Case study: Site-wide cloud managed Wi-Fi upgrade at a school – with guest wifi

The project completed by Dan:
In the October half term, Dan completed a Wi-Fi refresh project at a school in Bath. We first run a survey of the area to be covered, this may include a heat map of the school and additional network cabling may be required. Wireless technology and standards are constantly being improved and more of a demand is put on wireless devices in teaching environments. A lot of school software is now cloud based and that relies on a decent wireless connection at all times. Dan installed 21 new Ubiquiti UniFi nanoHD wireless access points and a cloud controller. The new 802.11ac Wave2 access points replaced older ageing technology in the school – 802.11a/n. The new access points allow up to 200 concurrent users and a high throughput. With the cloud controller it allows the IT staff in the school, and our technicians to manage the wireless network from anywhere.

Overcoming the problems:
The school has a café that’s open to the public and takes card payments over Wi-Fi. That can present problems, but we setup VLAN’s and segregated the guest Wi-Fi and put other configuration in place ensuring that the network is PCI-compliant (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards) which need to be adhered to.

Other technology that we manage in the organisation:
The school have 70 iPads which us the Wireless network, which we manage via an MDM (Mobile Device Management) solution, and hundreds of computers/laptops. This year we completed a separate project for the school imaging and upgrading all computers to Windows. We also installed the school’s servers and disaster recovery solution, and manage the Office 365 setup.

Case study: Apple and Adobe upgrade – deploying new iMac’s for a publishing company

The project completed by Matt:

This November, we have completed a project to upgrade all Apple Mac’s for a large publishing company to OSX Mojave.
We first run an audit of all computers within the company and then recommend which ones can be upgraded to the latest version of Mac OSX and, and which ones are due for replacement and might not be capable of running the latest software. We needed to make sure that the Mac’s meet the specification required to run the latest Adobe Creative Cloud Suite, and we then installed the latest version of Creative Cloud and Office 2019 across all Mac’s within the organisation.

Overcoming the problems:
Not all Mac’s are capable of running the latest OSX or the latest Adobe Creative Cloud suite. A thorough audit first checked which ones could be reloaded or upgraded, which one’s needed a solid state drive upgrade (to make them run faster) and which one’s were due for replacement. We ended up supplying 7 new high spec iMac’s all with SSD’s and 16GB RAM ready to run the latest design software, with the rest of the Mac’s being wiped and reloaded. Our IT engineers need to be able to support Mac and Windows as lots of our clients use a mixed network, and the majority of publishing companies use just Mac’s.

Other technology that we manage in the organisation:
Moore SW IT also manage the publishing companies IT support. We recently completed over projects for them which included renewing the server storage, and disaster recovery, managing the Microsoft Office 365 cloud services, and we manage the security software and mixed Windows / Apple network.

Case study: Complete school upgrade to Windows – deploying new laptops

The project completed by Ryan:

During the October Half term, Ryan completed a site-wide upgrade to Windows at a BANES (Bath and North East Somerset) school. We are gradually upgrading all of our school and business customer sites to Windows before January 2020 due to Windows 7 become end of support with Microsoft.

“The specific end of support day for Windows 7 will be January 14, 2020. After that, technical assistance and software updates from Windows Update that help protect your PC will no longer be available for the product. Microsoft strongly recommends that you move to Windows sometime before January 2020 to avoid a situation where you need service or support that is no longer available.”

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/4057281/windows-7-support-will-end-on-january-14-2020

We first run an audit of all computers in the school and then recommend which ones can simply be upgraded to Windows / Office 2019, and which ones are due for replacement and might not be capable of running the latest software. In this particular school, one laptop trolley of 16 laptops needed replacing, so we replaced those with new HP solid state hard drive computers as part of the project.

Overcoming the problems:

Schools are often running to a tight budget. As Microsoft Authorised Education Resellers, Moore SW IT are able to offer discounted software which provides the school with a cost-effective software solution – the Microsoft EES agreement enables the school to install the latest version of Microsoft Windows and Office without licensing each machine individually.

With over 100 laptops and 110 PC’s, It’s not necessarily a quick job to re-image all computers. Using Microsoft WDS software, Ryan was able to create an ‘image’ with all of the required software installed and send that image via the network to multiple computers at the same time and complete this during half term, ready for the schools pupils and staff to return the following week.

Other technology that we manage in the school:

Moore SW IT also manage the school’s iPad trolleys, we recently renewed the iPad’s earlier in the year and setup the Apple configurator on a Mac Mini to deploy apps where needed to all iPads. We install and manage the Promethean 65-75” interactive touch panel’s in the classrooms, and the school’s Wi-Fi and networking infrastructure.

Cyber crime prevention

What can you do to minimise the risk of a cyber attack?

Cyber crime is unfortunately mentioned daily in the news and media today, there are a lot of big name organisations and schools getting attacked. Information about cyber crime is everywhere, but how is it relevant to you and what can you do to help prevent an attack?

Here are our top 5 cyber crime prevention tips, which will help businesses and individuals protect themselves in the unfortunate event of a cyber attack:

Top 5 cyber crime prevention tips:

Be smart with your passwords and always use MFA (Multi factor Authentication) or 2FA
Keep on top of software updates and antivirus
Delete/disable users that have left the organisation/business – review your network regularly
Make sure you have a solid backup solution
Think twice when opening and reading emails

Passwords

Always use strong passwords that are not easy for a criminal to guess. Avoid simple words such as “password” and make sure that you use a combination of lower case, upper case characters, numbers and symbols. This makes your passwords harder to crack. It’s also good practice to change your password regularly – ideally every month and don’t use the same password for every website, bank, email account and work network account that you log on to. If you did use a common password, a website gets hacked (out of your control) and passwords are leaked; criminals could know your login details for all services that you use. Never give out your password to anyone, keep them private. Always use MFA – Multi factor Authentication – such as authentication apps or codes that are text to you to stop a hacker if they do guess your password.

Software updates and antivirus

It’s a good idea to keep all software that you use up to date. This extends to operating systems: iOS, Windows, Mac OSX and software applications. Criminals are constantly looking for ways to gain access into systems via loopholes and vulnerabilities and once these get discovered a patch will be released. This is why it’s important to keep your software up to date. It’s also critical to keep an up to date Antivirus program on all of your systems. Antivirus software cannot guarantee that it will prevent a cyber attack, but you are much less exposed with an up to date, correctly configured and well known Antivirus product. At ONFINITY, we still find business networks occasionally with antivirus software expired, out of date or even missing on servers when we perform IT audits for new clients.

Disable users that have left and regularly hold Network reviews

Within business networks you should regularly be reviewing your systems with your IT support team. When did you last check the list of users on your network and see how many of them have left the business? When did you last change your Wi-Fi passwords – who knows your Wi-Fi passwords? When an employee leaves a business their network account should be disabled, they could still have access to the network via a VPN (Virtual Private Network) or the company email system. Regular reviews can help this. At ONFINITY we recommend that an IT engineer performs a monthly visit to discuss this with our clients and provide this as an option under our SLA’s (Service Level Agreements).

Backups

Make sure that you have a backup, that it is working and that you are including everything required in the backup selection list. There are a number of methods of backing up your data, tape, hard disk, NAS (network attached storage) and cloud backups are the most common types. All of these methods work, but need checking regularly – do you get email notifications each day informing you of the backup completion? Do you run a test restore to test the integrity of the backup and what is the retention period of your backup (how far back could you restore if you had a virus that didn’t get detected on your network straight away) At ONFINITY we are able to provide hardware backup solutions and cloud backup software that automatically backs up your data to UK data centres with encryption, with various different retention periods – ideally 365 days. Ask your IT support team to setup notifications of your backup completion, check what’s being backed up and how regularly.

Think twice when opening and reading emails

Email fraud: spam, phishing and viruses are on the increase. In an ideal world your anti-spam software or provider will block these threats before they get delivered to your inbox, but the anti-spam companies are finding it harder to keep up with the new threats released every day. The best advice is to always think twice when reading an email, if it’s an offer that sounds too good to be true, ignore it. If it’s an attachment that somebody you don’t know has sent you and you aren’t sure, don’t open it. If it’s a colleague asking you to make a financial transaction; speak to them in person before making any transfers – even if it has come from their email address. This may be obvious to some, but never give your details to any banks, Paypal, Ebay or any other websites that send you an email asking you to verify; this is a criminal after your personal details. Always ask your IT support team if you are suspicious about any emails.

Further protection

At ONFINITY, we provide free IT audits as an introduction to how we can help your business or organisation. This is a perfect way to have your server / network checked and receive a free report on any potential issues.

If you suspect that you have an infection on your system, please get in touch with us and we will be happy to help.

Further reading / links

Zephyr Regional Cyber Crime Unit

Types of Cyber Crime – The Windows Club

Free Cyber Training for Business

Donating Refurbished Computers To Local Schools

During February 2016, ONFINITY donated 10 refurbished computers to various local schools, in conjunction with Whitehorse Training in Bath.

St Andrew’s Church of England Primary School in Bath, were delighted with their free computers. Pictured above are Tom Cannon and Dan Padfield of ONFINITY, presenting Sue East and James Elliott of St Andrews Primary School with a PC for the office.

Sue East, head teacher was extremely pleased to receive the computers, which ONFINITY obtained, wiped and reloaded Windows 7 Professional completely free of charge.

ONFINITY are able to offer this service when businesses are upgrading computers and the grade-A refurbished stock becomes available to them. This is a perfect way to recycle unwanted technology and find organisations that might be currently using older computers and technology than the refurbished stock.

Please get in touch with us if you would like to be part of this exciting ongoing opportunity to recycle technology.

Donation Mulberry Kidz Nursery in Bath

ONFINITY are always looking for ways to recycle IT equipment and really like to help educational establishments that don’t necessarily have the budget to acquire the latest technology.

By regularly visiting nurseries and schools to provide them with IT support we come across the use of older technology – obsolete computers running Windows XP are still found in many schools.

Lucy Purnell, nursery manager at Mulberry Kidz mentioned that their nursery would really benefit from an interactive whiteboard and projector, but they didn’t have the budget to spend around £2000 buying a new one. We had kept this in mind over the last few months when we were relocating various businesses and upgrading their projectors. We were pleased to be able to save the nursery’s required items from other businesses: a projector, Smart board and sound system – and provide the equipment to them free of charge. The Nursery were delighted.

Technology waste is expected to top 65 million tons by 2017. ONFINITY like to do anything that we can to help reduce this and are in a great position to do so when removing IT equipment from businesses/schools when they are re-locating. Being able to give the technology to assist children with their education makes perfect sense.

If your business or organisation would like to donate any unwanted technology items and you would like us to find schools and nurseries that would like to benefit from this, please get in touch. Similarly, if you would like to put a request to us for recycled technology, please call us or fill in the form at the bottom of this page.

For a competitive quote on the latest interactive flat panels or interactive whiteboard please contact us.