Business Solutions & Software Group Blog

Phishing attacks are a fashionable strategy for many cybercriminals and have been for some time. From the infamous Nigerian Prince email scam to the generic urgent message from the bank, most people have seen at least one example of phishing hit their inbox.

“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.

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.

Windows 7 was once the best operating system ever made by leaps and bounds. Now, it’s unsupported and shouldn’t be found on any Internet-connected device. Unfortunately, this isn’t the truth as millions of people are still using Windows 7 for their businesses. Today, we will take a look at why Windows 7 is dangerous and what options businesses have to upgrade away from the unsupported OS.

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.

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. 

While we may talk about computer viruses a lot, we wanted to change tack briefly and talk about the other kind--the kind that makes you sick, rather than your technology. With COVID-19 still plaguing the news, we felt that there was no time like the present to do so.

It may not be a surprise to you that hackers and other scammers are trying to get between you and your stimulus money. Using the COVID-19 pandemic to prey on unsuspecting or ill-prepared people, they have already made off with more than millions of the $290 billion that the U.S. government has earmarked for its citizens. Let’s look at how you can avoid being another unfortunate victim of the modern cybercriminal. 

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. 

Before we start on what practices you should be prioritizing when it comes to your cloud resources, we want to recognize that most businesses have found cloud computing to be extraordinarily useful. In fact, that is why we wanted to discuss some actions that you need to implement to help keep your cloud-based resources secure. 

The past two decades have generally seen business technology in one of two camps: either IT (information technology), which includes all of a business’ computers, peripherals, and networking equipment, or OT (operational technology), which included everything else. As time has passed, both have advanced, and now both carry the risks once limited to IT. Let’s examine how you can better secure your business by focusing on the convergence of IT and OT.