Welcome to February's Bits & Bytes

In this edition, we are excited to share our latest article on website spoofing. Whilst website spoofing has been around for a while, cyber criminals have aimed their sights at smaller businesses in recent years, so make sure you're doing what you can to prevent it!

We're sharing news on Paul Matthews' trip to Manchester for IT Nation Evolve this month and everything he learnt from peer group meetings and the community day.

We've also whipped up a brand new Byte-size Bulletin on Apple's new iOS 17.3 update to protect you from phone thieves who are after your sensitive information.

The rise of website spoofing...

...and how to protect your brand reputation

Website spoofing is when scammers create fake copies of legitimate websites that tend to look very similar to the real version, and often have a very similar website address.

Whilst cyber criminals often opt to make less sophisticated spoofs of large sites with the hopes of tricking less aware individuals, more sophisticated scammers have been turning their attention to smaller businesses in recent years.

In this article we’ll go into how and why you should be more aware, what the dangers are, what the cyber security and intellectual property implications of website spoofing are, and most importantly, how you can prevent it.

Prevent website spoofing.

IT Nation Evolve, Manchester 2024

Our own Paul Matthews journeyed up to Manchester last week for IT Nation Evolve, where he attended a peer group day and a community day.

The discussions on the peer group day were focused around security and recent advancements, but also featured company updates from our friends in the MSP community, a discussion on the CIS Framework for security controls which TFS is working to align with, and a lunch and learn session from Melvyn White at Axcient.

“The highlight of IT Nation Evolve was the community day, which had a great session from Dan Adams focused on leadership. Dan’s discussion around having the right mix of hard and soft skills is something that really resonated with me and TFS as a whole – it’s not all about hard skills and what you know, but also about who you are and how you interact with others, you’ve got to strike the right balance. Dan gifted us all a copy of his book, which was a lovely gesture, and I am very much looking forward to reading it!”

We cherish opportunities to attend events like these and be a part of IT Nation peer groups. It helps us improve as an MSP and encourages us to share our unique experiences with our peers so we all come out the other side with a better understanding of our clients’ needs.

How to turn on and use Stolen Device Protection on iOS 17.3

Apple recently released an iOS update?that drastically improves the security of your iPhone in the event of theft.

Last year we wrote an in-depth article on the iPhone security flaws that make it easy for a thief to steal your data if they know the passcode to your phone. There was understandable unease in the Apple community and the company responded with a feature that came out with the release of iOS 17.3.

This feature is called Stolen Device Protection, and adds two significant security features to your iPhone.

Learn more here.

Thank you for reading and sharing

Dan Adams' book sounds like a very useful addition to our reference library of books that make a difference in how we provide service. IT people need to learn to speak the language of business and focus technology on business goals. We await Paul's thoughts on the book with interest.

Apple's new security feature can't currently be applied to either my iPhone or iPad, so for now I will follow our previous advice and keep an eye on when updates are available. And maybe consider a device upgrade.

If you need any help or would like to discuss anything you have read in this newsletter, please get in touch: Simon Heath , 020 7572 0000 or [email protected].?