Do you think all of the bad guys are sitting in smoke-filled rooms in the Chinese war ministry? Do you think your network is safe if you prevent people from getting to the Internet too openly? Ah, if only that were true. The fact of the matter is that one of your biggest vulnerabilities is sitting among you. Some are malicious and some are accidental. Some researchers believe that the percentage of incidents due to insider threats may be as high as 55%! Long story short -- the average user is a significant source of your IT and data security risk.…
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If you have a managed service provider (MSP) you are already doing the right thing. We have written in the past that in business, it is a good idea to stick with what you are good at and pay someone else for specialties work. You pay for lawyers. you pay for accountants. Pay for IT in the same way. But just as with all of those professions, it pays to periodically check on your MSP to make sure they are doing the job that you are paying them to do. What am I paying for? Many MSPs will help set your…
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You've heard it before -- from us and from, well, pretty much everyone who values security. Patch your systems. If you don't, you are not secure. It's as simple as that. As if we needed more reminding of this global truism, Microsoft just released a new patch for a critical vulnerability in their DNS service. To an average Joe, if they even know what DNS is, this is an entirely unimpressive patch. But to those in the know, this is huge! Nerdy Version: This is a remote code execution vulnerability. The attacker can execute whatever they want on the affected…
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Today is the biggest Internet shopping day of the year in the United States, Cyber Monday. During this day you will be tempted to visit a plethora of online storefronts, hunting for the huge deal on your next TV, computer, article of clothing, etc. Here are a couple tips to remember to keep you safe on Cyber Monday: Secure Browsing. Many e-commerce websites use SSL (https:// in front of the web address instead of http://) to encrypt the transmission of sensitive data to and from their storefront. The reason for this is that if you are surfing on a public Wi-Fi or hotspot,…
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With the holidays coming up everyone is looking to relax and spend time with their friends and families. They will be able to stop thinking about work for a few days and take the time to really unwind. The downside is that, unfortunately, threat actors do not take a vacation. Networks continue to be vulnerable when no one is watching them. Network security should not be seen as a 9 to 5 job. With attacks coming in from all over the world, no one can predict on what day and at what time an intrusion attempt will take place. How do I…
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