Are you conscious of the threats of cyber-attacks and what they entail? If you’re a business owner with an online presence, you need to start becoming aware of some of the most damaging cyber-attack tactics and how to protect your business’ online presence against them.

As the world becomes increasingly digitally-dependent, the dangers of the internet become an ever-present reality for businesses. The truth is that most companies nowadays rely completely on their digital capabilities. Downtime is absolutely not an option, as a website that is down means that sales are down as well.

One of the most common online attacks is a Distributed Denial of Service, otherwise known as a DDoS. Research from security experts shows that outbreaks of such attacks currently account for up to one third of all online downtime.

DDoS attacks are usually comprised of multiple compromised systems often infected with a Trojan virus, used to target a server or network resource. These compromised systems are then used to overwhelm the target with huge volumes of traffic in an effort to crash the targeted infrastructures and stop them from functioning. The subsequent downtime that ensues afterwards can last for hours, days or even weeks.

According to sources in the industry, there are over 2000 daily DDoS attacks worldwide. With that in mind it’s crazy to think that 93% of DDoS attacks in 2016 lasted less than 1 hour.

To put things into perspective, during the time it takes to watch one episode of Game of Thrones your entire business could be brought down to its knees.

The average size of a DDoS attack has also risen by 30% in the last twelve months. Some attacks have registered speeds of over 100 and 200 Gbps, akin to having more than 6000 songs uploaded to your servers every second. Worryingly enough, most businesses would be floored by much less than a 1 Gbps attack. For businesses relying on the internet, the downtime generated by DDoS attacks is alarming.

DDoS attacks usually target particular businesses, but that is not always the case. In October 2016, more than 170 million internet users in the United States experienced downtime for around a whole day. Dyn, an internet performance management company that controls the majority of the internet’s domain name system (DNS) infrastructure, suffered a prolonged DDoS attack. This attack is thought to be the largest recorded to date. Affected businesses included Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit, GitHub, Etsy, Tumblr, Spotify, PayPal and the Playstation network. Apart from these well-known services, it is more than likely that thousands of other online retail operations were disrupted as well.

Unfortunately, DDoS attacks are one of the scourges of the Internet. However, with awareness, proper planning and the correct resources you can avoid that dreadful moment when everything comes crashing down.

With the right team behind you, attacks can be shielded-against. The damage done can be mitigated and controlled to keep your servers online, website live and your customers happy.

Attacks are only becoming more and more common as businesses shift towards total immersion in this digital-first world. Online security is, in this day and age, an integral part of any company’s future growth.

At BMIT, businesses have the facility to better prepare themselves against these potentially business-stopping DDoS attacks by using a multi-tiered protection and mitigation system. This setup ensures the correct boundaries are put in place alongside the lawww, constantly evolving prevention tactics. This system is built to withstand and handle the requirements of even the most demanding of enterprises experiencing huge spikes in traffic.

BMIT’s protective infrastructure, paired with 24/7 support and an experienced and fully-qualified engineering team, has been built alongside industry-leading expert partners to create a solution that benefits from constant reinvestment and technological advances.

This article will be featured in next Sunday's edition of The Times of Malta

As part of of our ongoing CSR initiatives, the team at BMIT ended the month of March with an activity for a good cause. More than 25 of our staff members made their way to the St. Joseph Home for Children in Żabbar to help the Dominican Sisters with maintenance work around the home as well as installing new basketball hoops for the children.

The BMIT team got their hands dirty and put their metalworking skills to the www as they installed a canopy, assembled new furniture as well as painted the washroom and other areas of the home.

Cloud computing really is an easy concept to grasp, but let’s go with the analogy route to make it even easier. In the old days, farms and factories needed to generate their own power either through windmills or water wheels. This all changed thanks to power grids, as businesses could just tap into the grid and pay for the power they use, avoiding all costs related to building the power-generating infrastructure.

A good cloud computing provider is essentially that power grid – it’s a one-stop means of getting all sorts of hosted services online. That means that if you require a range of services such as web hosting, data storage and backup, creating your own virtual machines, collaborative tools and business intelligence solution features, and more, you can get them all through a cloud computing services provider.

As they say, the best things come in threes, and cloud computing is no exception to this maxim. Cloud computing can follow a private model, a public one, or a hybrid of the two. As you can imagine, each type comes with its own distinct advantages and is best suited for different scenarios. We’ll go into the specific differences between all three models.

Public cloud services are generally offered through the internet, by way of companies selling infrastructure, applications or storage options that you can pay for on a pay-per-use model, for example per hour or in bundles of bandwidth consumption.

The big advantage here is that public clouds are generally more cost-effective, making them an excellent choice for small and medium-sized businesses. The caveat, though, is that users do not get to oversee the management of the underlying infrastructure that is storing their data, so the element of trust needs to be considerably higher as there’s less direct assurance that your data is being managed the way it should be.

Of course, when you’re dealing with very reputable companies that offer public cloud services, there shouldn’t be any reason for distrust.

Something else which you should expect with regard to public clouds is that they’re often much less customisable overall – you’re generally dealing with one-size-fits-all packages, and you can select which services from that package appeal to you the most. Whether this is a positive or negative factor depends entirely on what your operation is and what your outlook on the whole issue is.

Some people actually enjoy the fact that public clouds are less fussy in that regard and it makes it much easier for companies to get moving with tried and wwwed services, as opposed to having to undergo processes to www how well-optimised a service is for their individual business.

Private clouds are defined by their added security and personalisation. Usually designed with specific businesses in mind, private clouds are the ultimate for tailor-made solutions.

Are private clouds, then, a step up from public clouds? Again, it really depends on what your needs are as a company. If you’re running a larger business, it might be easy to feel weighed down by the limits of public clouds. Private clouds give you very similar features, such as self-service and scalability, but with even more independence.

Let’s put it another way. With public clouds, it’s like using a bus. You don’t have much say in how it looks or how it drives, but it gets you from point A to point B. With private clouds, you’re renting a car, and you get to decide whether you need a hatchback or an SUV. You’re in total control except for the fact that you didn’t fork out the money upfront to buy the car.

Plus, some of the features available with private clouds are just not an option with public clouds. Take BMIT’s load balancing service, for example, which was designed to counteract the pitfalls of high volumes of traffic, particularly when running multiple private cloud servers. It’s an effective way of distributing this traffic and thus ensuring that no single device gets overloaded. As a result, devices run smoother and performances is improved all round – with your devices as well as your business.

The hybrid cloud approach is the best of both worlds – but why would a company need to take this route.

Think about it this way: if you adopt a hybrid model, you can use the private cloud features for particularly sensitive or classified data, or run your most mission-critical workloads through it, and use the public clouds for less pressing jobs or jobs were added scalability is required.

In addition, hybrid clouds are excellent when disaster recovery or cloud-bursting is needed. In other words, situations in which a company will need to very quickly transfer data or operation to another server, but can’t afford to make use of multiple private cloud servers.

If you’re running any sort of business that relies on data structures or web management of any kind, there’s really no denying the asset that cloud computing can provide to your operation. For flexibility, customisability, and ease-of-use, there’s nothing as flexible and scalable that will help you reach the standards expected today.

The fact that there are so many different faces to cloud computing might initially seem overwhelming, but really should be seen as an excellent way of ensuring that your company gets exactly what it needs to oversee the smooth running of its operation. There’s no better or worse here – there’s only what’s right for you, so the idea shouldn’t be to go for the most expensive option just for the sake of it.

Contact BMIT, Malta’s largest multi-site data centre services provider, to find out how your business stands to benefit from the various cloud computing options available.

This article was featured on The Times of Malta

BMIT, Malta’s leading provider of data centre, cloud and managed IT services, has just enhanced its Managed Services portfolio with the introduction of a Load Balancer-as-a-Service. The company has opted for a Brocade-based solution, therefore ensuring that industry-leading technology is being adopted for both its data centre-based as well as on-premise customers.

In the process, BMIT also attained a Brocade Cloud Service Provider status.

BMIT’s Load Balancer as a Service provides an effective and highly reliable solution to distribute traffic effectively, so no single device gets overwhelmed with traffic. Additionally, it provides a range of features and functionalities to deliver faster, high performance user experience, while maximising the efficiency and capacity of web and application servers.

“Becoming a Brocade CSP was an integral part of our mission to simplify IT consumption by our customers. Our collaboration with Brocade ensures that we can deliver a load balancing solution on a pay-per-use model, and complete with full functionalities expected from top-end solutions”, commented Jack Mizzi, BMIT’s Chief of Marketing & Business Development.

Amar Ul-Haq Brocade’s Cloud Sales Manager– Software Division EMEA added, ”We are delighted to be collaborating with BMIT.  The company is a leader in its field and we strongly believe that Brocade’s services and technologies can further enhance BMIT’s offering as it seeks to extend its IT services portfolio to its customers.  We’re really looking forward to extend our expertise and collaboration with one of Malta’s leading IT companies”.

The Load Balancer as a Service offering is the lawww newcomer to BMIT’s portfolio, with other additions being a range of connectivity services over its new 40Gbps exclusive international network, data centre points of presence in Milan and Frankfurt, as well as the attainment of a Microsoft Cloud Service Provider status, and the offering of Microsoft Office 365 services on a pay-per-use model.

Missed this year's ICE Event? Click on the links below to read the three editions of ICE Daily, all featuring news from BMIT:

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

 

From start-ups to larger entities, companies in all fields are rapidly coming to recognise the importance of having access to IT services – IT services that are not only competent but also equipped to aid your business in growing while running as efficiently as possible.

Yet, IT services are a resource like no other, and resources can be draining. For a company that does not specialise in any facet of IT or digital services, having an in-house IT branch can raise complications. Difficulties can range from figuring out from where to begin with staff training to understanding what kind of funding needs to be allocated; you might soon discover that you are not making full effective use of your IT branch.

Don’t be discouraged, however. Making use of a third-party IT services provider like BMIT is a sure way to make your company’s transition into becoming fully IT-integrated a seamless process, and will help you avoid missteps along the way.

Of course, it is not as easy as that. You need to know what kinds of managed data centre services are available to know what you need. No two companies are the same, which is why a tailor-made solution should always be made available in discussions with managed data centres.

Through any reputable managed data services entity, you can expect to have all your IT needs met. One essential facet of this is having your data housed and protected within the data centre itself; a feat achieved by using best-of-breed servers and with reliable backup systems in place. Naturally, you can expect security, as well as ensuring the smooth running of the handled data through a dedicated high-speed network.

Indeed, merely hosting the data is not enough. That is why BMIT offers fully inclusive system administration services, providing you with a guarantee that your company has access to proper IT services – not just a storage space. Some of these services include the installation of servers; web server management; backup processes; performance monitoring; and virus protection. Even these are simply scratching the surface of what proper IT system administration can provide.

Another important consideration is infrastructure management. After all, when it comes to managed IT services, we are not just talking software, but hardware too. The reality is that buying or leasing hardware is an added expense that can accumulate rather quickly. In other words, it is an expense that most companies would rather avoid.

BMIT will help you avoid buying hardware by making its infrastructure available to you – hardware that is as up-to-date with the lawww technologies as its software solutions are. This readily-available infrastructure enables us to offer infrastructure management with ease, and that involves overseeing the general management of the hardware and network, as well as taking care of load balancing and firewall management.

One thing that is essential to stress is that even though you will be making use of third party services, you should never be kept in the dark about the performance of your data operations, so make sure to ask for monthly reports in addition to all other support services.

These are all services that BMIT has offered to top entities in Malta, but our services have also made their way to international clients. Indeed, 2017 will see BMIT showcasing its products at ICE Totally Gaming in London between the 7-9th of February. ICE is one of the leading business conventions internationally, and with an attendance of nearly 30,000 people last year alone, BMIT is optimistic about the impact that ICE 2017 will have.

That impact might lead to new opportunities, but it would only be further validation that BMIT is the right company to handle all your managed IT service needs. Look no further if the services mentioned in this article strike you as services that could benefit your company.

Worries about cost are sure to surface, yet BMIT offers solutions that are a seamless combination of necessity and the client’s desired budget. Utilising the services of an IT-savvy third party will prove to be even more cost-effective, as you will avoid mismanaging time and money to set up an in-house IT team. IT services providers will help you discover what services are most vital to your operation.

We understand that different companies have specific goals which require different facets of IT handling, and while we believe it is important for any company to immerse itself in top IT practices, this does not require overstepping your budget. Of course, our aim is to give you the right stability to keep your company growing as efficiently in the digital age as possible.

This article was also featured on The Sunday Times of Malta

Any experienced businessman knows that business is not merely about having a product. It is also about knowing how to build a rapport with your public audience, with the intention of getting them to consume the product subconsciously. Companies need to have the capacity to learn as much as they can about their potential customers in order to achieve that, but how?

According to Charles Duhigg in his book, The Power of Habit, ‘you collect data. Enormous, almost inconceivably large amounts of data.’

This article is not a book review for The Power of Habit, but any entrepreneur or business owner would do well to read it for its insight as to how it becomes possible to operate in accordance to observable consumer behaviours. Enter the concept of Big Data, and how you can use it to your advantage.

Big Data is a term used for datasets that are so large that it becomes impossible to process or analyse them simply by using traditional software and database methods. Analysing big data is a massive operation that requires top of the line storage and visualisation methods.

The reason why Big Data can be so mind boggling (and yet so useful to your company) is that to the untrained eye, Big Data can initially seem all over the place, as it is an extensive collection of both structured and unstructured data. Making heads or tails of such data can be hard to do, so imagine how much more daunting it can be to try and give that data a practical purpose.

How do businesses get around this? By having a fully trained analytics department, as opposed to a couple of statisticians at the office. Big Data requires getting some of your best minds together to tackle it. It is a proper business investment, but it is a business investment that pays off significantly.

If you are sceptical, you can turn back to The Power of Habit for proof. The book explains how Big Data is used by all sorts of entities to heighten their sales output by capitalising on human behavioural patterns. From which animals are most effective in greeting cards, to how it becomes possible to sell junk food in grocery stores by placing healthy food at the beginning of the aisle, it becomes delightfully clear that Big Data has changed the business game in an extraordinary way.

One particular chapter focuses on the career of a rather innovative statistician, Andrew Pole. Pole took on one of the most challenging Big Data jobs in history – that is, analysing the behaviours of consumers who shop at Target, an entity that seems to be smarter at working around consumer patterns than other huge names such as Amazon and Best Buy.

One of Pole’s strengths was known as the ‘guest portrait’, which is a predictive analytics way of determining information about consumers’ lives depending on buying patterns. If you stop by Target to buy popsicles after work, Pole would determine that you have kids and would send you coupons and leaflets to manipulate your next purchases, to great success.

More interesting than this, though, is the ability to deduce further information about consumers when buying patterns change. Research has shown that buying patterns always change when a major life event occurs. Thanks to this principle, Pole was able to develop a way to accurately whether consumers were likely to be pregnant or not. This new algorithm led to a notable incident in which a household received a leaflet for baby goods, which resulted in an angry father complaining to Target. What the father did not know was that his daughter was in fact, pregnant. A sudden shift in her buying habits, to vitamins and delicate soaps, caught her out!

This story, of course, though amusing, raises ethical concerns. There is nothing wrong with gathering data to learn about your customers and so increase the effectiveness of your business. A level of subtlety and tactical approach, however, goes a long way. Your customers cannot feel uncomfortable by what you know, as the business relationship can then become compromised.

The ultimately take away here though is that if you want your business to thrive, you would be wise to make use of Big Data analysis. To do that, though, you need the data storage space your business deserves, which is where BMIT comes in

Our Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) solutions are the most powerful cloud server solutions in the business, giving you as much space as you need to perform your analytics on, with equally powerful security features that ensure that none of that data gets lost. BMIT can come up with tailor-made solutions to meet your applications exactly, all while keeping your budgetary concerns in mind.

With BMIT, you work more efficiently while saving money. We will help you use the Big Data you collect to its full capacity, and the prosperity of your business will be the result.

This article was featured on the Times of Malta here

A cornerstone of modern banking is the availability of banking services on a 24/7 basis such as online banking and ATMs. Failure to provide such facilities, particularly due to negligence, can have dire consequences for any financial institution.

In 2012, The Royal Bank of Scotland Group, including NatWest and Ulster Bank, suffered a system outage due to a corrupted software upgrade, affecting more than 6.5 million customers in the UK over several weeks. Money did not flow into accounts after being deposited, payrolls were delayed, credit ratings downgraded, utility bills were not met.

Two years later in 2014, the Financial Conduct Authority fined RBS £42m, and the Prudential Regulation Authority fined the bank £14m, citing “a very poor legacy of IT resilience and inadequate management of IT risks”. Surprisingly, the FCA itself suffered a widespread IT outage in September 2016 after a physical incident in a data centre.

It cannot be reiterated enough that IT for finance has become a critical component in every facet of the industry. An IT system failure can result not only in downtime for business, but also in data loss or worse, a data breach.

For financial companies looking to improve their IT infrastructure through outsourcing, partnering with an experienced IT provider is a great way of getting the ball rolling quickly, but why outsource in the first place and not keep everything safe internally?  Outsourcing provides flexibility for companies that are growing at a fast pace, as well as increased resiliency through having your systems hosted on redundant infrastructure that can withstand both physical as well as digital accidents or attacks.

However, outsourcing does not mean that control over one’s IT systems is lost, as it can be either partial or full. For example, in some cases, companies choose to keep their most critical systems within their premises while housing their still-important ancillary systems with the IT partner, whereas others outsource their IT systems completely. In any case, the company still has full control over its infrastructure, with some of the added benefits being that they can easily scale up or down as well as avoid having to hire additional staff as they expand their IT needs expand.

Data loss is more common than one would expect, and suffering such a loss within the financial sector, can have severe consequences, arguably more so than any other industry. Most data losses stem from a lack of discipline when it comes to backing up. Maintaining a regular backup schedule, regularly wwwing backup and restore functions, spreading backups across various locations and encrypting the backups are just some of the must-dos to avoid data loss as well as mitigate data breaches. Of course, all this requires time and resources, so delegating backups to an IT partner can help companies save time, money as well as ensuring the backups are stored in safe environments.

We at BMIT, Malta’s largest multi-site data centre, can put your mind at ease. During the past four years we have evolved from a co-location provider to an IT-as-a-Service provider. We offer a variety of IT services which provide our customers with the flexibility to choose to what degree they want to be involved in procuring, deploying and managing their IT systems and how much of this they want to delegate to us.

In addition to hosting IT systems within our multiple data centres, we can also manage them for our clients thanks to our 24x7 support team. In cases where the operator has their own IT team, BMIT’s role is usually to supplement their efforts and assist them in their support function. We have other clients who opt to outsource all IT support, in which case the role shifts to one ensuring a round-the-clock upkeep of their systems, as well as providing best-practice advice.

With a trusted and experienced IT partner such as BMIT, businesses can keep up with innovations that help them stay abreast of the market and their competitors. We are already working with a large number of local financial operators to deliver optimal solutions on the business continuity and disaster recovery side, which includes secure backups at our data centres and the management of the business continuity process.

So do you think your company can gain an edge in the financial sector from any of the mentioned advantages and with an exclusive 40Gbps network? Contact BMIT today; we’d love to help your business move forward and save costs in the long run.

This article was featured in Money Magazine's Finance Issue (Nov 2016)

What do you get when you mix jeeps, encrypted clues and hidden treasures? Why, BMIT's October 2016 team building activity, of course!

Have you ever lost a file that was important to you, only to spend the rest of the day angry at yourself for having procrastinated backing up your data?

Unfortunately, this story is all too common even in this day and age, and with companies the situation is no different. Whatever a company does, data is constantly being created. That data could either be in the form of end products, the information needed to produce those products, or the information needed to provide the company’s services. If this data is lost, the company will be in jeopardy.

There are many things that can immediately cause data loss, from hardware failure, corrupted files, virus and malware to accidental deletions. However, human error remains the most common cause of data loss, with recent survey findings regarding data protection and compliance in the United States and the UK discovering that accidental deletion of information is the leading cause of data loss, ahead of losses caused by malicious insiders and hackers.

Having a backup plan in place is key for those business owners who don’t want their operations to come to a grinding halt, simply due to an employee saving a fresh (and empty) database over the current customer data.

What are the features of a good backup plan? Whether you’re creating an internal backup plan or outsourcing to an IT services provider such as BMIT, make sure that the plan incorporates the following key characteristics:

With small and medium-sized enterprises being the target for more than 60 per cent of cyber-attacks in 2015, having an effective backup system in place can be expensive and time consuming. Outsourcing backup can reduce the impact of human error while also providing a peace-of-mind in knowing that the backup policies and procedures would have been tried and wwwed already. This reduces amount of time required to deploy an effective backup solution to protect your business data.

This article was featured on the Times of Malta here