At Datactics, maintaining the highest information security standards has always been at the core of our operations. This unwavering commitment has recently been formally recognised with our achievement of the ISO 27001:2022 Certification for our Information Security Management System (ISMS).

It is a major milestone in achieving ISO27001 and a powerful validation of our continuous efforts to protect client data and ensure the integrity, confidentiality, and availability of our information assets. In this blog, I’ll share our journey of achieving ISO 27001:2022.

The journey toward ISO 27001:2022 Certification

Our path to ISO certification began in Q4 2023, with invaluable support from industry experts at Vertical Structure.

The process started with a thorough evaluation of our existing security posture, carefully measuring it against the rigorous requirements set by ISO 27001. This stage involved a deep dive into our policies, procedures, and infrastructure to identify potential vulnerabilities and areas for improvement.

Following the evaluation, the DevOps team implemented targeted improvements over several months to strengthen our security framework. These efforts came to a head in January 2024 with a successful Stage 1 audit conducted by NQA. This initial audit was instrumental, providing us with crucial feedback and pinpointing specific areas for improvement.

The rigorous Stage 2 audit

By June 2024, we prepared for the critical Stage 2 audit and welcomed NQA back to the Datactics headquarters for an intensive review

This audit was exhaustive. For five days, the auditors scrutinized every facet of our ISMS. The audit team delved into our operations, from software development processes to client support systems and internal IT protocols. The auditors even spot-tested Datactics staff on their knowledge and understanding of Information Security Management within the company. This thorough examination ensured that no stone was left unturned.

Thanks to the hard work of our entire team, we successfully passed the audit! Datactics earned the ISO 27001:2022 certification, reinforcing our compliance with global information security standards and demonstrating our proactive approach to maintaining a secure operational environment.

Beyond certification: A commitment to excellence

For Datactics, the ISO 27001 certification is more than just a formal recognition; it embodies our ongoing commitment to excellence in information security and sets the stage for future advancements.

Achieving ISO 27001 is a significant milestone for Datactics and is the result of hard work and dedication from the entire team as we aim to grow and improve our security posture, proving the team’s dedication to providing secure and reliable policies and procedures that protect ourselves and our clients.

This milestone is more than just an endpoint; it marks the beginning of an ongoing journey. As we continue to innovate and expand our platform, maintaining a robust information security practice will remain a top priority. Backed strongly by our senior management team, we are ready to build on this foundation, creating a more secure, process-driven, and impactful data quality platform that will positively influence the industry.

As we continue our journey, the ISO 27001:2022 Certification for Information Security Management System reinforces our dedication to building a more secure, process-driven, and impactful data quality platform that will positively influence the industry. As a team, we are excited to see what comes next.

About ISO 27001:2022

The ISO 27001 certification is recognised as the global benchmark for managing information security. Datactics accreditation has been issued by NQA, a leading global independently accredited certification body that provides assessments (audits) of organisations to various management system standards since 1988. The process was supported by Vertical Structure, who conduct technical security training, helping companies to achieve certification to international standards such as ISO27001.

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No one team can be all things to an entire company – Or can they?

 Last week the DevOps & Security Team here at Datactics got together to reflect on what our priorities are as a team and to plan out 2023. 

As a small team in an ever-growing company, we began the session by reflecting on what our role has looked like at Datactics, before honing in on what the key areas of focus are for us this year. After plenty of discussions, it turns out that (at least for all things IT) one team can indeed be a lot of things. 

What does DevOps do? 

At Datactics, you can break down what it is the DevOps team does into 6 main areas:  

• User Support (UserOps) – Supporting the company’s user base. 
• Systems Operations (SysOps) – Supporting the hybrid infrastructure.  
• Security Operation (SecOps) – Keeping the company safe and secure from threats. 
• Development Operations (DevOps) – Supporting the developers and making it easier for them to develop. 
• AI/ML Operations (MLOps) – Supporting the AI/ML engineers and making things work. 
• Client Support (ClientOps) – Working to keep our clients happy. 

In light of this, we shared some thoughts on what developments we’re expecting to see within IT infrastructure over the next 12 months, covering everything from self-service user support to AI and automation. 

User Support – The Rise Of ‘Self-Service’  

Everyone likes a bit of self-service. From online check-in to self-scan checkouts in the supermarket, we like to do things for ourselves. The world of IT infrastructure is no different, with self-service user support becoming an increasingly popular option for busy organisations.

People are seeing the benefits of self-service user support in the form of reduced costs and increased efficiency. Additionally, this frees up valuable IT team’s resources, which can then be redirected into other areas of the business. 

What does self-service user support mean for Datactics? Throughout 2023, we will be looking to make as many offerings as possible to our end users. Leveraging the ever-growing force of Powershell and other scripting tools, we want to equip our users to help themselves. 

(We do, of course, still look forward to interacting with our users when they undoubtedly have their “we forgot our password” moments) 

Hybrid Infrastructure: It’s Here To Stay 

This is one I often see debated. When I first joined Datactics, there was plenty of discussion around whether or not we could be a fully  cloud company (a discussion I am sure many of you have had yourselves, or are perhaps having right now?) – The answer back then was found to be no, we could not move fully to the cloud given the nature of the company. I am now into my fourth year and I still stand by that decision. 

We are a hybrid-cloud company making use of various SaaS offerings such as Office365, Jumpcloud, AWS, and more, alongside our internal services all running across our VMWare estate. As we continue to push into AI/ML and develop new platform offerings, I see this blended approach growing and we’re looking forward to working alongside our partner, Dell, as we expand.  

Alongside this, and overlapping with our ClientOps piece, we will be continuing to review and improve on the Datactics Platform Cloud deployment by using tools from Ansible and the Azure Marketplace – As clients continue on their hybrid journeys, we have a responsibility to make sure we have options for both On-Prem and On-Cloud deployment.  

Being hybrid gives us the necessary level of control over all systems that we require and, personally, I just don’t see cloud offerings matching that anytime soon (agree or disagree, I am always happy to discuss this one, so feel free to drop me a line!). 

Security Is King 

Unless you spent 2022 living under a rock, it’s hard to ignore the increase in the number of security hacks, breaches, and threats that insidiously infiltrated some of the world’s largest organisations last year. The constant threat of attacks like these isn’t going anywhere and the cost of a breach similarly shows no sign of diminishing. IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach report revealed that the global average cost of a data breach reached an all-time high of US$4.35 million in 2022. 

For us, whether we are trying to protect our infrastructure, increase user security awareness or add additional features to better secure our platform, security really is king. We make use of multiple tools at Datactics (both on-prem and SaaS) to accomplish our infrastructure estate’s security, which enables us to stay on top of all current threats and ensure that we are as protected as possible. 

This year, we intend to take things a step further and are currently looking at what’s involved in obtaining ISO or SOC certifications, in addition to maintaining our Cyber Essentials Plus Certification (the highest level of certification offered under the Cyber Essentials scheme). We will also be increasing our end-user security training and will be running a number of drills to make sure our people are as security savvy as possible. 

Empower your developers 

DevOps is now an industry standard term. However, if you ask two DevOps Engineers for a description of their job, you will get two entirely different answers. For us here in Datactics, we see DevOps as making the lives of our developers as easy as possible – Giving them access to tools that allow them to do what they do best (and quickly).  

With a number of big projects in the pipeline for us in 2023, we see this as a key role and are constantly increasing our automation offerings to the dev team to make operations and software delivery as efficient and effective as possible. Using Ansible, Terraform, and other toolsets, we aim to support the Datactics development team as much as possible in their projects; supporting agile software development without being a roadblock.  

The use of AI and ML in Infrastructure 

We are privileged to have an amazing team here working on our AI and Machine Learning offerings. In a short period of time, they have developed a number of different micro-services for Data Quality which we’re looking forward to seeing make waves in the market this year (keep an eye out for more news on this). 

As many of you will know, the complexities of bringing an AI/ML offering to market are massive and we certainly found this to be true. We worked closely with the AI team last year to make our offerings production ready by going through various deployment options and, of course, security testing alongside our partner Vertical Structure.  

As we go to market in 2023, we look forward to taking things further. We will be getting alongside our clients and leveraging the power of the cloud with the help of tools like ECS, EKS, AKS, and Tanzu, as we bring AI/ML to the wider Data Fabric market.  

Clients: We Love Them 

From initial introductions to POCs to production deployments, clients are key in pushing us to be better. They help to steer platform roadmaps and keep us on our toes. No matter how good the QA is, a client will always try to do something with our platform that we had not considered. As we support the Datactics client base in the deployment, support, and development of our platform, we cannot wait to see where they take us next.  

Datactics are lucky to work alongside a great client base – As we aim to fulfill our mission statement of becoming an indispensable partner we look forward to continuing to work with all of them throughout 2023. 

As 2023 stretches out before us, I look forward to working with the talented DevOps & Security Team (Paddy Donnelly, Victoria Wallace & Jessie Steenson) and the wider Datactics family to push the limits of what we think is possible; achieving not only the highlighted areas above but so much more. 

As a wise man once said, we want to go “To Infinity And Beyond!”

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In some ways, it seems so long ago since those early days in March but in others, it seems like no time ago at all. I do count myself lucky though to have had a job to do throughout which has helped to keep me sane and exceptionally busy Mon-Fri. I realise others have not been so lucky and for them, I spare a thought.

I mentioned in my last update about how here @ Datactics we were considering how a return to the office may look and I am happy to report that after a lot of hard work across all teams and a lot of measuring and re-measuring we have been able to run a successful pilot week and subsequently move to a 3-week rota basis for getting people back in the office.

For those still considering a return, I would say do not underestimate how much work there is in the project and to plan accordingly and be willing to change and roll along with trials and errors. For us the return has worked well, our distancing measures along with all necessary COVID-19 precautions have been taken and those that have returned to the office already have enjoyed it and reported no issues. We will of course continue to monitor the situation and to take on board feedback from all staff as more return on our rota basis.

What has all this meant for the support function well thankfully not much has changed for us in this new “hybrid” model of working. Well first off I would just like to point out that coming back into the office in a controlled and structured way was much simpler than the rush back in March to implement an un-tested BCP plan! The move to WFH was filled with unknowns and a few sleepless nights whereas coming back thanks to the work of the RTO Team was seamless.

Outside of that, user support has remained steady (consuming roughly 60-70% of the teams time) and project work has been able to kick on as well.

I do have to say though that this period has brought probably my most interesting user/laptop issue in my over 20+ years of IT! Now I will leave the user nameless to save the shame but let me ask all other IT guys out there, have you ever had a user set their laptop on fire atop a gas stove? Well, turns out we have!

Now thanks to our quick thinking user, disaster was averted by them heroically grabbing the singeing laptop and throwing it into the freezer (feel free to facepalm at this point) and well surprisingly enough the laptop does actually still work! Says something for the Dell build quality Pic inserted above for the unbelievers.

As mentioned our project work has been continuing thanks to the assistance of Paddy and we are now starting to look at the fun side of things in how we can automate some processes and start to move along in our DevOps story. Early reports indicate that the work done to date has increased speeds across the development processes and I hope that with more automation we will make even more gains. As with all things in IT processes, there is always more room for improvement.

Other infrastructure improvements have continued as well and we continue to tinker with and improve our Commvault/Wasabi DP/DR along with early testing all of which has proved successful. We have also recently kicked off another project one which hopes to see us obtain the NCSC Cyber Essentials certification – This is a massive undertaking but I know the team is up to the challenge and we look forward to what we can learn and adapt during the project.

In other good news, I was able to bring a Dell XPS 13 back from the dead Some open laptop surgery was performed, a hard reset completed and then an OS reinstall later and it lives. I have to say there was a certain sense of satisfaction in getting it going again and getting back to my IT roots of hardware repairs.

It’s hard to believe that it’s coming up on one year since I joined the team here @ Datactics and looking back over the improvements made across the companies infrastructure its impressive to see how far we have come. Adopting new cloud technologies, deploying new on-prem technology and bringing both together seamlessly into the start of the Datactics Hybrid Infrastructure has seen a lot of hard work, some long weeks and a massive team effort. And from here well Yazz (showing my age) put it best, “the only way is up”! My thanks again go to Alex, our CTO, and all senior board members for their support and as already mentioned, Paddy. Not to forget that all of this has been accomplished mostly during the lockdown of 2020!

What about the fun side of work? Well, thanks to a committed social committee, Datactics remains a great place to work and play Of late, mind you, I would also add a competitive place to work.

The start-up of our Datactics Riders and Runners club has been bringing out the competitive side in us all and Strava segment times are now a daily topic of conversation. Even in these early days, there are some scores to be settled with Marcus looking to take Matt on a few local segments. We have also managed to fit in a club commute along the Lagan Towpath which was good craic and hopefully the start of more to come.

In regards to my own downtime well I have been continuing to enjoy getting out on the bike (for non-commute rides), walks in the Mournes and now that the restrictions allow it: more meetups with friends and family. I have also added some more on the Bugatti build and hope to finish that off soon.

Its been a great Lego build and I recommend it to anyone. My local coffee roastery trials have also continued with the latest edition from Belfast Coffee Roasters whom I highly recommend – The Foundry Blend is amazing.

I have also been lucky to be able to buy some new gadgets over these past few weeks as well – My new cordless lawnmower is great craic (I especially love how it revs up and down depending on the thickness of grass) and this last week I got a Wahoo Element Bolt. Great piece of kit though it is very likely to make me even more competitive as I now get my Strava segments live and can see how hard I need to push…

Hopefully you own adventures continue and if any of you are lucky enough to get away on a stay or vacation I trust it goes well and that you all stay safe (and of course distant).

Right, coffee time. Back at home this week so more choices including a surprise addition of some Café Grumpy courtesy of delivery from a New York-based friend – Big shout out to Stefan.

Until next time. Stay safe and well. Dave

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DaveOps is back again after a 3-week break to give a quick round-up on what’s been going on at Datactics through weeks 11-13.

We continue to plan for a return to the office getting things ready and in my team, we are taking the opportunity to do some tidy up on the network and cabling. A time-consuming job but one which I am are will ultimately prove worth it once we are back in the office.

The planning is going well and things are coming together but as with all things during these strange times, it’s a plan that keeps on changing. Now, where do I start to cover off the last few weeks?

Interestingly in the past 2 weeks, we have seen an increase in day to day user support with roughly 60(ish)% of the teams time being consumed by those requests. We have had some strange ones this week alone with about 2 hours or more being lost on a funny issue with PowerBI and Azure SQL Server trying to make some visuals for dashboard – Thankfully working with Andrew we have found a workaround (not a very appealing one but hey, it works ).

Other than that, printing issues, password issues, access issues and all that stuff continue to raise their heads. 

The increase in that support has meant less time for the migration project but thankfully things still progress there and I would say we are now about 40% through with more work scheduled over the coming days. All in all the migration has been smooth with only a few funnies along the way and some things resolved only via trial and error as is the IT way.

I never thought when I start looking at our Jfrog Artifactory migration and upgrade that I would lose over 15 hours on the testing alone.

All sorted now though and the migration of the live system confirmed for next week. Here’s hoping there are no gaps in my documentation.

Thanks to Paddy part of the migration completed was on our internal Gitlab server.

It was migrated over and upgraded to version 13.x without issue and after a week of use on the new system no complaints from Development so we will take that. Hopefully, the migration will continue without a hiccup though I still admit to being nervous about what lies ahead and will feel much better when it’s all over. 

With the new infrastructure, we hope to introduce more ‘DevOps’ processes along with more automation in general for tasks that normally fall to the team. I have started working on some internal dashboards with Powershell Universal Dashboard toolset along with a set of VMWare PowerCli scripts which I hope will be the start of this.

With all things that I script we have had some successes and some failures but I think I am getting there and hope to have a version one out for testing with users within a few weeks. 

As mentioned in previous posts we have been rolling out Commvault as our data protection suite and had already required new licenses. That project also continues (about 85% completed) and been going well. For backup storage, we have decided to go with Wasabi Cloud Storage. The integration has been seamless and so far Wasabi is working out well for us.

I also credit them with giving me the best laugh for a couple of weeks. I was sent their latest marketing video during the week – Anyone out there in IT Admin/Storage Admin/Infrastructure this one is for you.  

Earlier this week I was asked by senior management to write down the team’s current workload and upcoming projects. Having not done this (officially) since the start of lockdown, taking the time to do it was both useful and scary. As a team we are busy and with 6-7 major projects on the go, I do not see that changing anytime soon.

I am thankful to my team, Alex our CTO and the senior managers for their support in all that we do, it’s only with these things that we have come as far as we have and will continue to progress. 

Next week as a company we have staff taking part in the online version of BelTech and as such, I have been lucky enough to get a ticket for the event and I am looking forward to it – If any of you have a ticket be sure to check out Thursday and the AI track where Fiona (Datactics Head of AI) will be a key speaker. I have actually just had a reminder in that today is the last day to register so make sure to get in quick! 

As always, I will end this with some thoughts on non-work activities. I continue to enjoy my leisure time getting out walking and cycling (even got a socially distanced ride in with some friends).

I have also been enjoying flying my drone (a Mavic Mini) and even though my footage is not great I have stuck it up on YouTube.

My latest one of Slieve Croob can be viewed here  (only 1 view so far do a guy a favour and give it a wee like ).  

Sadly, the Bugatti build is still stalled but I do plan on getting back to it soon. Last week I also started back into some climbing training and it turns out I am out of shape again for it so much more work is needed before getting out on that rock. 

Hopefully, your own downtime continues and you are not getting bogged down with too much work.

Anyone with any good adventure stories, give me a shout, I always like to hear about what people are getting up to.

As a company, it looks like we have gained a few more members of staff keen to climb and walk in the Mournes so hope to get out with them soon and maybe even get a Datactics drone video (I promise to practice more before then). 

Right, coffee time. My Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee from SD Bells is starting to run low now as are my general coffee supplies. 

If you have any good roastery recommendations give me a shout, always like to try new coffee (remember, local is best). 

Enjoy your weekend everyone, I am hoping for big things as mine states the Big Datactics Lockdown Quiz #6  

Until next time. Stay safe and well. Dave 

Dave Brown heads up all things IT for Datactics. Joining in 2019 and bringing over 20 years’ IT experience in various roles across the industry he is delighted to be bringing that expertise to this exciting new role for the company.

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Well, here we are at the end of week #10! Can you believe it? 10 weeks since all this (madness) started. There has been a lot of adjusting, new learning, new ways of working and now as the talk starts of a return to normal you have to wonder how much will simply go back to “normal” and how much of the “new normal” will become the default?

For us, we have continued to think over the past 2 weeks about how we can return to the office once the guidelines allow and as we think through all the practicalities it is becoming obvious that it will not be as easy as simply rocking up and going back to work. From thinking through how we use toilets and doing a virtual walkthrough to make sure hands are clean at the end of the process to figuring out how to actually get into the office, all these conversations provide some good laughs.

As a group looking into it, we are getting there though and good progress is being made for a return to the office. I, for once, am looking forward to it as I find I miss the buzz of the city.

From a work perspective, things have continued down the same busy path as they have been. We continue to build out our new infrastructure with the introduction of new hardware/software and migrating over from old systems.

Even after my years in IT I still get nervous about migrations, especially when making sure the command will move things the right way and not lead to an unexpected outage Well, so far so good and the migration is moving along nicely though the task list is ever-growing!

My thanks to the team for all the help to date and to those that have accommodated moves from various teams across the company.

We have opted to go with Dell hardware provided via our partner Softcat and I have to say that I am impressed so far with our choice – Though being an HP guy for most of my career I almost feel like I am cheating… lol

Outside of this, our (new) normal IT support has continued. I have not yet figured out an exact metric for this but from what I can see it would appear that we have seen a 30-45% increase in requests during the lockdown. The past 2 weeks have seen requests for new features (PostgreSQL & Kerberos), new (cloud) systems, issues with laptops to name but a few.

Paddy has covered off a good amount of this workload and for that, I am grateful to work in such a dedicated team.

The one issue that neither Paddy or I expected though was to be locked in our office It all happened when we visited to install the new infrastructure, we both came in, the door closed and when we tried to leave for a coffee the door was stuck! This led to a few hours of clambering in and out of the window for a few hours before the door eventually unstuck itself – I am just glad we had the kit in before it stuck…

Another normal IT task for any admin is making sure systems are updated. Being informed of a new update for Commvault this week I was logged on yesterday to deploy it. The update applied without issue which is exactly what I recall from working with Commvault originally – What I did not expect though was for this to lead to the realisation that we already need more additional licenses!

Turns out that since we deployed/purchased Commvault (just before lockdown) that Datactics has continued to grow in headcount

It was a pleasant surprise and I just hope that the quote from Commvault is just as pleasant and not a shock

I think that’s about it from a work perspective for interesting news. I continue to enjoy attending some webinars and online training/demos and am looking forward to trying out some of the software in POC as we look to see where (if) it can fit in our plans moving forward.

What about the all-important downtime? Well over the past 2 weeks I have continued to enjoy walking and cycling and even managed to get back into the Mournes for the first time since January. We got a late evening hike in up Rocky Mountain on Monday evening and it was amazing to be back even if the winds were crazy. Looking at my Strava stats as May draws to an end I can see that I have covered 382m in 33 hours and 4422 meters in elevation – An improvement on April thanks to a few longer cycles which included a lovely 70km+ spin on Monday down to see mum in Ards and then home via backroads that I have not been on since my youth – This showed by the number of times I took wrong turns but the less said about that the better.

The good weather has led to a pause in the Lego Bugatti build but hopefully over the weekend production can start up again.

Oh and the good news came that climbing restrictions have been lifted so hopefully it will not be too long before I break out the climbing rack and get onto some rock

I trust that you are all still enjoying the downtime and getting out and about in the sunshine – If anyone has had any adventures I would love to hear about them so feel free to reach out.

Right, coffee time. I’m still enjoying my Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee from SD Bells though not every day, just on those ones where I feel like I deserve it. Enjoy your weekend everyone, I am hoping for big things as mine states tonight with Marcus leading us through the Big Datactics Lockdown Quiz #5 in the “new normal”.

Until next time. Stay safe and well. Dave

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So, what have we been up to? Well, I am happy to report that things have continued to go well with only a few hiccups. I have been continuing to play around with Powershell/Jumpcloud to interrogate our JumpCloud LDAP, learning about Commvault’s new features and putting out fires including a couple of server outages. Needless to say, I have been busy.

We have also continued looking at our return to the office plan so that we are ready to go just as soon as we are told we can.

The old ones are the best – aren’t they?

A bank holiday last Friday meant no update but back at it this week and will try to cover of the past two weeks without being too boring. To start with, what did we think of a bank holiday Friday? Were you a fan? For me it just felt weird almost like I was taking a sneaky day off I much prefer my bank holidays on a Monday and thankfully there is not that long until the next one. Whatever you got up to, I hope you enjoyed the continuing good weather and made the most of it.

Powershell & JumpCloud

Through my work with Powershell/JumpCloud, I feel I now have a better understanding of what we have out there in the wilds and will use the information gathered to draw up a plan on how we can patch what we need to patch and upgrade what we need to upgrade. As I mentioned last time round JumpCloud also recently released a PS command set for their new Directory Insights which has also been giving me some interesting insight into how our directory is being utilized.  Have you tried Jumpcloud? In reference to updates, I attended Ivanti’s Patch Tuesday webinar this week and was happy to learn from it that Windows 10 (Build: 1809) has had support extended to November this year – Maybe that takes the pressure of some of you in regards to updates as it did me – Thank you Microsoft.

As my career has progressed and technology moves on its been a while since I had to use what I call the basic skills of fault-finding engineering – That all changed this week as we dealt with not only a server outage due to a failing raid set but also a good old (what we thought to be Windows permission) application install problem.

The server outage happened on Monday (what a start to the week) and caught me off guard as all had been OK logging off on Friday. After giving the raid set a couple of hours to complete its checks and not get very far I decided it best to head into the office and get started on a restore.

As I mentioned a few weeks back, a backup is only as good as its last restore so to say that I was nervously waiting on it to complete would be a giant understatement. Thankfully the finger crossing (and a good backup) paid off and the server was back online the same day and has since been backed up again

The application install issue was one that caught everyone out for a good few hours. Lots of smart people looking at lots of possibilities of root cause and drawing a blank. Enter some fresh eyes this morning and after a quick internal meeting, we went back to the customer with a list of possible fixes. It was a good Friday, we tried the first one and low and behold, the install completed without issue – For those old school Windows admins out there, any guesses as to the root cause?? Permissions? Effective access? Ownership? None of the above, it was in fact down to good old AV scanning We all know the importance of good AV maintenance in IT but sometimes, could you not see it far enough? Anyway, all’s resolved now and the POC is set to continue hopefully without any further issues.

What else? Well, it turns out that preparing to return to the office is a large task for any of us given the new government guidelines around social distancing, cleaning, face masks, public transport and all that good stuff.

As a company, we are making strides in our planning but have a bit to go yet. I never expected there to be so much to it. And it’s the small things that will catch you out as well – How have you all been getting on with your own planning? If you have not started yet I highly recommend you do as I am sure now it will not be as quick as anyone thinks.

From a security point of view, there is a lot of work ahead in making sure when we all return to the office that we do so in a safe and secure manner both in regards to people and systems. We’ve been playing around with JumpCloud, but for weeks now peoples laptops (either work or BYOD) have not been on corporate networks (asides from whatever remote access you have allowed) and instead, they have been on home WiFi, probably left unlocked for longer than normal, not behind office secure firewall and security but rather home security and the list goes on. When the green light is given for office returns, how are you going to bring them all back online safely? Just go for it and see what happens or with careful planning and policies in place? For us, it will be the latter and next week I will be turning my attention to exactly what that will mean for us and coming up with a policy which everyone can then be made aware of. IT Governance has been running a series of webinars of this subject which I have found very useful. If you are looking for advice on this area, check them out.

Anyway, enough work. What about leisure? Well as you can see from the latest 2 build pictures, the Lego Bugatti is taking shape and I hope to start on body work this weekend.

Its been a great build so far with a lot of intricate sections. I also eventually got round to looking at some stats from my fitness tracking and I have to say that one positive of the lockdown has definitely been in that area. Last year from 23/03/19 to 14/05/19 I had only completed a very poor 16 hours 46 minutes of exercise over 8 activities whereas this year from 23/03 to 14/5 I have completed 47 hours 49 minutes of exercise over 42 activities.

Now, there were other mitigating factors last year which added to my low number but even taking those into consideration I can say with confidence that the lockdown has definitely had an impact (for good) on my fitness.

I hope you too are continuing to get the downtime required to stay sane and have found a good balance between work and leisure. I always like to hear stories of what people are up to so if you have a good one, please reach out.

Right, coffee time. As a present to me, I splashed out this week on some Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee from SD Bells so as it’s been a rough week I believe a cup of that is what the Dr ordered. It may also help to increase my brain activity in advance of the Big Datactics Lockdown Quiz #4

Have a good weekend everyone.

Until next time. Stay safe and well. Dave

Dave Brown heads up all things IT for Datactics. Joining in 2019 and bringing over 20 years’ IT experience in various roles across the industry he is delighted to be bringing that expertise to this exciting new role for the company.

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Another week in working from home, another week of highs, lows and everything in between.

How have you all fared? Its had to believe that we have today entered a new month, April even in lockdown seemed to fly by. I wonder what May will bring?

Here at Datactics, we have had another busy week. We have started to form a focus group to start looking into what a return to the office (wherever that may be) will look like, we held our first virtual ‘Keep In Touch’ meeting with a full cross-company update, and outside of that, life in IT has continued at a fast pace. Thankfully our ‘KIT’ meeting went off without a hitch and it proved a hit with all staff; I even got a new Netflix recommendation out of it !

This week for me has mostly been spent working with Powershell running scripts against our JumpCloud directory to get an overview of all things applications.

I have to say it’s been great to be back coding again and I look forward to more with a new addition to the JumpCloud PS module today allowing even more insights across our directory.

I have fought with }’s and {‘s, if and or statements and overall tore my hair out (what little I have of it) trying to figure out where the missing character causing my script to misfire is located!

Outside of that, we have had general support issues, more fun with our internet circuit, laptop failures and some MS Outlook issues thrown in for good measure.

With so much going on it’s great to have a dedicated, knowledgeable and committed team to work alongside and my thanks go to them again.

With the increase I have mentioned over these past few weeks in phishing attacks we have today launched some further online training via ‘Trend Micro Phish Insight’. I am happy to report that early indications from the quiz results are positive, and show that Datactics employees have a good understanding in this area and this will no doubt continue to keep our infrastructure safe and secure as the lockdown continues. Thankfully I passed the quiz after completing the training as man, that could have been embarrassing

Patching also remains a high priority and this week has seen us patch various apps including MS Teams to combat the funny ‘gif’ flaw: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52415773 – If you have not already done so, please make sure that you are using the latest Teams app updates.

I also got to attend a few online webinars this week from the NI Chamber of Commerce and DevOps Institute; all those I attended proved useful and raised a point that I had not considered before: risk assessments for home working!

This, of course, includes making sure employees are working safely and comfortably but also goes further in regards to who can overhear and see what, now that our offices are dining rooms, family rooms, kitchen tables etc.

In an office, it’s easy to separate this out and if you need to make a confidential call or read a document you can simply get up and head for an empty meeting room – that’s not so simple at home.

We have already taken action on this getting other teams involved (HR for example from a well-being point of view), starting to think about how we can best gauge this risk and then what mitigation steps we need to take. Is this something you have all considered, or like me in the midst of all the other tasks for making a workforce remote, did it get overlooked?

Thankfully in the midst of all the work I have also managed to get some downtime and have enjoyed plenty of walks, a cycle, some more Lego building and a few Zoom quizzes. Strava reliably informs me that I covered 260.5km last month across all activities and recorded over 27 hours of active time.

Got me thinking, how much did I do in April 2019? I will maybe make a comparison for next week. As you can see from this week’s pics, the Lego Bugatti is starting to take shape and I hope to get more build hours logged over the weekend.

I trust that you to are getting some downtime and are not falling into the traps that have been discussed so much since lockdown regarding working from home; remember, that email that you “need” to send will still be there tomorrow (Monday in this case) morning. Looking after your own well-being will, in the end, increase your ability to work not diminish it – Take those breaks, get outside and allow yourself to properly unwind.

Right, think that’s it for me this week. On to the weekend which starts tonight with The Big Datactics Lockdown Quiz #3 – We will not talk about how #2 went but needless to say, there is room for improvement

I hope you all have a good weekend.

Until next time. Stay safe and well everyone. Dave

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As I have alluded to in these updates, things have still been moving at a hectic pace here, so perhaps being busy is the key to making the time pass quicker? How have you all been finding it? Not noticing the time passing or feeling each hour?

Whatever the case, I hope that you and your families are staying safe and well and remembering to look after your mental & physical health alongside getting everything done.

So, what has week #5 been like here? Well, have you ever started a week with a clear to-do list and plan, only to have it knocked out of the park by something outside of your control? That was my week, a lot to do and very little of it accomplished thanks to a fault on our internet circuit which had some interesting impacts on our remote access. Of course, no fault found when we logged a ticket, it just magically disappeared after 24 hours and a series of emails detailing in plain text and pictures the fault that “did not exist”

In past times, an outage such as the one we experienced would have meant a full stop to work until it was resolved, however thanks to our cloud services the outage only really affected a small % of our ability to work. That said, it has given me food for thought in terms of single points of failure and how best we can resolve them moving forward.

In other news, we have been continuing our rollout of Commvault which is going great and I am enjoying working with the product again. Outside of that, all other teams our busy with software releases continuing and the sales team flat out. Collaboration has continued to be strong with PowerBI still proving a useful tool. We saw another 16-18% increase in MS Teams usage alone! Unfortunately, I was unable to try and understand our Slack stats this week but maybe next week.

Security remains a high priority and this week again we’ve seen a further increase in the number of phishing attempts being caught in our filters (over a 20% increase on last week). How are you all faring on that front? The recent vulnerability found in the default mail app for Apple iOS has also been an interesting one to read about. If you have not heard about it, you can here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52391759 and if you have any users making use of it, now is the time to make them aware of it.

As I have mentioned before, looking after all aspects of our health is important, so even in the midst of a busy week, I was able to stop and take an hour out to attend an online webinar organised by NI Chamber of Commerce on mental well-being and enjoyed just stopping to breathe and take in some helpful hints.

The picture of the tree above was used during the webinar to describe resilience and I have to say I thought it did so perfectly. The tree may have seemed down and out but it bounced back and in my opinion, looks great. The other 2 points that have stuck with me are firstly to change what we call the current distancing from ‘social’ to ‘physical distancing’; the point being it’s about being physically and not socially distant; and secondly, a task which was to spend some time thinking about our best experience in work over the past 2 months. I have not had time to do the task yet but maybe next week.

There we have it, my week in a nutshell! It’s been one of ups and downs with highs and lows, frustrations and issues but the end is in sight and the weekend is upon us again with no fault found!

Anyone any big plans? For me, as you can see I have started my new Lego project (the Bugatti ) so will hopefully have time to get more of that done and other than that, some more exercise, Zoom quizzing and then on Sunday night it will be back on for virtual youth group with the young people from the church which is proving an invaluable resource for them.

Until next time. Stay safe and well everyone! Dave

PS – Got a coffee today from Drop Hopper Coffee which is back open. It was great if even just for those 5 minutes when waiting for my coffee at a safe distance to have a sense of normality.

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So, what have we been up to? Well, things continue to push forward and it is still very much business as usual with new backend systems setup and configured along with laptop setup and delivery to new starts working from home. 

I am pleased to announce that we are now entrusting our data protection to Commvault having recently deployed v11 and we look forward to working with them in the future as we continue to invest in this ever-important area. Speaking of backups, how are yours and how stringent are you on checking them? Is it simply a case of checking a log or a screen for a green tick? Remember, a log file or a green tick are not really worth anything. A real test of a successful data protection strategy is found in a restore test. Have you completed one recently? If not I would encourage you to make it a priority for the top of next week’s To-Do List.

I have also recently (virtually) met with a member of NI Cyber for an update meeting on all things security. Unsurprisingly they are seeing an influx of reports for attacks and scams making cybersecurity at this time even more important. With that in mind as I mentioned before we have been playing around with PowerBI to get a hold on what’s going on in our own infrastructure. There have been some interesting insights for example within the past 7 days alone we have seen 219 emails and attacks blocked by our security measures. I would encourage everyone to be on the lookout for attacks within their own infrastructure and ensuring you block any gaps.

Also using PowerBI we have been able to monitor some Teams usage and I am happy to report that collaboration is alive and well in Datactics with a 100% increase in member engagement and a 50% increase cross-team while working from home. This is just one method as we also use Slack but I am still working out how to monitor usage for it so there will perhaps be more on that in the coming weeks. If anyone knows of any methods to look at and analyse Slack usage please reach out to me. Statistics like those we have from Teams are invaluable as we aim to monitor productivity remotely. Luckily for us, it looks like everything is on track

The past 2 weeks have also seen an increase in general support issues with VMs failing, patch installs and even an outage on our VPN. The outage caused by an insignificant-looking config change highlights the need for good change control and rollback mechanisms. Thankfully with those in place, we reverted the change and the VPN was back in service in less than 30 minutes. My thanks again to all staff who have worked and assisted in keeping things running smoothly.

As I mentioned at the start of this update the 2 days off caught me a little of the guard but it turns out they brought some welcome downtime. Car washing, weeding, walking, cycling, chilling, reading and just generally not doing a lot made the days fly by. I have been enjoying walking in my local area and choosing to walk as the sun sets have brought some stunning scenes as you can see from my pics. It’s been impressive to see so many people out and about and enjoying their local areas – Makes me think though of how much exercise we would actually be getting if not for this lockdown. I am going to take a look at some of my Strava and Garmin stats so will share more of that later.

Remember to get your own downtime and make sure that you do not fall into the trap of “just one more email before I log off” – We need to close down and step back from our workspaces where ever they may be. A break is good for both mind and soul and should not be underestimated.

The eagle-eyed among you may have noticed that I included this time a picture of some coffee. For me, this was a new find. A roastery down in Cork Ireland and their coffee is amazing. Order 1 day and it arrived the next, great service. Anyone looking for a new brew should check them out, https://velocoffee.ie/

Right, some more working from home to do and then later this evening we have round 2 of The Big Datactics Lockdown Quiz.  Hopefully, what D: Ream said was true and “Things can only get better” as I did not do well at all in round 1

Until next time. Stay safe and well everyone. Dave

PS – More new additions to the home office setup. Can anyone spot it?

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It’s been an interesting experience for all and thanks to some logistics issues one that continues into next week

To get the new employees in and WFH we have again leveraged our Office 365 and AWS instances. Using the WebApps from Office 365 and Workspaces from AWS the new employees have been able to complete their inductions and get started on the necessary training. All the tech has worked which is great and I have heard good reports about how they have been performing.

Other issues encountered and overcome in week 2 have ranged from WiFi/Internet connectivity to an increase in email spam and phishing attacks. This week alone we have seen over a 40% increase in the number of email attacks being caught in our filters. My thanks to the quick-acting staff for catching the ones they did and for the good set-up filters catching the rest. A few tweaks made and hopefully, things will settle down next week.

I would encourage everyone to make sure that staff are aware of the increase in attacks and to make sure everyone is being vigilant. Outside of that, we continue to see an increase across services like VPN, Teams and Slack. To get a more accurate look at what exactly that looks like I have started to play around with MS Power BI so more on that to come.

The social side of the company has also continued (thanks to the committee) with the start of a Slack Chess Tournament, Virtual Coffee Mornings and this evening it is planned that we will all take part in a table quiz.

All of this is helping to keep company spirits up during these strange times. I look forward to seeing what they come up with next. Perhaps they will even choose a game that I know how to play!

For me, it’s been a busy week so even though the weekend will be another in isolation it will be welcomed.

As you can see from the pics I am still managing to get out for walks and cycles (all local mind you) so hopefully, a few more during the weekend will set me up nicely for WFH week 3.

Stay safe and well everyone.

Dave

PS – Did anyone notice the new additions to the home office? (sadly the dog is not mine – That’s Molly, she is WFH as well)

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In line with government advice, we made the decision to close our office in Belfast and to port the entire workforce over to working from home last weekend.

As the guy in charge of making sure everything worked as normal, this was quite a daunting task. Thanks however to some forward-thinking business continuity planning I am glad to see that as we approach the end of week one we have had very few reported issues and only one small instance of downtime (note to self, disable auto reboots ). This is even more impressive when we look at the statistics of our VPN and cloud services usage reports. Our VPN usage has increased by over 70% whilst MS Teams usage (chosen as our main communication method) is up 80%!

Here at Datactics, we use a wide range of cloud services (AWS, Azure, Office 365) along with Sophos XG devices for our front facing VPN and firewall. With the VPN this means our employees have been able to continue to use the cloud services without the need for injecting any new firewall rules directly into them.

We also adopted the nature of Daily Standups within individual teams via MS Teams which have been a real asset as people adapt to a new way of working. These short/sharp meetings allow us to keep up to date on the project and individual needs and I have enjoyed hearing positive reports throughout the week on how well these have worked. (The key here for anyone looking to try the method is to keep the meetings short and to the point)

Looking back on week one I do so with a sigh of relief that everything has worked so smoothly and am thankful to have a dedicated team working alongside me to make things tick.

As you can see from the pics, it has not all been about work and on a personal note, I just want to encourage everyone to make sure to get that downtime in each day.

Exercise and chill time is invaluable for mental health and wellbeing as we all adjust to this new way of life.

This week I have enjoyed getting out for walks (in my local area from home), cycles (again from home), flying my DJI Mavic Mini and Lego building (I even have a new kit arriving next week).

For now, it’s onwards to the weekend and then back to it next week. I wonder what week two will bring?

Stay safe and well everyone.

Dave

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