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Some Consumers are Aware of Data Privacy, But It’s Not Enough

The User Experience and How Security Fits

Let’s face it, the majority of Internet consumers have no idea about data security until something terrible happens. Until they get malware, or get their identity stolen, or their accounts hacked, they assume that there is enough built-in security to facilitate any behavior online. This is not ideal, obviously, but there are a small number of people, around 29 percent, that have enough security awareness to avoid certain websites. 

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Have You Applied the Recent Chrome Patches?

October saw five vulnerabilities patched in Chrome, with two of those vulnerabilities being classified as zero-day threats. A zero-day threat is an attack that is already being used by cybercriminals by the time security researchers identify it. With the head start that the zero-day threat gives them, these cybercriminals have a dangerous advantage.

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You Even Need To Worry About Phishing In Your Text Messages

What is Smishing?

When cybercriminals use phishing scams, they aren’t using advanced technologies to crack their target’s digital defenses. Instead, they hack users by exploiting the assumptions, bad habits, and ignorance of the target to get them to release sensitive information.

Attackers circumvent cybersecurity measures by sending messages purporting to be from an authority figure or trusted contact, thereby convincing the user to undermine their protection. A notorious example of phishing is the email from the persecuted royal family, known as the "Nigerian Prince scam."

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You Need to Keep a Close Eye on Your IT Investment Strategy

How to Approach Your IT Spending

When determining an IT budget, perspective is an important part of the process. It can be tempting to view your IT as just another cost of doing business, but it really is more than that. Your technology (and the state it is in) has a major effect on how your business runs. If it is lacking, other things will as well. In some cases, employee morale will suffer, your productivity will slow, and your incoming cash flow will falter.

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Examining Some Unusual Cybercrime Patterns in 2020

To begin, let’s examine the data that we currently have available, courtesy of Statista: in 2019, there were a total of 1,473 data breaches recorded. The first half of 2020 saw 540 breaches reported. Crunching the numbers, these 33 percent fewer breaches have impacted what other sources assert to be 66 percent fewer people.

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How to Establish Fast, Secure Wi-Fi for Guests to Your Healthcare Organization

Your Main Hospital Wireless Network Needs to be Locked Down

First of all, your main office Wi-Fi cannot be used for guest access. The same network that your computers, tablets, laptops, and other equipment run on needs to be completely segregated from the rest of the traffic and secure. This might be pretty obvious for most healthcare professionals, especially those who have an understanding of HIPAA compliance, but it’s worth mentioning because it poses such a huge security risk (and breaks compliance).

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CAPTCHA and Its Many Challenges

Let’s discuss what this signifies, and how this may shape how users authenticate themselves in the future.

Defining CAPTCHA

Short for Completely Automated Public Turing Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart, CAPTCHA has long been the standard tool used by Google to prevent automated spam from polluting the Internet by requiring (in theory) a human being to interact with content in some way before allowing access or a task to successfully be completed.

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What You Need to Know to Stay Ahead of Hackers in 2020

Strategy #1 - Know the Value of Your Assets

By knowing the value of the data you hold, you will be able to properly prioritize how to protect it. Since IT experts have to create cybersecurity strategies based on how much harm can be done to your operational integrity and reputation, it’s good practice to know what assets hackers would be after if they were to breach your network defenses. 

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Alert: Update Windows Netlogon Remote Protocol Now, says Homeland Security

What’s the Exploit and Who Does It Affect?

The vulnerability in the CISA’s emergency directive affects all supported Windows Server operating systems. It’s been named Zerologon, and If left unpatched, it could allow an unauthenticated threat actor to gain access to a domain controller and completely compromise your network’s Active Directory services. The vulnerability gets its name because all the hacker has to do is send a series of Netlogon messages with the input fields filled with zeroes to gain access. 

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Are Developers Going to Eliminate the Password?

What Exactly is Passwordless Authentication?

Instead of using passwords, you would effectively verify your identity through alternative means such as a verification app, a predefined security token, or even biometric information. These forms of authentication aren’t exactly new--most smartphones have a biometric authentication system onboard--but now they are beginning to become the predominant way that IT administrators set up their authentication systems. 

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Include Your Staff in Your Security Strategies

Tesla’s Near-Sabotage

In August 2020, a Russian businessman was indicted on charges of conspiracy to intentionally cause damage to a protected computer after he attempted to recruit a current Tesla employee to install malicious software on the automaker’s Gigafactory network. 

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A Long Look at Compliance Concerns

Healthcare

We’ll start with healthcare, as it is the most prevalent. Healthcare data is protected, and that protection is regulated, and all for good reason. This information is the most personal information an individual has and it has no business being in possession of anyone but the provider, the insurer, and the patient. The most well-known regulation for healthcare in the United States is called the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). It was developed to keep personal health data and personally identifiable information (PII) secure. This was necessary as there have been new systems implemented to transfer health and insurance information between healthcare providers and insurers. 

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Simple Tasks to Improve Cybersecurity

Getting Employees to Identify Threats

The average employee comes to work and produces. This isn’t a problem until their lack of awareness of other matters hurts the company. Often met with “that isn’t my job”, it has to be explained that security concerns are a part of their job. Employees often can’t see how it is their responsibility, but since 90 percent of data breaches happen because of user negligence, it has to be explained that it could put the entire business in peril. Their cybersecurity efforts can literally save their jobs. 

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You Need to Be Asking These 4 Questions to Maximize Security

#1: Is security a priority when we build processes?

Your business has a way that it does what it does. Are those processes created with both physical security and cybersecurity in mind? The amount of threats your business is subject to is literally innumerable. Each day new threats are created and used to try and steal money and data from businesses just like yours. When building your business’ processes, the first consideration that isn’t “can I make money this way” has to be about how to secure your business from outside threats.

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Evaluating the Security of Your Chrome Extensions

Let’s go over how you can review how much of your data these Chrome extensions can access, and how you can adjust these permissions more to your liking.

Fair warning: This will naturally require you to change a few settings, so don’t be afraid to reach out to your IT provider to confirm these changes are okay to make and for assistance in doing so.

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Artificial Intelligence Will Be Assisting Cybercriminals

We aren’t alone in believing so, either. A recent study examined twenty such AI-integrating cybercrimes to see where the biggest threats would lie.  

Here, we’re looking at the results of this study to see what predictions can be made about the next 15 years where AI-enhanced crime is concerned. Here’s a sneak preview: Deepfakes (fake videos of celebrities and political figures) will be very believable, which is very bad.

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Windows 7 Should Be Long Gone

When we say that some businesses are using Windows 7, what we really mean is that with a remarkable market share that still sits around 23 percent, a lot of businesses have chosen not to upgrade to Windows 10, Microsoft’s latest OS. In fact, as of January, when Microsoft officially did away with support for Windows 7, nearly half (47 percent) of SMBs were still utilizing it. It’s not a good scene. Let’s take a look at why so many haven’t moved off of Windows 7.

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Cybersecurity Needs to Shift for Businesses to Survive

The Changes We’ve Witnessed

For such an… eventful… year, it started off with little anticipation of the events to come. Businesses had ample time to plan their 2020 technology budgets, but most (if not all) of these budgets were postponed (if not thrown out the proverbial window) with the spread of COVID-19.

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What’s the Best Way to Secure Your Mobile Device?

Why Mobile Security is So Important in the First Place

Consider the capabilities of our mobile devices today, as compared to those that were considered high-end before Apple premiered the iPhone in 2007 (Not to discredit all the classic PDA/smartphones that came before the iPhone, like the Palm Trio, the Blackberry, and the line of super cool HTC Windows phones, but general consensus feels that the big shift in mobile computing really started with Apple). The difference is staggering. While those devices that are affectionately referred to as “dumb phones” certainly can contain sensitive data, it is effectively nothing compared to what a smartphone can access.

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Are Macs Inherently More Secure than PCs?

Spoiler Alert: Macs Do, in Fact, Get Malware

Not to be juvenile about it, but duh. A computer produced by Apple can just as easily be infected by malware and ransomware, just as they can also experience any of the other problems that a PC user would. Hardware failure, slowing with age, crashes, data loss—these and so many other issues can be seen in a Mac.

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