03 October 2024

Mark Jow, technical evangelist, Gigamon

The UK public sector is failing in terms of its cyber resilience. Over the last few months, we have seen cyber-attacks of significant scale affect the MoD, Electoral Commission and the NHS.

The new UK government brings with it the hope of change. It must lead by example in the public sector and incentivise or regulate to get more organisations to follow best practices for enhanced cyber-resilience. It is encouraging to see that steps have already been taken in pushing forward The Cyber Security and Resilience Bill in the King’s Speech on 17 July, which aims to build on the NIS regulations and ‘strengthen our defences ensuring that more essential digital services than ever before are protected.’

03 October 2024

Nicola Pearce, head of education, BenQ

Digital infrastructures will continue to be a significant part of the classroom and school network. Every piece of technology must be completely secure to safeguard children from potential security risks and inappropriate online content, as well as protect teachers’ data.

Schools already have significant experience with security and safeguarding tools and will need to amend these for the digital era. Education establishments can ensure they mitigate any possible security risks or data leaks within the school setting through security measures embedded within tools such as interactive displays, account and device management systems, and online cloud services or software.

30 September 2024

Ruchir Brahmbhatt, Co-Founder & CTO, Ecosmob Technologies Private Limited

It’s easy to view open-source UC solutions as a budget-friendly alternative to proprietary solutions, but this perspective misses the real substance behind the open-source movement.

Communication is no longer just about connecting calls well. Businesses today are under constant pressure to answer to the changing communication needs. These changes are driven mainly by the rise of remote work, evolving customer expectations, and rapid technology growth.

12 September 2024

Andie Dovgan, Chief Growth Officer, Creatio

The UK is facing an IT skills gap crisis whereby the demand for technological expertise outpaces the supply of qualified professionals. A recent study by Forbes highlights the severity of the issue, with 93% of UK businesses reporting a shortfall in the IT skills necessary to meet their operational and strategic needs. Software development is particularly affected by this issue, with innovation hindered by a shortage of coding talent.

As businesses grapple with this shortfall, the competition for skilled IT professionals has intensified, particularly as tech giants and high-profile companies attract the lion’s share of available talent. This has left many organisations, particularly smaller businesses, struggling to fill critical roles and impacting their position in the playing field.

06 September 2024

John Diamond, Solutions Architect, Park Place Technologies

In this digitally enabled hybrid and remote working world, it’s hard to recall the days when fixed Wide Area Networks (WAN) universally delivered our everyday enterprise network user experience by solidly moving data over a single, private network fixed grade connection.

Back in the early 2010s when online collaboration tools, video conferencing and VOIP were in their infancy, some forward-thinking vendors including Viptela (now part of Cisco) and SilverPeak (Aruba/HP) started pioneering a Software-Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN) as an alternate decentralised approach for networking that would allow for intelligent routing of traffic over multiple connections.