Wireline Issue 48 - Summer 2020

Phishing scams are likely to affect every business, and each will company have its own policy on how to report and deal with these attempts. The NCSC’s Suspicious Email Reporting Service also allows individuals to take personal action against dodgy emails. If you receive something that doesn’t look right, you can forward to report@phishing.gov.uk and the NCSC will analyse whether it is malicious and act to remove sites if necessary. In the first two weeks, the public reported 160,000 suspicious emails, some of which were coronavirus- themed, resulting in more than 300 fake sites being taken down. The NCSC also supports individuals. Its recently launched Cyber Aware campaign provides six steps everyone can take to protect their accounts and data online. More information can be found at ncsc.gov.uk/ cyberaware. OGUK has also created dedicated cyber security resources for the oil and gas industry. To request an information pack, contact editorial@oilandgasuk.co.uk.

tactically it has also provided an opportunity to spark digital initiatives to overcome some logistic hurdles.” The experience of deploying IT quickly and across entire business units may even stoke support for smaller, targeted, projects in future. Martin notes that the ‘fail fast’ mantra of the tech industry does not transfer easily to the engineering-led disciplines of oil and gas. “My view is that [we should focus on] looking at much smaller building blocks, and how we get data in near or real-time from an operation directly into a system and then push that data wherever it needs to go.” These small low-risk steps, he hopes, may pave the way for more ambitious transformations and greater efficiencies. For Maged, a future with more remote working and greater digital connectivity raises new questions for businesses to examine. “Do we consider how we might alter the IT infrastructure if there is reduced occupancy in the office, and then what kind of policies

do you set?” he notes. “If you’re asking people to work from home, what is the industry standard for that?” In particular, companies (and users) will need to consider ‘last mile’ problems like household bandwidth and work environments. As a result, he adds that building awareness and developing best practices for maintaining a home working space will be key topics of discussion in the months to come. Low commodity prices inevitably mean tighter budgets. But Martin is keen to press the importance of not underinvesting in these targeted projects which could have far-reaching implications in terms of business effectiveness and cost reduction. In this regard, he believes every potential avenue should be explored: “For the survival of the industry here we need to look at every efficiency we can. That involves embracing IT, taking some risks in how we approach IT— a more agile approach — and learning a lot from other industries.”

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