Aspire Technology Solutions

Meet our Keynote Jenny Radcliffe - The People Hacker 🎤🎧🧠 Jenny Radcliffe, aka “The People Hacker,” is a world-renowned social engineer and bestselling author, known for bypassing security systems with psychology, con-artistry, and cunning. As a multiple TEDx speaker and an entertaining educator, Jenny has protected organisations of all sizes from scammers and led simulated attacks to safeguard data. Inducted into the InfoSec Hall of Fame in 2022, she has also received numerous industry awards and appeared on many TV and radio shows. 📍 Hilton, Newcastle Gateshead 📅 Wednesday 25 September 2024 ⏰ 09:00 – 17:00 (Drinks Reception to follow) 📍 Crowne Plaza, Glasgow 📅 Tuesday 26 November 2024 ⏰ 09:00 – 17:00 (Drinks Reception to follow) We have a limited number of complimentary tickets available, early booking is advised. Please contact marketing@aspirets.com for more information. Learn more at

We are thrilled to share that our NPS for last month was an incredible, ‘world class’ – 86! We love to hear from you to understand how things are going so please get in touch! The Customer Experience team reviews all feedback received and this forms a key part of our continuous improvement program.

We are delighted to welcome new member Aspire Technology Solutions to CeeD. Aspire are an award-winning IT managed service and cyber security provider who deliver leading technology solutions across cyber security, cloud, connectivity, managed services and unified communications. https://lnkd.in/ejgC-ChN

Last night we held a summer quiz at Tiger Hornsby on the Quayside, Newcastle. Quizmaster, Chris Fraser, tested teams on their general knowledge, logos, sport / Olympics, colleague baby photos, and 2024 news. We even featured a signature cocktail named the 'Aspire Spritz,' in our brand colors of blue and red which was a delight! Congratulations to the winning team ‘The Crowd Strikes Back’ who won the quiz and will be treated with a lunch! Thanks to all those who participated, Tiger Hornsby for hosting, and Paige Kane and Caitlin Bowley for organising!

Exciting Update for Aspire Cyber Summit 2024! We’re thrilled to announce an additional date for our Aspire Cyber Summit 2024! Following the success of our previous events, we're bringing the summit to Glasgow on November 26th. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to join us in person. Designed for business leaders across all sectors, the Aspire Cyber Summit will offer a comprehensive program to enhance your security posture and protect against the ever-evolving threat landscape. Relive the highlights from last year’s summit, which brought together over 380 IT leaders and tech experts: Watch the video here https://lnkd.in/eSuW5JjC We’re also excited to welcome our keynote speaker, Jenny Radcliffe – The People Hacker. Jenny is a globally recognised Social Engineer with expertise in psychology, con-artistry, and persuasion techniques. She ethically bypasses security systems, specialising in non-verbal communication and deception, and leads simulated criminal attacks to strengthen client security against malicious threats. 📍 Hilton, Newcastle Gateshead 📅 Wednesday 25 September 2024 ⏰ 09:00 – 17:00 (Drinks Reception to follow) 📍 Crowne Plaza, Glasgow 📅 Tuesday 26 November 2024 ⏰ 09:00 – 17:00 (Drinks Reception to follow) We have a limited number of complimentary tickets available, early booking is advised. Please contact marketing@aspirets.com for more information. Learn more at https://lnkd.in/e_2gfTFj

A huge thanks to everyone who attended our Glasgow Heads of IT Social event at Flight Club Darts last night! It was a fantastic evening of networking, knowledge sharing, and great conversations.   A special shoutout to our winners:  🥇 First place: Les Barclay, DM Hall Surveyors 🥈 Second place: Mark Hilson, Whyte & Mackay & Richard King, Loganair Limited We already can't wait for next month's event! Bob McKay Lance Gauld Tristen Bellringer Shaun Richardson Connor Todd Chris Fraser Denis McIlroy Alexander Nairn Darryl Gibson Andrew McSherry, MBCS CITP Iain Bain

In light of the recent CrowdStrike outage, which caused significant disruptions, we deeply understand the impact this has had on Aspire customers, and organisations across the world. As a dedicated Managed Security Service Provider, our primary goal is to ensure the security and operational continuity of our customers’ systems. We would like to address how we managed this incident, the steps we took to support our customers, and address any queries that our customers may have. Read more at https://lnkd.in/eKVFF5BH

Each month, our Service Desk team leaders choose an employee from their team who has gone out of their way to demonstrate excellence. Whether that be through problem-solving, showcasing great leadership, or going above and beyond to deliver outstanding customer service, we want to recognise the hard work of our employees. For June, the Service Desk Member of the Month was Jasmine Oakes! Jasmine has consistently demonstrated exceptional customer focus and support. She provided valuable information and contacts for issues with various sites and managed problems effectively. During a customer’s transition, she significantly increased her support, becoming the go-to person for queries and creating helpful guides for the team. Jasmine has also excelled in covering team leader duties, ensuring smooth operations, and effective workload management. She is a fantastic team member, always making time to support others. Thanks again to everyone who put forward nominations, and we look forward to reading July’s nominees! #AspireForMore

There's been a big increase in social engineering targetting CrowdStrike users off the back of last week's outage. There are hundreds of domain names registered to mimic CrowdStrike.com but these "lookalike" domains were registered in the last 3 days: 😮 crowdstrike[.]gg secure-crowdstrike[.]com crowdstrike[.]feedback crowdstrike[.]fail crowdstrike[.]bot crowdstrike[.]blue crowdstrike[.]cam Also interesting to see some "PunyCode" domains registered in the last 8 months as these are particularly hard to spot: croᴡdstrike[.]com (xn--crodstrike-r29d[.]com) crowdstríke[.]com (xn--crowdstrke-r8a[.]com) Most of the Microsoft variations been long-since gone so it seems last week someone really pushed the boat out on the puny code front! 😀 : micrösöft[.]com (xn--micrsft-d1ab[.]com) #phishing #crowdstrike #punycode #infosec #informationsecurity #cybersecurity

A quick update on the CrowdStrike situation, many users are still going to be impacted, on Friday IT companies focussed on restoring servers/services, this week is going to be end users. Both CrowdStrike and Microsoft have now provided some information, including a bootable USB tool from Microsoft: Microsoft Info page: https://lnkd.in/ee4uCpAV CrowdStrike Info page: https://lnkd.in/ex3qZJEt Aspire Status Page: https://lnkd.in/ebVH7Tuc Phishing Attacks on the Rise Organisations should issue guidance to their users to be suspicious of emails purporting to be from CrowdStrike or MIcrosoft on the issue - the NCSC has seen a significant increase in phishing emails relating to this and lookalike domain registrations. The Bitlocker challenge One of the difficulties for some organisations is if their users require a bitlocker recovery key. Devices with a TPM (Trusted Platform Module) storing the decryption key and no user-entered pin/password should be able to recover without the recovery key (more info on the Microsoft link above) There are also reports of users simply rebooting over and over to solve the issue if they cannot recover their bitlocker key (unverified by us at the moment) @crowdstrike Microsoft #crowdstrike