Why we have to take cyber-attacks more seriously

By Sarah Morgan

The US defence secretary has said that cyber-terrorist attacks can be as devastating as a physical attack.

Leon Panetta said US intelligence showed "foreign actors" were targeting control systems for utilities, industry and transport to subvert computer control systems and wreak havoc. So the country is preparing to take pre-emptive action if a serious cyber-attack becomes imminent.  

"An aggressor nation or extremist group could gain control of critical switches and derail passenger trains, or trains loaded with lethal chemicals. They could contaminate the water supply in major cities, or shut down the power grid across large parts of the country" stated Mr Panetta in a speech to business leaders on the Aircraft USS intrepid. “Such a destructive cyber-terrorist attack could paralyse the nation and create a profound new sense of vulnerability," he continued.

Mr Panetta explained that smaller scale cyber-attacks are now common. In the last few weeks, many firms have suffered such attacks. He also discussed Shamoon attacks - where oil companies in Qatar and Saudi Arabia have had their computer data replaced with random code.

To know more about such attacks and to trace them, the US defence department developed tools, and a cyber-strike force to attack the source.

"Potential aggressors should be aware that the United States has the capacity to locate them and hold them accountable for actions that harm America or its interests, if we detect an imminent threat of attack that will cause significant physical destruction or kill American citizens, we need to have the option to take action to defend the nation, when directed by the president." Panetta concluded.

We all must be prepared for a cyber-attack, and to understand how much damage it can do. Companies are spending more money every day, to develop protection and to secure their database.

Cyber-attacks are the weapons of tomorrow.

Want to learn more about IT security?

Opportunities in IT security are appearing everywhere so why not take it? You could earn on average £50,000 according to ITJobsWatch.co.uk with the fasting growing sector in the IT industry. Find out more on our top four IT Security certs blog post.

About the Author:
Sarah writes for Firebrand Training on a number of IT related topics. This includes exams, training, certification trends, project management, certification, careers advice and the industry itself. Sarah has 11 years of experience in the IT industry.

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Government launching new cyber security squad

By Sarah Morgan

The Coalition has announced plans to create two new cyber security teams, which will look to strengthen the nation’s virtual defences.

Two new teams will be created to bolster the nation’s virtual defence, said the Coalition.

In a statement written recently to Parliament, the new squad will be created for the ministry of Defence (MoD). The minister for the cabinet office, Francis Maude stated that "attacks on government departments continue to increase”.  The UK’s Cyber Security Strategy got a powerful boost thanks to the £650 million investment in the nation’s digital infrastructure last year.

By DGH source: Technology Moral Dilemma blog
July 1, 211

A cyber security squad

Maude, promises to “Improve national co-ordination of cyber incidents and act as a focus point for international sharing of technical information on cyber security” . In addition to this, a Cyber incident Response scheme was launched by GCHQ’s information assurance arm CESG and Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI) earlier this year, which will be equipped to help the new force.

Maude stated that the cyber reserve will “draw on the wider talent and skills of the nation in the cyber field”, and will not use the armed forces unless needed. “The exact composition is currently in development and a detailed announcement will follow in 2013”.

In a document from the Cabinet Office, it states that “The Services will engage additional experts to support their work in defending against the growth in cyber threats. These will be supporting roles to the Joint Cyber Units across the full spectrum of cyber and information assurance capability.  A series of events are being held with industry on how the scheme will work”.

Industry watchers have welcomed the two initiatives. Raj Samani, UK CTO for security firm McAfee, said the squad would help fill the public sector skills gap when it came to cyber issues. “From the cyber perspective, of course ideally we would all want a full time ready and able cyber team capable of addressing the issues facing the UK,” Samani told TechWeekEurope.

He added, “However with the cyber security skills shortage facing all sectors, such an approach is absolutely necessary until we are able to have this full time capability.  This of course places greater dependency on the need for cyber security training and getting the skills of reservists at the right consistent level. What this, and the new national CERT really emphasizes, however, is the need for a strong public-private partnership.  Not only in terms of providing resources, but also the intelligence in terms of a real-time and global perspective necessary in understanding the threats facing the UK.”

A permanent information sharing environment is going to be set up called CISP (no not CISSP for you security professionals out there). CISP stands for the Cyber-security Information Sharing Partnership . Maude said that his one is now in place since January. He stated that “attacks on government departments continue to increase”, so the

Industry experts and the government worked together on CISP, which will be open to critical national infrastructure sectors. Others will be able to have it later on in the year. Furthermore, the joint ‘Cyber Growth Partnership’, a representative body for the UK technology industry, was announced. This will consist of a “high level group which will identify how to support the growth of the UK cyber security industry, with an emphasis on increasing exports. In line with Government targets, at least 25% of GCHQ’s procurement budget is to be spent through SMEs to gain access to the vibrant innovation of these firms.” Said the government to confirm they will be increasing the proportion of cyber security contracts going to SMEs. 

Taking the opportunity

As the number of IT security threats continue to grow, the demand for the those to defend against it has become ever more important. IT security has become the fastest growing sector in the IT industry.

Opportunities in IT security are popping up everywhere so why not take it? Get the right security certification and earn on average £50,000. You can view our top four IT Security certs here.

Get your CISSP

CISSP is offered by the highly respected (ISC)2 vendor. CISSP professionals are always in demand and many businesses now require it. It’s one of the key certs employers and the government looks for to fill management-level information security positions. Having a CISSP demonstrates that you have a strong understanding of security concepts as well as the specific methodologies involved. It is very well known in the IT security community and has also become a requirement in many companies in order to join their IT security team. According to itjobswatch.co.uk, the average salary for a CISSP professional is £50,000.

About the Author:
Sarah writes for Firebrand Training on a number of IT related topics. This includes exams, training, certification trends, project management, certification, careers advice and the industry itself. Sarah has 11 years of experience in the IT industry.

How to defend yourself and your company from a DDoS attack

By Sarah Morgan

DDoS mitigation

DDoS stands for Distributed Denial-of-Service attacks. They have become increasingly popular and have gone up in scale, intensity and frequency.

There are a wide range of reasons for DDoS attacks, including political (hacktivism), criminal, or just simply for their own amusement; which makes anyone with an online presence a potential target.

If you find that your site or organization is under attack, it’s important that you report such attacks quickly to parties that are best positioned to help you mitigate, weather, and restore normal service.

Here are some steps you can take to take out the sting

Simulate your own DDoS attacks

Create a simulated DDoS attack on your network. This will help you or your management see the best options to mitigate when under a real attack. Here’s a simple video of how to perform your own DDoS attack.

Manage communications

If you do get a DDoS attack, make sure you are prepared to have a single point of contact streamless information sharing. This contact can keep more of the organisation up to date with short updates so everyone understands the situation. By already completing the simulation process mentioned above, everyone in the team will know their specific roles in the mitigation process and how they can continue ‘business as usual’.

Make a plan, and keep planning again

Make a call tree, keep it updated and in the same place so it is easily referenced. Call trees are an important part of every disaster recovery plan. They are a telecommunications chain for notifying specific individuals of an event. It is very helpful if you need to reach certain employees after hours to notify them of a situation. This is in order to make sure the mitigation process is contained and in order. It helps turn an attack into an incident as everyone will know their role after the simulation and the plan created from it. You should also have teleconference bridges (where engineers can coordinate response efforts), a troubleshoot bridge for application owners to report issues, and a security and forensics bridge. This will help with the confusion and add speed again.

In April 2013, Prolexic (a DDoS mitigation service provider) mitigated a sustained DDoS attack peaking at 160 GBPS and 120 million packets per second - which is a very heavy attack. In the video below they explain and show you how they did it.

Source: Prolexic

Defend your business with a Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) professional

You too can learn how to perform DDoS attacks and help companies like PayPal defend themselves against it. Become a Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) and earn on average £42,750 in the UK (ITjobswatch.co.uk). The CEH certification from the EC-Council is widely recognised as the entry into the hacking world. As an ethical hacker, you’d attempt to penetrate the networks or computers of your organisation or any organisation that hires you. "White hat" ethical hackers are widely sought after to help find and fix the vulnerabilities that would otherwise be exploited by "black hat" criminal hackers.

About the Author:
Sarah writes for Firebrand Training on a number of IT related topics. This includes exams, training, certification trends, project management, certification, careers advice and the industry itself. Sarah has 11 years of experience in the IT industry.

What to do when your projects keep failing

By Stefano Capaldo


Failing, over-running and budget-crashing projects are causing businesses billions in lost revenue.

Businesses up and down the land are wasting tens of billions of hard-earned resources in projects that run late, cost more than they should or fail altogether. 

A British Computer Society study in to project failure by Dr John McManus and Dr Trevor Wood-Harper looked in detail at 214 big IT projects over a period of seven years and found  nearly a quarter of all projects  (23.8 per cent) were cancelled  before they even got off the ground.

A more recent IDC report shows that things aren’t getting any better “Improving IT Project Outcomes by Systematically Managing and Hedging Risk,” by Dana Wiklund and Joseph C. Pucciarelli, revealed that 25 per cent of IT projects fail outright. Meanwhile, 20 to 25 per cent don’t provide ROI and up to 50 per cent require material rework.

The knee jerk reaction is to blame the problem on the programmers and the coders. However when you dig down into the figures however you find that it’s not the IT that’s at fault or the people creating and testing the code, it’s actually project management where the problem lies. The statistics show that 54 per cent of IT project failures can be attributed to project management, whereas only 3 per cent are attributed to technical challenges.

The obvious solution therefore is to do something about the project management, but what?  The answer according to an in-depth study “The Benefits of Training and Certification” by analysts IDC is to invest in training.

The IDC research shows (see graph above) an undeniably tight correlation between training, team skill, and project success and the research found that the three most important variables for predicting project success were;

• The overall skill level of project teams
• The percentage of project budget spent on training
• The number of hours of training per team member

Increasing or reducing any of the three variables would directly have an impact on the project success. Projects allocating 7% of the budget to training were significantly more successful than projects where only 4% of the budget went to training In fact, managers of IT project teams that meet most or all of their objectives provided each team member with 40% more training than managers of teams that achieve little or only some success.

The numbers required don’t need to be that significant; when preparing for a project, teams receiving 40 hours of training per member met their significant project objectives three times as often as teams that received 30 hours of training or less.

Finally the report also looked at the type of training that the teams received and found that there was also a close correlation between project success and certification.  

The research found that every relevant certification increases a teams performance with an "average" team performance achieved only when more than 40% of the team (see graph above) is certified, with 100% success rates achieved when over 60% of the team achieved certification.

The report should be a wakeup call to anyone embarking on a large IT project – or for that matter any large project.  If you want success then get your staff trained to expert level and make sure they have the certificates to prove it, if you don’t then be prepared for the same old failures, over runs and costs spiralling through the roof. 

About the Author:
Stefano is the co-founder and head of strategy education at Firebrand Training. He has 20 years experience in IT operations and services support, and worked in financial markets supporting IT infrastructures.

IT Security – the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

By Sarah Morgan

The Good – Wages increase for professionals in-demand

There has been an increase in the demand for skills related to security architecture and web application security according to Acumin’s latest salary index. The IT security recruitment consultancy reported that the average salary increase for similar roles in the past six months from £78,000 to £90,000 per annum, which is up from £75,000 to £90,000 in 2012. From the report, Acumin say that the reason for the salary rise is the increase in corporate web apps and a better understanding of the security risks involved.

The Bad – North Korea blames web outage on US

North Korea has stated that the US was performing cyber attacks on their servers which was preventing access to certain sites, according to reports. Some of the sites affected included the Korean Central news agency and the official Sinmun newspaper which are state-run media organisations. Foreigners and tourists in the capital Pyongyang reported that they had no internet access for several days.  South Korea denied involvement and the US has no comments. Others are suggesting hacker groups around the world are responsible, but no evidence has been found as to if it was an attack or if anyone was involved at all.

And the Ugly: Organisations strengthen their cyber insurance

Cyber insurance prices have increased dramatically. According to insurance broker Marsh, there was a 33% rise in 2012 from the year before. They found that the sectors most keen to insure themselves against the financial consequences of a data breach or cyber attack are the service and education sectors. The demand went up by 76% for the service sector and 72% for the educational sectors. 

About the Author:
Sarah writes for Firebrand Training on a number of IT related topics. This includes exams, training, certification trends, project management, certification, careers advice and the industry itself. Sarah has 11 years of experience in the IT industry.

Business as usual is an opportunity - eating monster

By Stefano Capaldo

If you had to make the choice between innovation and business as usual, I’m willing to bet that 99.99% of you would plump for innovation. So why is it that businesses spend so much time fire-fighting and so little time being innovative?  For most businesses the answer is ‘because we have to.’ Systems will always need updating and fixing and things will always go wrong and you need to fix them, servers fall over, disks crash and users – bless them – get a little confused and accidentally delete things they shouldn’t or forget their password.

Unfortunately most businesses can’t afford the luxury of having dedicated people on standby should a server fall over or an application crash or a price needs changing on the website. The consequence of this is your IT department and the development teams get called off the new revenue generating projects to deal with the crashes and the problems.  In a nutshell, business as usual is a great big opportunity-eating monster.

By and large IT departments were not created to fix old applications, mend failing hardware or to answer the dumb-ass support questions of the rest of the business. They’re there to serve the business, creating IT solutions, making the business more efficient and to bringing in new revenue. Alas over the years this role has been forgotten and instead the IT departments now spend their time waiting on business as usual and attending to her every need, and she’s a demanding customer.

So what can a business do to improve the situation? The answer is to give the business as usual problem to someone else better suited to deal with it and to make sure that when you build the applications they’re built and managed properly, and that the people fixing the problems are capable of fixing the problems.

A report by analysts IDC showed that experts ie trained IT professionals with certification spent far less time on business as usual, and were able to spend more time on being innovative. According to the survey, experts in archiving and retrieval teams spent 28% less time fixing problems, data backup and recovery experts spent 21% less time fixing problems and security experts had 20% more time to spend helping end users.

It’s a no-brainer.  If you are being swamped by business as usual then get an expert to handle the jobs, either in-house or in the cloud, or send your IT and business teams on some training courses and set your IT team free to become revenue generators and not a business overhead.

About the Author:
Stefano is the co-founder and head of strategy education at Firebrand Training. He has 20 years experience in IT operations and services support, and worked in financial markets supporting IT infrastructures.

Thank Firebrand it's Friday - Fifth Edition

By Edward Jones

Welcome to the fifth edition of TFiF (Thank Firebrand it's Friday). This week we look at cyber-warfare, the death of an internet giant and App creation for the web coding challenged. Let's get to it.

The death of an internet giant

Last week saw the quiet passing of an internet legend. After 16 years of dedicated service, Hotmail was finally put out to pasture by Microsoft to be replaced by the metro styled Outlook.

Source: Ryan Majeau

Final transition from Hotmail to Outlook saw the migration of more than 300 million live Email accounts, which equates to more than 150 petabytes of data (1 petabyte = 1000 terabytes). No doubt a majority of that data fell into 2 categories, social media notifications or Spam.

"Sir I have won lottery, need bank account to transfer my many millions, will give you 5%".....seems legit, here's my bank details and 4 digit pin code.



The real risk of cyber attacks

In recent years we have seen the rise of cyber crime and the increasing insurmountable danger in a world seemingly dominated by computers. Only last week Hackers compromised Twitter accounts from the Associated Press, causing Stock Markets to tank for following a false tweet claiming an attack on the White House.

Former Department of Homeland Security, Paul Rosenweig warns us that future attacks could result in far more severe consequences. Below are a few disturbing scenarios from his recent publication:

• Industrial Control Systems could be hacked disrupting dams, oil refineries and the national grid. Think of the riots following the New York blackout, or when that dam collapsed and Superman had to race to save the town from the onrushing flood (ok the second happened in a movie, but you see my point).

Source: www.complex.com

• Satellite based navigation systems could be manipulated affecting GPS data, planes provided with incorrect locational data, or you end up in a field instead of Tesco car park!
• For those that have seen Fight Club a similar scenario could play out where London, Tokyo and New York Stock exchange data could be wiped out. Did anyone say sextuple dip recession?

A free Windows 8 App creator...


Enough of the doom and gloom, ever wanted to tap into the App market but lack the programming skills?

In steps the Zipapp web site, this free resource allows you to create your own app without ever having to write or learn a single line of code. The web based platform allows you to create a variety of static pages within the application, using feeds from Twitter/YouTube/Facebook and any compatible RSS feed.

So if you want to create a Windows 8 version of your Wordpress / Google blog and have an active Facebook, Twitter and YouTube channels, in quick time, Zippapp can help you achieve this.

Check out this 8 minute video, it really is simple.

So there we have it, another week of Thank Firebrand it's Friday in the bag. Join us next week for more news, reviews and hopefully whacky goings on.

About the Author:
Edward is a member of the Marketing team overseeing the Content Strategy for Firebrand. Working in the Industry for 2 years, Edward has experience with Microsoft Technologies including SharePoint 2007 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Edward writes for a variety of Blogs and Publications on all things Technology. 

What is ISO 27001 and information security?

By Sarah Morgan

What is your data worth?

 

Information is one of the most valuable assets in any organisation. Data loss costs companies millions, not to mention the damaged reputation. The Audit Commission has recently stated that 50% of all detected frauds are found by accident. Poor supervision of staff and lack of proper authorisation procedures are a major cause of security incidents.

Any information collected, stored, managed and transferred is an asset. It adds value to the business and must be protected. It can be your customers’ personal details or confidential financial data and can be printed or written on paper, electronically stored, etc…

What is information security?

Because of the increasing dependence of information systems, shared networks and distributed services like cloud computing, organisations are increasingly more vulnerable to security threats.

The Chartered Management Institute did a recent survey where 72% of businesses admitted that they were worried about the financial impact of cybercrime. Over 35% said they have had experienced with such attacks in 2010.

One of the major causes of security incidents is due to poor supervision of staff and a lack of proper authorisation procedures.

There are several ways companies try to prevent breaches. Some set heavy restrictions on all information, making ordinary tasks difficult. While others are laidback and permit access to all, making the company much more likely to suffer from security breaches cyber-crime and fraud.

For a business to run efficiently with low risk, they need the right balance between the two: this is where ISO 27001 comes in, the international standards for information security management.

Why your company needs ISO 27001

The purpose of information security management and auditing is to ensure business continuity and reduce business damage by preventing and minimising the impact of security incidents.

Strong information security is only possible when the security objectives are set out specifically for an organisation so they can be identified and addressed.

The framework, also known as the information security management system (ISMS) - that ISO 27001 identifies, requires that senior management:

• Examine security risks, taking account of the threats, vulnerabilities and impacts;
• Implement a logical and effective information security controls 
• Create a reliable management process to ensure that the information security controls continue to keep the organisation secure

The PwC Information Security Breaches survey in 2010 found that “Two fifths of large organizations have been asked by customers to comply to ISO/IEC 27001” which continues to state that is is “increasingly becoming the lingua franca of information security”. Following the frameworks identified in ISO 27001 ensures your company that you are following the globally-agreed good practice with regard to the protection of information.

In another report by BSI, it was found that 87% of organisations implementing ISO 27001 confirming that the standard had ‘positive’ or ‘very positive’ outcomes, including an increased ability to respond to tenders.

Secure your data and information

We have two accelerated ISO 27001 courses - Lead Auditor and Lead Implementer. You'll learn how to plan and execute audits on your Information Security Management Systems.

These three-day courses are twice as fast as traditional training, and we're accredited by the PECB (Professional Evaluation and Certification Board).

Or get the latest ISO 22301 certifications - Lead Auditor and Lead Implementer.

About the Author:
Sarah writes for Firebrand Training on a number of IT related topics. This includes exams, training, certification trends, project management, certification, careers advice and the industry itself. Sarah has 11 years of experience in the IT industry.

Microsoft Training Camp #3 - How to play ping pong?

By Sarah Morgan


Microsoft recently released three insane commercials for its Asian markets. They were removed from their official YouTube page but thanks to the power of the internet have been brought back.

They're quite difficult to describe. But let's give it a try...

Windows 8 Training Camp: Piano

On this video you see two people playing the piano and ping pong at the same time. The video is meant to describe "work and play".

Windows 8 Training Camp: Watermelon

The second video involves three guys slicing up watermelons with their fingers to show the "power of touch".

Windows 8 Training Camp: Makeup

The third and possibly favourite of the three, is three women competing to see who can put on their make up in just 10 seconds without any mistakes. Symbolising the beauty and speed of Windows 8.

About the Author:
Sarah writes for Firebrand Training on a number of IT related topics. This includes exams, training, certification trends, project management, certification, careers advice and the industry itself. Sarah has 11 years of experience in the IT industry.

Thank Firebrand it's Friday - Fourth Edition

By Edward Jones


Welcome to the fourth edition of TFiF (Thank Firebrand it's Friday). This week we talk Firebrand Babies, no tech related ridiculousness, this week is all about the Firebrand Family. Although, as tomorrow is Star Wars day I may just chuck in an awesome video at the end, "May the 4th be with you", as I won't be able to say it to you tomorrow. 

So let's get to it....

Firebrand Babies!

Friday 26th April was a momentous day for Firebrand, we were joined by 2 new miniature recruits. Please join me in congratulating Gary Fildes our Apprenticeship Instructor on the birth of his daughter Clementine and Tom McElroy our Apprenticeship Recruitment Manager on the birth of his daughter Skye Joy McElroy. We are delighted to have two new additions to the Firebrand Family.

To ensure the organisation and professionalism of the Apprenticeship department remained intact, it was agreed that both babies would arrive on the same day, outside contracted working hours of course.

The new Recruits

In the blue corner we have baby Clementine, weighing in at 6lb 12oz. Whilst over in the red corner we have baby Skye weighing in at 7lb 9oz.

Clementine Fildes

Skye Joy McElroy

A series of remarkable events....

Both births are remarkable in their own right, however it wasn't until Monday when Gary shared with us the series of events leading up to and after the birth of baby Clementine that we realised quite how special Gary's efforts were.

His exploits in juggling the birth of his first born child, whilst ensuring he was back in work on time to train the Apprentices optimises the dedication of our instructors to both their students and their families! 

Here is Gary's run down of a frankly remarkable and somewhat amusing series of events.

 “26th April 2013 - the run down

02:00 the action started happening at Wyboston Lakes

04:30 Massive contraction in Room 331.. When I politely told my wife to keep it down as there’s a guy next door who has a SQL Exam in the morning.

04:45 Run around the centre..writing instructions for the apprentices on the board

05:10 arrive at Hospital

06:12 Baby Clementine arrives with 6lb 12oz.

I’m back sorting out the apprentices now and will grab Mother and Child from hospital for fish and chip day at Wyboston.

Thanks for all the help, prezzies in the office and congrats.  Marketing guys..I wore the T-shirt all the way through.”

Now that my friends is dedication! Here's the proof that they made it back for Fish & Chip day, I hope Gary changed his shirt...

Mr and Mrs Fildes with Baby Clementine

I'm also doubly delighted as a member of the Marketing department that not only do we have new additions to the Firebrand family, but also that in all likelihoods the first thing Clementine saw when she entered this World was the Firebrand Logo! (this is a joke, I'm not that crazy...)

May the 4th be with you...

Absolutely nothing to do with babies or technology, but seeing as it's Star Wars day tomorrow I thought I would share with you this awesome 60 second video summarising the first Star Wars movie, A New Hope. Which is quite fitting as we have two new hopes in the Firebrand Family (tenuous link?).

Happy Friday, hope you enjoyed this weeks instalment of TFiF. We're back next week with an amazing, undiscovered and FREE Windows 8 App creator. We'll also be taking a look at IBM wasting an inordinate amount of time and money on creating a miniature video at the molecular level, although I must admit it does look cool.  

About the Author:
Edward is a member of the Marketing team overseeing the Content Strategy for Firebrand. Working in the Industry for 2 years, Edward has experience with Microsoft Technologies including SharePoint 2007 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Edward writes for a variety of Blogs and Publications on all things Technology. 

Increase in cloud adoption and multi-cloud use

By Sarah Morgan

A survey from Cloud-management provider RightScale, shows an increase in both cloud computing usage and multi-cloud adoption.

Larger companies appear to be adopting cloud computing more so than companies with less than 1,000 employees. 77% of the larger companies had adopted cloud in some way whereas 73% of companies with fewer than 1,000 employees had adopted cloud according to the recent survey of 625 businesses, and IT development staff from RightScale.

The survey also found that 68% had deployments spanning more than just one cloud. The interesting area is in the increase in the provisioning of resources on multiple clouds. Over three quarters of larger companies adopted clouds, 77% of those are deploying across multiple clouds.

At a meeting with reporters and representatives of RightScale customers, the CEO Michael Crandell said he believes the use of multiple clouds has been steadily rising. “I think it was lower (before the first survey),” Crandell said. “That’s my gut instinct.” You save money, and multiply different applications to run on different hardware or to focus on core competencies. Cloud represents a lot of possibilities for companies.

However, security and compliance with regulations still seem to be a problem for a few companies. Crandell said it can come down to legal issues. Businesses might not want to risk putting their own customers at risk of data breaches. Crandell stated “It’s their attorneys who are dealing with that as well as ours.”

About the Author:
Sarah writes for Firebrand Training on a number of IT related topics. This includes exams, training, certification trends, project management, certification, careers advice and the industry itself. Sarah has 11 years of experience in the IT industry.

IT hiring at four times the rate of retail - Online sales boom

By Sarah Morgan


There was a 12% rise last year in hiring for IT and web design compared to a 3% rise in retail hiring according to research by specialist technology recruiter Greythorn. It was also found that growth in online retail sales is well above that of traditional retail.

The number of IT and web design roles has gone up by 32,000 over the past year. The largest growth has been in in the number of web designers, which went up by 19.4% (31,000 to 37,000 roles). The number of IT business architects and system designers has risen 18.8% (85,000 to 101,000).

• 32,000 IT and web design jobs created over the past year – a 12% rise
• Retail jobs rose only 3% over the same period
• Online sales growth two and a half times the pace of total retail growth
• Falls of up to 2.39% in retail pay, and steady increases in IT

Growth of Online Retail

According to the British Retail Consortium, there was a 10.9% increase in online spending in the year to February 2013. That’s over twice of total retail sales (4.4%).

Official statistics are not good for high street stores. The figures show that January had an 8.7% increase in online retail sales, whereas retail sales saw a 0.6% year on year fall in overall, according to ONS.

This is the reason for large online retailers significantly boosting up their IT teams, such as John Lewis who announced they hired 100 new staff in January 2013.

Research from Greythorn also shows a growth of 89% in IT roles placed in online retail over the past year, compared with the previous twelve months.

Mark Baxter stated “The list of high street insolvencies is becoming a roll-call and there appears to be no end of famous names struggling or going under. It is undoubtedly sad news, but there is a silver lining in the growth of IT roles. As online shopping grows, companies are increasingly investing in improving the customer experience and the back office operations supporting online sales. It is a key stage in transferring to a high tech economy. The number of specialised new roles is growing and that is only good news for IT professionals.”

Larger Salaries

IT job vacancies in the UK are at a record high (see our recent blog post), causing IT salaries to be, now in often cases, higher than those in retail. The average salary of an IT system designer is £37,092 whereas the average salary for a Retail Manager is £21,237.

Mark Baxter continued: “A career in IT is potentially very lucrative and the number and diversity of roles is growing rapidly. Obviously, there are specific technical skills that are needed, but it is a candidate’s market for experienced IT professionals who are either already in online retail or those in other sectors with transferrable skills. For people looking to retrain, web design and online retail offer excellent opportunities that will only increase as people vote with their feet and choose to stay at home rather than shop on the high street.”

Reeds 2013 ‘Salary & Market Insight Reports’ has been released and offers great insight into the IT sector. Andrew Gardner, Director at Reed Technology, explains the most in-demand skills for technology professionals this year in this interview.

You can download the Reed report here.

About the Author:
Sarah writes for Firebrand Training on a number of IT related topics. This includes exams, training, certification trends, project management, certification, careers advice and the industry itself. Sarah has 11 years of experience in the IT industry.

20th Anniversary of the World Wide Web

By Sarah Morgan

Today marks the day the World Wide Web entered the public domain. Just 20 years and look all that it has achieved.  April 30^th 1993 was the day CERN announced that the World Wide Web would be free to anyone.

Yep that’s right, CERN. The same research group that is currently smashing protons together with the LHD (Large Hadron Collider) to uncover the greatest mysteries of the universe also made www technologies available to world with British inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

Before the internet, we use to send letters in the mail hoping they would reach their destination within a reasonable amount of time.

The Internet Map (the top 350,000 sites on the internet by similarity and popularity)

This important date marks the beginning to a life of convenience, social networking and access to an endless amount of information. The World Wide Web has changed the world in more ways than we could even imagine. Here are some stats on how much the Internet has made an impact on us:

• There are currently 2,405,518,376 internet users in the world and rapidly rising
• The number of users in 2012 grew by more than 550% since 2000
• Hacktavisim was born and through social media it influenced many world events such as:
• The Arab Spring
• The overthrow of Tunisia
• The overthrow of Egypt
• The recent end to the CISSPA act in USA
• The 99% movement around the world
• There are over 1.2 billion people on social media sites
• Every month, there are around 800 million unique visitors to YouTube which is equivalent to 140 views per person on earth
• 72 hours of footage is uploaded to YouTube every month
• There are 40 million photos uploaded to Instagram every day

Source: flatclassroomproject

To find more interesting stats on the internet, check out the ‘How the Internet Has Changed the World’ infographic.

To celebrate this important date for the World Wide Web, the CERN team started up a project to revive the very first website to its original URL, a 1992 copy of the spartan web page — describing what the web was and how it could be. Alongside the website restoration, CERN aims to dig up and preserve all digital assets associated with the inception of the web, with the ultimate goal being to turn info.CERN.ch into a historical archive for future generations.

About the Author:
Sarah writes for Firebrand Training on a number of IT related topics. This includes exams, training, certification trends, project management, certification, careers advice and the industry itself. Sarah has 11 years of experience in the IT industry.