Merry Christmas from CF Systems (and our Christmas opening hours)
It’s December, close to Christmas and time for one of those “looking back at the year past” posts. Clearly the past couple of years have been even more challenging than normal, but despite that, our team here at CF Systems have put together some notable IT events and trends that we hope will give useful food for thought as we move towards the close of the year.
As a starting point, it’s obviously impossible to ignore the situation (still it seems, ongoing) with COVID-19 and the trend this has driven towards working remotely and from home. Something that seems as though its likely to continue for the foreseeable future at least. Obviously as a Managed Services Provider to many businesses in Cornwall and Devon, we have helped hundreds of employees across our customer base work from home safely, securely and efficiently. Please get in touch if this is something that you’d like help or advice on. In addition to IT Security, we have noticed an increased requirement from our customers for improved physical security such as CCTV.
Cyber Security will continue to be a hot topic for the foreseeable future. 2021 has seen numerous high profile cyber attacks, for example as this is being written, Spar have announced that over 300 of their stores have been hit by a cyber attack, forcing many to close. We continue to work with our technology partners to provide robust security solutions as well as staff training and phish testing solutions and many are working with us to go through certifications such as Cyber Essentials to ensure they are on top of best security practice.
Meanwhile, technology from major vendors continues to progress, with a particular focus from many of them in moving applications from on premise to the cloud. Microsoft are a prime example of this and we have worked with many of our clients this year moving them to the latest Microsoft 365 suite. We are also particularly focused on ensuring that clients have secure backup solutions, particularly as they move to a mixture of cloud and on premise solutions and have staff working both on site and remotely. The flexibility offered by VOIP telephone systems and platforms such as Microsoft Teams is also a key part of this.
Our support desk and team of remote and on site engineers have worked hard throughout 2021 to keep our clients operational, happy and secure. We look forward to 2022 and keep our fingers crossed that it will be a more predictable and stable year than the one just gone. We’d like to wish all of our customers, friends and partners the very best wishes for Christmas and a safe and happy new year – please note that our support desk will be available as normal every day of the Christmas and new year period with the exception of Christmas Day.