Ignite Solutions in Cairns, Queensland, Australia | Business service

Ignite Solutions

Locality: Cairns, Queensland, Australia

Phone: +61 7 4015 2949

Address: Suite M3B, The Pier, 1 Pier Point rd 4870 Cairns, QLD, Australia

Website: https://IgniteSolutions.com.au/

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24.01.2022 Public service announcement - Get ready to patch your wifi gear. Announced overnight is the awesomely-named and comprehensive KrackAttack set of vulnerabilities which significantly damage the encryption used by the current Wifi standard - WPA2. What's even better is that there's no "fix" yet - each equipment vendor has to produce, test and then deploy a patch for their gear. So for now, sit tight, but be ready to apply updates/patches to ALL your wifi capable gear - laptops, ...PCs, Macbooks, Linux workstations, iPhones, Android phones, wireless video doorbells, wifi automated cat feeders, and so forth. The interesting thing about this bug (and why I believe it's sat unnoticed for so long) is that: * It's an attack against what's called the "4-way handshake" - a process that's been mathematically proven to be secure (and still is). * It's completely aligned with the Wifi Standard. Therefore, any device that's Wifi-compliant is at risk from this attack. So it's not a bug that a particular vendor has in their coding - this surfaces when a device follows the standard PERFECTLY. So, time to panic then, yeah? Not so fast. Unless you're Super Top Secret classified, I wouldn't be rushing to turn off your wifi just yet. It's a serious vulnerability that needs to be addressed and fixed, but that's in train already and I expect patches will be forthcoming now that the public disclosure has happened. In addition, any apps that you use which leverage transport-layer encryption (such as HTTPS for facebook or internet banking) will remain secure. So for now, be aware that Wifi security has been degraded, and make a list of all your wifi "things" around your house and/or business - they'll all need updating very shortly. Things like internet modem/routers, laptops, phones, Wifi APs, various "smart" things, and so on. This is another good lesson in why it's important to keep all your devices and such updated with the latest vendor patches and upgrades - even to the point of turning on automatic updates if you can. Because I guarantee this will not be the last :) . In the meantime, while we're waiting for patches to be issues, here's some light technical reading:

24.01.2022 Heads-up - theres a very convincing Office365 phishing attempt going on at the moment. If you receive an email from Office365 like the one shown below PLEASE look at it very carefully before clicking and putting in your password!!!

23.01.2022 As fallout from the recent Petya ransomware outbreak continues to unfold, it's worth remembering that law firms, even big ones like DLA Piper, are not immune. Thanks to my background in working with PI law firms, this article really hits home to me. Look - we've all been there at some stage. And it really sucks, and you get a terrible, cold feeling in the pit of your stomach. But it doesn't need to be this way. "...the ransomware attack Tuesday on DLA Piper sounded a differen...Continue reading

22.01.2022 There's been a lot of talk lately how some ISPs, particularly Telstra, have been caught up in this "Overcharging" issue for NBN users. One of our clients has also unfortunately been caught out recently, signing up for a 100/50 Telstra-provided NBN service that struggles to give 25mb download speeds. To rub salt into the wound, their neighbours are enjoying full-rate connections. Because Telstra is involved, it's easy to point the finger and claim they're ripping off their cu...stomers. As always though, the situaiton is a bit more nuanced, and while Telstra and the other ISPs aren't blameless, neither are they 100% to blame. If you want to know more, this article from ITNews explains the situation very well. Basically - when a client signs up with the ISP, the ISP purchases the connection from NBNco. But at that point, neither NBNco nor the ISP really know what speed the line is capable of. This is because we switched from the original FTTP model to the new multi-mode NBN design, which uses (among other things) FTTN. FTTN is still reliant on the copper cables in the ground, some of which have been buried there for over 100 years. Aside: interesting reading: https://www.gizmodo.com.au//parliament-arguing-about-copp/ As expected, this copper wiring can be in pretty poor condition: http://www.smh.com.au//broken-phone-lines-taking-longer-to Because of this, until you actually connect the NBN service to a particular business or home, you never really know what you're going to get. NB - this is the same problems that plagued the previous ADSL internet network as well - real-world speeds were VERY variable depending on copper length and condition. Here at Ignite, we work with and recommend specialist network providers such as OverTheWire, who take a much more rigorous qualification process to be confident that they can provide the bandwidth requested. In one instance, we migrated a client (different client to the above example) from a third-party ISP into the OverTheWire network, on the exact same "speed tier", and their real-world transfer rates went from ~30mbps to around 87mbps. If you're struggling with poor NBN performance, get in touch and we can discuss some options for getting you the bandwidth that you need.

21.01.2022 Are your IT systems secure? Virus and malware attacks are on the rise, but a lot of people have been lulled into a false sense of security by a streak of good luck. I'm not one to fearmonger, but the risk is real and you need to make sure that your business can survive a concerted attack or outbreak. DLA Piper, a large international law firm, was one of the bigger companies hit very hard by the NotPetya outbreak last year to devastating consequences. They have released some ...details of what happened in the weeks and months following, and it's not a pretty read. I sympathise with the comments that Dylan Jame (IT Manager at DLA Piper) has made in the article below, but I also feel he's being rather hard on himself. At the beginning of a clean-up effort like this, it's very difficult to make the call to abandon it all and start from scratch again. Everyone wants to get things back up and running as quickly as possible. In the end, it was a largely positive outcome for the firm - all data was recovered and all systems were able to be restored. That in itself needs to be congratulated. Think about your IT systems and the Backup, Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity and data protection mechanisms you have in place - are you confident that you could say the same thing? If you're concerned that your company may be exposed to too much risk in this area please get in touch. It's always better to talk these things through BEFORE an outbreak happens. Even if it's something that you couldn't protect (and there'll always be that risk), the ability to recover your critical data and systems in a timely manner is very important.

15.01.2022 PSA - Office365 and Azure are currently suffering an extended outage, relating to some fundamental authentication issues with AzureAD. Apparently an update was rolled out tonight, but it's broken, well, basically everything in the Microsoft cloud. *EVERYTHING* relies on AzureAD for it's authentication, and that seems to be where the problem is tonight.It's a worldwide outage from what we can tell at the moment. Nothing any of us can do for now, but hold tight and hope the M...SFT engineers can fix the problem quickly. Don't panic - your Office365 account hasn't *really* gone away, it's just not quite in a usable state right now . For Ignite Solutions clients - we'll continue to monitor this and advise as more information comes to hand!

11.01.2022 Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen a huge uptick in the development of these highly contextualised and localised phishing email attacks. Here’s the latest example targeting GoVia users. If you’re in SEQ be especially aware of this one. For everyone else, make sure you check emails thoroughly before opening attachments or entering your password on any website. Here at Ignite, we’ve been working with all our customers to deploy additional security measures to protect their organisations. If you’re concerned about the security of your systems, please get in touch and we can have a chat about where we can help.

11.01.2022 Uber find themselves in another spot of bother, and this one's a doozy. I've defended the company in the past, but how they've handled this is just plain wrong. I hope they learn some valuable lessons from this and are able to continue forward, but they're certainly going to have to answer a lot of questions. If your company handles or holds sensitive or personal information about your customers/clients, you NEED to have a disclosure policy, and it needs to be better than "just 'fix it' and don't tell anyone, ok??".

10.01.2022 Ignite has been privileged to work with the Cowboys on an Australian-first - deploying the Kore ProSports CRM system into the club over the past 12 months. The project has been a resounding success for the club, and they are already reaping the benefits of improved sales visibility, customer engagement and campaign management as we head into the 2019 season. This has been one of Matt's favourite projects for 2018. It's not every day you get to work with an organisation like ...the North Queensland Toyota Cowboys who embody the FNQ spirit. It's inspiring to witness how dedicated the entire team are to their much-loved fans and members. Additionally, the team from @KORESoftware are world-class, and consistently went above and beyond during the entire project - from pre-sales, through the design and launch, to the ongoing support they've been providing. Their dedication has ensured the club has a solid foundation.

10.01.2022 You know I'm a big fan of video conferencing, especially cloud systems like Skype for Business. I use it day in and day out and it lets me work with awesome clients on exciting projects all over the country - all without leaving my office. But let's be honest - the "video" part in video conferencing still sorta sucks. It's not great, despite it now being 2017. I've been on the end of this a number of times, and it's really frustrating. The start of the video below demonstrat...es REALLY well what it's like at times! The solutions that fix these problems have historically been really expensive, and really complex to set up. That's why I'm really excited by this cute little critter - The Meeting Owl! The Meeting Owl is a USB-connected 360-degree camera, speaker and microphone array that connects to any of the popular video conferencing apps. It's inbuilt smarts provide a video feed of the entire room, as well as focussing on the active speaker. If it works half as well as what the video below shows, it'll be an instant hit, and just what a lot of small, remote teams need. It's clear that they've put a lot of thought into the product, so I'm excited to see how well it works in the real world. The days of terrible video conferences might be behind us all! More info: https://www.owllabs.com

08.01.2022 Every now and then you come across a gem. Draw.IO seems to be one of those! For a long time, Visio has been the gold-standard when it comes to drawing process maps, flowcharts, and such things. It wasn't your only option by a long shot, but the combination of high sophistication, integration with Sharepoint for client-free rendering, and reasonable price-point meant that it was the go-to app for a large group of people. But Visio is also extremely capable of doing an awful l...ot that most people don't need to worry about. A lot of times, you just want to quickly draw up a cross-functional process flow, or sketch out a quick conceptual network diagram, for instance. Draw.IO is a cloud-based browser app that is pretty much completely free, and solves this problem for you. Jump on and check it out below. Feel free to bail out now, but I'm going to dive a bit deeper into the results that you can get by using a tool like this: One of the areas that we help our clients out in is around process mapping, and process analysis. From a strict technology angle, we capture the process flows so that we can both document and automate them where possible. While the automation is cool, the reality is that a lot of our clients gain significant benefits simply from working through the process identification and documentation exercise. We all have processes that we follow every day, whether we realise it consciously or not. Once an organisation starts to grow bigger than one or two people though, it becomes important for the leadership to document their desired process flows to ensure consistency across the team. Not everything, but certainly the key processes that either set yourself apart from your competitors, as well as the foundation support processes (billing, etc) to ensure consistency. You might pride yourself on excellent customer service, but if each person on your team is approaching the same process with a different script, how can your clients receive a guaranteed outcome? A lot of times, this knowledge is caught in the founders' or leaders' heads and they can get frustrated when new team members "don't get it". By documenting and visualising the key process flows that your business runs on, your team gains a key on-demand resource to see exactly how they should approach a situation. Training time lowers, and no-one needs to re-invent the wheel. What's more, if you do take on a new team member, they can bring their experience to bear and suggest improvements to your processes so that the entire team improves. Process documentation and analysis is one of the key Ignite services, as it folds into our overall mission of helping you leverage cutting edge digital tools and mindsets to empower and transform your business. If you want to find out more, please get in touch.

07.01.2022 Heads up - Office365 is having a rough ride this morning. Microsoft have confirmed that there are widespread problems with their user authentication system, so people may experience difficulty logging in to Outlook, Sharepoint, Dynamics and other Office365 systems. They're working on it, but it may be up to 6 hours till it's resolved. If you're an Ignite customer and experience this, please get in touch so that we can help track it for you.

06.01.2022 Happy New Year to all our valued clients and customers - I hope 2019 brings you success and happiness in all facets of your life. 2018 is now in the books. It was a great year for Ignite and we feel privileged to have worked with a great bunch of people. We kicked a lot of goals together. My preference is always to focus on delivering great value to our clients and ensuring that we do a professional job. The best measure of this is whether our current clients are willing to... refer us to their friends and colleagues. I’m happy to report that we finished 2018 with a number of personal introductions, and I’m very excited to get a running start on 2019. It’s going to be an exciting year. I wish the same for each of you. Happy New Year! - Matt

06.01.2022 For anyone looking to have your team work from home over the coming weeks, a lot of the tech providers are coming to the table with solutions. Microsoft have removed a bunch of limits from the free version of Teams, which is what I'd recommend straight up for any company looking to enable people to work from home. It's quick and easy to set up, and will let your teams collaborate, have video meetings, etc. A laptop with a webcam (can you even buy laptops without webcams thes...e days?) and your old iPhone headset, and you're off. There's a great point in this article about enabling MFA security for your user accounts. If you're an Office365 customer, this should be something that you've already got turned on. It's even more important in a work-from-home scenario. It means that your IT team's processes might need to change a bit, but the increase in security is massive. It's not perfect, but it'll take your security position from 10/100 to 80/100 pretty much by itself. Setting up your team to be able to work from home productively whilst not compromising the security of your critical information and data is very achievable these days, you just need to think through how you will approach it and understand (and mitigate) the risk exposure.

05.01.2022 With the introduction of the Mandatory Data Breach Reporting legislation in Australia earlier this year, Information Security has been the top of everyone's minds. Here's a great info-graphic from our partners at OverTheWire that explains what compromises a Serious Data Breach, and how you need to respond if you believe you could have been breached. It's worth noting that data breaches are not JUST electronic breaches - accidentally leaving a folder or a notebook in the back seat of a taxi can also compromise a breach. If you have concerns about information security in your business, please get in touch. There are a number of basic precautions that can be put in place relatively quickly to significantly improve the security of your critical customer information.

05.01.2022 Setting up some new PCs today as part of an over-arching tech transformation project, and thought I'd show them off. These are little HP ProDesk 600 workstations, mounted onto the rear of 23" HP monitors with special brackets. Whilst they may be small in size, they pack more than enough power for general day-to-day duties. It's a neat solution that gives maximum desk space, with no need for a tangle of cables. When combined with a wireless keyboard and mouse, you've got a pr...ofessional workstation that's equally at home on either an office desk or a front counter (as this one will be, complete with handheld barcode scanner). Choosing good equipment will provide the client with many years of reliable service, and the 3 yr warranty gives great peace of mind. It's these little details that all add up to deliver a great solution for both the business as well as the people using the tech every single day.

04.01.2022 Microsoft Surface Pro 4 - Runout pricing available. With the release of the updated Surface Pro, Microsoft are offering runout pricing on the older Surface Pro 4 model. Stock is limited to whatever is left on the shelf, so first in, best dressed. If you've been looking to introduce Surface Pros into your business, this is a great opportunity to acquire the devices at a significant discount. ... Case in point - a client of mine recently took advantage of this, and completed a hardware refresh project for all their staff at a significantly lower investment than would otherwise have been possible. It was a real Win-Win outcome for them - the business saved some money on a big project, and the staff have the latest and greatest devices + software tools to help them serve their clients better and faster. By bundling in Extended Warranty with Accidental Damage protection, the firm is safe in the knowledge that staff can take their devices with them and use them as intended without any risk of big repair bills. Personally, I have both the new Surface Pro and the older SP4 here, and to be honest there's not a lot of difference between them. The newer model is subtly better in a lot of ways - it IS a better device. But the older SP4 is almost as good - the platform is mature enough these days that any improvements are incremental, not revolutionary. NB - these are the Commercial model devices, and are required to be sold to and registered against a business. Unfortunately I can't sell personal/consumer devices - the normal retail outlets will have you covered there. That said, we have access to a lot of business-focused add-ons that aren't available through the retail channel (extended warranties, enterprise services, etc). If you are interested in Surface devices for your business, there are compelling reasons to buy a Commercial device through Ignite, where we can package up the right product with the right services to really make your life a lot easier. As always - if you would like any more information please don't hesitate to get in touch.

04.01.2022 Well, here's something new! Minter Ellison, one of Australia's largest corporate law firms, has acquired ITNewCom - an established and well-respected IT Consultancy company. Minter Ellison has been building out a Technology Solutions advisory practice, and the ITNewcom team will join that group, positioning Minters as a "one stop shop" for clients who are embarking on large technology projects. Personally, I think we'll see more of this happen across the industry as the big... players look to further integrate technology advisory and delivery services into their portfolio. I think it's a marker of the maturity of technology in the C-Suite, and evidence that technology strategy is now seen as inextricably linked to corporate strategy and success. Does this spell the end for the stand-alone IT consultancy? By no means! There's still very much a place for expert independent consulting services to exist along-side integrated strategic offerings like this. If anything, a rising tide lifts all boats, and the increased investment that large legal and advisory firms are making in this area only serves to raise awareness of the strategic importance of technology to business. Obviously I'm a big believer in the advantages that a well-defined, well-understood and well-integrated technology strategy can bring to your business. We've done a number of technology roadmaps and technology strategy maps for our clients, and it continues to be a popular service. If you want to find out more, including how such a strategy can help your business, please get in touch.

03.01.2022 It's client appreciation day here at Ignite! I probably don't say it enough, but I really love the fact that we get to work with some absolutely awesome clients. People who "get" the advantage that technology can bring to their business, and are committed to using the available tools to really empower their team to deliver outstanding results and customer service for their customers. It helps that they're just generally all really nice people too! These people are living pro...of that you can run and manage a range of highly successful businesses whilst still holding core values like honesty, respect and authenticity. To each of our clients - it's a real honour for myself and all the Ignite team to work with you. We appreciate the trust that you place in us, and we will strive to keep delivering every-better results for you. Again, thanks for allowing us the opportunity to work with you. We won't let you down. -Matt

03.01.2022 Great news this morning out of Microsoft - Guest Access has come to Teams! Teams is a great example of the long-term value that Microsoft provide through Office365. You subscribe to the service, and Microsoft keep adding in new and exciting apps like this that you get access to "for free" as part of your main subscription. But with Teams, the lack of guest/external access was really disappointing. Especially when it's key competitors (slack, et al) all revolved around the con...cept of being able to form teams for ANYWHERE - inside your org, or outside. That was the main reason apps like Slack became so popular so quickly - the ability to form an ad-hoc team and start collaborating with very little friction. Microsoft had good reason to not include Guest access initially, for sure, but it was still a sticking point when it came to people actually using the app. Thankfully, that's now in the past! I'll be trying out Guest Access over the coming weeks, and I'll share my thoughts once I've had a good chance to kick the tyres. Have you been using Teams in your organisation? How's it been working for you? Are you excited about Guest Access, or do you not see it as a big selling point for you?

02.01.2022 The future is almost here. Imagine being able to talk to anyone, anywhere - to understand them and for them to understand you. What would you do with this technology? Take an overseas holiday to someone you've never been?... Expand your business into new markets? Talk to that new family that moved in across the road, and look like they don't really know anyone here?

01.01.2022 Things have been pretty quite on the ol' Ignite FB page lately - we've been head-down and working hard on some really exciting projects. But that's no excuse, so look for more content coming down the pipeline soon. In the meantime, we've got some exciting news to share! Ignite is Australia's newest Surface Hub partner! We've completed the qualification with Microsoft to be an official Surface Hub reseller and integration partner, meaning that we can now work with you to desig...n a Surface Hub solution for your meeting space. With virtual collaboration, Teams meetings and remote working all current hot topics (and staying that way for a while to come, me thinks), the Surface Hub brings some really exciting capability to the (boardroom) table. If you're keen to find out more give Matt a call and he'll be happy to talk to you about where the Microsoft family, including the Surface devices, Surface Hub, Teams and Microsoft 365 can help your business collaborate and connect, regardless of physical (or social!) distance.

01.01.2022 It’s Sports Tech day! Looking forward to talking about the success we’ve had with the North Queensland Toyota Cowboys in deploying KORE Software’s CRM and workflow system.

01.01.2022 Here at Ignite we’re big Zoom/Teams fans