The Office (after Coronavirus)

WorkFromHomeC19

When the UK government took the decision to impose working restrictions in March 2020, the nature of office work changed dramatically overnight.

Not all the changes had a negative impact, people who could work from home found that they could be just as productive without the commute to the office.

We look at the lessons learnt and how they can be implemented to make the new normal a better place to work.

Working from home

It’s been a revelation just how convenient working from home is, both for the employer and the employee. No travel time meaning more productive hours and less pollution from driving, and, if your job allows it, more flexible working hours giving you more quality time with your family, fewer distractions (in some cases) and no arguments over who used the your milk.

Going forward, it’s easy to see that employees could use this to their advantage, downsizing their office as it only has to accommodate a fraction of the workforce while the remainder work from home or ‘hot desk’ in shifts.

First, lets look at how working from home could be a long term change, and at what a work from home office might need.

Home Workstation & Hardware

Home Office GDPR
Working From Home

It’s more than likely that your work from home employees will need a computer, chances are they already have a computer of some sort at home, but with the ubiquitousness of tablets and smartphones, it may well be that their home computer is somewhat outdated.

There are a number of options available here depending on the person and their position in the company.

The least expensive method would be to use a remote desktop session (even running it from a ‘live CD or USB rather than from their computers operating system) This requires little processing and memory power from the remote end as all the heavy work is done at the server end (typically cloud based or a server at your office)

You could provide a laptop for work use, giving you control over the spec and budget of the machines your staff are using, or you could give them a budget to buy their own devices for work use.

Unless particular processing power is needed on the remote devices, say for graphics work, then using a laptop is absolutely the best option. There’s a choice of touch screen, stylus input, tablet/laptop or standard laptops again depending on your employees needs.

Additional screens can be setup, especially if your staff are used to using them in the office, wide screens and rotatable screens are ideal for managing large spreadsheets or word processing.

Having a decent camera, microphone and speakers are also very useful especially when you’re running video conferencing calls or your remote workers are contacting clients. If the built in offerings are a bit low quality, it’s easy to buy and use external devices.

If the remote workers home space allows it, have a separate screen that can be dedicated to video calls and conferencing, leaving this logged into an office Microsoft Team meeting (or zoom, Skype or any other conferencing app) all day long so all your remote workers can see and speak to each other without having to start up a specific session. This helps give the office/team feeling to working and means that your staff can keep in contact as they would do normally, such as chitchat over a coffee in the office, or asking for help from colleges while their working.

If the remote workspace is not a dedicated area, such as a home office, then having hardware that can be setup and then packs away quickly and tidily is essential. If your remote workers are working on the dining room table, having two 20 inch monitors in place all the time would really get in the way!

Your remote workers might also need access to a printer or scanner. Depending on what quality they need and how often they need it, there are several options. From providing a multi-function printer/scanner at home for every day print jobs, to setting up the office printer to allow remote print access, and using the camera on the users smartphone as a scanner.

Home Broadband

Broadband
Home Broadband

In most cases, a lightning fast broadband connection at the remote end is not required, the amount of data sent to and from a remote worker can be kept quite light or buffered and cached when the broadband is less busy.

If there are other people sharing the broadband, hogging all the bandwidth when your remote user downloads a set of files is soon going to be picked up on, so using technology you can cache these files on the remote workstation over night, or access them via remote desktop software.

Carrying out a survey of your remote workers homes could help identify better broadband deals, and help your remote workers position their workstations and WiFi access points/routers in the best locations for connectivity and speed.

Compliance

It’s essential that your remote workers remain compliant with various legislation while working from home, Health and Safety and GDPR are the two that immediately spring to mind, but there may be others that you need to take into account.

GDPR General Data Protection Regulation
GDPR (DPA2018)

GDPR, the Data Protection Ace 2018, policies you have in place will need assessing and updating to cover the new situation, but this should not be a barrier to moving to this new working environment.

If home PC’s, tablets, smartphones or other devices are being used to process personal information, they should be assessed and managed according to your GDPR policy.

Business information and household information should be strictly segregated, and management put in place to protect the business data.

Assessing the working conditions for your remote users will quickly identify areas that need to be covered under your GDPR policy, this may include things like; screen privacy, data storage, printing and destroying printed material, transporting data between the office and remote office and data encryption.

Meeting Room & Reception

With your office staff working from home, it means the office doesn’t need to be so big. In lots of situations, a meeting room, reception area and one or two offices would suffice.

This means the meeting room can be large enough to accommodate clients and observe the social distancing rules, and and office workers in the building could work from one of the offices meaning they are isolated from other people while they’re in.

Your reception could be fitted with a client-facing monitor, and any ‘walk in’ clients could still speak with any member of staff via video conferencing.

A networked scanner and printer could also be made available to share documents.

Hot desking would need a slight revamp, with maybe just a docking station and screen left behind when a users leaves, and a wipe down of all surfaces before they are used again.

Keeping it all together

Making sure your company data is available to your remote workers in a reliable and secure way is essential. There are a number of options for you to look at.

Firstly there are cloud only solutions, services like Microsoft and Google. They are the big boys but that is a benefit; their platforms are reliable and robust and have a range of options and prices that give you access to different amounts of storage space and different tools.

Then there are hybrid solutions, part cloud based and part office-server based. These setups allow you to make use of all the transport facilities of cloud based connectivity, but with the security and peace of mind of an office-based server.

Then there is the pure office-only solution, letting you manage and configure every aspect of the system with an in-house server.

Each option has it’s pros and cons and are suitable to different types of work, in some situations you might combine different elements of all three setups to offer the right connectivity and security for your remote workers.

Having control over your data is essential. Being able to audit it’s use, monitor for breaches in your security, and remotely destroy data from a compromised device are all tools you should have at your disposal.

Making sure your data is backed up is critical. Also, making sure the data on your backup targets is up-to-date and includes any data that might be sitting on a remote device should be built into your backup plans.

tinsleyNET IT Servces Consultants #WeCanHelp

#WeCanHelp

We can carry out a review of your remote workers home office and advise you of any changes we think are needed to make it a long term working arrangement. We can check internet connection, WiFi location, device security, working environment and identify areas needed to be included in your GDPR policy

We can also sort out your office based needs, with terminals, servers, internet connections, security and everything else you need to allow your remote workers to be as efficient as possible.

Contact us today to prepare your workplace for the new normal.

Computers in World War II

VE DAY

With the UK getting ready to celebrate V.E. Day’s 75th anniversary with a Bank Holiday this Friday (albeit in lockdown conditions) we take a look at the world of the Digital Computer and the role of Bletchley Park on the development of today’s computers.

Lock-down 2020 v Wartime 1939

Whenever our nation reacts together against adversity, the phrase “Blitz spirit” often appears in the press. But the wartime ethos of ‘Make Do and Mend’, ‘Dig for Victory’, and ‘When In Doubt, Lights Out’ was played out in a very different world to today’s ‘Stay Home, Save Lives’ (and lasted considerably longer)

In our quarantine, we’ve been able to remotely access our company resources over the internet, hold video conferencing meetings over Skype, Teams and Zoom and keep up with friends and family over social media. Back at the start of the second world war, the digital computer was only just being born.

The Term ‘Computer’ in 1939 referred to a person who’s job was to perform calculations, and the only way to keep in contact remotely was via the telephone and a manned operator switchboard.

Bletchley Park, Station X and Codebreakers

The UK Security Agency GCHQ evolved from the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS). At the outbreak of war, the GC&CS consisted of a handful of people working on deciphering diplomatic encrypted messages, based in a single room in a building in London.

Prior to war, Germany started to invest in encryption machines to speed up and secure the encryption of information that was broadcast over wireless stations. These machines were thought to create ciphers that were unbreakable.

Through a network of listening stations around the cost of the UK, British intelligence services could intercept the wireless transmissions sent in standard Morse Code, but messages meant nothing without a way to decipher them.

It quickly became obvious that being based outside of London would be sensible, and Bletchley Park, a stately home in modern day Milton Keynes, was chosen for it’s central location, easy access to London, Birmingham, Manchester and other cities via train and road, proximity to Oxford and Cambridge universities for students, and close to the main trunk telephone and telegraph networks for the UK.

Female codebreakers at Bletchley Park

BP as it became know, or sometimes Station X due to the radio intercept station that was setup on the site, soon expended and by the end of the war 10,000 personnel were working at the site, mostly in brick built outbuildings referred to as the Huts and Blocks.

Most of these staff were female and we’re involved in performing complex calculations and programming electronic machines to enable them to rapidly crack the encrypted intercepted messages. These we BP’s first Computers.

The Professor Types

Some of Britain’s finest mathematicians and professors were recruited via various secret (and sometimes not so secret) ways into BP, and were set to work on finding a way to break into the various ciphers that the Germans were using to encrypt their messages.

Names such as Alan Turing, Gordon Welchman, Bill Tuttle, Max Newman and Joan Clarke were amongst the many cryptanalysts working on various codebreaking problems, including the well known Enigma traffic.

Electronic Codebraking Machines

Early in the War, British, French and Polish codebreakers met up in a forest in France to discuss a combined codebreaking effort. It was clear that the Polish team had achieved significantly more success against German codes and ciphers, and had started designing a machine to help break the German Enigma traffic.

Alan Turing and Gordon Welchman later replicated the Polish machine at Blethcley Park. Called the Bombe, it was the first electromechanical device used to rapidly check encrypted messages against an array of possible encryption settings, stopping when it found a possible match.

Bombe Machines and operators

Lorenz Machine & Colossus

The Germans continuously made improvements to their encryption machines, adding additional encryption devices or changing how the devices were used, but the basic machine remained relatively the same.

Then, in 1941 a new machine was used. British broadcasting stations could hear the signal, but it wasn’t sent in Morse Code. The Germans had used a device that encrypted the information as it was entered, and sent it automatically in teleprinter code at about ten characters per second, far too fast for a human to write down.

Using a British teleprinter, the British were able to intercept the messages but they could not crack the cipher.

With the help of other signal intelligence, it was realised that these messages were being sent to and from German high command to the army commandos in Europe, and as such they were of great importance.

By studying the encrypted messages, and with the help of German operator errors, a team of cryptanalysts working under Ralph Tester devised a machine that could help to decrypt this new cipher.

Their work eventually produced the Colossus, the worlds very first programmable digital electronic computer.

Tommy Flowers, a post office engineer, helped build the first Colossus prototype. He then helped refine the design into the Colossus Mark 2 which went operational in June 1944.

Colossus was programmed by means of a plug board and switches, it used vacuum tubes (Thermionic Valves) to perform boolean operations much like the bits in modern computers.

It’s classed as the first ‘First Generation’ computer; it was digital and programmable. This meant it could be used to solve different problems simply by reprogramming it.

By the end of the war, there were 10 Colossi in operation. The British government ordered their blueprints be destroyed asking with most of the machines in order to keep the secret that Britain could intercept and decrypt messages sent on this need system.

After the war, some of the mathematicians who had worked on designing machines for BP carried their ideas forward in UK universities, designing ever more complex and more universal computers.

American mathematicians who had been working at Bletchly Park in the latter years of the war had more freedom to advance their development of digital computers, being outside the scope of the British Official Secrets Act.

Modern computers

The second generation of computers built upon the likes of Colossus, but moved to digital switches rather than vacuum tubes, and made use of storable programs that could be recalled from the computers memory.

This then evolved into the third generation of computers which is what we have today, making use of integrated circuits, long term storage and human interface devices.

So as part of your VE Day celebrations, give a moment to remember the service of all the staff based at Bletchly Park and it’s listening stations who worked together and gave birth to the digital age.

Wi-Fi 6 is coming (did you even notice Wi-Fi 1-5?)

WiFi 6 Icon

The Wi-Fi Alliance have released details of Wi-Fi 6 certification program, meaning manufacturers of Wi-Fi devices can start to implement the new standards.

Wi-Fi 6 is the first Wi-Fi standard to use the simpler naming scheme (although this is only on the consumer side, it’s still technically IEE802.11ax)

Previous versions of the Wi-Fi standards are going to be retro-renamed Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) and Wi-Fi 4 (802.11n) to help consumers identify which standard devices are manufactured to.

WiFi 6 Lozenger

What will Wi-Fi 6 give me?

For the average home user, the main benefit will be speed. Wi-Fi 6 will boast speeds upto 9.6Gbps (the existing Wi-Fi 5 801.1ac is rated at a maximum of 3.5Gbps) Obviously it’s extremely unlikely that you’ll ever connect at those speeds, but we expect average connection speeds to be about 30% – 40% better than on a Wi-Fi 5 router. Remember that the average internet speed to homes in the UK is about 54.2Mbps

For busier locations such as businesses, public hotspots and so on, the benefits of Wi-Fi 6 will be much more dramatic. The main aim of Wi-Fi 6 is to increase connectivity and reliability between router and device, amd be more efficient about how it keeps you connected.

Technology designed for multiple device access such as MU-MIMO and OFDMA is included in the specification, meaning more devices can be connected and receive high bandwidth data simultaneously, and more data can be sent in a single burst. As the number of IoT (Internet Of Things) devices in our homes increase, these technologies will help keep your home Wi-Fi ‘clutter free’

Also, the new Wi-Fi 6 standard is designed to be battery efficient, meaning your mobile devices won’t heat up and drain the battery while you stream from a Wi-Fi 6 access point.

Techspot have a great article here listing the technological developments of Wi-Fi 6, including what is meant by MU-MIMO, OFDMA, QAM, OFDM and many more geeky terms!

What if my device is not Wi-Fi 6 compliant, do I need to upgrade?

Nope. As with all Wi-Fi certified devices, backwards compatibility is built in, so if you’re using a phone that’s Wi-Fi 5 compatible (nearly every recent phone will be) and you connect to a Wi-Fi 6 wireless point, the router will recognise your device’s level of compatibility and use Wi-Fi 5 instead. Likewise if your phone is one of the few Wi-Fi 6 compatible phones, it will identify the compatibility of the Wi-Fi access point and use the appropriate settings.

There are already Wi-Fi 6 compatible phones?

Yes, the Samsung Galaxy S10 was the first Wi-Fi 6 phone to hit the market, Apple’s iPhone 11 will also support the standard. To compliment those, routers from cisco, Netgear, Asus and TP-Link have also been released with Wi-Fi 6 compatibility.

Commodore 64

Commodore C64 Retro

The Commodore C64 was released in January 1982 and sold about 17 million units, making it one of the most successful computer models of all time.

And now it’s back!

THEC64 Logo With White Lozenge RGB

RetroGames are going to be re-releasing a full sized C64 in December 2019. The unit will be able to emulate the C64, and it’s predecessor the VIC20, but unlike the original devices that had a 320 x 200 (16 colour) raster display, the new units will support HDMI output at 720p.

In the pack you’ll get a joystick and 64 pre-installed games (no more waiting for the game cartridges to load) with the option to boot to BASIC.

C64 Boot time animation

So, who’s up for a game of Boulder Dash, Monty On The Run or Spindizzy?

Find out more and pre-order for Christmas here https://retrogames.biz/the-c64

FaceApp

FaceApp Icon

You can’t have helped but see the FaceApp images appearing on people’s social media, photos edited by AI to make them look older, younger or to swap genders.

You’ve probably also heard that the app is stealing your data in the background and uploading it to Russian servers.

We take a look at the app and dig into what it’s actually doing with your data.

The App

FaceAppMockup

FaceApp is available on Android and iPhone, the website is https://www.faceapp.com
Privacy policy is https://www.faceapp.com/privacy

FaceApp was first released in 2017.

The app is available as a free download, with limited functionality, and a pro version with more filters to use.

FaceApp uses AI to manipulate images, making the subject look older, younger, add a smile and so on.

Why does Russia want my data?

A tweet from an app developer suggested that FaceApp was uploading massive quantities of photos from users phones without their permission, this was later quoted in an article on 9TO5Mac and other publications, unfortunately they didn’t actually check if the facts were true.

So just to help clear things up, the app is NOT stealing your data, well not in any way that Apple and Google are already doing.

FaceApp Older

What is the app doing?

The app will upload images to their servers, but only the ones you send for the AI to edit. No background uploading takes place, and only the individual photos you select are sent.

Using cloud servers to process the images will help keep the app size down, increase the speed of the image AI processing and helps keep their AI technology away from prying eyes.

The servers your photos are sent to appear to be based in America, although the company that makes FaceApp is based in Russia. This is not uncommon, as server costs and reliability in America are likely to be better than Russian based server.

The company states that most photos are removed from their servers after 48 hours. Like many other companies, they have a term that states any images sent to their servers may be used by them, royalty-free. Some may find it worrying that their photos might be used to promote this app, but this is not an unusual term in such situations. Twitter has similar terms in their usage T&C’s for example.

It’s likely that the images you send for processing are being used to help improve the AI technology used. Some have suggested this could be used to improve facial recognition algorithms, but In a statement to the BBC the firm’s chief executive, Yaroslav Goncharov, said “No, we don’t use photos for facial recognition training, Only for editing pictures.”

A French security researcher looked into what the app did when you used it, the technical details can be read in his twitter thread here: https://twitter.com/fs0c131y/status/1151270788357603328

How accurate are the FaceApp results?

There’s an article on the BBC News website where they test the app using some well known celebrities, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Morgan Freeman and Sir Ian McKellen – you can judge for yourself the quality of the results.

FaceApp Younger