A Technology Morning event organised by 6PM at the Westin Dragonara Resort highlighted steps businesses should take to protect themselves from cyber attacks, particularly in the wake of attacked on Spamhaus, Google and the US Senate.

6PM’s David Vassallo pointed out that this year the majority of hacking was State-sponsored – hackers are targeting the smaller companies and individuals to obtain information. This is the reason managed security services are on the rise.

It is difficult to determine if computers have been infected with a virus. Restoring a back-up could take days but thanks to virtualisation, it is now easier to back up files and retrieve them.

Isaac Zarb explained how virtualisation reduces validation cycles and provides a faster time to market. Jose Muniz from Palo Alto Networks said 27 per cent of malware is not detected by anti-virus vendors, adding that multi-vendor solutions do not work because of the cost to license and operate but rather because of the complexity of orchestration among multiple security vendors. Palo Alto Networks offer a state-of-the-art prevention through a robust firewall.

As the world becomes more virtual and people depend on different devices to remain connected, problems arise in synchronisation. 6PM has developed a solution called Cloudlink which is a conduit between the file server and the internet.

“A 2011 Gartner report explained that without proper planning enterprises deploying iPads will need 300 per cent more Wi-Fi. Wherever we are, our devices are constantly scanning for wireless connectivity to the enterprise network,” Brian Zarb Adami said.

Jennifer Capewell from Xirrus said that by 2015, 80 per cent of newly-installed wireless networks will be obsolete due to lack of planning. She added companies thus must optimise their Wi-Fi to deliver predictable user experience. Xirrus is the leader in high-performance wireless networks offering a future-proof and application-aware Wi-Fi infrastructure.

The 6PM Technology Morning event discussed business intelligence. According to Gartner, business intelligence has become an expected business competency for improving decision-making effectiveness. Elton Barry from 6PM said businesses have oceans of data that needs to be measured.

Business intelligence helps businesses answer questions such as the costumers’ demographics and the business growth compared to marketing costs.