It’s Summit season for the ITW Arsenal. After 3 months of preparation and research, over 200 hours of planning for our leadership group – it’s time to rally our team at a lodge north of the city for 2 days of learning, mind sharing, and to honour some of our star performers … And of course, there’s one helluva party! Do you have a Summit? You should. Keep your Arsenal sharp. Read more…
One of the best pieces of business wisdom that Jay and I ever heard was “surround yourself with people smarter than you, and then get out of their way.” Now that my technical skills and certifications are dusty and expired, that’s exactly what I need to do or else I do more harm than good! I spend a good chunk of my time looking for, and spending time with others that we can learn from to help make ITW better, faster, stronger. If you ever took a philosophy class—or you admit watching Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure—Socrates was known to assert that the wisest man was the one who recognized his own ignorance. Read more…
Last night we attended the 9th Annual CDN Channel Elite Awards – and for the 3rd year in a row, our team was recognized in multiple solution categories. We netted 4 awards … you can read the story here. Today is a good day; the mood in the office is great and we’ve got this great news to share with all our clients. Jason and I are super proud of our team. Who doesn’t love the feeling of winning? This raises another question … Is winning awards just about beating the competition and trying to be the best? I think there is more to it than that.
We had a pretty good laugh at the lunch table last week about the companies that are calling home computer users telling them that their home computer has viruses or is running without important security updates. Everyone knows someone that this has happened to. My wife had this a few weeks back and walked me through the call. She knows me well so she played along with the call taking notes on their pitch. Even though she professed to work at an elite IT company that focuses on security, they said they were far better and there was no way anyone at our company knew what they knew. They insisted our home computer had issues. She then asked which computer (we have several). He said that’s not important – and repeated that we had issues. She asked for the computer name – he must know the name, right? – he again said that it wasn’t important – that our computers, data, and credit cards were at risk and we must quickly sign up for a program that would resolve all our computer problems. She then said she was going to conference in her computer security expert and the gentleman hung up.
Some of the other stories spoke of these Super Tech’s having a message on their screen regarding the issues with home computers or even people being told ‘I am looking at your computer screen right now and you have issues!’.
All great scare tactics and at the lunch table we found it quite funny…
BUT – then these super techs crossed a line – this weekend they called my Mother! Now, thankfully, my Mom has been schooled – over and over about the pop ups that warn of viruses and promises to speed up her computer….she knows they are BS….so she too successfully dodged the super tech’s assault. I high fived her and explained how her judgement was sound and why (she was so proud!)….but it made me concerned for all the people out there that would bite on these attacks….make sure you pass the word that these calls are happening and are a scam – even though you might know they are – about 1/5th of people will bite…see link:
http://www.securitynewsdaily.com/fake-tech-support-scams-dupe-thousands-0880/
With the world’s eyes on Toronto for the G20 Summit, many businesses are preparing for a unique challenge for their Business Continuity Plans (BCP) … government instated restricted physical access to their offices combined with extreme traffic, and an insurgence of volatile …ahem … ’tourists’.
This will be an interesting test of patience and business resilience. We have seen many requests for BCP modifications and remote access enhancements. We have been engaged in formal preparedness for emergency support and/or BCP fail-over for client systems to our Data Centre (DC) and Alternate Workspace (AWS).
An interesting thing, and source of pride for us, is that our existing clients of our DC and AWS have had minimal concern for disruption as they have tested fail-overs and ‘feel safe’ already.
These clients are confident in their mission-critical systems and the associated BCPs – and we take pride in helping with that. From multi-billion dollar asset risks to human life risks – ITW is helping our clients ‘feel safe’.
See some more thoughts on the G20.