18 Aug 2009 - NSS Labs, an independent security research group, found that Internet Explorer 8 was the best browser tested at thwarting phishing attempts. Firefox was statistically tied with IE for first with Opera and Chrome bringing up the rear. Safari was the real loser of the group with only 2% of phishing attempts blocked and there was no difference between the Mac or Windows client.

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Support Bank

The purpose of the support bank is to try to ensure that the right amount of support is given to your organization whilst at the same time, catering for flexible monthly demand.

The first step is to discuss with you your current organization, IT architecture and overall competency. From this we will make an estimate of how many hours are likely to be needed on a monthly basis in order to ensure coverage. Once this number of hours is agreed, this will become the base amount for your support bank. You will have this many hours in your bank at the start of each month. Every time support is given, it will be subtracted from what is in the bank.

All companies have good months and bad months, in terms of demand for IT support. In order to minimize the impact of this, the support bank model has two further features:

  • If in any one month you use less than your total allowance these minutes (to the nearest quarter of an hour) will be carried over into the support bank for use in the following month. These hours will be used before the new monthly hours. The account will have an absolute maximum capacity of 200% in any one month, no matter how much time is carried over. This means you will have more hours in the bank for a month in the future where demand may be higher.
  • Additional hours can be purchased at the reduced hourly rate up to a maximum of 25% of the agreed base of your support bank.
  • Out of Hours support available. Additional charges will apply.

Benefits

  • You are able to budget for a set cost each month for your IT support (as long as you keep within the banked hours).
  • You will get a statement each month of what is in the bank, so you will always know your support position.
  • You are guaranteed response times of 8 hours for a desktop and 4 hours for a server or business critical problem.
  • You will benefit if you have a month of low IT support usage
  • You can accumulate hours to see you though any future months of high usage
  • You can still get additional support when needed without paying penalty rates or callout charges.

Requirements

  • Minimum 8 hour monthly contract.