Author: SME Chamber

In March 2016, the Maltese Government together with the private sector has set up the Mriehel Enterprise Zone Foundation, a Private Public Partnership (PPP). The idea initiated by the private sector was set up to give a makeover to the Mriehel Industrial Estate. Both the private and public sphere of this partnership will fork out equal amounts of investment to make the in-dustrial estate a state of the art business hub. Within this Foundation, GRTU will be representing smaller size operators through President Paul Abela, who acts as one of the members of the Foundation.

In this environment, GRTU organised a meeting with its members within the Mriehel Industrial Estate with the intention to involve SMEs actively in the feedback given to the board of the Foundation. The Foundation is very active at the moment and adjourns every two weeks.

During the meeting with its members GRTU CEO Abigail Mamo, discussed a number of issues and concerns which could be raised to the Foundation. Such as pro-posals for alternative parking zones, waste collection systems, storm water mitigation system and marketing proposals for the area, amongst others. Feedback from small businesses in the area to this cause has been very positive and enlightening.

GRTU has initiated progress in the interest of small busi-nesses. The organisation has been able to obtain a €50,000 contribution from Government towards the PPP, as a collec-tive sum contribution by small businesses. GRTU is of the opinion that small businesses do have interests in the area especially since the market price allocated to the area is ris-ing. Therefore, due to the involvement of large stake-holders, it is in the small businesses’ interest to remain up to date and active stakeholders. GRTU will be speaking to indi-vidual businesses separately to gather their feedback and create a separate sub committee. This committee will be represented in the Foundation’s Board through President Paul Abela as one of its members. The intent of such a com-mittee is to integrate the interests of small businesses in Mriehel which collectively will become proactive players to the agenda setting of the Foundation’s board.

GRTU has signed a shareholders’ agreement with the Water Services Corporation to develop two solar farms to be utilised by the commercial sector on the Corporation’s land. Through this agreement a company has been es-tablished with the name of Malta Energy Ltd.

Minister Konrad Mizzi responsible for energy and water conservation exclaimed that the two solar farms will be constructed over reservoirs at Ta’ Cenc in Gozo and an-other in Mellieha in Malta.They will jointly generate a minimum of 1 megawatt of electricity.

Minister Mizzi also noted that the recent renewable en-ergy projects, including the communal PV farm scheme, the Water Services Corporation will be making optimal use of its assets for renewable energy. This measure is envisaged to contribute to Malta’s 10% of renewable en-ergy, country specific requirement target by 2020. Minis-ter Mizzi also mentioned that the Ministry and its entities are working very well with the GRTU, which organisation is also currently the promotional partner in the Energy.

GRTU has signed a shareholders’ agreement with the Water Services Corporation to develop two solar farms to be utilised by the commercial sector on the Corporation’s land. Through this agreement a company has been es-tablished with the name of Malta Energy Ltd.

Minister Konrad Mizzi responsible for energy and water conservation exclaimed that the two solar farms will be constructed over reservoirs at Ta’ Cenc in Gozo and an-other in Mellieha in Malta.They will jointly generate a minimum of 1 megawatt of electricity.

Minister Mizzi also noted that the recent renewable en-ergy projects, including the communal PV farm scheme, the Water Services Corporation will be making optimal use of its assets for renewable energy. This measure is envisaged to contribute to Malta’s 10% of renewable en-ergy, country specific requirement target by 2020. Minis-ter Mizzi also mentioned that the Ministry and its entities are working very well with the GRTU, which organisation is also currently the promotional partner in the Energy

The Business Advisory Services provide business undertakings operating in Malta with advisory services that suit their specific requirements.

Through the Energy Audit Voucher Scheme, small and micro undertakings that have their energy consumption between 10,000 kWhr and 75,000 kWhr, may engage an Energy Auditor to carry out a high level energy review of the activity.  Through the energy audit, the business would identify actions and investments that may be carried out to reduce energy consumption.

Should you wish to see the full details and links to relevant application documents, please click here.

During the first Executive Council meeting for the year 2019, Paul Abela has been confirmed as GRTU President for the year 2019.

The Executive Council also elected GRTU’s 6 Vice Presidents as follows:

GRTU has today published it’s annual Business Performance Survey.

Overall, results have been positive with 36% of respondents claiming that their sales in 2016 increased by between 1 and 30% over sales in 2015 and 29% claiming that they did worse that 2015. The remaining 36% claimed that their turnover was identical to that of 2015.

This survey is conducted by the GRTU research unit which is headed by Marcel Mizzi (GRTU Vice President – Finance & Admin). The number of respondents was 175 and the survey was conducted online and via telephone. The online system employed utilises tokens which means that only persons that possess a token can participate and tokens are sent by email to members. This ensures that respondents cannot vote twice and that only persons who are legitimate business owners can actually participate.

The above pie chart shows the business activities that the respondents of this survey are active in. It is clearly evident from this chart that the respondents where from a cross section of the business community and not simply retailers. This particular question allowed respondents to select more than one selection as we are aware that many businesses are not simply involved in one activity within their enterprise.

The above line chart shows that the businesses interviewed are involved in am myriad of sectors. Sectors for the GRTU is well known are represented as well as other sectors that are such as the sectors which are traditionally considered as service sectors.

Respondents were also provided with an opportunity to air their concerns and the most prevalent concerns where the following :

• There is an acute shortage of employable people. Considered on a country wide level this is undoubtedly a good thing but on a micro business level this is causing acute problems. Business people are claiming that they are spending a lot of their time finding employees rather than focusing on being productive in their respective businesses.
• Traffic congestion is causing serious concerns. Persons employed to handle on-site calls have become much less productive and companies are finding it very hard to keep up with their client support commitments because of inefficiencies that are clearly attributed to logistic challenges caused by traffic congestion.
• The new SISA on cosmetics and related products was mentioned repeatedly. GRTU members and businessman in general simply cannot understand how the government would choose to inconvenience the business community with these unnecessary burdens to collect a paltry few millions. GRTU has always claimed that it sees this as going back in time to a time when Excise and Customs played an important part in tax collection. GRTU applauded the Government on the removal of ECO taxes, only to be disappointed with the new SISA.
• Respondents also mentioned repeatedly the unfair competition which is rampant through the Internet as well as through other channels such as undeclared imports from Sicily. Goods purchased online are exempt from taxes such as VAT, Duty and packaging and WEEE fees. This causes an aberration in the market and GRTU has been insisting that these abuses need to be curbed.
• Respondents also mentioned the new “Shop opening hours” regulations and showed surprise that the €700 fee to open on Sundays was still in force. A survey conducted by GRTU about this matter two years ago clearly showed that shop owners are widely in favour of a free for all system. While GRTU understants that the new ammedments were a first step, the €700 fee is excessive and should be removed.

 The full survey can be found here

Ransomware –  Make sure your business is protected before it’s too late !

Local ICT companies that provide support services to local businesses are getting an increasing number of reports of systems being infected by what is known as Ransomware here in Malta. All over the world reports of businesses being heavily effected and indeed even going out of business because of this threat are being reported daily. In the US, the New York Times is treating this as a major issue. Many are labeling this threat a “Business Killer” because it can literally destroy your business. This type of Malware makes your files unusable and this includes your invoicing system and any other applications you may be using. Unless you have a backup of your data which is not also affected by this malware, you could potentially lose everything. It is extremely important that you have the correct protection and contingency measures in place. You need to be proactive as traditional antivirus solutions including corporate packages may simply not protect you against this threat.

The graph below shows the increase in the incidences reported to Mcafee recently. Mcafee is one of the leading anti virus solution publishers. There is no question that this type of virus is becoming a real problem. Read on to make sure your business is protected!

So what is ransom ware?
Ransom ware is a relatively new type of malware or virus. What it does is put you in a situation where you either pay a criminal (the creator of the virus) or you lose access to all your data. This includes MS Word Documents, MS Excel files, PDFs and many application software packages such as Sage Accounts and other popular products.  It encrypts or changes your data in such a way that there is no way of getting your files back except by paying the criminals who designed the virus. Once this happens you will be notified through a popup that appears on your screen similar to the one below. The criminals who are developing these new threats know that they can get caught easily if their money is delivered using traditional channels such as credit cards or Paypal so they request payment in Bitcoin which is a relatively new virtual (or internet) currency. These criminals choose to be paid in Bitcoin because they cannot be traced through it. In fact, this is the reason why Bitcoin is used for other illegal business such as trading in weapons and narcotics. The issue for us Maltese is that unlike in other countries it is not easy to find and purchase Bitcoins in Malta although it can be done.  In Italy for example, you simply look up people selling Bitcoin on Google and all you have to do is go down to the nearest public place with mobile in hand and your eWallet app installed, hand over your cash and the seller will send you the Bitcoins. They are after all simply numbers.

 
Figure 2 – Pop up screen that appears when you are infected (Could vary !)

So how do you get infected?
The most common method of infection is through email. At the moment a lot of emails are being sent under the guise of being from DHL or FEDEX because the creators of this malware are very aware that people are using eCommerce all the time and getting an email from these carriers is no surprise. This is not a rule as this malware is constantly evolving and the email could be disguised as anything. We have seen instances of this threat appearing as a response to a vacancy for example. Needless to say, companies looking for employees will be likely to open the attachment in this case. The sender could also be someone you know, so the advice “Don’t open attachments from people you don’t know” no longer applies.  
It has also been reported that this malware can also be spread through Remote Desktop Connections. To those of you who are not very tech savvy, this is a system which is used to connect to computers or servers remotely and usually used by branch offices or to work from home.
Another method that this malware spreads is through macros in Microsoft Word documents. Macros are small programs that provide extra functionality to Word docs and this malware will exploit this feature to deliver its payload. MS Word will warn you that a macro is a potential danger but if you get the document from a colleague, you are likely to ignore the warning.
Once you get infected, you will have no doubt of that this has happened. The malware will display a splash screen giving you instructions of how to pay the ransom and get your data back. There are many variants but most of the latest ones will ask you to pay half a Bitcoin if you do it in the first few days with the price going up if you wait longer.

What can you do to protect your data ?
The most obvious advice here is “Don’t open these email attachments!”. People who got infected will tell you that this  is easy to say but next to impossible to achieve in practice.
The key word here is backup ! You need to backup your data regularly and in such a way that Ransom Ware does not encrypt your backups as well!
Many of the regular antivirus solutions simply detect ransom ware when it is already too late. Most are good at removing the actual application but not before it deploys its payload. Furthermore, the malware will first finish encrypting your data and only display the ransom message when it is done. By this time it will be too late to do anything in any case.
The latest variants of this threat also attack popular backup systems such as Easus Backup. The first versions that appeared in the wild did not but the latest versions are becoming much more intelligent and are aware of measures that are taken to mitigate these threats. For example, the latest windows operating systems support “Previous Versions” which allow you to revert to versions of your data from dates in the past. The latest variants even erase these copies so that you cannot use this feature as a safety net.
The best solution is to use a backup system that backs up to a device that is not usually accessible through Windows. Windows Server Backup in the latest versions of Windows Server Operating Systems works just like this. You can dedicate an external USB drive for your backups and this drive is then not accessible through “My Computer”. This is a perfect solution and something which the criminal malware creators will have difficulty solving.  Unfortunately this type of backup is not something you can use on your personal computer but there are others that work the same way.  Another solution would be to connect your external drive while you are backing up and disconnecting it when you are done.
There are also a host of applications specifically designed to combat this malware. Most of these work very differently from traditional antivirus solutions. Most antivirus solutions look for a signature to detect a virus or a sequence of bytes through which it can be identified. Applications designed to combat this threat instead work using Heuristics which means they detect the process which actually performs the file encryption. Because they work in this way, regardless of what the malware creators do, if it involves encrypting your files they will discover it and stop it.  

Here are a couple of examples :
https://www.foolishit.com/cryptoprevent-malware-prevention/
Even the free edition will protect you enough for most purposes.

Or  http://www.surfright.nl/en/hitmanpro
Hitmanpro also have a free version which works in the same way.

Should you pay the criminals ?
The easy answer to this in NO! You are paying criminals and you have no guarantee that they will decrypt your files and give you your data back. You also cannot be sure that these criminals do not get arrested before they can keep their part of the deal or else skip the country because they have made enough money from poor souls like you!
On the other hand, if you don’t have any recent backups or if your backups have also been effected you need to ask yourself “Is my data worth €350?” If it is and many times it is worth much more than that, then paying is an option you should consider. Indeed it is like paying a thief who is robbing your house in the dead of night so that you don’t have to change your locks but in many cases this is the only option. There are many reports of users having paid the ransom and successfully got their data back.
Obviously paying the ransom will encourage more criminals to join in using this new method of extorting money from unsuspecting businesses but when it’s your data you simply might have no other option!

Written by Marcel Mizzi MSc BSc
GRTU Vice President (Finance & Admin)