Billion pound Energy Provider without an IT department? Really???

[Scryder]

So I saw this article about Octopus Energy last week and my first thought was "This company has probably been hacked but since they have no IT infrastructure, they probably don't know about it!"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56130187

My second thought was, I won't be giving my details to a company that doesn't have any IT security.

The CEO of this company said (from the article):

HR and IT departments don't make employees happier or more productive in his experience, he says.

So he doesn't have them.
----------

Running smaller companies of around five people he would learn to cover HR and IT issues himself.

HR is one thing, but IT, yikes! This to me seems to be the wrong place to cost-cut in this day and age! And this guy seem proud of it.

Does this seem like a sensible move for a billion pound company, that stores customers information? It doesn't to me!

[spacein_vader]

Just because they don't have a HR/It department doesn't mean they don't have HR/IT people, or a contract with a 3rd party to provide that service.

[DanceswithUnix]

Just because they don't have a HR/It department doesn't mean they don't have HR/IT people, or a contract with a 3rd party to provide that service.

Agreed, someone has to do those jobs. I work in a small company, I am the one that does IT when I'm not creating new products, someone else does HR as part of their job.

Some of those tasks just have to happen, but others are nothing to do with making employees happier or more productive and are simply a cost reduction exercise. I can fix a PC, right now I have to, but in a bigger company there will be a lower paid junior in the IT department who can do just as good a job and free me up to make the company money.

I have worked in places where the IT dept was one person, and HR was another person and those often worked really well. The everyday tasks were still spread around the company, but someone was pulling it all together.

[Ttaskmaster]

Just because they don't have a HR/It department doesn't mean they don't have HR/IT people, or a contract with a 3rd party to provide that service.

We outsource our IT.
Can't say it's the best idea, as they typically know nothing about our industry, how it works, how we work and what we need to do our jobs the way they need to be done... but they're also the lowest bidder, which typically means we get the shoddiest service while the performance stats are so easily fudged to make the bosses think our IT is awesome.

In truth, we probably haven't been hacked because our stuff is so outdated that no hacker remembers how to interface with it!

[Scryder]

I did think they'd outsource IT. But not sure if that's the best of ideas.

I've worked in a smallish company where we got a phishing email from an employee's email that obviously got hacked (or probably brute forced). We all worked out pretty quickly it was a scam and ignored it (and told the IT chaps)... it said something about financial statement for the quarter. But the CEO and CFO both opened the email, and entered their login details. The problem was worked out quickly because we had an IT dept, however small, that we could get in touch with. Consequently for the next couple of months, we kept getting "cybersecurity training"... it's not usually the employees that are IT ignorant, it's the people at the top. Which is why I'm cynical about this guy's claims.

[ik9000]

but he doesn't need an IT dept. Those helpful people in the foreign call centre are watching his internet for him and just call him when they spot a problem right? You gotta love Sanjeev aka Robert aka Sasha aka Paulo aka Dimitri from the world wide web. I mean it must be a tiring job monitoring someones PCs remotely 24-7 and keeping track of their contact details, and being able to diagnose problems in real time, and fix them in just 5 mins of a remote desktop session...

[Saracen999]

.... You gotta love Sanjeev aka Robert aka Sasha aka Paulo aka Dimitri from the world wide web. I mean it must be a tiring job monitoring someones PCs remotely 24-7 and keeping track of their contact details, and being able to diagnose problems in real time, and fix them in just 5 mins of a remote desktop session...

Well, they have more time on their hands than they used to because they seem to have quit calling me and pretending to be from MS.

It might be because I kept telling them we were a Linux house. Or, it may be coincidence (probably is) but I did pick up the phone a while back and, suspecting the nature of the call, said

"CIA London Office, Security Desk, How may I help you today?"

Maybe my American accent is better than I thought it was. And yeah, sure, people must say that kind of thing all the time, but .... no calls since.

/shrug!

[ik9000]

Well, they have more time on their hands than they used to because they seem to have quit calling me and pretending to be from MS.

It might be because I kept telling them we were a Linux house. Or, it may be coincidence (probably is) but I did pick up the phone a while back and, suspecting the nature of the call, said

"CIA London Office, Security Desk, How may I help you today?"

Maybe my American accent is better than I thought it was. And yeah, sure, people must say that kind of thing all the time, but .... no calls since.

/shrug!

In so doing the real CIA probably now have a tap on your phone and are filtering out those scam calls on your behalf to reduce the amount of recording and playback analysis they have to do on you Saracen!!

[Scryder]

In so doing the real CIA probably now have a tap on your phone and are filtering out those scam calls on your behalf to reduce the amount of recording and playback analysis they have to do on you Saracen!!

lol... nothing else to say!