Fined up to £500,000 for data loss

A recent BBC news article warns of future fines for data loss and once again highlights how critical data protection is for every business.

Read the full article on the BBC website: BBC News

Your needs can be taken care of, CD Team offers a range of data security and anti-piracy solutions which can reduce the chances of your data being lost and or copied dramatically and even eliminate it completely:


» SECURE DISCS for access security and data protection
Secure discs such as Verbatims SecureSave DVDs and AutoSave Encrypt, are a simple and cost effective way to store and distribute confidential information. If the disc is lost or stolen, it is protected by an enforced password and 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption. If the disc is copied onto a standard blank disc or a hard disc drive the encrypted data will become inaccessible. Each disc contains the security application so in only a few clicks, and without installing any software on your PC, you can record, protect, encrypt and archive your sensitive data.


» SECURE USBs for portable data security and content protection
Secure USB drives are the perfect compact and versatile way to save your sensitive data and protect it from unauthorised access. CD Team has a selection of secure USBs ranging from single secure partition with enforced password protection and hardware-based, 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption to advanced devices with FIPS 140-2 level 2 certification and inbuilt drive termination software. As above each USB device contains the security application.


» SECURE DUPLICATORS for secure data copying
Secure Duplicators with lockable entry, can custom print your cd, dvd or blu-ray discs with your company details and logo, individually barcode or serial number them or add an individuals name to every disc produced so that you can track each one. This identity information can also be embedded into the disc content (known as fingerprinting). For regular high volume data encryption, AutoSave Encrypt Pro enables discs to be pre-printed with your logo and supplied in bulk or used as part of our secure duplication service.


» SECURE HARD DRIVES for secure data storage
Protecting the data that is stored on external hard drives is of major concern to many organizations and there is an increasing requirement for the devices to be robustly secure. Verbatim’s 128-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) hardware encrypted 2.5” hard disk drive fulfils this need, offering real-time full disk encrypted storage with no loss of performance during data transfer.


» SECURE DISC DESTRUCTION for safe data disposal
Don't leave discs lying around in temptations way. If you have important data to protect, disposing of it can be a real issue. Don't take any unnecessary chances; CD Team can dispose of all your discs using heavy duty disc shredders or provide you with a disc shredder or professional degausser for use in-house.


For more details or visit our dedicated security site: www.storeandprotect.co.uk

Happy New Year

I would like to wish you all a very Happy New Year.

Despite all the heavy snow we've been having, it is business as usual here at CD Team. So please contact us today, call 01491 636373 or email us at info@cdteam.co.uk

It may be cold out there but you can't deny it's a beautiful sight. Take a look at some of our snow photos below:







We look forward to hearing from you and hope you all stay safe if travelling in the snow.

Christmas Opening Times

On behalf of everyone here at CD Team, I would like to thank you all for your continued support and I look forward to working with you in 2010.
Best wishes, Emma.

Instead of sending Christmas cards this year we ran a Competition for our customers with a chance to win a PS3, an iPod Touch or a Ticketmaster Giftcard. The Competition is now closed.

THE WINNERS ARE:
1st Prize - Tony Clarke
2nd Prize - John Sowerby
3rd Prize - Sarah Timbers
Congratulations and thank you to everyone who entered.
You raised £232 for Children in Need.


As you all enjoyed our Christmas cards in the past, here's a look back over the years with our Card montage:


CD Team will be closed for Christmas and New Year as follows:

• Thursday 24th (Christmas Eve) - CLOSED from mid-day
• Friday 25th (Christmas Day) - CLOSED
• Monday 28th (Bank Holiday) - CLOSED
• Tuesday 29th - OPEN
• Wednesday 30th - OPEN
• Thursday 31st (New Years Eve) - CLOSED
• Friday 1st (New Years Day) - CLOSED
• Monday 4th January - RE-OPEN for business as usual

Christmas Wishes
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from us all and thank you to everyone who has sent us a Christmas Message. Here are just some of the kind messages we received:

• Hope that everyone has a very happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year, with many thanks for a really good product and great support.
• Wishing everyone at CD TEAM a fantastic Christmas and a Happy New Year! It's been an absolute pleasure (as always) working with you and I look forward to seeing you in the New Year! Best Wishes Sam
• Have a great Christmas and I look forward to working with you again in the New Year. P.S. The quiz is a great idea!!
• Wishing you all a Cool Yule and Many Thanks for all of your help and cooperation throughout the year.
• Merry Christmas! Can I please have the PS3!?!
• Just want to say thank you for bailing us out of a hole this year - the speed and quality of your service is superb! Have a wonderful Christmas and a successful and prosperous 2010! Ben
• Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year everybody - thanks for your support in 2009!
• Thanks for all your help, and Have a great xmas, hope your all drink loads and fall over.thanks xx
• Thanks for all your help this year with our digital storage needs. Have a Happy Christmas and a Great New Year.
• Merry Christmas from us all, thanks for your support, and the bit of fun with the quiz too!
• Merry Christmas ...keep up the good work !!
• Best Xmas Wishes go to a very helpful and friendly team and we wish you good business and happiness for 2010.
• Thanks to the whole team for the personal and cheerful service. Hope all your stockings are full this Christmas.
• HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL! AND THANKS EVER SO MUCH FOR ALL OF YOUR HARD-WORK FOR US THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE YEAR. MANY THANKS. X
• Thank you very much for your help in creating CDs for one of our clients this year. It was much appreciated and we hope to be in touch soon with more work for you. Merry Christmas!
• Thanks for the Christmas Competition invite and thanks for your hard work throughout the year. I'll be in touch for our next order very soon!
• Thank you for all your excellent work over the year!
• Merry Christmas Merry Christmas Gang. Great idea this (so long as I win!)
• Happy Christmas! Thank you to Dom especially for dealing with all my last minute orders and getting them all delivered as promised. I hope you all have a lovely Christmas and New Year x
• Thanks for your help over the last 2 years. Have a Merry Christmas everyone, and a Happy New Year.
• Merry Christmas everyone and thanks for all the tips and quizzes!
• Merry Christmas to one and all. And thanks for all your help with our monthly duplications this year, the turn around times have been great, cheers
• Merry Christmas from My team and myself. A Great first year of this partnership. Congratulations to Jan Collins and the CD Team.
• To the C-hristmas D-ream Team, wishing you lots of Christmas cheer.
• Happy Xmas, Thank you for been a good help, great service from yourself, unlike many other company's! Have a great new year!

CD Team on Digital Distribution

In preperation for the London Games Conference 2009, Tim Ingham from MCV magazine asked Jo Fone and Richard Dearing the following questions regarding Digital Distribution and the Future of the European Games Market.

How will digital distribution impact the business of a disc replication company?

CD Team offers services and equipment which support the games development community before the release of the title to the consumer so the effect on our business will be different to that of a disc replication company which is tied into the mass production of discs for retail distribution.
Before a title is released the development and marketing budgets are under constant scrutiny so providing a cost effective method for testing and pre-release marketing, including short run distribution, is critical to the success of any project. The current generation of consoles utilise optical media as the primary method to deliver the content so our multi-platform Games Development Xpress which supports Blu-ray, dual-layer DVD and RVT-R* (*available to Authorised Nintendo Developers only) is the perfect solution for today’s development requirements.

While the next generation of consoles will undoubtedly continue the move towards online distribution as either the primary or secondary means of delivering content there will still be the opportunity for the development and marketing teams to use physical media to provide instant access to pre-release content and marketing materials.

Removing the optical disc drive from the hardware will reduce cost but it also removes a proven content delivery method and a range of ‘backwards compatible’ entertainment features. USB has become the standard for peripheral connections so it is likely that Secure USB flash drives will be supported and support for Secure Digital memory cards has also become a standard feature of home entertainment devices.

The services and equipment CD Team offers to the games development community is a vital part of the process. The methods of delivery, physical and online, will change when the next generation of consoles are released but we believe there will be a requirement for both. 

What's attracted CD Team to support LGC?

In partnership with Imation TDK it was clear to see that sponsorship of this event was an excellent opportunity to demonstrate our continued commitment to the games development community and to enable CD Team to be part of the ongoing discussion regarding its future.

We're into our 15th year in business and have been working very closely with the games industry since the company was formed in 1995. We supported customers in the early days of CD then the transition from CD to DVD and were the first in Europe to sell a Blu-ray publishing system. We will continue to support our customers with our services and products, today, tomorrow and in the years to come. We see this as an ideal event at which the industry can come together as a whole to discuss and debate the opportunities for all of us in the future of digital distribution.

Why is digital distribution such an important issue to address right now?

The media industry is in turmoil. New platforms, such as online, mobile, and social networking, are driving major shifts in consumer behaviour and advertising. Companies are rethinking their business models. In this environment, all media companies and the games industry must address some critical questions. We also need to be sure we work on practical solutions for today’s business. The consumer experience must be the focus and whilst we can’t say exactly what the future will look like, we are supporting customers today – developers and publishers, pre-release titles, PR and Marketing materials with reliable digital delivery on disc, flash memory and USB formats.

Has the games industry explored everything there is to know about digital distribution? Which business models are still to be investigated properly? (e.g. in-game ads for online games, microtransactions, etc.)

Far from it, our industry has so much to be proud of as one of the most creative and innovative, I am confident it will constantly evolve to enhance the consumer experience whilst maximizing revenue streams. CD Team specialise in delivering content, securely and on time with our range of services, and providing solutions in the form of duplicator hardware, software and discs to enable developers to do themselves so in-house. We work with pre-release content however we don’t influence what that content is. We do ensure companies can share and test their content in-house, and journalists across the world receive their marketing and review titles on time.

How do CD Team see the relationship between physical goods and digital sales developing in the years to come?

Downloading has been around now for several years and consumer demand will continue to shape how content is delivered, the PSP GO for example makes perfect sense as games content is small. The all important Q4 when the vast majority of disc based sales are bought as gifts, with titles already reaching 25GB and soon to be 50GB downloads on current broadband speeds, even with the planned improvements, will not appeal to all consumers and even less so as gifts. We’re certain the retailers will agree, it will be more than 3 years before the boxed disc based product is dead.

Anyone who plays games online at peak times will already be aware of the limitations, restrictions and priorities imposed by various ISPs. Large content patches can also be extremely frustrating even if you have the latest high speed broadband connection because of the number of users accessing the content at the same time.

It is also difficult to compare the delivery of compressed audio files, mobile games and streamed media to the download and decompression of high definition game content for the latest generation consoles. The former is measured in megabytes and the latter is measured in gigabytes with a typical high definition console game weighing in at 4 to 24 GB. 

So the games development community needs to focus on the consumer experience, in the same way that CD Team focuses on pre-release development and marketing for our customers, and we believe this is best served by using a combination of physical and online digital delivery methods. 

The edited article, published in MCV issue 561 (on page 42), can be found here.

Submitted by Richard Dearing, Operations Director

Your Opinion Counts

CD Team would like to thank all of you who took part in our survey.

The winner of the £20 Amazon Voucher has been contacted.

100% of you were either very satisfied or satisfied that:

• your enquiry was dealt with in a timely, professional and friendly manner
• your account manager was knowledgeable and helpful
• your order was well managed throughout and delivered on time
• our range of products and services met your requirements

99% of you were either very satisfied or satisfied that:

• the speed and condition in which your product was delivered met your expectations
• our technical support team was knowlegeable and responsive (when contacted)
• that every team member showed an interest in you and treated you as a valued customer

100% of you would recommend us and 96.4% would use us again

However, only 60% of you use our website
We hope this is because you think we're a lovely bunch of knowlegeable people and prefer picking up the phone and contacting us directly for information. However, we really do make every effort to ensure our website shows the most up to date news items, product information and downloads and we want it to be a useful resource for you. Therefore, our main priority for the following year is to make our website even more informative and beneficial to you, our customers. We will be working on the site design, navigation and usability in order to attract more of you to the site and keep you returning.

Any suggestions on how we could improve the website or any other aspects of our business in order to better our service to you are greatly appreciated.

Optional Survey Comments included:

"In all dealings with CD Team, I am always left with the impression of a professional, well organised company, with a courteous and knowledgeable team."

"You are always efficient and communicate well, which makes my job that bit easier since I know I can rely on you."

You don't have to wait until our next survey to make a difference... you can add a comment about your account manager or the products and services you receive from CD Team any time, just click here »

 

Thank you for your continued business and support

CD Team has been awarded ISO 14001 certification. This certification has only been achieved by less than 1% of UK businesses and this prestigious award is supported by the Government and recognised worldwide. Nigel Griffiths, who undertook the assessment for QMS Quality Management Systems, paid particular tribute to "the investment in people and training that enables CD Team to provide an efficient and environmentally friendly service to their customers".

Dinner is served!

Yesterday, every member of CD Team lent a hand to pack an urgent project which needed to be despatched the same day. This is a service which is critical to many of our customers and vital to us. I took pride in seeing the couriers and post leave our building on time knowing it was a job well done and within the deadline, and I spared a thought for the amazing fulfilment I was priveledged to see in India a couple of years ago. If you have never heard of the incredible tiffinwallah courier service, it is Indian efficiency at its best…

These are the men who deliver 175,000 lunches (or "tiffin") every day to offices and schools throughout Mumbai, the business capital of India. Lunch is transported in a tin container consisting of a number of bowls, each containing a separate dish, held together in a supporting frame. The meals are prepared each morning in the commuter's home by their family once (s)he has left for his commute into Mumbai. It is then collected by the tiffinwallah later that morning and delivered to their place of work or study in time for lunch. Afterwards, the process is reversed and the tin container returned to the commuter's home address.

The process is amazing despite the complexity. The 5,000 tiffinwallahs working today make a mistake on average of only once every two months, according to the President of the Mumbai Tiffinmen's Association. That's only one error in every 8 million deliveries, or 16 million if you include the return trip. "If we made 10 mistakes a month, no one would use our service" he says.

How do they do it?

The meals are picked up from commuters' homes in suburbs around central Mumbai long after the commuters have left for work, delivered to them on time, then picked up and delivered home before the commuters return.

Each tiffin carrier has, painted on its top, a number of symbols which identify where the carrier was picked up, the originating and destination stations and the address to which it is to be delivered.

After the tiffin carriers are picked up, they are taken to the nearest railway station, where they are sorted according to the destination station. Between 10:15 a.m. and 10:45 a.m. they are loaded in crates onto the baggage cars of trains.

At the destination station they are unloaded by other tiffinwallahs and re-sorted, this time according to street address and floor. The 100- kilogram crates of carriers, carried on tiffinwallahs' heads, hand- wagons and cycles are delivered at 12:30 p.m., picked up at 1:30 p.m., and returned whence they came.

The charge for this extraordinary service is just 150 rupees per month, enough for the tiffinwallahs, who are mostly self-employed, to make a good living. After paying Rs60 per crate and Rs120 per man per month to the Western Railway for transport, the average tiffinwallah clears about Rs3,250 a month.

Of that sum, Rs10 goes to the Tiffinmen's Association. After minimal expenses, the rest of the Rs50,000 a month that the Association collects go to a charitable trust that feeds the poor.

Although we don’t have the same daily volumes, ours is a far more varied service. In any one day we might be producing 8,000 DVD’s, packing them into PVC wallets and dispatching those with letters into jiffy bags with labels to 8,000 destinations Nationally. The same day we could be packing promotional materials such as key rings, blow up chairs, t-shirts or books with, CD’s and Blu-ray discs, across multiple language skus and dispatched Worldwide. The complexity should not be underestimated and nor should the skills required to ensure we do an accurate job.

Every box and all packing material is re-cycled and re-used immediately on the same job where possible. Or, stored and re-used over the course of the next few days, or weeks. Our waste management processes are all measured and recorded for our ISO14000.

We can’t claim to deliver by bicycle to save on fuel, but our couriers and the postal service all work to ensure efficiency, and are measured against care for the environment too.

I’m certain there are still many lessons that can be learned from the Tiffinmen's Association, perhaps I am just trying to convince myself that in name of commitment to continuous improvement I should visit Mumbai again.

Submitted by Jo Fone, Managing Director

The best and worst of the World Wide Web

There are tens of billions of websites out there to choose from so we've saved you some surfing time and compiled a list of the lesser known sites that we find most useful with our 10 of the Best.

Most sites serve some kind of purpose but there are also those sites that seem to have absolutely no point at all, like those on our 10 of the Worst list. Despite being utterly pointless, The Sheep Market site does make me chuckle : )

Why not sign up to our blog and add your favourites to the list?

10 of the Best:

1. iStockphoto - Royalty free photographs, vector illustrations, video footage, audio tracks & Flash files to buy online with iStock credits. You'll never be stuck for artwork ideas again www.istockphoto.com


2. DaFont - More than 7,500 free fonts for Mac and PC www.dafont.com


3. Whatsonwhen - Events, attractions, openings and exhibitions from around the world. Enter a location and dates and the site will show listings www.whatsonwhen.com


4. Sporting Life - Live scores and results from a UK perspective. All major sports including football, racing, cricket and golf www.sportinglife.com


5. Engadget - A (digital) finger on the pulse of the technology world. All the newest developments, discoveries, gadgets and toys before they hit the shops www.engadget.com


6. XE - Currency converter covering every world currency. Azerbaijan new manats to Cayman Island dollars? Just a click away www.xe.com


7. Kelkoo - There are plenty of price comparison sites on the web, but this one seems to get it right more often than most www.kelkoo.co.uk


8. COCO2 - Increase site visits and offset your website's CO2. Make your website carbon neutral from only £6/annum www.coco2.org


9. GiftGen - Gift ideas for the hard to buy for. Just enter their age, sex and interests and how much you want to pay and it searches the net for ideas www.giftgen.co.uk


10. Zoopla - Zoopla gives sale prices of recently sold and rented homes and - the tricky bit - estimates the value of the rest www.zoopla.co.uk

10 of the Worst:

1. The Sheep Market - More than 10,000 sketched sheep to choose from www.thesheepmarket.com


2. The Dullest Blog - Who knew life could be so exciting, NOT! www.dullestblog.com


3. The Rolf Harris Jukebox - Listen to the musical stylings of Rolf Harris, an animated figure that sings (badly) while playing some kind of....saw? WARNING: has sound www.rolfharrisjukebox.com


4. Toilet Paper - Unroll a roll of toilet paper as long as you want without having to clean it up - no blaming the puppy this time! www.papertoilet.com


5. Purple - It's purple. That's it. Whatever this site is doing, it's doing it RIGHT NOW www.purple.com


6. Human Clock - It's a clock. A big clock. Made out of people www.billychasen.com


7. How to open a coconut - Neglects to mention you have to buy the coconut first unless you're Robinson Crusoe www.howtoopenacoconut.com


8. David Bowie is... - Find out for yourself www.davidbowieis.com


9. A day in the life of... A MacDonalds Employee. How would you spend it? www.conceptlab.com


10. The End of the Internet - Somehow, against all odds, you've reached the End of the Internet. www.shibumi.org/eoti/

Submitted by Emma Freke, Marketing Manager with reference sources from The Telegraph and About.com