This Month at BCC: December 2024

Tech the Halls!

Welcome to December’s monthly insight as the spirit of Christmas was successfully installed at BCC IT. Our Newcastle Emlyn office is adorned with Christmas decorations and our team (and plus ones) rebooted with a festive feast at the Porth Hotel in Llandysul, where a glass or two of good cheer was downloaded with remarkable success! Making the evening even more special was finding out that it was our Director Hywel’s wedding anniversary – Congratulations Mr. and Mrs. Ifans! By Monday morning we had resumed to full power, ready to draw our Secret Santa from Santa’s sorting hat.

Our technical team kicked off this month with some major upgrades and server migrations, working late into the evening to ensure our clients’ systems are running as smoothly and efficiently as possible with minimal disruption. Meanwhile we are continuing our rollout of Heimdal Endpoint Security, a new and improved product that offers a wealth of benefits designed to enhance cybersecurity at no additional cost to our customers.

As our team and engineers prepared for the coming weeks, it was beginning to look a lot like … an extremely busy month ahead.

We were not wrong, however on the 6^th of December everything changed and plans for the month were disrupted when the Met Office issued a rare red weather warning, as storm Darragh severely impacted parts of the British Isles, including Wales. The extratropical cyclone caused travel disruptions, including closure of both the Prince of Wales and Severn Bridges. Dyfed-Powys Police declared a major incident as chaos and significant damage followed gusts reaching recorded speeds of up to 96 mph. Many of our clients and staff members, myself included are among the 1.5 million plus affected by total power outages, and with mobile signals down households have been left without communication. Fortunately, the BCC IT office in Newcastle Emlyn was exceptionally lucky and is one of few buildings in the area to remain connected. For the rest of us reconnection is estimated by 10 PM on Thursday 12^th December and our thoughts are with everyone facing this situation, including those worried about affected family members. Our resilient team is working hard to keep everything secure and ready for whatever is next.

As this year draws to a close, we’d like to thank every one of our clients and customers for your continued trust and support. It has been our pleasure to help you to stay connected and secure throughout 2024.

From all of us at BCC IT, we wish you all a Nadolig Llawen a Blwyddyn Newydd Dda! Our next monthly insight will be in 2025 but remember to follow us in the meantime via our social media channels, which I will update throughout the month.

 A very Happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year!🎅