What is VoIP?

VoIP stands for Voice over Internet Protocol and basically means using the phone service over the internet. An increasing number of businesses are finding themselves in a situation where working from home is essential, or are incorporating more flexible working patterns. With this shift towards non-office-based work, many are having to upgrade their phone systems to VoIP. Where setting up everyone within a team with a traditional telephone sounds like a mammoth and expensive task, all this can be easily avoided by making the switch to VoIP.

Is VoIP right for my business?

VoIP has many benefits for businesses, not least because operating over the internet allows for reduced setup and operational costs, reduced hardware and increased connectivity.

• Be flexible

VoIP allows businesses to set up remotely and with more firms incorporating flexible working, employees can simply connect their device to the internet. As well as allowing for staff flexibility, VoIP allows for flexibility within your business. Whether you are expanding or downsizing, VoIP systems can grow with your business and can be deployed quickly to suit your needs. The need for arduous and time-consuming installations is removed.

• Cost-effective

VoIP systems are cheaper than traditional phone lines. With reduced installation costs and hardware, it’s easy to get set up with VoIP quicky and cheaply. Using the internet to make calls means the cost per call is a fraction of traditional prices.

• Keep connected

VoIP is now very well established, and with newer internet connections, reliability has significantly improved. It is worth noting that traditional BT POTS and ISDN circuits will cease in December 2025, making VoIP the only choice. Switching over sooner rather than later will ensure your business is ready for the future of telephony. Here at Probado we have been delivering VoIP services for over ten years meaning our team is fully equipped to help build resilience into your telephony requirements in line with your budget.

At Probado we offer a free initial site visit to make sure your internet system can support VoIP phones. Our telephony service is tailored to your business and includes either the purchase or rent of handsets, call handling and recording services, and maintenance. We see your phone system as a central part of your company’s branding and day-to-day operations; therefore, it will be dealt the respect it deserves. If you have any questions or need a helping hand with the process, get in touch with a member of the team.

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The year was off to a brilliant start from quarter one as we reported a growth of 39% compared with the same period last year, against projected annual growth of 32%.

This year we have provided and managed telephony and IT services for over 40 clients on retained monthly contracts. We also offer training programmes, and throughout 2019 we delivered a series of FOC Cyber Security awareness events for the third sector and commercial clients.

As well as offering our services, we were invited to become a member of the University of Huddersfield’s Manufacturing Supply Chain Advisory Group as well as joining the National Physical Laboratory’s Manufacturer Measurement Network. Of course, all of this kept us busy and enabled us to take on two new members of staff, increasing our workforce by 50% to a team of six.

2019 saw us installing a number VoIP systems for our clients, six of which were installed in the last six months! This is an increasingly popular service as more and more businesses are moving towards a fully connected, flexible model of working.

Always striving to uphold our ethos of honesty, integrity, knowledge and excellence, our customer service is top of our list of priorities. We are thrilled to have received an average 94.88% ‘good’ rating from our clients for the entire year! We also processed 11,128 helpdesk calls throughout 2019, advising and supporting our clients.

We strive to do our bit and give back to the communities we work in, so over the last 12 months we have gifted services to Holme Valley Mountain Rescue, setting up a wireless communication grid which is now used during rescues. We have also worked with Inspire Oldham this year, joining other businesses in sponsoring their volunteers, attending the National Diversity Awards in September.

In 2019 we embraced social media and communications, working with an agency to help tell our stories and communicate our message. Since January, we have posted 13 blogs, helping to increase web traffic and gain a total of 6,356 page views this year, with a 144% increase from January to December.

We also posted 294 times on social media. Across Twitter and LinkedIn we received a combined total of 67,609 organic impressions and 1,047 engagements.

We’ve had a fantastic year here at Probado and can’t wait to continue in 2020. If your business is looking to improve your IT support and cyber security in the new year, get in touch with our team.

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It’s fair to say, digital communication and unified communication has come a long way in the past decade. Virtually all our daily tasks can be done at our fingertips.

In late 2015, mobile web traffic skyrocketed and surpassed desktop for the very first time. Since then, mobile technology has continued to evolve and adapt, rendering us increasingly dependent on our mobile devices, not just within our personal lives, but also in our professional lives.

A study carried out in 2017 by Asurion found that the average person checks their phone once every 12 minutes, this includes checking work emails and communicating with colleagues and clients alike.

Thanks to the introduction of clever applications, online communication has been streamlined and adapted to bring work to our fingertips. This integration is known as unified communications and more and more companies are seeing the undeniable benefits.

Unified communications nowadays are limitless. Voice, email, chat, video and web communications are brought together and accessible from almost anywhere using nothing more than a simple internet connection.

Whether we’re on the train or sitting in the comfort of our own home, we can participate in web conference calls, check emails and access work documents at the touch of a button without having to fire up our computers.

For business, this technological flexibility brings with it several advantages. Firstly, integrating unified communications allows tasks to be streamlined between locations and resources to be utilised to their full potential.

Unified communications mean a reduction in commute time which leads to greater productivity. There is also a significant increase in employee motivation as fewer distractions lead to reduced stress, and in turn lower sickness levels. Flexible working also has a positive impact on finances due to savings on office space and other facilities.

For employees, the main advantage to accessing work outside of the office is the increased work/ life balance. Employees with children can balance work with childcare and other home commitments. Calls, emails and important work documents can be seamlessly transferred to mobile devices and accessed anywhere.

Whilst to many of us, this seamless technology and working from home is a relatively new notion, the idea of unified communications has actually been around since the 1990s. However, as technology wasn’t as advanced as it is today, communications weren’t as streamlined and convenient. Everything had to be done via desktop with a wired internet connection.

Implementing unified communications into company policy doesn’t require much work. Firstly, every main email service provider used in business has an application that can be downloaded from both Apple and Android app stores. Once downloaded, all employees need to do is log in using their work credentials.

Secondly, work documents and filing systems can be accessed using remote cloud applications. The convenience of cloud storage cannot be underestimated, the amount of desktop storage is greatly reduced which is beneficial for the overall health of computer devices and employees can access work files from wherever they are.

It is clear to see that as technology evolves, we gain more and more flexibility in both our home lives and our professional lives – everything we need is at our fingertips, in our pockets and even on our wrists.

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If you believe any of your accounts have been compromised you should take action immediately and follow these steps:

Contact your IT Support Team

If your business is covered under an IT support contract or you have an internal IT department, tell them that you suspect your account has been hacked. They will have procedures to follow in the event of suspected breaches. If you do not have IT security support in place then you should:

1. Perform antivirus scans on your devices

Ensure your antivirus software is up to date and perform an antivirus scan on all of your devices. Many breaches occur through malicious software being installed via drive by downloads or by opening malicious attachments in email

2. Change your passwords

Change your passwords for any online accounts you may have (do this from a different trusted PC/device). This includes email accounts, social media pages (such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn), online shopping accounts (e.g. eBay and Amazon) and payment gateways (such as Paypal).

The NCSC UK Cyber Survey found that 23.2 million victim accounts worldwide used 123456 as a password! You should always ensure that every password that you use is unique and not easy to guess – this will help to mitigate the scale of a compromise.

3. Enable 2/Multi Factor Authentication (MFA)

This is an authentication method whereby the user is only allowed access after successfully giving two or more pieces of evidence to confirm their identity, for example their mother’s maiden name or place of birth. Enabling 2, or MFA, offers a second tier of protection for your account. Even if your password is discovered, a hacker would still need the code provided by your second authentication method to get to your data.

2FA (and the use of unique password methods) will help to protect you against hackers using ‘credential stuffing’ techniques. This type of cyberattack is one of the top threats to web and mobile applications because of the sheer volume of accounts involved. It usually consists of large lists of email addresses and/or usernames, along with the associated passwords, being used to hack into user accounts. This usually happens as a result of a data breach and can be devastating for businesses that fall prey to this type of attack, not least because of the huge reputational risk that comes with it.

4. Check your accounts

Many malicious actors will leave back-door methods to enable them to continue to access your information even if you have realised you have been hacked and already changed your details.

The key things to check are:

• Make sure you don’t have any unknown forwarded emails in your account(s)
• Check your email account(s) sent folder – while some malicious users would delete the contents here, some may not
• Make sure your email address hasn’t been changed on any sites that you usually log into online
• Check your ‘forgotton password sections’ haven’t been changed (e.g. phone numbers, secret questions, date of birth)

5. Notify third parties

While it may seem like a daunting task, if your account has been hacked, we would recommend informing third parties associated with your account/business. This will ensure they can react appropriately and with caution to potentially malicious emails from your account.

As of 25 May 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) introduced a responsibility for businesses to report certain types of data breaches to the Information Commissioner’s Office. To check if your incident qualifies you can go here: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/report-a-breach/

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After an online search of IT companies HVMRT found Probado whilst searching for local companies based around West Yorkshire.

Tom Dawes of HVMRT comments ‘as luck would have it ‘Probado’s Director Martin Jones lived close by from our headquarters and was aware of us as an emergency service.’

Confidence in Probado

‘What impressed them most was Probado’s willingness to help us as a charity. They knew exactly what was being asked of them, what was needed and put forward suggested solutions that really worked.’

For HVMRT communications is key, as originally the organisation had stand alone repeaters in locations where standard broadband was either poor or not available at all. HVMRT had already invested in 4G SIMS believing this would be the solution. However, without static IP’s, the VPNs they had setup would regularly drop and need to be reconfigured. Probado recommended the use of 4G enabled routers at the remote sites.

“We now have better interconnectivity of IT systems linking with other mountain rescue teams through things like mapping software and radio which is growing year on year.”

The solution used the fact that the HQ had a static IP and involved creating dynamic VPNs from the remote locations, including the control van when this comes online, back to the HQ. By doing this each of the remote locations could then route via HQ to any of the other locations and so the VPN Probado provided linked all HMVRT’s repeater sites together. HVMRT now have radio coverage spanning all the way from Leeds to Holmfirth.

Improving Technology

In the last few years mountain rescue and IT technology have taken massive leaps and bounds as teams are very reliant on having robust internet connections and VPN which will only prove to be more important in the future.

Tom Dawes continues ‘We now have better interconnectivity of IT systems linking with other mountain rescue teams through things like mapping software and radio which is growing year on year.’

‘After the work was completed Martin has been more than willing to help support us, answering directly to any questions we have and now everything is set up we can email him remotely.’

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How many times a day are you asked to input a password online? Your work email, personal email, online banking account, social media, to name just a few, all require a password and it can be tempting to use the same one for everything.

But stop right there! Using the same password for all your online activity, or one that is easy to guess, carries a heavy risk of cyber-attack. So, SMEs that don’t have adequate password security in place are leaving themselves vulnerable.

In February it was reported that as many as 2.2 billion email accounts had been compromised in what could be the biggest data breach in history, with hackers sharing the leaked passwords and emails on cyber-criminal forums.

Cyber-attacks are an ongoing risk for SMEs and businesses should do all they can to protect their password security.

Cyber attackers use a range of techniques to discover passwords. This includes:

Searching

IT systems can be searched for password information that is stored electronically;

Interception

Attackers can intercept passwords as they are transmitted over a network;

Social Engineering

This is where the attacker uses a variety of techniques, including phone calls and social media, to trick people into revealing their passwords;

Stealing passwords

If you store your passwords insecurely then you are leaving yourself vulnerable to attack e.g. passwords written on a note stuck to your computer;

Manual guessing

Many people use personal information in their passwords, such as the name of their spouse, child or pet, all of which can be figured out with minimal research on the hacker’s part;

Key logging

This is when a person’s keystrokes on a computer, phone or tablet are recorded.

With the array of techniques that attackers use, it’s essential that SMEs have a robust and workable password security policy.

It is advisable to:

• Ban the most common passwords
• Monitor failed logins and train staff to recognise and report suspicious activity
• Never store passwords in plain text format
• Prioritise administrator and remote user accounts

On average people use the same password for four different websites and the average UK citizen has a total of 22 online passwords. That’s a lot of passwords to remember however, there are measures you can put in place to help your staff to remember them.

This includes:

• Only using passwords where they are necessary
• Putting systems in place that allow staff to securely record and store their passwords
• Only asking staff to change their passwords if there is suspicious compromise
• Allowing staff to reset passwords easily and cheaply

You can help staff to improve their password security by:

• Advising against using predictable passwords
• Encouraging them to use different passwords at work and at home
• Making them aware of the limitations of password strength meters
• Putting technical defences in place so less complicated passwords can be used

With cyber attackers becoming smarter and more sophisticated, businesses should also consider Multi-factor authentication (MFA), which adds an extra layer of security that can help reduce the risk of cyber-attacks. You may have already come across MFA through your online banking, where you use a secure key pad on top of your passwords to access your accounts.

In a nutshell, MFA is an authentication method in which the user is granted access only after successfully presenting two or more pieces of evidence (or factors) that they possess on them.

Factors generally used in MFA are:

• Knowledge – something only the user knows

• Password
• PIN
• Phrase etc.

• Possession – something only the user has

• Disconnected Tokens
– Separate device (usually provided by vendor, bank etc)

• Connected Tokens
– Card Readers
– Wireless Tags

• Software Tokens
– Authenticator App

• Inherence – something on the user

• Biometrics
– Fingerprint
– Face
– Voice
– Iris

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Keeping on top of your data security means protecting digital information from unauthorised access such as that which occurs in a cyber-attack or a data breach.

Here are some tips on the issues that businesses should be aware of in order to protect their data in 2019.

Multi Factor Authentication (MFA)

With the proliferation of Cloud delivered services businesses should be using MFA to provide a second layer of authentication (usually a code to a device that you carry with you). This ensures the person accessing the service is who they purport to be.

Security Services

This includes devices such as web cams and CCTV. It might seem a contradiction to the prime function of such equipment but using them to ramp up your security can actually end up undermining it if they are being accessed from the internet, as this requires ports to be left open making them, in fact, more vulnerable.

Passwords

When it comes to data security, we often think of password strength, but the biggest issue here is apathy. Businesses often have confusing and sometimes unworkable password policies, requiring staff to change their passwords every time they sneeze! This leads them to use ever more memorable passwords, inevitably feeding the online databases that collect them.

Training

This is an often undervalued line of defence. No matter how good the IT security policies and devices a business has in place, if its staff are not aware of the dangers and how to avoid them, they are often the route in for cyber attackers. All too often, untrained staff ‘leave the keys in the door’.

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

Becoming GDPR compliant with an accreditation such as Cyber Essentials serves two purposes. It gives businesses and their staff the tools to get organised and manage some of the security risks with things like new starter and leaver procedures, breach logs and information on previous investigations which they can learn from. It also enables businesses to ensure their partners and suppliers are doing their part to keep data safe. Organisers should know what data they are sharing with suppliers and what the suppliers are doing with it – this can make all the difference in your defence against cyber-attack.

Backup

The need for a good, solid and reliable regular data backup cannot be over stressed. This is often the only way back from any data security issues such as ransomware or malicious data tampering.

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RockShop Wholesale’s Operations Manager, Debbie Bradley recalls ‘We were looking for IT support having just moved premises and looked online for local IT businesses. We asked a few companies to quote but liked Probado’s consultative approach’.

Probado were required to manage information between the multiple parties involved in the installation which included BT, Probado, FrontLine and RockShop Wholesale.

‘We could have saved money on a leased line, but since RockShop had engaged early with BT on the line, it meant that we could not take the risk in missing committed deadlines’ says Gordon Maclean of Probado.

Once BT had then installed the leased line and IP Telephony, FrontLine then delivered hosted SAP, using the BT Leased Line circuit.

Probado was then asked to implement a wireless mesh in the Rockshop Warehouse and created the various VLANS (Virtual Local Area Networks) to separate and protect VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol), Scanner IP traffic and general Data.

The installations went well but unfortunatly BT did not take any responsibility for network beyond the connection to the clients premises and so RockShop used Probado for network management again liaising with all parties.

Debbie recollects ‘Our backend system had become so huge and was a real issue for us, Probado alerted us to the problem and helped us resolve the issue through the installation’.

Midway through the project unfortunately FrontLine could not deliver the IT performance required and so RockShop requested help from Probado. The client had lost confidence in a hosted system, so Probado worked with all parties to deliver a permanent on-site solution.

The new system is installed and delivering the required performance, we have sized the system to accommodate future growth and we confident the solution will scale. The solution is based upon Dell hardware, Terminal Services, Microsoft SPLA licensing (so users can be added / removed without penalty or further capital investment) and Office 365 for email services.

Debbie Bradley recalls ‘In the early days after the installation we used the Helpdesk a lot. It really helps speaking to the same people who know your set-up and take the time to explain in plain English. They were really open with good communication, telling me everything I needed to know.’

Probado continues to work with RockShop Warehouse and its software partners to ensure that the system continues to meet performance expectations. In order to ensure this done pro-actively Probado monitors all aspects of the service using it’s PRTG monitoring tools, automatic off-site backups are performed nightly using secure encrypted methods which are stored across replicated data centres. Probado has implemented a local NAS (Network-attached Storage) for local copies and test data.

Debbie Bradley summarises ‘I would highly recommend them and wouldn’t go anywhere else. They would be my first choice every time.’

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Darren continues ‘I found Probado’s approach refreshing and personable. Probado clearly know their subject, they are easy to talk to, with no jargon and provide great customer service. They think about future proofing when choosing the right system – not just choosing for the now.’

“I travel between offices and its massively improved my workflow being able to hot desk and login remotely.”

The Right Solution

Having initially been commissioned for off-site backup services, Probado were then asked to create a unification strategy for all sites and a road map for its delivery. This involved structured cabling and creating a network between offices, as well as a terminal server off-site at Probado’s secure Datacenter for resilience. A second off-site data server was then put in place for back-up and email achieving.

Within all Harold Stock offices, PCs were migrated to Thin Clients which reduced the cost of ownership, increased security with a three tier level of Antivirus protection. Practice Manager, Alex Newman commented about the network connectivity ‘I travel between offices and its massively improved my workflow being able to hot desk and login remotely’.

SpeechExec

As part of the IT system review, Harold Stock & Co. were also migrated from the PC Edition to the server led SpeechExec Enterprise, providing they with greater flexibility when it came to encrypted digital dictation. Darren comments ‘I was in Leicester and had to take a statement, with SpeechExec I was able to send the digitally recorded statement to my secretary to type and within 20 minutes she was able to document the statement and send out a letter to my client.’

Alex also commented ‘SpeechExec has also allowed me to manage the workflow of secretaries, so it doesn’t matter if they are in different offices, three secretaries can all work on the same case all at once.’

A Helping Hand

Probado’s Helpdesk also provide technical support to Harold Stock, Alex continues ‘We use Probado’s Helpdesk a lot and I like the fact you can look back at your service history and see things have been dealt with.’ Darren concludes ‘I find the Helpdesk are always very polite and they get information to you very quickly and efficiently.’

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Probado worked closely with Steve demonstrating how Microsoft Terminal Services could facilitate the solution. We chose a Fujitsu Server since at the time of purchase it offered best price performance, sourced refurbished Thin Clients and all software licences were sourced using the Microsoft donor program. This kept costs as low as possible whilst not jeopardising performance or reliability.

Following the success of the project BCB now employs Microsoft Terminal Services across all of its businesses and has seen performance improvements as a result of this move.

“We have a partner in Probado not just a supplier, they have delivered and are happy to go the extra mile to support our business”

BCB continues to expand its offering and the system continues to support their expansion. When asked for comment on Probado’s approach – Steve commented, “We have a partner in Probado not just a supplier, they have delivered and are happy to go the extra mile to support our business”.

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