Security researchers recently discovered a major security vulnerability in a tool that comes pre-loaded on many PCs. This specific tool, PC-Doctor Toolbox (also rebranded for other third-party manufacturers) has been identified with a flaw that would allow an attack to gain access to administrator privileges on the computer.
In Dell’s response to the vulnerability—yes, Support Assist or PC Doctor are typically loaded onto all business-grade Dell machines—they noted that a patch addressing this vulnerability had been released to customers on May 28th, 2019. The company believes that most computers have already received the updates. Prior to the update, millions of business computers were vulnerable to an attack that could compromise your entire network (from one PC!).
If you are a Dynamic Edge client, we remove all pre-loaded software prior to onboarding the computer for your users.
The reason for this is two-fold. First, pre-loaded applications—many of which you and your users would never use or need in your work environment—slow down the machines and take up space.
Second, and more importantly, pre-loaded software can open up security risks to your network that are not easily fixed. Since we manage computers across diverse environments, it is important to us to make sure that unaccounted for software be removed.
We make sure your systems only have applications that your users need to reduce your risks for computer vulnerabilities—most of which stem from software-related bugs.
If you are not a Dynamic Edge client or are concerned about a home computer manufactured by Dell, make sure you have patched your system with the following update. Business version 2.0 or Dell SupportAssist for Home version 3.2.1 would be the necessary updates to ensure your computer is not vulnerable to major security flaws. Even better, if you have never used SupportAssist, consider removing it from your computer—along with other pre-loaded applications—to stay on the safe side of computer security.
How else does Dynamic Edge keep your users safe?
We monitor your network—in the event there is fishy activity occurring on your network, we are on the look for it. Our security team monitors your network 24/7 looking for out of the ordinary behaviors. Our team is vigilant in making sure suspicious traffic or network activity gets investigated and that you get notified if anything funny is going on. We’d much prefer alerting you to a false positive (say one of your users is legitimately uploading videos from your network that is using a ton more internet bandwidth than your team normally uses) than have a serious situation to clean up later.
We implement smart firewalls—in addition to monitoring the guts of your network, our smart firewall solutions are on the look for suspicious activity around the clock. We have up-to-date security analytics informing us of where and what constitutes suspicious activity and are able to block malicious traffic before it makes its way on or off of your network. In the event that someone clicks on a malicious website, our smart firewall is in place to contain the traffic and prevent a ransomware attack.
We keep your machines up-to-date—you have a team specifically looking at proactive ways to manage your network. Our patch management team tests, retests and updates software on your environment so that you are secure. Most IT teams simply apply patches (or say they apply them), but the problem with merely applying a patch is you never know if updates will break other parts of your environment.
We backup your data—in the event something were to happen to a computer on your network (or if your entire network were to go offline), we back up your network daily to ensure you have everything to spring board back to running smoothly in the event something were to happen—say a natural disaster or theft.
Bottom line: we are here to keep you and your users safe.
