surrey

Intergrate your Xero Accounts straight into Power BI

We work with our Local Gold Xero Consultants in Surrey : http://www.dna-accountants.co.uk/ , in helping move our existings customers accounting Systems to Xero to offload more of their resources to the cloud for better management and mobility.

Most of our customers will now be utilising Office 365 which comes with Power BI so in 5 minutes we can integrate their accounts package into a very powerful reporting tools giving the below

What's included

The content pack dashboard includes tiles and metrics that cover a variety of areas, with corresponding reports to learn more:

Cash
Cash in
Cash out
Closing balance by account
Closing balance today

Bank Accounts

Customer

Invoiced sales
Invoiced sales by customer
Invoiced sales growth trend
Invoices due
Outstanding receivables
Overdue receivablesCustomer
Inventory

Supplier

Billed purchases
Billed purchases by supplier
Billed purchases growth trend
Bills due
Outstanding payables
Overdue payables

Suppliers
Inventory

Inventory

Monthly sales amount by product
Inventory

Profit and loss

Monthly profit and loss
Net profit this fiscal year
Net profit this month
Top expense accountsProfit and Loss

Balance sheet

Total assets
Total liabilities
EquityBalance Sheet

Health

Current ratio
Gross profit percentage
Return on total assets
Total liabilities to equity ratioHealth
Glossary and Technical Notes

Azure now offers a 99.9 percent service-level agreement (SLA) commitment option on single-instance virtual machines with Premium Storage

Just to show Microsoft's commitment to it's infrastructure in Azure to host your Virtual Machines, it has now increased it's SLA to the highest yet 99.9%

Previously, receiving an SLA required a minimum of two virtual machines configured for high availability. However, some IT organizations need SLAs for single-instance virtual machines, forcing those virtual machines to stay on-premises. With this new option in Azure, we are empowering organizations to move more workloads to the cloud.

To qualify for the single-instance virtual machine SLA, all storage disks attached to the virtual machine must be our Premium Storage, which offers up to 80,000 input/output operations per second (IOPS) and 2,000 MB of disk throughput per virtual machine. Customers can continue to build for high availability by having two or more virtual machines deployed in the sameavailability set, which provides a 99.95 percent SLA, or by utilizingAzure Virtual Machine Scale Sets.

For more information about our SLA for Azure Virtual Machines, please visit the SLA for Virtual Machines webpage. For more information on Premium Storage and how to begin migrating your workloads, please visit theDisk Storage webpage.

What is an SLA?

This stands for service level agreement. It is what service providers agree with their customers on uptime of a service before a payment or credit will be applied to their bill.

What is the Refund?

Microsoft are not offering a refund, but service credit which can be used for the following months server : 

< 99.9% Uptime = 10% Service Credit

< 99% Uptime = 25% Service Credit

 

New "GoldenEye" Ransomware installed via Job Resumes/C.V.

There is a new ransomware out nickednamed "GoldenEye" like the movie, which is targeting HR Managers through fake Job interview application attachements.

The attackers are also targetting Recruitment companies and HR Consultants.

It uses existing specific exploits in existing Microsoft files such as .doc / .xls to run macros which install the virus

How to stop yourself getting infected?

Please see our article here about steps to prevent infections 

http://www.response-it.co.uk/news/2016/10/27/ransomware-the-small-business-guide?rq=Ransomware

I am already infected...

Please contact us today as there might be some methods to retrieve your data 

Could your business benefit from an IT Security Assessment?

According to the UK Government, in 2014, 60%* of SMBs experienced a security breach. The same survey has estimated that a severe cyber attack on a SMB costs upwards of £65k.

*UK Gov, The Information Security Breaches Survey – Department of Business, Innovation & Skills

Since 2014 Security risks and attacks have increased in quantity and sophistication

The government has put together some free training for companies to train staff of how to protect security

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/cyber-security-training-for-business

What do you get from a Security Assessment?

We look at your current system as it currently is to locate and identify an potential security vulnerabilities and risks. It's a great way to get a third party audit of your current network and system and also a list of recommended upgrades or changes in a single report.

Access Control - Who currently has access, do they need access, how they access and what to

Patch Management - What is up-to-date and what isn't in your company with list of security exploits that can currently be used against your system

Malware Protection - What current defense do you have against virus, spyware and spam

Firewalls - Your current firewall configuration  

Backups - Your current backup configuration

Why should I get a security assessment?

A security assessment can prove beneficial to companies to not only reduce the risk for future attacks, but it can also offer up significant financial advantages. One of these advantages is the review of your current spending of the above to check for any unnecessary overspending on certain security solutions and suggest the most cost efficient alternatives available

Contact Response IT Today via our Contact Us Page to Inquire about our IT Security Assessment 

Best Way to build a server room

Server Rack

Most server rooms or Datacenters are made up of a collection of racks. With the help of virtualisation nowawdays, most companies will have a single rack with all their Storage, Networking, Server and Patching equipment. Choosing the right rack can be hard as there are varying heights, width, depts and vendors to choose from. Most of the time these cannot be returned due to the size so they should be picked properly the first time round! 

Noise

This is a pretty big side effect of having the server room on your premise instead of hosted elsewhere. If this is in a seperate room, the enclosed space will help muffle the sound. We have had some customers who opt in for a silent rack , which has a sound rating of 25 DB , and of course saves space by not needing a server room!

Cooling

Keeping servers at a recommended manufacture operating temperature, keeps your data safe and warranty valid! For example a HP DL 380 has the following recommendations

The maximum recommended ambient operating temperature (TMRA) for most server products is 35°C(95°F). The temperature in the room where the rack is located must not exceed 35°C (95°F).

Cooling in most server rooms is done by Air Conditioning with airflow. This cooling should be specced correctly using BTU readings. You should also have monitoring at server and rack level to make sure you can monitor fan failure and rise in tempuratures to act.

Cable Management

This is always a battle in server rooms due to the amount of cables needed per phone , computer and server. Cable colours are important to see different networks such as Phone over Data as well as using the correct media for uplinks.

Power should also be looked at, make sure you understand your buildings power backup e.g. Generators

Label and Document Everything

The customer and IT Provider should know what each box does incase of a problem and for Auditing purposes as well.

Security

This is where all your company's data is ( if you are not already in the cloud ). There was a case with a building in London where some people walked off the street during an office move and helped themselves to a few servers without any employee stopping them! Make sure you lock your server racks and can account for the keys to server rooms. 

Small Business - Guide to Ransomware

What is it?

Ransomware is the ability of the attacker to launch an application usually on your Windows Desktop to Encrypt all your Company Shared files and hold the unlock key to ransom. The ransom is usually asked for by payment of a Bitcoin key which is totally untraceable.

Such strains of this attack has usually been nicknamed Cryptolocker

There are even companies selling this Virus as a service offering 10% of all the Ransom paid!

 

How do I stop it? 

Spam Filters

Make sure you have one of these before email hits your Office 365 or Email Server. They can scan Macro's and files and also block emails which have been bulk sent and this protects you before the email even gets to your server!

User training

Make sure users are wary of what emails they open with attachments. For Example why is my gas company sending my home gas bill to my work email? Why is TNT sending me a receive note when I have not received anything?

Keep Up-To-Date

Alot of Ransomware comes from out of date programs such as Flash and Java, sometimes through Averts! Make sure you keep these up-to-date or speak to your IT Provider about a tool to deploy these weekly and Advert Blockers.

Disable Macro Scripts

Cyptolocker variants like to use Zipped up PDF , Word and Powerpoint presentations harmless looking invoices to download programs to the computer. Make sure you read the warnings before enabling these.

Group Policies

Enable Group Policy's to Disable Executables running in AppData and Local App Data

Antivirus

Make sure it's turned on - Remember when you turned off the Anti Virus to stop it annoying you about updates or a false positive. Make sure you have a management center for all your Anti Virus Clients to check what users have what enabled!

File Resource Manager

Get alerts when specific files hit your server so straight away you can action the removal of the machine from the network. The process can even be automated!

 

What if I get infected?

Call your IT Provider Straight Away

You will start seeing your files changes extension from .doc ( Work document ) to .zzz and you will be unable to open these anymore. This means they are encyrpted and the virus is encrypting or has encrypted all the company data. There will also be Readme.html files are placed in each directory with the Unlock Key and instructions of how to pay as well as a deadline.

Call your IT provider so they can determine which computer is infected which will need to be unplugged and wiped. They can also get on with the restoring of Data

Try and Find an Unlock Key

Our friends at Kaspersky have put together a load of tools to be able to unlock for files for you for free here

Backups 

Backup is the only last method of defense. If there is no unlock key from above from your strain. Depending on your backup software ( Veam / Backup Exec ) you should be able to restore from the previous' Nights backup meaning only a loss of a days data compared to everything. This might be a good time to thing about your current backup plan, maybe a midday backup would be good to mitigate a 24 hours loss instead of a 12 hour lost.

Pay up

This is the last scenario, it never helps to pay Ransom's as it encourages it , however if this is your last option, maybe a 500$ Payment is cheaper then wiping all your Data. Payments do actually work if you leave all the documents on the system intact, it will actually decrypt it per case study.