industry news
Almost half of UK firms hit by cyber
breach or attack in the past year
Businesses large and small
are being urged to protect
themselves against cyber
crime after new government
statistics found nearly half of
all UK businesses suffered a
cyber breach or attack in the
past 12 months.
The Cyber Security
Breaches Survey 2017
reveals nearly seven in 10
The most common cyber attacks are via
large businesses identified
fraudulent emails – for example coaxing staff into
a breach or attack, with
revealing passwords or financial information.
the average cost to large
businesses of all breaches
over the period being £20,000 and in some cases reaching millions.
The survey also shows businesses holding electronic personal data on
customers were much more likely to suffer cyber breaches than those that
do not (51 per cent compared to 37 per cent).
The most common breaches or attacks were via fraudulent emails – for
example coaxing staff into revealing passwords or financial information, or
opening dangerous attachments – followed by viruses and malware, such
as people impersonating the organisation online and ransomware.
Businesses also identified these common breaches as their single most
disruptive breach, and the vast majority of them could have been prevented
using the government backed, industry supported Cyber Essentials scheme,
a source of expert guidance showing how to protect against these threats.
The government has committed to investing £1.9bn to protect the
nation from cyber attacks to help make the UK the safest place to live and
do business online.
cent of European organisations report an uplift in revenue as a result
of improved CX, while 77 per cent report cost savings. Yet, just 41 per
cent of the European organisations polled have appointed a board
level executive who is responsible for customer experiences, and
organisational disconnects mean digital solution functionality is not
meeting customer requirements.
Joe Manuele, Dimension Data’s group executive – CX and collaboration,
said, ‘The world has formed a digital skin and business, service, technology
and commercial models have changed forever. However, organisations are
strategically challenged to keep pace with customer behaviour. The digital
dilemma is deepening, and organisations need to choose a path between
digital crisis or redemption.’
Click here to download a summary of the 2017 Global CX
Benchmarking Report.
Hyperscaler demand fails
to undermine continued
colocation growth,
champions Aegis Data
New research conducted by IDC has found
that while 2017 represents a massive year
for hyperscale data centres, this will not
be at the expense of colocation facilities.
This is according to Greg McCulloch, CEO of
Aegis Data, who stated that the scalability of
OCP ready colocation facilities will provide
customers with a better environment to host
and grow their IT infrastructure.
In IDC’s latest report, ‘Worldwide Datacenter
Census and Construction 2014-2018 Forecast:
Aging Enterprise Datacenters and the
Accelerating Service Provider Buildout’, it claims
that while the industry is at a record high of 8.6
million data centre facilities, after this year, there
will be a significant reduction in server rooms. This
is due to the growth and popularity of public cloud
based services, occupied by the large hyperscalers
including AWS, Azure and Google, which is
expected to grow to 400 hyperscale data centres
globally. Despite this, colocation is expected to
grow alongside wholesale and hyperscale.
Greg McCulloch said, ‘The influence of
hyperscalers in the data centre market is
increasing by the year, but this won’t hinder the
growth of colo facilities. Customers are constantly
looking for the right solutions to better support
their IT needs, and colocation facilities are using
hyperscalers as a template for this success. Many
of the most popular cloud based companies such
as Google and Microsoft have invested time and
resources into becoming OCP ready and colos
have followed in their footsteps.
‘The popularity of OCP, particularly with
the hyperscalers, has trickled down towards
customers who are becoming more alert to the
benefits that this new innovation can offer. An
OCP environment enables customers to have
a more scalable solution that can be easily
upgraded to respond to market trends and future
proof requirements of servers even years down
the line. Data centres within organisations are
largely constrained, whereas OCP can easily
redeploy for different applications such as HPC,
reducing costs associated with application specific
systems, leading to space efficiency, flexibility and
lower operating expenses.’
April 2017 | 11