Before you take on a new employee, you interview them to find out about their experience and motivations. Employing a Technology Support Partner is no different – you need to find out about their business principles, working practices and other commitments before you make a decision to work with them. To do this, we recommend asking a series of questions which allow them to share openly and honestly with you.

Questions that elucidate, for example, about their specific industry experience and how they explain technology requirements to you, Let’s face it, for most of us, tech talk is a foreign language which needs to be translated into plain English – it’s imperative that you start these productive conversations before you make any commitments.

As well as being sensible, it’s important to remember that any Technology Support Partner will have access to all of your internal systems and data and, as well as the trust issues, they will play an integral role in your future business success.

To help SMEs have these very important conversations, we have compiled 10 top tips: questions that will help you ascertain if your prospective tech partner is the right fit for your business.

Read our full blog here and get talking. Employ the wrong partner and it could cost you dearly. Get it right and it will propel your business forward.

As part of our ‘People First’ initiative, we’re proud to announce that we have recently gained the accreditation of Disability Confident Committed marking the first steps on our path to becoming a full Disability Confident Employer.

I’m sure you share our vision for a society in which disabled people and those with health conditions can work in good jobs to fulfill their full potential. The fact that 83% of people will acquire a disability whilst in work probably indicates we are already working alongside colleagues who could maybe benefit from some extra help or support.

The Disability Confident scheme helps organisations like ours with the skills and confidence needed to recruit, retain and develop disabled people who bring commitment and energy to an organisation.

We intend on launching a series of Cloud Workshops showcasing the hidden and often untapped features within the Microsoft portfolio specifically designed to help people with accessibility problems.

As a Disability Confident Committed Employer, we have committed to:

• Ensure our recruitment process is inclusive and accessible
• Communicate vacancies and offer interviews to disabled people
• Anticipating and providing reasonable adjustments as required
• Supporting any existing employee who acquires a disability or long-term health condition,
  enabling them to stay in work

• Promoting at least one activity that will make a difference for disabled people

Please look out for details of our forthcoming workshops and progress updates on our Disability Confident journey.

The lack of multi-factor authentication helped criminals to steal usernames, email addresses, social media tokens and 4.7 million phone numbers from 21 million users of social media app Timehop. The app, based in the cloud, resurfaces old photos and posts by connecting to your social media profiles. “Access tokens”, which are allocated to Timehop by social media providers, were also taken and could allow criminals to view a range of social media posts without permission.

Multi-factor authentication is the process of confirming your identity in two different ways before access is granted to an account or service, such as a PIN or password, a secondary device such a key fob or card reader, or via biometric data such as a fingerprint. We recommend that all our clients implement a multi-factor authentication process to help protect they IT systems and data.