Blog

One of the highlights of the recent lockdowns has been the ability of businesses, of all sizes, to cope.

Many small businesses have had to adapt and embrace new technology as they could no longer operate on a face to face basis. Something that wasn’t considered important previously.

Our new phone system allows you to adapt as your stafing and business needs change in these “new normal” times.

No nonsense, easy to use telephone solution that gives you the ultimate control and staying in contact with your clients.

How can VoIP help my business ?

Open and close the office at a moments notice but still be available for your clients.

• Using our system, your phone line isn’t tied to your premises so you can answer your office calls from anywhere, easily.

• Talk your office calls on your mobile or a simple web browser or take your handset home.

• Voicemails are emailed to you so no need to “check the machine”.

Need to setup an information line for your clients ?

• Simply record your message and it is played to anyone calling your busines, or create a specific information line number.
• Change your message easily – record the audio on your laptop or direct via VoIP System.

Keep you customers and clients updated in a simple and easy way.

Dont pay for diverts !

If you or your staff need to work from home, there is no need to divert calls to personal mobiles or start the “telephone tag” game.

• Our phone system can be used via a handset so each user can access their “extension” via a handset, our free mobile app or even a web browser or all three!

You can keep your mobile number private and your customers see calls from your normal business number.

Aren’t these VoIP systems very technical ?

Your VoIP telephone system setup is available to change just using a a web browser.

How you handle your calls is entirely under your control, via a simple flow chart style approach

Isn’t VoIP Expensive ?

How does 2 users and a local phone number for under a £10 per month sound ?

• Go PAYG so you only pay for the calls you make

• Or go “unlimited” on a per user basis to cover their calls toUK Landline & Uk Mobiles.

• Or choose a call pack for your entire business.

Don’t forget that call bundles are only cost effective if you make a lot of calls, this applies to any form of phone deal.

Handy Hint : Once you start regularly hitting the price point between PAYG and “Bundle” you can change your tariff via Your Account.

Sounds good – what do I next ?

Simply head over to the Hightrees VoIP Portal and get started !

We’ve just made getting started with VoIP telephony even easier with our new self-service portal.

Business Quality VoIP in the Cloud

Help shrink your call costs with our state-of-the-art VoIP service and feature rich switchboard in the cloud. YOU choose the call package best suited for your business needs.

PAYG, Unlimited UK (inc Mobiles!), Unlimited EU or Call Packs to cover your entire business.

Our self service VoIP system is always on, accessible from anywhere and can be customised exactly how you want it to operate your business.

What features are included?

• SIP User Management
• Time of Day Routing
• Alternative Caller ID
• Hardware Integration
• Conference Bridge
• Call Routes & Forwarding
• Voicemail & Mailboxes
• Call Management
• Call Monitoring
• SIP Trunking
• Integrated IVR
• Music on Hold
• Call Recordings
• Fax to Email

Your Phone System Direct To Your Device

Whether you work out of your smartphone or conduct your business through your laptop, the Hightrees VoIP app harnesses the power of your phone system direct to your device of choice.

Or use an exisiting VoIP handset – the choice really is yours.

This may mean the end of giving out your personal mobile numbers to clients when you are out of the office.

Take a look – head over to the Hightrees VoIP Portal now

Hightrees Organisation is very happy to announce we have been successful in our assessments for the Cyber Essentials scheme and the IASME standard.

We’ve received the following from Wiltshire Police and thought it would be a handy resource for our Small Business clients.

Our emails have been hacked, this account has been compromised, I’ve notified all the other members of staff – what can we/you do ?

This was basically an email that Hightrees received from a client recently.

Upon investigation there was no hack. No activity or rogue logins on the sending email account at all.

When we actually found a copy of the email in question, it all became clear.

The email were a pretty typical but growing in use “spear phishing” email. 

So how does spearphising work ?

In a nut shell this is where an email is sent appearing to be from a known source/name but is actually not the person you think it is.

The Email Security software highlighted this email in question as potentially an issue but it couldn’t be guaranteed.

As this information might be useful to others, below is a breakdown of some things to look for :

Display name is Mr CEO
This is purely what is displayed as the person sending it. This is normally someone known to the person receiving the emails. The names of people in the Management Team, the owner, Directors etc are often available on company websites, Social Media or via Companies House.

Many businesses and organisations have email information available to the general public, so making something appear to come from “The Boss” lends an air of confidence to the email. This happens with many businesses – “it’s an email from the boss I must reply…” at first glance.

Email Address – executivecommitte286@gmail.com
As you can see, this is not a internal company email. Technically this could still be a valid email if it was a personal email account.

Email Contents
The first email was along the lines of

“I’m really busy, can you do me a favour ?”

Nothing spammy, nothing to immediately raise concerns – after all it is a message from “The Boss”.

Once a reply was sent, the tone of the email was still kept conversational and went along the lines of :

“I need to organise a prize for the next meeting, but I’m going to be tied up on a video conference – can you help me organise this please ?”

Again, no big red flags, no dodgy links – The Boss is busy and needs MY help.

There was a bit of to and fro – “give me an hour and I’ll give you the details” until the crunch point came.

I need you to get hold of some Apple iTunes gifts cards, if you can get 4 x £50 and 1 x £100 and scratch off the codes and email them to me I can do the rest. If you could do it within the next couple of hours it would be a life saver…..

This is tailored for a growing scam, where people are persuade to purchase gift cards and then pass on the codes to a 3rd party. Sometimes this is blatantly obvious and out of character for the person you think has sent the message, on other occasions it may seem normal.

The contents of spear phishing emails vary greatly, but they tend to be targeted to a specific aim rather than just dodgy weblinks as this helps the email appear genuine. Emails tend to be more conversational than typical spam/malware style attempts which helps with the “it must be genuine” feel.

As the first email that has come through is pretty basic, are you free, can you contact me – it’s human nature to respond as you think you know who you are talking to.  Once this conversation starts , you are adding to the credibility of the mail so further spam/security checks become lower.

If in doubt, always contact the person via the proper email address/telephone to confirm.

Conclusion

Luckily in this instance, somebody twigged that something wasn’t right and raised concerns.

Whilst easier said than done, it is important not to over-react in these situations. 

Panic emails mentioning danger words like “hack”, “compromised”, security etc do unintentional damage to both the users faith in the system and the supplier of any of the services mentioned, espcially if you jump the gun and email ALL of your contacts to say you have a problem.

You then run the risk of having to deal with the original problem and then dealing with the chinese whispers fall out.

Please get in touch if you would like advice on email security and the services Hightrees can offer to help protect your email systems.

With the current situation, many small businesses will be looking at their cash flow.

Hightrees have just setup Stripe payments for our invoices, so if you need to pay by credit or debit card securely, you can do that.

Starting from April 10th, any invoices issued can be paid for, securely via Stripe if you need to. The link will be included in your invoice.

Been busy over the last couple of days sorting out a VoIP system to help the Pewsey Coronavirus Community Association.

The PCCA has been setup to help the local community deal with the local problems in the current Covid-19 situation.

From arranging meds/prescriptions to food parcels, general help and advice to dog walking – the group is aiming to help their local community in anyway they can.

We noticed a Facebook post and the problems they were having trying to operate with a single landline so we said we could try and help out.

In essence, we have created a new phone number and built a glorified answering machine. This relatively simple system will take the pressure off manning a physical line and taking messages.

The new answering service operates a menu system and voicemails are forwarded to the “team leads” for each particular service.

We’ll be looking at adding softphones remotely so callers can talk to a real person, especially important when lots of people are self isolating and contact with others is limited.

Sunday 29th March Update

After raiding the old/spare kit cupboard we’ve managed to persuade some old VoIP handsets into service. The network cable length are a bit of a guess-timate but should be good enough to allow the PCCA to operate from their central location at The Little Lunch Box in Pewsey.