How the Digital Upscaler programme can help ambitious businesses

How the Digitial Upscaler programme can help you

Digital transformation used to be a very “corporate” phrase, focused on significant system and process change, as well as equally significant investment challenges. But today, it’s a necessity for businesses of any size, says Jason Roper (pictured), digital technology adviser for the Chamber’s Digital Upscaler programme. He explains how it feeds into the mid-pandemic themes of agile working and online engagement using the example of a business he recently supported.

Arecent Harvard Business Review survey reported 81% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that the ability to rapidly adopt new technologies, and embed them in their employees’ everyday work, was a competitive differentiator in their industry.

Organisations have reshaped their workforce, overturned age-old business models, and embraced digital technologies, from chatbots to blockchain, in response to the pandemic.

A March 2020 survey of 2,000 adults by Sykes Enterprises found that 60% said Covid-19 made them more likely to consider using workplace-provided health services in the future and that number has pretty much played out.

The physical, mental, and emotional health and wellbeing of employees and management is also a primary key to business success in these changing and challenging times. Informing and including the use of wellbeing technology needs to be an important factor of any current and future digital transformation plan.

HEALTH AND WELLBEING DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IS A GAME CHANGER

The Digital Upscaler programme supports, advises and drives SMEs to design, develop and deliver digital transformation via workshops and one-to-one specialist digital technology advisers including myself.

We use a holistic approach to being a “critical friend”, taking a pragmatic approach to helping deploy a robust long-term digital strategy, driving knowledge to ensure businesses make an informed and considered decision about any technology change or investment, of which elements of health and wellbeing are inclusive.

Take Game Changer Performance, a Derby-based company that helps professional sports stars achieve peak performance. It works alongside the Football Association and Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) at England’s national football centre at St George’s Park, in Burton upon Trent.

It identified this transformative opportunity of health and wellbeing in the workplace to help businesses improve the physical and mental health of workforces by enabling technology-based support and review.

The company enrolled on the Digital Upscaler programme last year just as lockdown hit. It was looking for support and advice in relation to delivering a mobile application via a health and wellbeing algorithm it was in the process of developing.

Game Changer felt challenged trying to understand the process of developing the algorithm into a fully functional health-screening Curve app that provided a health audit, as well as insights and analytics, at an individual level –while delivering anonymised data at departmental, regional and organisational level.

Through the one-to-one support and advice offered through Digital Upscaler, it was able to improve the algorithm development process to better integrate with mobile application development and connected to another Derby business, Bloc Digital, which developed its prototype application.

Jake Keeling, director of Game Changer, explains: “We wanted corporates to benefit from the same programmes that help our elite sport clients, something which would ensure their staff are better supported both with their physical and mental health to be able to perform at their absolute best. The Curve application will create a tailored programme for every participant. It will look at their lifestyle, movement and mindset and highlight areas where support would be useful.”

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION ISN’T AN OVERNIGHT PROCESS

Game Changer went through a digital transformation, having a steep learning curve on the insand-outs of application development and realising there is far more infrastructure required than “just a mobile app”.

Designing that long-term digital strategy is an on-going process which is an important thing to understand. Digital transformation is a fluid process that takes time to implement.

Don’t expect to transform in a few weeks. To be successful, you need to understand map and document your business end-toend process, which takes time and effort.

Once you have that, you can place your current systems against the process and identify those digital transformation opportunities.

If you’d like help driving your digital transformation, new product development or technology investment, enrolling with the Digital Upscaler project may be that “critical friend” you need.

HOW TO FIND OUT MORE

Need digital support? Businesses can access fully-funded support via two digital programmes managed by the Chamber, the Digital Upscaler and Digital Growth Programme.

Digital Upscaler, part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), aims to provide high-growth businesses across Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire with the knowledge, investment and capacity to scale up through embracing new technologies. Visit www.emc-dnl.co.uk/digitalupscaler

The Digital Growth Programme is designed to help SMEs located in Leicester and Leicestershire to improve productivity and growth using digital technology via themed action planning workshops, grants and digital advice. It is part-funded by the Chamber, ERDF and Leicestershire County Council. Visit www.leics-digital.co.uk

Businesses based in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire can access similar support by visiting www.d2n2growthhub.co.uk

How password managers are making businesses more secure

The majority of cyber-attacks are caused by weak passwords that hackers are able to crack in a matter of seconds – but employees aren't always aware of this. In light of Air IT’s recent password management service launch, chief technology officer Lee Johnson (pictured) explains the pitfalls of poor password hygiene and tells us how businesses can remove both the burden and risk.

THE DANGERS OF WEAK PASSWORDS WITHIN YOUR BUSINESS

The average person has access to more than 70 password-protected accounts. While most of us know our passwords probably shouldn’t be as simple as our pet’s name or our date of birth, it seems impossible to think of a unique, strong password for each of our accounts and be expected to remember all of them. So, many people end up using the same easyto-remember password across all their accounts. This poses a huge cyber threat – if your password is simple, it’s an easy target for hackers. If you’ve reused it several times, suddenly they have access to a whole host of accounts. If there is no password policy in place within your business, and employees are left to their own devices when it comes to passwords, your business is at significant risk of being breached.

THE THREAT IS GREATER AT HOME

The change in environment when going from the office to home means many people are less vigilant about cyber security than they would have been prepandemic, and personal devices are being used in a professional context they weren’t designed for. In addition, having a remote workforce means you may not have been able to carry out training or refresh your staff on the importance of password hygiene. Whether you’re planning on reopening the office, staying fully remote or introducing a hybrid of the two, it’s important all your colleagues are up to speed on best practice regarding password security.

PASSWORD BEST PRACTICE

To generate a strong password, you should avoid using personal details such as your name, date of birth, hometown or pet’s name in your passwords. It should be at least 12 characters long, consisting of a mix of upper and lowercase letters, numbers and symbols. You should also use two-factor authentication for your accounts where there is the option. This adds an extra layer of defence to your passwords as it requires an extra step (usually entering a six-digit code from your mobile device) to prove your identity.

PASSWORD MANAGEMENT

So how do we reach the seemingly unfeasible balance of having secure passwords we can remember, which aren’t reused across all our accounts?

To avoid having to remember your passwords off by heart or writing them all down, you can make use of a password manager.

This is a useful tool that creates highstrength passwords, stores them in a secure vault and autofills them on the login pages of your websites and apps.

Your vault is accessed via one master password, so you’ll only ever need to create and remember one strong password to access all your accounts.

Built by industry professionals, password managers are created with security as the top priority and your passwords are encrypted to ensure they’ll never be visible to anyone but you.

When used within a business, password managers can go a long way in preventing cyber-attacks and making employees’ lives easier.

Understanding the key cyber security terms

Navigating the language of cyber security is a minefield that complicates the online safeguarding process for many businesses. Sarah Knowles (pictured), principal security consultant at Nexor, explains what some of the key terms mean.

BS 10754: An industry standard providing a specification for improving the trustworthiness of systems, software and services

Cyber Essentials: A simple but effective Governmentbacked scheme to help organisations protect themselves Cross-domain: The act of manually or automatically accessing or transferring information between different security domains Denial of service: When legitimate users are denied access to computer services, usually by overloading them with requests Flow control: Ensure data only flows in one direction required to support the business process. Often delivered by a firewall (two-way data flow) or a data diode (one-way data flow) Gap assessment: Reviewing a system or process against a known baseline or standard to see where the company might be deficient

Information Exchange Gateway: A system designed to facilitate secure communication between different security and management domains Network security: Combining multiple layers of defences at the edge and in the network, with each layer implementing policies and controls Open systems: A system that allows entities from different enterprises to access information related to tags used in the system Phishing: Untargeted mass emails sent to many people asking for sensitive information or encouraging them to visit a fake website Transform: Modify the content or protocol for interoperability or security purposes. Sometimes referred to as a gateway Web guard: The guard messages secure information exchange for web downloads and uploads Zero trust: A security concept centred on the belief that organisations shouldn’t automatically trust anything inside or outside its perimeters. Instead, they must verify everything trying to connect to its systems before granting access