data protection

Mother of All Breaches: Unprecedented Data Breach Alert

Data breaches have become all too common, and the recent "Mother of All Breaches" serves as a stark reminder of the vulnerabilities that exist within our digital security frameworks. With over 26 billion records compromised from platforms like X, LinkedIn, and Dropbox, the magnitude of this breach is a wake-up call for individuals and organizations alike. Understanding the Breach This massive data leak, affecting millions globally, underscores the critical need for robust cybersecurity measures. Personal information, sensitive data, and confidential communications have been exposed, putting countless users at risk of identity theft, fraud, and unprecedented privacy violations. Immediate Steps to Take If you suspect your data might be compromised: Change your passwords immediately, ensuring they are strong and unique. Enable two-factor authentication wherever possible. Monitor your accounts for any unusual activity. For Organizations: A Call to Action Businesses must prioritize cybersecurity like never before. Investing in advanced security protocols, conducting ...

2024-02-05T21:51:49+00:00

6 Cybersecurity Habits You Need to Break Today

What you do on autopilot can hurt you – especially online. Here are the habits you should track from month to month until cybersecurity becomes automatic. Is your computer locked?  Bad Habit 1: Leaving your computer unlocked and unattended. With the slip of a USB stick, bad actors can corrupt files or steal information. This applies at coffee shops and even the office. Anytime you leave it, lock it! Avoid unknown USB charging ports, too. They’re easy for hackers to compromise and can physically damage your device. Are you actually creating strong passwords? Bad Habit 2: Using weak passwords Short, common, old, default, and guessable passwords can have serious consequences. Consider utilizing a password manager to help you create, change out, and remember your unique logins. And don’t forget to turn on multi-factor authentication (MFA) options! Are your systems up-to-date? Bad Habit 3: Letting security updates slide Every device, app, ...

2023-10-17T14:36:28+00:00

Cyber Security : Be Prepared and Prevent Disaster

The threat landscape is becoming more incessant, dangerous, and high stakes for businesses. The sheer quantity of attacks has been increasing at an alarming rate. The complexity and ingenuity of these attacks are frightening.   Almost all these attacks are identity-based; they start as phishing emails or password spray attacks. Once they gain access to a user account in your environment, you have officially been owned. If you are lucky, they will use the compromised account(s) to send out more phishing emails to your global address list and contacts from the owned account. This will result in a lot of embarrassment, organizational risk, potential blacklisting of your domain, and untold negative business impacts. If you are unlucky, they will encrypt your sensitive data with ransomware, exploit you for money with a socially engineered scheme, or exfiltrate sensitive data such as employee tax forms or proprietary intellectual property. This can potentially result in your company or organization ceasing to exist.  To mitigate attacks of this nature, there are several critical items you need to address:  Globally enforce multi-factor authentication  Globally block legacy authentication  Leverage device and application trust to limit your attack surface ...

2023-02-16T16:01:18+00:00

Top 5 Infrastructure Trends for 2019

We’ve bid 2018 farewell and welcomed 2019 with open arms. So what's next? What’s going to happen in 2019 from an infrastructure perspective? The answer for 2019 is similar to that of recent years. Cloud and security are still the top priorities. Let’s take a quick look at what may impact your infrastructure focus. 1. Exchange Migration Migrations from Exchange on-premises to Exchange online and upgrades from older versions of Exchange to the latest version are both projects going strong in 2019. We continue to support our clients who are going through these Exchange migration and upgrade processes and predict that Exchange migrations, upgrades, and support will continue to be a trend with our clients. 2. Multi-Factor Authentication To add additional security, Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) provides one or more additional forms of authentication for users when they log into company resources. Traditionally, users would log into their computers or other ...

2023-02-16T16:01:29+00:00

What is spear phishing and how can my company avoid it?

The average person receives 16 malicious emails per month. A 2018 study of 500,000,000 emails found one out of every 101 emails received were malicious. Are your employees properly educated about this? Or will they click a link that could cost the company millions? Most of the time, the greatest risk to your company’s internet security are the people who work for it (including you). One click on a malicious email—even one that looks like it comes from a friend—could seriously damage your company. New employees are the most at risk for being duped. [1] What is Spear Phishing?  Spear phishing is an attack in which hackers trick targeted users into sharing confidential information. It can also involve tricking the recipient into installing malware on their computer or network. Here is how it works:  1. You receive an email with an attachment from what looks like it originated from a ...

2023-02-16T16:01:31+00:00

April Showers Brings May Security By Avoiding Attacks

The cyber security threat landscape is evolving, most companies’ solutions are not solving these attacks. Attackers are spending more than 287 days on average in companies they breach – and the amount of damage done in that time is astonishing. Three-quarters of those breaches are directly linked to the mismanagement or theft of user credentials.  What is most alarming is that companies’ solutions cannot solve the problem. Expect breaches to happen, instead of struggling to protect your business from outside threats.  So what can you do?  Rely on detection and containment to best secure your environment. What if your employees need to access information from outside the office and often from their own devices?  More importantly, how do you ensure that your data stays safe and out of the reach of likely attacks? One recommendation is to rate your mobility landscape. One question to ask yourself is, “How well am ...

2023-02-16T16:01:38+00:00

BUDGETING FOR IT IN 2018? BUILD UP THE BASICS

People don’t usually get too excited about the basics where technology is concerned. It’s not surprising. People are interested in what’s new, and technology is all about what’s new, what’s next, what’s going to change the world – new apps, new phones, and new services are where all the action is. That mindset extends beyond people to companies. When considering what to spend IT resources on, there can be a great temptation to be dazzled by the novelty of that supposedly world-changing new application, that lightning-fast machine or that must-have accessory. And sure – some of them are must-haves or at least extremely-good-to-haves. If they come at the cost of taking care of fundamentals, though, that’s a problem. A lot of companies I work with are starting to think about budgets for the next fiscal year. Almost everyone I talk to would probably describe their IT budgets as “tight” – ...

2023-02-16T16:01:41+00:00

WIFI or WI-Spy : Avoiding the Perils of Public Networks

For some reason, it seems to be a well-kept secret that public networks are not exactly secure. Just about anywhere you may go in a given day -  coffee shops, libraries, shopping malls, office buildings, your hotel – there’s a network just waiting for your device to join it. Convenient? Sure. But from a security standpoint, this is not a good thing. Try telling that to a convenience-driven society that’s grown quite used to shopping, checking its email, dating, doing its banking, and chatting on social media, whenever and wherever it wants to. Despite the publicity given to data theft and identity theft, many if not most people don’t change their online behavior on vulnerable public networks, or even take advantage of even basic protective measures. A recent article in Harvard Business Review outlined the range of threats to public wifi users’ security, describing some of the common tricks the ...

2023-02-16T16:01:42+00:00

Six Big Challenges – or Opportunities – for CIOs and CEOs

A CIO’s work, it seems, is never done. For that matter, neither is the worry associated with most of it. It’s a big job, and one that seems to get bigger just about every day: New technologies, new security threats, new business challenges, and new opportunities alike conspire to consume more of our attention and more hours of our waking lives (and at worst, keeping us up at night and intruding on sleep time as well). …

2023-02-16T16:01:49+00:00