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Choosing an SSD Drive
You still have a mechanical drive in your computer, maybe its several years old, or maybe just not the most expensive. You likely have a desktop PC if you have a mechanical drive but many laptops still have them being sold brand new. That’s not always a bad thing however, regular drives can offer great…
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Compliance and governance – not such dirty words after all!
All companies have to comply with certain rules and regulations, ranging from reporting regularly to the tax authorities and Companies House, to paying staff at least minimum wage for every hour worked, to ensuring that any personal data is kept secure and only for as long as needed or legally required. Governance is the set…
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How Fast does your IT Support React?
If you ever think about this, you would probably think an “in-house” IT team or a big supplier would give you the best reaction time if you have an issue. So is that true? Maybe! Let me tell you a story about Octagon Technology: One of our clients had a break-in overnight, and a laptop…
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Looking For IT Support You Can Rely On?
With the addition of recent team members who are now fully trained in our ways and ready to take on more responsibilities, we can open the doors to more clients who want to experience our brand of Technology without Tears. The kind of clients we are looking for will range from microbusinesses upwards, but they…
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Who sees your research data?
Many companies use university students to conduct research for them and the students sometimes use the projects as part of their degrees, suitably anonymised when requested. They can use publicly available data for the research, or they can use data provided by the companies concerned. In addition universities also offer higher level dedicated original research…
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A Geek Father’s Day – Sunday, 16 June 2019
I did a Geek Mother’s Day – so it only seemed fair to do the same for Dads. I am offering an alternative to all those CD compilations disks you see on the television that will “make a great gift for Father’s Day”! Do I even have a CD player in the MX-5 for that…
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Bot Blogging or Blog Botting?
You may have heard of the word processing addon “Grammarly” if you watch a lot of YouTube like myself you will have been subjected to one of their ads by now. It boasts being a ‘must have’ for anyone who writes anything that will be read by anyone else, as well as being able to…
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Loving My Cycle Tech
Working in remote tech support means spending a large part of my day sat at a computer. And if truth be told going a little stir-crazy every now and then, especially when I look out the window on a bright sunny day knowing my cycling buddies (the retired and self-employed ones) at that very second…
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Data Privacy and Security Seminar – the one that you cannot miss this year
It’s almost a year since the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect and we are running a free seminar to help you think about your business data – is it private and secure? This interactive and practical seminar will be run by our CIO Clive Catton who has a special responsibility for data…
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How to Create a Strong Password
“So I can’t win then, can I? It sounds like you want my passwords to be 25 letters long and look like the cat danced on my keyboard. How on earth do I win?” You ( now frustrated!) Fear not, there is hope. Combine what you have learned and consider the following. Use many words…
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Factors that impact on a password strength (Section 2)
Any password that is a word, is in the crackers dictionary, and all words of any length can be checked in pretty much the same amount of time when they use what is appropriately called a ‘Dictionary’ attack. This means that all those easy and interesting long words you know, can’t be safely used, at…
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Factors that impact on a password strength (Section 1)
In our previous blog I introduced three factors that result in a password strength. Here are the first two I mentioned: Factor 1. Number of symbols Symbols here mean any character typically used or usable by the computer, for example numbers consist of ten symbols 0 to 9. Lower case letters a to z are…
