Everyone in the technology sphere is aware about Microsoft Azure and it's expanding set of on-demand cloud services that help your business create a flexible and scalable infrastructure, store and manage data, create complex web apps, improve cybersecurity and compliance practices, and much much more. But what are the actual benefits of Microsoft Azure? Here is a list of all the benefits you will take advantage of when using Microsoft Azure's global cloud platform.
Flexible
Transfer the hardware infrastructure issues and responsibility. Save time, money and labour-intensive tasks to maintain your infrastructure. Eliminate waiting time to deploy new infrastructure, spin new VMS with a click of a button and pay for what you use.
Scalable
Since Azure is a public cloud platform, businesses can scale up their infrastructure and services to align with their needs.
Elastic
With the platform’s automation it enables elasticity to save your business the time and money, so that you pay for what you really need.
High-Availability
Microsoft Azure provides high-availability and redundancy across all its data centres. Azure is available in over 52+ regions worldwide and is available in 140 countries, making Azure well-suited to companies with a global reach. Because of its availability zones, Microsoft can offer a service-level agreement that ensures 99.95% up to 99.99% availability for VM infrastructure, which amounts to under 4.5 hours of downtime per year.
Reliability
Microsoft is committed to continue improving its Azure services reliability by introducing more automation to its infrastructure in order to be less susceptible to component failures. And uses low-and-no-impact methods and technologies during maintenance on its infrastructure and services.
Secure
All data stored on Azure is protected by an advanced encryption process, and Microsoft’s data centers are outfitted with two-tier authentication, proxy card access readers and even biometric scanners. When paired with existing cybersecurity systems and policies, Azure’s built-in security tools can help maintain the privacy, integrity and availability of sensitive customer information. Through its multi-layered security model, Microsoft helps companies ward off data breaches, malware, DDos attacks and other evolving threats.
Compliant
Over the years, Microsoft has become quite familiar with the need for strong and adaptive compliance controls. That’s why Azure offers more than 35 compliance offerings specific to the needs of key industries, including health care, government, finance, education, manufacturing and more. Through its built-in compliance tools, configuration management features and guidance resources, Microsoft helps organizations keep pace with the evolving regulatory guidelines like HIPAA, ISO 27001, GDPR and more.
How can BMIT Technologies help?
Every client we work with requires different solutions. So, we tackle each need with our expertise in technology, business strategy and innovation.
We propose and develop intelligent, secure infrastructure solutions, help build your internal capabilities and identify opportunities to enhance your business potential through the application of innovative technologies. This ensures a greater level of business management and progression.
Want to learn more about Microsoft Azure and how BMIT Technologies can help you take advantage of the benefits mentioned above? Read more about BMIT Technologies Azure services or reach out today and one of our Business Solution Advisors will be in touch!
What is a DDOS? Why am I being targeted and who is attacking me? What do I do now? These are some of the many questions I have heard over many years of handling DDoS attacks at BMIT Technologies.
BMIT Technologies has been in this business for almost 20 years, and we have seen many DDoS attacks. Over the years there were many changes, in size, attack vector, methodologies but one thing remains a constant: The attacker wanting to shut down the operations of the targeted “victim”. One might even say it is a perennial game of cat and mouse were the mouse (the attacker) is always looking for new ways to bypass the cat (security systems) and steal their cheese (bring down their target). Here are some of the most common questions we receive.
So what is a DDOS attack?
In simple words, a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, is nothing more than a malicious attempt to bring down a website or a service. This is achieved by either flooding (we call it “over subscribing”) the connectivity of the service or overuse the resources available to the service. To give a simple example: if a customer is serviced by a dedicated Internet line of 100Mbps and suddenly the attacker is sending ten times more (1Gbps) of traffic, the connection becomes oversubscribed with the result being that the customer’s websites/services become unreachable. It is worth noting that a flood is the simplest form of attack. There are many attack vectors. In fact, in recent years multi-vector attacks have become the most common type of attacks.
But why me? Who is targeting me?
There are many reasons why this happens, most attacks are an attempt at extortion. It is very common that either prior or after an attack you will receive an email to pay an amount of money, in bitcoin of course, to avoid being attacked. But this is not the only reason. This attack could be the result of competition. Indeed, many organisations believe that there was at least one instance of attack originating from competition. The DDoS attack could also be instigated by an angry previous employee or just a script kiddie who wants to have some fun. These are all possible scenarios, especially when you realize that a DDoS attack can be very cheaply bought. On the Dark Web you can buy an attack for as low as USD10per hour. This makes the DDoS attack accessible to anyone.
So what do I do now?
When facing such a threat you need to stand up, subscribe to a DDOS mitigation service, and fight. Never surrender and pay the extortion, as the attacker will demand more and eventually end up still attacking you. Indeed, the sentiment is correct, the successful mitigation of an attack is possible if and only if both you and the service provider work together to fine tune and personalize the countermeasures to your traffic profile. One of the most common pitfalls is that during the attack, the mitigation is switched on and left on its default settings without parametrisation and fine tuning. Although this might work, most of the times it will not as there are instances that mitigation will result in collateral damage on traffic towards the customer’s payment gateway or an offsite control office, effectively bringing down the operations even though the attack is being mitigated. The suggestion here is that you get a service provider that can actively manage your connectivity during an attack, with your support. you Get a multi-tiered DDoS mitigation service, document all your external partners and be prepared. You will never know when an attack will hit you.
If you own a business that depends on online presence to survive, or you work in IT security, then it’s not just Covid-19 stats you should be looking at. During 2020, despite the pandemic hitting everyone globally, DDoS attacks increased by over 15% over 2019. That sounds like yet another percentage, but the actual impact can be devastating for businesses, small and big alike.
A quick refresher first - What is a DDoS attack?
One definition, by Netscout, is that “DDoS is an attempt to exhaust the resources available to a network, application, or service so that genuine users cannot gain access”. In practice a DDoS attack on a website or a network feels like a few hundred or a thousand elephants are trying to pass through your hallway, therefore rendering access to your kitchen very difficult, if not impossible.
Over the years, the way cyber criminals attack has become much more sophisticated than just bombarding a website with traffic. Now it is a combination of high-volume attacks, along with more difficult to detect infiltrations that target applications as well as existing network security infrastructure such as firewalls, routers and IPS.
I will spare you the technical differences between a ping / ICMP flood, a TCP SYN flood, an SSL exhaustion or a BGP hijack since they can become numbingly boring, and I might also run out of alphabet letters listing down all the acronyms – the important point to be made here is that the protection and mitigation mechanisms need to be able to handle the complexities behind the attacks, and not just against a “simple” volumetric attack, for example. Indeed, multi-vector attacks has become more common and are now almost the norm.
Why are DDoS attacks so dangerous for your business?
A DDoS attack is a threat to your ability to continue doing business. As businesses have grown more dependent on the Internet and web-based applications and services, online availability has become as essential as electricity and water.
From our experience, the most obvious targets to a DDoS attack are Financial Services and iGaming companies. But a DDoS attack can also target the mission critical business applications that your business relies on, daily email, payment gateways, sales software and automation, CRM and many others. Additionally, other industries, such as manufacturing, pharma and healthcare, have internal resources that the supply chain and other business partners rely on for daily business operations. All of these are targets for today’s sophisticated cyber attackers, as the North Korean attack has shown in a very public way.
Look beyond the high-volume attacks
Many associate DDoS attacks with high-volume, “spectacular” attacks – because that’s what makes news. But for most organisations, this is rarely what they should be worrying at.
Netscout recommend that as businesses start considering the steps needed to mitigate the risk from DDoS attacks and maintain resilience and availability, they should keep the following in mind:
Think beyond volumetric attacks. State-exhaustion DDoS attacks that block devices such as firewalls, load balancers, and VPN concentrators from doing their job can also negatively impact vital applications, services, infrastructure, and data. This is particularly relevant in the current high dependence on VPNs due to remote working. The recommendation here is that companies deploy a DDoS set-up that protects beyond the obvious, to be protected the widest type of DDoS attacks possible. We can help. Reach out and we will set up a quick call to go through your worries and requirements.
Cloud-based protection is not enough. The most common form of DDoS attack protection is a cloud-based mitigation service. This is critical to stop large, volumetric DDoS attacks that outstrip the volume of the internet connection but is only one part of a comprehensive protection strategy. Companies shall also think of their own network and how it can be protected – and ensure that their service provider has mitigation mechanisms within its own network, and not just depend on 3rd parties. BMIT’s Managed DDoS Shield caters for end-to-end protection, and with its multi-tier mitigation mechanisms ensures that you tick these best practice recommendations.
Size doesn’t always matter! Smaller and short-lived attacks can be as lethal as massive attacks and it is therefore important that your service provider can provide instant detection and mitigation mechanisms. Netscout estimate that almost 25% of attacks last less than 5 minutes, and the absolute majority an hour or less.
The end message is that DDoS attacks can be mitigated if, and only if, you are prepared. A key part of that preparation lies in a regular engagement with your service provider to ensure that the right set-up is in place, end-to-end.
Leading Maltese technology solutions provider BMIT Technologies today announced the launch of their new DDoS protection and mitigation solution - BMIT Managed DDoS Shield. This solution is the result of a major investment in technologies and skills, which now allows the company to extend the service to large and smaller organisations using their network services and strengthen its security portfolio further.
BMIT DDoS Shield is a multi-tiered solution which protects against multiple types of attacks. The edge-based mitigation deployed within BMIT Technologies international high speed private network allows the finetuning of countermeasures that are used to protect against protocol and application attacks. An upstream mitigation - Cloud-based – is also activated and both mitigation mechanisms work in sync to mitigate an attack.
“The investment in the latest DDoS technology and in our high speed and resilient international network allowed us to launch an enhanced solution, which is backed up by a team of local experts on a 24x7 basis. We proactively monitor for any attacks and act on them immediately, sometimes well before even a customer realises, they are under attack,” commented Gordon Bezzina, BMIT Technologies’ Chief Technology Officer commented.
“When developing the Managed DDoS Shield solution, we have given particular attention to customers who might wish to be “insured” against an attack, and therefore built a low, fixed subscription fee solution which allows for a pay per attack charging model”, added Ivan Galea, Product Manager at BMIT Technologies. “We have also developed an always-on solution to protect those customers who either are prone to more frequent attacks or else prefer to have quicker response to attacks,” concluded Mr Galea.
BMIT Technologies, a leading Hybrid IT enabler, was recently recognized by the Microsoft Greece, Cyprus & Malta subsidiary as the best performing partner for Azure for fiscal year 2020. This award is a result of BMIT Technologies’ solid performance and investment during the past year and continued focus to drive innovation through the exploitation of cloud technology.
Building on the strategic partnership that it established with Microsoft in 2018, BMIT Technologies continues to invest in both its technology infrastructure and its technical capability to ensure that it has the necessary capacity to help customers harness the power of Microsoft Azure to fulfil their strategic objectives.
BMIT Technologies also offers a secure and quick-to-set-up remote work solution which is designed to address the main pain points of anyone wishing to offer remote work to employees but is constrained by systems or software. Based on Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365, BMIT’s Remote Work Solution enables organisations to ensure that their IT systems and services are made accessible to employees anytime and anywhere, securely and reliably. This solution has proven to be a vital lifeline for many businesses during the current pandemic, enabling them to remain fully operational by allowing their employees to work from home.
Adopting a Hybrid IT approach, the company also offers regulated businesses, such as online gaming and financial services operators, a quick-to-deploy Hosting Compliance solution that enables them meet all their regulatory requirements, in a fully compliant manner. This solution allows clients to focus on optimizing their operations, CX and marketing and spend less time and resource managing and operating their IT infrastructure. A key element of this solution is BMIT Technologies’ own Microsoft Azure Stack platform, which provides the same Microsoft Azure experience but with the added benefit of being fully hosted in Malta and therefore ensuring data is maintained in Malta in line with regulatory needs.
Nick Tonna, BMIT’s Chief Commercial Officer, said: “We are thrilled to have received this prestigious recognition from Microsoft. It is a huge achievement for our team and reinforces BMIT Technologies’ leadership in Cloud services on the island. We look forward to bringing more exciting things for our clients and ensure they continue to see the benefits of working with us.”
BMIT Technologies plc, continues to implement its extensive CSR strategy and long-standing commitment to future generations through a new partnership with Sliema Aquatic Sports Academy. With all the evidence that swimming is incredibly good for your physical and mental health and wellbeing and proven to instil great habits from a young age, this is the kind of support that benefits all communities.
The two-year sponsorship agreement includes naming rights and will establish BMIT Technologies as the lead sponsor of this popular swimming academy. As of this season all water polo squads between U11s and U20s as well as the Sliema ASC swim squad will now carry Sliema ASC BMIT Technologies Academy as the official name for their teams and on their kits.
This is not the first time BMIT Technologies has invested in sports for younger people. For the fourth year running, the leading IT solutions provider remains the main supporting partner of the BMIT Otters Swimming School in Gozo which was set up with the objective of promoting swimming and water polo to children.
“We are thrilled about this latest collaboration,” said Jack Mizzi, BMIT’s Chief Marketing Officer, “Water sports and swimming are such an integral part of our national make-up, and through our ongoing commitment towards swimming activities we have seen directly just how beneficial swimming is to children. This new sponsorship is another step forward in supporting young local talent.” he added.
Kevin Saliba, Vice-President and Chairman of the Sliema ASC academy added that he was very happy to have reached a sponsorship agreement with BMIT Technologies. “I am confident that this collaboration between BMIT Technologies and one of Malta’s top water polo teams will be mutually beneficial to both parties.”
Gaming operators live in a business reality of continuous change but it is evident that the whole industry is currently undergoing through a significant shift. One area that is constantly under scrutiny and focus is the quality of customer support offered by operators and the general gaming community at large. The need to strike a balance between providing top support and maximising returns has never been as relevant as now. Add to this the need for 24/7 support, across multiple languages, and the challenge is real. This is creating a growing need for gaming companies to adopt technologies which optimise efficiency while protecting profit margins and managing costs.
Against this backdrop, BMIT Technologies has launched a new tool to offer an effective and innovative customer support to its customers, worldwide. This tool, an AI-powered intelligent virtual agent, has been developed by EBO, and offered exclusively by BMIT Technologies for gaming companies.
The primary objective of the BMIT Technologies CX Virtual Agent is to automate the very notion of customer service. In the process however, it also improves customer onboarding, KYC (know your customer) processes, responsible gaming and marketing.
In fact, whereas EBO.ai builds and operates AI technology that empowers businesses by transforming the way they connect with customers, BMIT Technologies will be channelling this technology to its customers and help them unlock the endless power of Artificial Intelligence.
“At BMIT Technologies we pride ourselves in offering the best technology solutions to our customers. Our solutions are built on a resilient infrastructure and supported by the right set-up, a highly experienced team, as well as innovative thinking that helps our customers identify opportunities to enhance their business potential. We are very proud to partner with EBO.ai. Their specialism in the world of AI, as well as commitment to excellence and innovation, is in line with our business philosophy and portfolio objectives. We’re very excited about this partnership,” said Ing. Christian Sammut, CEO of BMIT Technologies.
Dr. Gege Gatt, CEO of EBO.ai added “We are extremely excited about the partnership with BMIT Technologies which has established itself as a market-leader and a true catalyst of digital transformation. At EBO, we believe in technology innovation and most importantly, providing customers with the right AI solutions to help them scale quickly and sustainably. Our partnership with BMIT Technologies will help us offer advanced virtual agents to a much wider audience, starting from online gaming. The Virtual Agent will help platforms tackle traditional challenges in the iGaming sector.”
BMIT Technologies CX Virtual Agent is consultative in nature and once a company’s unique context and problems have been identified, discussed and understood, the product creates a rich data set built on conversations and dialogues with customers across all communication channels such as Webchat, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, etc.
The product offers continuous improvement every week, improving both the language model in terms of recognition as well as the dialog workflows whilst scaling up and down based on growing or diminishing demand. Supporting over 80 languages, the CX Virtual Agent can cross-sell, upsell, detect churn and act accordingly whilst retaining the capability to handover to humans at any point.
But perhaps the most important aspect of the product is its data and analytics capabilities which are set to provide businesses with the rich data they are constantly seeking to improve their products and their marketing initiatives.
BMIT Technologies, together with EBO, will be organising a webinar to introduce this new service to the gaming community. Please visit https://bmit.tech/cx-va-webinar to register.
Finally, both companies are running a brief survey about customer support – and for every reply, they are donating 100 face masks to the Red Cross in Malta. Visit this link for survey: https://bmit.tech/cx-survey
The whole economy is going through a significant shift and one area that is constantly under scrutiny and focus is the quality of customer support offered by businesses. The need to strike a balance between providing top support and maximising returns has never been as relevant as now. Add to this the need for 24/7 support, across multiple languages, and the challenge is real. This is creating a growing need for companies to adopt technologies which optimise efficiency while protecting profit margins and managing costs.
Against this backdrop, BMIT Technologies and EBO.ai have entered into a strategic partnership that will allow BMIT Technologies to offer an effective and innovative customer support tool developed by EBO.ai to its customers, worldwide. The initial focus of this partnership will be online gaming customers, with both companies committed to further extend this collaboration over the next few years.
The primary objective of the BMIT Technologies CX Virtual Agent is to automate the very notion of customer service. In the process however, it also improves customer onboarding, KYC (know your customer) processes, responsible gaming and marketing.
In fact, whereas EBO.ai builds and operates AI technology that empowers businesses by transforming the way they connect with customers, BMIT Technologies will be channelling this technology to its customers and help them unlock the endless power of Artificial Intelligence.
“At BMIT Technologies we pride ourselves in offering the best technology solutions to our customers. Our solutions are built on a resilient infrastructure and supported by the right set-up, a highly experienced team, as well as innovative thinking that helps our customers identify opportunities to enhance their business potential. We are very proud to partner with EBO.ai. Their specialism in the world of AI, as well as commitment to excellence and innovation, is in line with our business philosophy and portfolio objectives. We’re very excited about this partnership,” said Ing. Christian Sammut, CEO of BMIT Technologies.
Dr. Gege Gatt, CEO of EBO.ai added “We are extremely excited about the partnership with BMIT Technologies which has established itself as a market-leader and a true catalyst of digital transformation. At EBO, we believe in technology innovation and most importantly, providing customers with the right AI solutions to help them scale quickly and sustainably. Our partnership with BMIT Technologies will help us offer advanced virtual agents to a much wider audience, starting from online gaming. The Virtual Agent will help platforms tackle traditional challenges in the iGaming sector.”
“Virtual Agents take the pressure off Customer Support agents and allows them to focus on the processes and business aspects which add value to the company’s value proposition. It’s about letting agents deal with the real problems thus reaching new heights in efficiency levels,” added Dr Gege Gatt.
BMIT Technologies CX Virtual Agent is consultative in nature and once a company’s unique context and problems have been identified, discussed and understood, the product creates a rich data set built on conversations and dialogues with customers across all communication channels such as Webchat, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, etc.
The product offers continuous improvement every week, improving both the language model in terms of recognition as well as the dialog workflows whilst scaling up and down based on growing or diminishing demand. Supporting over 80 languages, the CX Virtual Agent can cross-sell, upsell, detect churn and act accordingly whilst retaining the capability to handover to humans at any point.
But perhaps the most important aspect of the product is its data and analytics capabilities which are set to provide businesses with the rich data they are constantly seeking to improve their products and their marketing initiatives.
BMIT Technologies, together with EBO, will be organising a webinar to introduce this new service to the gaming community. Please visit https://bmit.tech/cx-va-webinar to register.
In just two months, the coronavirus outbreak has changed the way thousands of companies operate in an unprecedented way. As business owners and employees move online to try to navigate this new normal, others are working hard to ensure that they can continue to operate amid this global pandemic.
BMIT Technologies delivers services to hundreds of customers from various industries including online gaming, financial services, ICT, manufacturing, media, transportation, retail and hospitality. The tech company powers businesses to achieve their desired outcomes through harnessing technology and it is involved in the provision of data centre services within the Maltese economy, including provision of bandwidth, connectivity and co-location services, and the sale of hardware to third parties.
In response to the Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting chaos it is creating, BMIT Technologies has adapted its strategies to ensure an unprecedented level of diligence in terms of CSR. While this has always been a priority, new and innovative ways of conducting business in a safe and reliable manner are being implemented to ensure the safety and well-being of all clients and employees.
As companies, organisations and schools continue to move to remote working as part of the national and global social distancing measures, demand for efficient cloud computing is at an all-time high. From the onset of the outbreak, BMIT took several initiatives aimed at providing essential and necessary services to ensure that their clienteles can continue to run their respective businesses smoothly during this challenging and hard-hitting time. Among these initiatives was a swift response to support their customers by implementing teleworking as quickly as possible, in order to protect their respective workforce, engineering and maintain their client’s key systems during the COVID-19 crisis.
The tech company also chose to help and assist local organizations which provide vital support to vulnerable societies and which have seen a sharp rise in requests for basics such as food and rent. To that effect, BMIT recently also donated a substantial sum to two local NGOs: the Richmond Foundation and the Jesuit Refugee Service. Both organizations are specifically designed to support those who have found themselves on the fringes of society or who have slipped through the cracks, now more than ever. “From the start of this outbreak, we were determined to provide the best service in ensuring that all our services operated at highest levels of efficiencies. With our monetary donations, we simply wanted to offer some additional support to these two wonderful NGOs which are dealing with the fragile side of society.” said Karl Demicoli, Head of HR at BMIT Technologies.
Every
year, at BMIT Technologies we celebrate World Autism Awareness Day - this year
we are all teleworking, so we thought we would share our message on social
media.
The
Autism Awareness Puzzle Ribbon is the most recognisable symbol of the autism
community in the world. But why a puzzle?
The puzzle pattern reflects the complexity of the autism spectrum.
The different colours and shapes represent the diversity of the people and families living with the condition.
The brightness of the ribbon signals hope - hope that through increased awareness of autism, and through early intervention and access to appropriate services, people with autism will lead full lives able to interact with the world on the own terms.
If you would like to know more how to interact with people on the spectrum, have a look at these top tips prepared by the National Autistic Society - UK
