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No-one likes passwords.

Creating them. Remembering them. Typing them in. Your whole mood can change when an application you’re using suddenly logs you out, and you have to go through login all over again.

It’s frustrating for everyone.

So here’s some very welcome news, courtesy of Microsoft, Apple and Google. The tech giants have joined forces to kill off the password for good.

Over the coming year, they plan to roll out no-password logins across all of their platforms, using a standard set by the FIDO (Fast Identification Online) Alliance. This sets the worldwide standards for passwordless authentication.

That’s a bit of a mouthful… so some people call this a passkey. A lot easier to remember.

A passkey works in a similar way to multi-factor authentication (where you use a separate device to prove it’s really you), but with less effort required. It’s very simple. To login to something, you’ll use your phone to prove it’s really you.

Your computer will use Bluetooth to verify you’re sat nearby. Because Bluetooth only works a short distance, this should stop many phishing scams. Then it’ll send a verification message to your phone. You’ll unlock your phone in the usual way, with your face, fingerprint or PIN.

And that’s it. You’re logged in.

Passkeys rely on something called public key cryptography. When you register with an application or website a key pair is made between the website and your phone.

These are really long numbers that are connected in some way. But you’ll never see them and you certainly don’t have to remember them. Your phone verifies the pair when you unlock it in the normal way.

And you don’t have to worry about losing your phone. It’s not enough to just have your device… someone has to be able to unlock it as well.

Your passkeys will be backed up in the cloud, so if you get a new device you can simply transfer over your information. In the same way it’s now easy to set up a new phone to be just like your old device.

These passkeys are not only simpler for you, but should keep your data safer.

There is no password for cyber criminals to steal. And your phone needs to be close to your computer to login. It’s not fool proof, but it’s a lot better than the current situation with passwords and multi-factor authentication.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this one.

Are you excited to say goodbye to traditional passwords?

Get in touch to let us know.

But we can all agree that having 20 tabs open in your browser at any one time has a negative effect on productivity.

Simply because it takes so much more time to find the web pages and services you need when you’re looking for them.

This might not be a problem for much longer.

If you’re a fan of Microsoft browser Edge, you’ll be interested in a new feature that’s going to debut soon.

Workspaces was originally revealed a year ago, back in April 2021. But since then Microsoft has gone quiet about it. We assumed it was dead in the water.

But a preview build of Edge that’s just come out for developers includes an option to create new Workspaces. So it looks like we could all be seeing the feature rolled out in the months ahead.

Workspaces allows you to group together browser tabs, and open or close groups with a click.

There are a number of ways you might use this. Perhaps to keep work-related and personal information separate. Or even grouping together information relating to different projects.

These groups can be named and colour coded, so it’s easy to find the right information at the right time.

And unless you delete a Workspace, when you close and reopen Edge all your tabs will be there waiting for you.

There’s no release date for this yet. But if you can’t wait to get stuck in, more good news – Google’s Chrome browser already offers a similar feature called tab groups.

A simple right-click lets you group together tabs, label them and colour code them too. You can even reorder them on your tab strip to organise them further.

Need more productivity boosting tools for your business?

We’d love to help, just get in touch.

A new update coming soon to Microsoft Edge will give you access to a new and improved password management feature. This will allow you to store all your passwords within your browser automatically, giving you a cost-effective way to avoid password-based cyber-attacks.

However. Although this new feature is more secure than using the same login details across multiple applications, our advice would be to avoid browser-based password managers in your business.

Why?

Because they’re not flexible enough and don’t give enough control to you the boss – especially when a member of staff leaves.

When you use a dedicated password manager, you can remove someone’s access to all their applications at the push of a button. You can also access their login details if you need to.

You still benefit from secure encryption, but it also works across all devices, including different browsers.

A separate password manager is also a lot more secure, which is really important when you have multiple people using your applications, each with their own login details.

And as a bonus, your password manager will generate strong random passwords for you; remember them; and auto complete the login boxes.

That means you’ll have even better protection from brute force attacks, where cyber criminals try to guess your passwords.

If you don’t already use a password manager in your business, it’s about time you did. It’s an extra layer of data security that you really shouldn’t be without.

There are lots of password managers about.

Would you like to know which one we currently recommend? Get in touch and we’ll tell you.

The partnership will help Optimity provide best in class data protection to its clients by leveraging Redstors cloud-native technology, helping to ensure customer data is protected and accessible on demand.

Redstor brings a wealth of knowledge as one of the leading vendors in the data management space, with over two decades of experience and a customer base spanning multiple public and private sectors.

Leeland Pavey, Optimity’s CEO, said:

“This is a really exciting development in our managed IT services offering designed to offer professional storage and recovery solutions for our customers”

In addition, Rob Buckton, Redstor’s UK Sales Director spoke of the partnership by saying:

“We are delighted to be growing our base of service providers by agreeing this partnership with Optimity. As an experienced service provider, we are confident that Optimity will continue to deliver the highest levels of service to their growing customer base and that Redstor delivers a brilliant new service offering for them to do this.

As our IP grows, we are able to offer an unparalleled level of protection from a single application, something which Optimity clients will be able to benefit from, whether protecting traditional infrastructure, cloud and SaaS applications such as Microsoft 365, Google Workspace and Salesforce or utilising our AI-driven malware detection.”


Smart data management and protection

About Redstor: Redstor offers smart, feature-rich data management and protection for environments offering the broadest coverage of support spanning modern and legacy data infrastructure and an ever-widening array of SaaS platforms, including Microsoft 365, Google Workspace and Xero, with no hardware requirements – through a single app.

Our software ensures backup data is safely isolated from live environments and features AI-driven technology to detect and remove malware from within backup data, providing a powerful additional layer of protection against cyber threats. A machine-learning model utilises shared insights, gained from malicious files found in backup sets, for community resilience against zero-day threats with automatic updates to improve protection every day.

And while many of the attacks are between these two countries, there is very real potential for other countries to fall victim to cyber-attacks by Russia, thanks to the sanctions placed upon it.

Over in the US, President Joe Biden declared the government had been improving national cyber security defences for some time now.

They’re focusing on the infrastructure to make sure that water, electricity and oil pipeline services aren’t at increased risk of attack.

Some very sensible cyber security advice has also been issued. There are a series of actions that businesses should be taking immediately to protect themselves against cyber-attacks, and other data security risks.

• To start with look at implementing multi-factor authentication. This is where you generate a login code on another device, to prove it’s really you logging in.
• Data backups should also be checked on a regular basis. Ideally there should be a copy of data that cannot be changed during a cyber-attack.
  
• All data should also be encrypted, meaning it would have no value and be unusable if anyone did manage to access it.

It’s also a good idea to have an emergency plan ready to go that will help mitigate any attack quickly and effectively.

Businesses are also being advised to give their staff training to help them spot and avoid the common tactics used by cyber criminals.

These include;

• Phishing attacks where they send an email pretending to be someone else
• Spoof login web pages, where they hope you will enter real login details in error.
  
  

If you have an IT support partner already, speak with them to make sure all of your systems are fully up-to-date and patched as necessary.

They can also help you to audit how well you’re performing with the items above, and get a plan in place to help you respond to an attack or attempted attack.

If you don’t have an IT support partner – or you feel your current one isn’t able to help you with your data security, we can help.

Call us today to find out more!

Your IT isn’t just about computers and data. It’s everything from your phone system, to your printers, to where you access your documents.

And that’s without going into the measures you must take to keep your data and infrastructure safe and secure from cyber criminals.

So we weren’t surprised by a new forecast from IT research and consultancy firm, Gartner, which predicts businesses will spend more on technology this year.

In fact, the global IT spend could reach an enormous £3.3 trillion. That’s despite

• Rising inflation
• Russian invasion
• Shortages of chips
• Shortage of IT talent.

We believe there’s been a fundamental shift in the way businesses view their technology.

Two years ago at the beginning of the pandemic, companies were forced to take unexpected urgent action to help employees work from home. In many cases that meant a large investment in devices, rapid changes to systems, and the adoption of new technology.

And it’s worked out well for most. Businesses have adapted quickly and many have embraced the changes on a more permanent basis.

But it’s also made business leaders realise they need to be better prepared to respond to future potential disruption.

This is the difference between a flexible and agile business… and one that stumbles at the first hurdle.

Many businesses no longer see IT as a cost. They embrace it as an investment. They can see the direct correlation between creating robust, safe and flexible systems – and their teams’ abilities to achieve more.

Owners and managers are also placing more value on excellent, proactive technology support from a trusted partner.

To not only plan and execute big development projects. But also to help reduce downtime and ensure systems are secure and running as they should be.

If you’re reviewing your spend on technology and support, we can help. Get in touch.