Business Solutions & Software Group Blog

“To confirm you’re a human being, select all of the images that include traffic signals.”

Chances are good that you’ve seen such a requirement before as you’ve spent time online, whether you were filling out a form or logging into a website. Whether it was an evaluation like the one above, or simply one where you needed to identify a highly distorted series of alphanumeric characters, you probably have also noticed these tests getting more difficult as time has passed. The reason for this is simple: computers are getting better at beating them.

Wouldn’t it be nice to know how much risk your business was under, in terms of vulnerabilities and potential exploits? Believe it or not, this is entirely possible, through a process known as penetration testing. Commonly referred to as “pen testing,” this simple measure can provide a business with some very valuable insight into their security preparations.

There are a lot of cyberthreats out there… too many for the modern business to avoid them all. While employing best practices may greatly reduce your chances of being breached and having data stolen from your network, they can also help you determine how a breach occurred and how your data was stolen. While there is no such thing as perfect cybersecurity, there are a few strategies you can lean on to strengthen yours.

Smart assistants are one of the most intriguing and confounding technologies developed over the past decade. At the time of this writing, over 150 million smart speakers are in 60 million homes in the United States, when you add in the smart assistants available on mobile devices and other various smart devices, you’re talking a billion people actively using some type of smart assistant. Over the past couple of years, you’re beginning to see these assistants being used more for business and this has made certain security-minded people a little weary of them. Let’s take a look at some of the security questions surrounding the smart assistants.

For the past twenty years, the password has been the most important security tool that individuals and businesses have to keep outside parties out of their personal and professional information. This may not always be the case, but much of a business’ security is built around the idea that passwords are keeping unwanted entities out. It is important that you and your staff understand what good password hygiene looks like. Today, we’ll outline what it looks like.

As a consumer, how concerned are you about the care that businesses give to your data privacy. Very? You aren’t the only one. 87 percent of Americans see their data privacy as a human right.

With COVID-19 creating the challenges that it has for so many, there is little wonder that creating a vaccine is such a major focus. Unfortunately, hackers are aware of this focus, and how it makes the organizations conducting vaccine trials particularly vulnerable. Let’s examine this situation, and the lessons that all businesses can take away from it.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way that a lot of businesses are approaching cybersecurity. In normal times, businesses will periodically try to make improvements to their organizational security and pounce all over events that could put their network and data at risk. While this strategy has worked, the new normal brought on by COVID-19 has IT administrators and business decision makers focused on maintaining resilience regardless of the financial and operational stressors they encounter. In today’s article we will look to identify the major shifts businesses have had to make, and how a consistent approach to cybersecurity is giving some companies an advantage.

One of the most prevalent problems that businesses now face are scams known as phishing attacks. When it comes to defending against these attacks, the capability to identify phishing as such is perhaps your greatest asset. Let’s go over a few signs that a message you receive might be a phishing attack.

In a recent security update, most Android and iOS phones received a new opt-in setting related to the COVID-19 Exposure Notification system. What is this? Is your phone being tracked? Let’s take a deeper look at what is going on.

It’s a common myth that Apple computers don’t get viruses. It’s not uncommon for a Mac user to chime in and say, “you should have gotten a Mac,” when a PC user mentions getting a virus or malware. 

Let’s unpack this myth, and talk a little about how, no matter what technology you have, you need to protect it.

There are many security buzzwords that come into play when the technology available to help secure a business is discussed. The problem is that many of these buzzwords sound great but are actually very poor fits to the real needs of most small and medium-sized businesses. Let’s consider how these buzzwords play into the concept of “security theater” and how this can impact businesses negatively.

The days of the cash-only business are over. It doesn’t matter if your business is a multinational corporation or you cut grass for a living, accepting payment cards is not only convenient for your customers, most of the time it’s the most secure way to get paid. In an effort to protect the personal and financial information of consumers who have come to depend on their payment cards, the banks that back the credit card industry have developed a regulation that businesses who process cards need to adhere to. Today, we will go over this regulation and how it affects small and medium-sized businesses.

We’ve all seen them: the scam emails that are so obviously a scam, you have no idea why a scammer or a cybercriminal would even bother sending them. It just so happens that there is a very good reason that criminals continue to use these transparent attacks, as they have done for centuries.

Internet-based companies have access to an audience that, at the very least, are extremely trusting of them. There is an expectation that these businesses will fulfill their promises while also protecting the information that their customers and clients provide to them, but are these expectations well-founded? Let’s consider common collection practices companies deploy and how you can keep yourself safe.

With so many people working from home due to stay-at-home orders resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, IT security may not be at the forefront of users’ minds. Unfortunately, scammers and hackers aren’t unemployed during this time and are still causing havoc for businesses of all sizes. Let’s take a look at cybersecurity during COVID-19.

Video conferencing has been one of the surprise winners of the COVID-19 era. As large percentages of people are asked to distance from others, one solution that has been extremely popular is to have meetings over the Internet. While seemingly the whole world is using video conferencing solutions, for the business, there are other considerations that have to be made. Today, we’ll hit on some strategies you can use to improve the security of your web conferences. 

With remote work becoming a popular option amongst businesses nowadays, concerns and considerations should be raised about how secure the networks being used are: namely, the Wi-Fi connections many have in their homes. Just as in the office, it is important that these networks are properly secured for the good of your business.

With so many people working from home due to the COVID-19 outbreak, organizational IT security is stretched thin. It is important that you know how to maintain operational integrity while prioritizing security when your whole staff is working from home. 

Ever since it first popped up in the Wuhan Province of China, COVID-19 (better known as the coronavirus) has created quite a stir—bordering on panic—around the world. Unfortunately, as has been the case many times before, cybercriminals have been using this near panic to support their attacks. Let’s review some of the ways they do so, and how you can protect yourself and your business from these efforts.