will significantly shorten the amount of time it takes to respond to an attack. That means you’ll limit your data loss and the cost of putting things right again.

If you know you’re making one (two, or even three) of these mistakes in your business, you need to act quickly. We can help.

Call us, and we’ll review your current security arrangements.

Published with permission from Your Tech Updates.

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