Blog

This week I'd like to make you aware of our support over the festive period, I've included more information on this below.If you need any help the bes ...

Microsoft have introduced a range of powerful apps which are built into M365 and Azure. These allow you to build high productivity apps for your business with a rich set of tools, which can help to grow your business, save you money and empower your people to work better together.

We can help you deploy these and work with you to create apps or train your people to get up and running, so please get in touch if you need help. 

More than 250 people from local business Chess ICT have been getting fit by taking part in a step challenge to support East Cheshire Hospice, raising £1,000 towards the cost of refurbishing a bereavement support centre.

PowerApps are a no code/low code platform that enables anyone to build rich web and mobile applications. In this blog post we'll explore the features and benefits of introducing Power Apps into your business. 

This week we’re excited to let you know that we've launched our Customer Portal Administrator tools which are designed to help you get the very best from your Chess online account.

Management of threats and compliance with regulations have not gone away over the last 9 months and many of our customers have asked us to help them with their digital information infrastructure, so I thought it might be useful to highlight 3 areas to consider. 

To help manage the challenges of compliance and data governance, Microsoft has introduced a new set of solutions, including Compliance Manager, which provides more than 150 out-of-box assessments.

Openreach has recently changed its service status to Amber, and this will remain until 2 December. You can read more about this and how it may affect you in the connectivity section below. 

This week we have sent your monthly bill, and I've included a reminder of our 5 top billing questions and answers, along with the best way to pay your bill. 

Chess is further strengthening its partnership with business technology and software provider, Sage, in an agreement which will see Chess deliver Sage for Education and Sage solutions across the UK.

The Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) is being closed in Dec 2025. The PSTN supports a range of familiar telephone and broadband products. There will be a stop sell point in September 2023, after which PSTN based products will no longer be available for new supply.  

We're always looking for ways to improve your online experience and this week we're pleased to tell you about 3 additional features coming soon on our Customer Portal.  Let us us know if you have any other improvement suggestions HERE and we'll review and action if we can.   

As another lockdown starts I thought it would be useful to revisit some of the products and services we offered in the Spring that are aimed at making working from home easier.

Chess is announced as a supplier on YPO's new national network and telecommunications framework.

We would like to reassure all our customers that our Service Desk remains unaffected by the lockdown and we will continue to provide the same high level of support.

Our last 3 episodes in a 12 part series #BeCyberSmart. Today we cover Drive By Attack, Buffer Overflow and Privilege Escalation.  All 12 episodes are available to watch on demand HERE.

Covid restrictions continue to tighten across the UK adding additional pressures to many businesses. We would like to assure you that our Service Desk is operating as normal and we are here to help if you need us.

The best way to get help is to log a ticket on our Customer Portal, we will then review and assign a response time, usually within 15 minutes of receiving your ticket. 

Don't forget if you need advice on any aspect of working from home, we can help, please click HERE. 

This week we're talking about Rootkits, Remote Code Execution and Password Attacks and there's some really fascinating information covered, even for the most technical of us. 

If you do nothing else, make sure you follow the password rules and don't get 'pwned'. Find out how and why.

This week we're talking about Malware, Ransomware and Worms and there's some really fascinating information covered, even for the most technical of us.

Whether you own a smart fridge, the latest laptop or you run a multi million pound business none of us can afford to ignore the threat of a virus attacking our systems. Find out why.

Staying connected and in control is more important than ever and in this week's update there are two features I'd like to draw your attention to:

• New Service Status page 
• The Customer Portal and what this means for your business.  

Data Protection and Compliance are amongst the most challenging areas of business operations.

Compliance Manager, created for Microsoft 365, helps to simplify your compliance journey by giving you the information and tools to assess your compliance risks, conduct risk assessments and manage your end-to-end compliance processes when using Microsoft Cloud services.