Cobweb

Funday Friday - Beachwear day

Hello all - we try and relax a bit on Friday at Cobweb... still lots to do but we have some fun while we're at it.   Today's been particularly good with a Beachwear day - shorts and sunnies all round despite the somewhat overcast weather!   

 

More losses of data

These sorts of things seem to be in the news almost daily now but when are things going to get to a point where it becomes a legal requirement to actively have a system in place to protect customer data? It almost seems now it's become accepted that peoples private data is going to be lost at some point and that is inevitable. Obviously some government departments are as guilty (if not more so) than private firms so maybe that is what is holding up the need for this legistlation?

Here's some more stories that have been appearing in the news that you may have missed!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/20/virgin_media_banking_loss/

http://www.epolitix.com/latestnews/article-detail/newsarticle/government-accused-over-new-data-loss/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/08/hsbc_hk_data_loss_snafu/

http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/stuart_king/2008/05/data-loss-epidemic.html  (interesting read)

And something a bit closer to home which is something that could potentially happen to anyone :-

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hampshire/7461409.stm

Mark

ISO14001 - Complete

I thought I'd be the first one to share the news before the marketing team get hold of it but we've now attained accreditation in ISO14001! This is an environmental standard that demonstrates a companies commitment to reducing waste and helping the environment in general.

It's a great achievement by all involved and if you think about doing something similar within your own company then I can recommend getting a team of people across the business from all levels that can help you achieve this. Without the team we've had here I don't think it would have been possible and I'm so proud to have worked together with them.

Mark

The end of the beginning?

Well what a week it is! It's been quite a while since I blogged and thought I should update you as to where we are. Today is the second day of our environmental audit for ISO14001 (which I'm feeling fairly confident about after the first yesterday) and then tomorrow is my last lot of exams at University. A very busy week! (Although going to Rome for a few days break on Friday is making me feel better about it)

The environmental standard is a very important achievement for Cobweb. It's not down to saving the planet but it's important for businesses to give something back to either their local community or even the marketplace as a whole. I truly believe that a company that is purely profit driven in it's strategic direction in most cases is destined to fail. With us having this standard in place it will enable us to monitor and measure many things that affect the environment. It will also ensure that we reduce our own waste and recycle equipment to some worthwhile causes. I'll be happy when we've achieved these aims.

And so, the end of my second year at university. The final exams are tomorrow and then that just leaves some consultancy for a company in Europe and then the dissertation for April next year, no problem! I've had a fantastic time doing the degree (I know it sounds masochistic!) but I've learnt a lot from it and met some great people. I think the adage you're never too old to start learning holds very true here and I can't wait to start something new once it's finished.

Mark

Microsoft UK and Microsoft USA

One of the great benefits of being an important partner to Microsoft is the access we get to the movers and shakers in the organisation. Being a Microsoft Gold Partner does not automatically entitle to the sort of access we get at Cobweb. I am typing this in my Seattle hotel room at the equivalent of 3:00 am in the morning because I am a member of the Service Provider Partner Advisory Council – but more of that in a moment.

Last Wednesday, I was invited to attend a round table dinner hosted by Gordon Frasier the current Managing Director of Microsoft UK. In attendance were some of the most important Partners for Cobweb including a number of the large Systems Integrators, the guys who design, build and deploy some of the biggest IT projects in the UK and worldwide. We were, of course given a very articulate view of the Microsoft’s view of the future by Gordon, but what was most interesting to me was that the other Partners showed a lot of interest in prospect of Microsoft opening up this “hosted” market place, indeed I picked up a couple of contacts who were interested in our SharePoint V3 and Hosted CRM V4 offerings coming later in 2008.

Back to Seattle...
It’s going to be a fun session later on this morning, my feedback is that the US Partners are taking te Microsoft move into Hosted Services hard, not surprised really, my feeling is that Microsoft is much more pervasive in the US than the UK and will take more market share more quickly, coupled with the fact that the release is only round the corner here. We are not just covering Microsoft Online Services though, the purpose of this group is for partners to get a much deeper understanding of how to get the best from the partnership and influence where we can, and of course, where appropriate share best practice.

Mark

Successful audit and off to Maastricht

Well we've just completed what was our fourth ISO9001 (Quality) and third 27001 (Information Security) visit from our external auditors. A few points were raised but overall we're very pleased with how the systems are performing and are looking forward to our ISO14001 (Environment) assessment at the end of May. We do try to be environmental friendly here at Cobweb!

I've had my two pieces of coursework back that were handed in early January and I'm happy with the results. It at least shows that I have an understanding of the topics covered which were Strategic Leadership and Strategy and Change, both very complicated areas, more so than I probably previously appreciated!

The University have organised for our MBA group to go to Maastricht for the week beginning 24th Feb so I'm busy packing for that at the moment. The idea behind it is to visit lots of businesses that are in the European market and some of the challenges that they face that may be different to ones faced in the UK. I'm quite looking forward to it as I've never been around that area before and I do like visiting new places!

Work wise when I get back two areas that I'm looking to work on (as well as many, many others!) are getting some content on our website (www.cobweb.com) that relates to the QA department and the standards we look to maintain within the company. Currently we have the three mentioned above as well as Microsoft Gold Certification and we are also looking at BS25999 which is a standard around Business Continuity. We do cover this area already in some depth within 27001 but 25999 just gives you that extra feeling of comfort should that unforeseen emergency happen. We've also had quite a few customers requesting more information around this area so it makes sense.

If there's anything that you think we maybe should look at as a business then I'd be happy to hear about it.

Have a good week whatever you are doing. I'll be doing a few trips in to Belgium to get chocolate so you know I'll be happy :)

Mark

Data Security Information

As my regular readers will know (both of you) I am doing my MBA at the moment and one of the areas I've come to is strategic data analysis. So, I thought long and hard about what I should cover in this area and suddenly had a brainwave! Why not do something that I can use for both University and my role here, then I give value to both workplace and University. That way I can do things on it during work time without feeling guilty too! Result!

So, what is it I want to analyse I hear you ask, well it's funny you should say that as I was just about to tell you. The area I've decided to cover is the importance of Data Security within a company. Obviously to a company like us it's critical as we manage so much of it for so many other people but what's it like for smaller companies who have less money to spend on this area, whats it like for a larger company and what sorts of budgets would they invest to ensure the data is safe, it can't be open ended. Can it?

The questions I'm looking to answer are as follows:-

• How important is data security to companies? Low / Medium / High / Critical?
• Are there markets that require data security more than others? If so, which?
• What price protecting customer data? As a % of spend how do the small compare to the large?
• How many data security breaches are there a year? Is there one area that is worse than others?

Those are some of the areas I've come up with so far as they will be areas of interest. Here's the bit where I say if there's anyone out there who can help me with this then hear my cry, HELP!

If you can't help but would still be interested in any data I do manage to collate then let me know and I'll send it on to you once it has been collected. (Obviously not compromising any data protection!)

As they used to say in Hill Street Blues.....lets be careful out there.

Mark

Doing the right thing.

Over the weekend while recovering from the Friday night festivities (Live bands and karoake competitions, don't ask!) I was browsing around some of the more interesting groups on Facebook and happened upon one that took my interest. The website is http://www.freerice.com/ and the basic idea is that you answer some questions, for each question you get right, some rice is donated to a third world country. It also tallies up how much rice you've managed to contribute too.

I think it's a fantastic idea and if enough people do it then the good things that come from it could be immense. So, here's me doing my little bit and putting it here for anyone to read. Please pass it on to as many people as possible and then all our little bits of help will tally up in to something much bigger.

One of the things that I mentioned about two months ago was around social networking sites and the access to information that people had on there. I make a point of not putting any pictures on there, no date of birth and definitely no contact details at all. Even putting status updates such as 'Mark is away on holiday for two weeks' could be translated into something completely different TO a thief such as 'Mark is away so please burgle his house!'

Sometimes putting less on social networking sites means that you get more out of them. The more things that are put in there the more risk you place yourself under. Read an article here - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7090096.stm

Mark

Motivating people to take action….

Why is it so hard to keep people motivated in delivering actions that achieve an outcome?  I am finding that it is extremely easy for people to get lost in the land of task management and lose sight of the purpose of the tasks.

I am an activist so it is extremely frustrating for me, but I understand that people have different approaches and styles, I also know that we need the difference to exist in order to achieve.

I would welcome suggestions on how you have successfully motivated people to achieve successful outcomes.  What is the secret?

All the best

Shelley

How safe are your children online?

I was reading a report this morning on the rising dangers of children online and how little some parents can do to monitor this usage. Being a father of three I find this quite alarming that people are really that naive as to what dangers their children may face on the internet. There are the obvious dangers of chatrooms and online messaging where they can end up talking to strangers who may have very dubious intentions in mind. Is it a case of out of sight out of mind? Would you allow your child to go off somewhere at night and not know where they are going?

I know it's going to make me sound out but 'back in our day' we never had this freedom and access to a much wider audience as children have now so were never exposed to the same types of dangers. If parents don't think there is any risk then they either don't care what their children see or are incredibly short-sighted. The things that are available to see and can influence a young mind are boggling. Anything is there to be found, even things that we wouldn't be able to comprehend being availble IS. I've been an internet user now for over 15 years and still things crop up that amaze even me. I would never let my children stumble across them and make sure the software and monitoring is in place to keep an eye on what they do.

I think that there should be some sort of training covering this introduced in to schools too. My daughter recently came home and told me that they were being given 'social responsibility' lessons in their school which taught them how people in a civilised society live together. Why not add the 'netiquette' in to that too? How children or younger people behave in society is a much larger issue and not one I'm going in to here but if they have things from the internet are influencing them to behave in this way then surely something needs to be done about it?

Another report about this is here

Mark

Hello, Introduction & Pub Club

Hello & Welcome to my first Blog, My name is Rob Savage and I work in the business development team at Cobweb and have done so for the last 5 ½ years, office based, I’m responsible for generating business for Cobweb’s full range of Hosted Solutions, services I really believe in, that add value to our customers day to day business challenges.

Being office based, tied to my computer is not always ideal, a change of scenery is always welcome so for me attending my first ‘Pub Club’ meeting last night in Bristol (Revolution Vodka Bar) was great.

It gave us the chance to meet new/potential customers in a laid back social environment and have a chat over a drink or two, speaking to people on the phone on a day to day basis is great, but actually putting faces to names makes a real difference.

So… for anybody wanting to meet the Cobweb Team, keep an eye out for the next event.

To be held in a Pub near you, oh….and the drinks are on us tooJ.

All comments welcome

All the Best

Rob

What's happening then?

Well it's back off to University for me next week (did I mention I'm doing an MBA?! :) ) and obviously all the preparations for that are in full flow. Lots of reading, lots of sorting out folders and making sure that pencils are sharpened and I have some clean, fresh paper. This year is all about strategy which I'm really looking forward to. Strategy is an area that I've had less exposure to than other areas of the business and in my role I have been fortunate enough to touch all areas and have a good understanding of how they work and why. This really helped me in my first year and helped bump up those exam results a bit.

Strategy is such a complex area that I'm interested in how you teach it to someone. How can you give someone the skills to help visualise and verbalise the future direction of a company and then get the rest of the company to understand that vision and why it's the right thing to do. Some decisions are much easier than others but some of them can have the 'hard sell'. Implementing systems such as ISO9001/27001 ones would be classed as one such change. How do you take a company that has a few rough round the edges processes and procedures and turn them in to a company that is process driven through and through? Not easily would be the answer.

Commitmant to the continued use of these types of systems is paramount to their success. They cannot be driven by a small team, an individual or a department. They have to become engrained in everyone in the company. Like any quality system (EFQM, Six Sigma etc) you are looking for consistancy and conformity to make sure that you set a high standard of what you are trying to acheive and then repeat that in all areas.

I received some really good feedback to the last post and would love to hear from people that have similar challanges within their companies. A Quality Manager role is a thankless task, but I've been told by a wise old sage of the industry:- 'We aren't here to be thanked, we're here to make everyone elses lives easier.'

Mark

More reason to beware

As more and more businesses move themselves on to the web then it gets easier for us all to be making transactions and putting potentially important data on to someones webserver. Most people would say this is of concern to them if they do order online whereas some people (My dad is a prime example) won't order online at all because they don't understand the risks and just think it's not safe. I'm a definite advocate of ordering online and ALL of last years Christmas shopping was carried out online, it was great! Not a mass of sweaty shoppers pushing in front of each other and then long queues at the till.

The thing is that when you read reports such as this one - here - it does make you a little bit more cautious when you think that these types of 'hacker toolkits' can be found so easily and so cheaply really. I've been fortunate in never having had any problems with online ordering (crosses fingers) but I think it's inevitable that it will happen, its just a question of when. You can see the quandry. Being a man the shopping thing goes against every fibre of my being. Is the risk of ordering online at the moment too great to stop me from doing it and sending me back to the scrums of the shops? Not on your nelly.

What are your thoughts on ordering online? Is it worth the risk or do you think there are safer ways of ordering your goods other than going to the shop.

Your thoughts please.

Mark

Where does the time go?

After returning from a few weeks away I checked when I'd last updated the blog and noticed it was almost a month ago already! It doesn't feel like it should have been that long but I think the adage that the older you get the quicker time goes is very true. I can't believe it's almost September already and my sister was reminding me to start my shopping for Christmas soon. (!)

In previous blogs I've mentioned the intention of Cobweb to become a 'greener, more socially aware' company and this has progressed since then. The more I've found myself looking in to what we can do the more I've found myself doing more at home too, not just to cut down on our carbon footprint but also to save money! For example one thing that I'd discovered was that just leaving a microwave on standby with the time on it was costing me £50 a year. £50 wasted just to have the time displayed! That doesn't happen any more. All plugs that are left in are switched off and not on standby, candles have been bought for the lower lighting needs rather than having things on a dimmer switch. Also, a single PC left on overnight and at weekends racks up an annual electricity bill of £53! (We have 60 people using PC's at Cobweb so that would be over £3000 a year for these machines to be left on at these times unused, money down the drain.)

What I'm doing is comparing what it cost us over the last quarter against what it will cost against the next quarter. Even if you feel that the whole 'environmental issue' is a lot of hot air then surely money disappearing out of your pocket will make people stand up and take notice. If you work it out over the year you could with a little bit of thought and effort save many hundreds if not thousands of pounds that you would have spent on what was wasted water and electricity. Is it really so hard?

Now, thats what I'm trying at home. Put that in to a business context where the waste is an infinately larger scale and you start to see the benefits of having something like an environmental standard in place. We may not be able to save the planet doing 'our little bit' but we can save money trying.

An interesting article on power consumption as an IT user can be found here

Mark

Do Human Resources add value?

As I am in the profession I am swayed to believe that HR adds huge value to organisations, however, this is not always the case.  Malcolm Howard, Chairman of Maris Interiors was recently cited in a CIPD debate to have stated;

“I don’t need someone with a HR title sat in a room working out policies and coming up with plans and appraisals. Most HR managers are useless and don’t understand business needs or people needs and rarely do they have any power or authority to change anything anyway. In running a business you have a responsibility to your staff – it’s as simple as that and I don’t need a HR person to tell me how to do that.”

Ironically, Malcolm Howard points resonate strongly with me, I believe that if the Managers do not manage their people it will have detrimental effect on the company.  Not all managers are in the position where they can carry out this role without help, and HR Managers, if good enough, will look to equip the Managers with the skills they require to be self sufficient.  In my opinion, HR will add the most value when they are able to influence the company strategy, implementing the requirements before the need and ensuring the business makes the most of the people now and in the future.

I believe that we are seeing a new evolution of the HR function and indications of the market show that this function has to add value through sound business acumen skills coupled with the traditional HR role.

What do you think?

Internet Users Scammed...

Leading on from the last post that I did I thought I'd follow it up with some statistics from a recently published report. The government-backed Get Safe Online campaign discovered that one in six adult UK internet users believed that it was the banks' responsibility to protect personal information online. 48% said that they didn't believe it was their own responsibility to secure their personal data online. 13% thought it was up to their ISP to do so. This niaveity could cause them huge problems if that data is comprmised in some way.

Almost 2500 adults were surveyed by the BBC website earlier in the year and of these 12% were victims of Internet fraud within the past year with an average lost of £875. 18% OF those surveyed has responded to spam messages and a further 10% had clicked on a link in a spam email.

More worrying though is that 50% did not have anti-spyware protection and 13% of users did not have a firewall installed on their PC. If you leave your house then you don't go before checking the doors and windows are shut should be exactly the same sort of security that you should look to have before logging on to the internet. If you leave the 'windows' and 'doors' open on your machine then it's just a question of time before someone lets themself in.

How safe are you? click here to find out....

Mark

And another thing while I'm at it....

The increasing need for data security is becoming more and more apparent and it’s profile within the news shows that the level of concern that is within industry is increasing dramatically. The amounts of different areas that you use potentially confidential data are increasing. They could be web-sites, over the phone or on documentation you send off to companies.

Protecting your identity is something that people should take far more seriously than they do at the moment. A recent BBC article which can be found here states that “a horrifying number of companies, government departments and other public bodies are in breach of data protection rules in the past year. Such breaches can increase the likelihood of identity theft.” Simply disposing of data like old credit card statements, bank statements, utility bills and the like in to your bins without shedding them leaves you wide open for someone to come and take the rubbish at night without your knowledge and before you know it they will be ordering things under your name. (Or worse!)

If you don't look after your data effecively at home then you could find yourself with a real headache should that information get into the wrong hands.

Mark

The second one from me....

The second posting on a blog feels very similar to what you get in a sequel to a movie, the back story is out of the way, you've been introduced to the character(s) and now you can come out all guns blazing. Think Lethal Weapon 2, The Empire Strikes Back, Star Trek - The Wrath of Khan, Mad Max 2 and you know what I'm talking about. Forget about Speed 2, Basic Instinct 2 and Matrix Revolutions, I'm hoping not to go down that route.(I'm not even going to bother with linking those films!)

Quite a few people witin the company have now started doing their blogs and obviously will have a different style in how they look to present. I'm going for the relaxed film nerd type approach so will reference them when I can as it makes sense to me. I've had some nice comments about the first blog, thank you for those.

Two of the things that I'm working on at the moment (amongst many others I hasten to add) are how we can look to use our Gold Partnership with Microsoft more effectively and also how we implement ISO14001, an environmental standard. I've always been a terrible stickler for turning lights off in rooms when I leave them, not leaving the tap running when I brush my teeth and other environmentally friendly actions. I thought 'thats fine, we should be able to get this standard (ISO14001) without too many problems'. How wrong could I be?! There is absolutely masses of documentation to go through and so many changes that we can make that will enable us to become a greener company and 'do our bit' for the environment.  We might not make a whole lot of difference just ourselves but at least we'll know we are doing all we can. It's my plan to have this implemented within the next six months. If you know of any environmentally friendly plans we can get involved in, let me know!

The Gold Partnership with Microsoft is a funny thing. We spent three years as a standard partner and then decided that we could achieve far more as a Gold Partner. The Gold Partnership was the same cost to us as a company to register but we wanted to get more customer feedback, more case references and the like. We had the technical people required internally to meet the requirements, we had the services needed for competencies and we had some great references from customers! Why not? It was, as they say, 'a no brainer'. What we are looking at now is how we can get even more from this relationship. Microsoft have some great resources but because there are so many it's difficult identifying all of the ones that will be of some use! If anyone out there can help me more with this or even if some bod from Microsoft happens to read this and can help I'd be happy to hear from you!

Mark D

Another Mark but don't get confused...

After seeing that the other Mark (MD) had starting on the posting of his blog here I thought 'hey I quite fancy doing that!' My role within Cobweb is to manage and monitor our Information Security and Quality systems. As you can imagine this can be quite challenging but also very rewarding at the same time. Cobweb have now been ISO9001 accredited for around three years and ISO27001 accredited for around 18months. These two standards help us to define the layers of both quality and information security that permeate throughout the company.

First, a little bit about me. (I am a well known chatterbox). I've worked at Cobweb since the very start (over ten years!) which shows how much I love it as a company. It's changed a lot since the early days and definitely for the better. I have three children and a lovely partner who I wouldn't be without. I'm currently doing a three year part-time degree at Portsmouth University to get an MBA, I've just finished my first year and am very lucky that Cobweb are flexible enough to allow me to do this.

So, what am I going to look to cover in my blog? Quality systems are a dime a dozen and from my experience and studies much of a muchness (Six Sigma, TQM, EFQM, ISO9001 etc). You can only get from them what you put in to them so little input equals little output. I'm keen to learn from other peoples experiences so if you are currently running an ISO9001 system within your working environment and would like to compare notes, please contact me. If you're running 27001 then even better!

I'll be talking about some of the challenges we face running the ISO systems, new systems that are in the pipeline (ISO14000 & ISO20000), how these will impact on customers, how we use customer feedback to make positive changes, how seriously we take the responsibility of managing customer data and many other topics. I'm more than happy to take suggestions from people as to things they may be interested in knowing.

Now I've got the initial who I am one out of the way then my next post will be more informative!

Please feel free to contact me