CyberAwake | Octagon Technology

Keep It Simple… Encryption (pt. 3)

Encryption is the process of encoding information, converting it from plaintext into ciphertext, to protect it from unauthorised access. This process ensures that only those with the appropriate decryption key can access the original information, thereby maintaining confidentiality. Modern encryption techniques utilise complex algorithms and keys, making unauthorised decryption extremely difficult without the correct key. […]

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Pine Lake Resort portable office with a VPN

Let’s Talk About Your VPN

Cyber Security / By Clive

I am on holiday for the next two weeks – some cold weather walking in the Lake District and the Cairngorms, whilst Diana stays back in the warm office – so it must be time to discuss VPN usage again. The photo above is the view whilst I write this article. A VPN – your

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Defence-in-depth – Your Move

Cyber Security / By Clive

Yesterday I wrote the opening chapter of this defence-in-depth article – I looked at how anti-virus protection can be side-stepped by threat actors and that staff cyber awareness training is needed to provide another layer to your defences. That was a human addition to your defence-in-depth and today we are going to look at more

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Authentication, Authorisation and Accountability lifecycle diagram

Accountability – It Shows You are Watching.

Cyber Security / By Clive

Authentication, Authorisation and Accountability. This is the third part of a three-part series looking at the basics of the cyber security principle of “AAA”. Day Three – Accountability Accountability is probably the least enforced part of our Triple A principle in most organisations. But if you do embrace it, it can have a powerful impact

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Incident Response – Talk about bad timing!

Cyber Security / By Martin

In response to Clive’s Blog on Smart Thinking about incident response – he couldn’t have picked a worse time. Right in the middle of putting together and planning some of the largest projects we have in the pipeline and organising the day-to-day support work – I did not want to play! (Clive said he wouldn’t

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Don’t Skip That Restart

Cyber Security / By Clive

Restarting – Welcome to our new blog Our blog is now the responsibility of our excellent support team, so they can share their IT support advice and stories with you. However, they are busy this week moving a large office and launching a website for a company, both on very short notice (sometimes clients do

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Smart Thinking Solutions publishes its 1000th cybersecurity post

Cyber Security / By Diana

Today, is a a day worth celebrating. Today we published our thousandth post over on the Smart Thinking Solutions cyber security news site. Clive has written a good article that covers how and why we started Smart Thinking and he has picked out 10 topics that we write about, illustrating them with example posts from

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Question. When do you have to think about cyber security? Answer. Oh…

Cyber Security / By Clive

My Regular Cyber Security Round-up will be posted on Saturday this week as I am traveling on Friday. I write blog posts and articles for three sites, Smart Thinking, CyberAwake and Octagon Technology, on cyber security and technology related subjects – although sometimes the links are a bit tenuous… Because It’s Friday – IT and

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The Digital Divide

Cyber Security / By Diana

Last week I attended a number of very interesting talks, ranging from those given at my party’s Spring Conference, via a talk from one of the professors at my university to a conference hosted by Computing magazine. A recurring theme seems to be the Digital Divide. What do I mean by the Digital Divide? Well,

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