Do you ever wonder why businesses—credit unions, accountants, healthcare facilities—keep falling victim to malicious ransomware attacks? The reason is they simply aren’t doing enough to keep criminals out. 9 out of 10 businesses fail to have a ‘smart firewall’ to protect your team from infecting your networks with malicious viruses (think cryptowall, for example).
And even if you are training your team, what happens when someone ACCIDENTALLY clicks on a bad link or lands on the wrong webpage? Why not proactively protect your team from malicious attacks rather than solely relying on employee training to keep your business, your data and your customers safe?
continue reading
With the Holidays right around the corner, we asked our staff to share some of their gift ideas for this holiday season. Here is what the DynEdgers came up with!
Do you ever wish you had your own private beverage cooler/heater right on your desk? Well now you can! Anthony points out the USB Thermoelectric Cooler & Warmer as a great gift idea. It’s perfect for single cans, and it’s powered by your computer!
Price: $19.99
~ Anthony Castro
With the new Star Wars movie coming out, why not get into the mood with some Star Wars Death Star Measuring Cups? With this gift recommendation from Ben, you can feel the power of the Dark Side while you bake!
Price: $14.99
~ Ben Tidswell
continue reading
It’s hard to know who to trust nowadays. And what’s harder, is understanding the consequences of trusting the wrong person. As we are entering the holiday season, I thought it fit to alert you to a few common schemes and scams that cyber criminals use especially during the holidays. Here are six common scams that can compromise your business during the holiday season.
- Ad Poisoning—cybercriminals continue to fool ad agencies that they are legitimate advertisers. Criminals poison the ad pool by linking to nefarious websites that then can easily install malware and viruses on your network. This is a common delivery system ransomware viruses, like CryptoWall.
Solution—Here are a few things I recommend you doing to help keep the bad guys out of your holiday cyber shopping:
Disable Adobe Flash on your computer—or if you are a video fiend, set the Adobe Flash plugin to “click-to-play” mode to block automatic infections.
Keep up-to-date with all security on your operating system.
Download and install an Ad Blocker that blocks pop-ups from displaying in your blocker automatically.
If you have a network and are worried about vulnerabilities from team members, you can get rid of Flash altogether or deploy blockers using a group policy.
CryptoWall 4.0 is now the latest version of malicious ransomware that will encrypt your files and hold them hostage. This new strain of virus is ‘bigger and badder’ than the last ones. It not only encrypts your files, but also your file names. If you attempt decryption, you have no idea where to start or what is most important!
CryptoWall continues to use similar versions of emails it had used in the past. Some recent emails include attached resumes, invoices, shipping information and payments. If you notice emails of this variety passing through your inbox (and don’t expect them), please do NOT open them! Avoid clicking on links from emails or attachments. These emails may even appear to be from people you know! Before you click on something that you hadn’t expected, verify that it is something you can safely open.
If you fall victim to this ransomware, we have few solutions to get your data back- and we cannot guarantee that paying a ransom will actually restore your files to their previous state—we can’t trust these criminals!
continue reading
I just got an email notifying me that my password will expire in 7 days! Time to reinvent the wheel and come up with another super secure passcode? Why torture yourself with password trauma? Here are my 5 easy tips to a better password!
Instead of banging your head on your table or coming up with a complicated password that will be hard for you to remember, I decided to outline how I like to generate my passwords. Disclaimer: Please don’t use the example passwords for your logins. They aren’t secure! Please do use my tricks to help you generate even better ones!
Tip 1: Turn your password into a sentence. Use at least one proper noun within the sentence to make it a little complicated and end with punctuation. Take the first letters of each word and punctuation for your password. Here’s an example:
continue reading
Most people, including me, think of Section 179 as some mysterious or complicated piece of tax code. The bottom line is that it is important that you understand what this specific code means for your business because you may be missing out on big deductions.
In this post, I’ll walk through Section 179 in plain English and explain how your investment in computer equipment might be the perfect way of you to take advantage of this deduction.
First, what the heck is the Section 179 Deduction?
Section 179 of the IRS tax code lets businesses deduct full purchase price of qualifying equipment—which includes computers and software— purchased during the tax year. What this means is when your business buys qualified equipment or software, they can deduct the FULL PURCHASE PRICE from your gross income. The logic behind why Section 179 exists? To encourage businesses to buy equipment and invest in their businesses.
continue reading
