One way or another, data breaches or ransomware attacks begin with one common denominator.
Human Error.
Whether it is someone clicking on an email. OR misconfiguring a router or server. Or even using a default or easy-to-crack password. Or it’s not having patched a computer. When a ransomware attack occurs, it’s certain that someone made a mistake.
What’s worrisome to me about 2020 is that hackers are going to greater lengths to get into your systems.
They are specifically targeting you and your company like a well-targeted marketing campaign. They are scanning your network from the outside for very commonly misconfigured pieces (mistakes that someone on your IT team could have easily made without noticing much).
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The holidays are a Bonanza for cybercriminals. With the joy of the season in all of our hearts, our normal skepticism tends to wane at least a little. Even though Black Friday and Cyber sales are almost at an end, and we (hopefully) have completed most of our holiday shopping by this point, we want to be extra careful as we end out the year.
With the last minute bargain hunting in full force for Christmas, criminals are out in force to make big paydays at the end of 2019.
They are stealing passwords and credentials in force this holiday season.
How do I know this?
As a cybersecurity expert, I spend a lot of my time monitoring and keeping track of what is out on the Dark Web (I also do a lot of Dark Web monitoring for clients). Let me be frank with you—there is a lot of new material out there! And a lot of it comes in at the end of the year every year.
Act NOW!
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It’s incredible how technology has evolved over the past 20 years.
When I started in IT over 20 years ago at this point, IT teams were concerned about much different concerns than they are today.
Way back when I was starting up Dynamic Edge, my team was focused on fixing computer problems. When it came to data security, we might have worried about a rogue employee here or there, maybe thought briefly in our days about risk management or compliance, but by and large, we were NOT a security-focused IT company.
My main job was to innovate on ways to implement new technologies to make the lives of my clients better.
But as we have gotten into an era where we all rely on technology more and more, criminals have moved from more traditional means of stealing and ransoming to locking down your entire networks and extorting your business’ sensitive information.
Today, attacks are more targeted.
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Microsoft has a security update for Windows 7 machines.
A few months ago when Microsoft shared that Windows 7 was no longer going to be supported as of January 14, 2020, it announced that its enterprise clients would still be able to get security updates and patches on the older platform for an extended period of time.
The Windows 7 Extended Security Updates (ESU) is a paid service offered by Microsoft that will deliver updates to computers still running Windows 7.
These updates will be pushed out past the January deadline into 2023. The problem?
There is a substantial price tag to these security licenses.
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Let’s say it’s a Monday morning. You’re headed into work—there’s a light drizzle coming down and traffic is backed up from an accident at the large intersection close to your building.
Frustrated, you wait for the accident to clear and get to the office nearly 30 minutes late. You hurriedly rush in the front door and notice the receptionist gone from her desk. You look in a few more offices and no one is to be seen.
As you are heading to your office you notice everyone congregated in the lunch room. No one is smiling. Your accountant is crying—she’s exclaiming that all of the hours of work she’s put in (including overtime that weekend) are gone.
What’s going on?
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Remember way back when? Those times where you’d leave your house completely unlocked? Where you weren’t worried about someone breaking in or stealing anything?
Maybe it was because you didn’t really have much you perceived as irreplaceable. Or maybe it was because you didn’t really care about things like that.
But more likely it was because you trusted your neighbors and those in your community to respect boundaries. You’d not heard of any break-ins and never thought it could happen to you.
We’ve been living that ‘old days’ life in cyberspace for years now—in fact, in the past 20 years of running Dynamic Edge, I think a good portion of it was not having to worry about people breaking into network (although being a security guy, I was always thinking about it and finding ways to keep my clients’ data secure).
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