The expanding threat landscape is making ransomware one of the few bipartisan issues in Congress right now. But an FBI expert’s testimony proves there are still no easy answers. Here are the top cybersecurity stories for small and midsize business executives in late July. Software Vulnerabilities Take 6 Months to Patch A recent study found…
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Unpatched Vulnerabilities, New Legislation and the FBI Pushing Against a Ransomware Payment Ban
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What Is a Perimeter Defense? Why Can It Be a Problem?
The explosion of ransomware has many security experts arguing forcefully against a perimeter-only security model. These experts point out that this approach has led to cyberattacks that have caused billions of dollars of economic damage. But what is perimeter security? What does it leave out? And what should you do instead? Perimeter Defenses, in Buildings…
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Technology Downtime: What’s Reasonable? (and What Isn’t?)
One of the most important jobs of a Managed IT Service Provider (MSP) is to minimize downtime. Losing even a single workstation can easily cost a business more than a thousand dollars per day of idle time. When a network outage strikes, or a major server faces a hardware failure, hours of downtime can have…
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Ransomware Is Coming. Plan and Prepare.
Ransomware attacks are so frequent now that even some big ones don’t make headlines. But last week’s attack on Kaseya VSA, a tool used by IT professionals around the world to help manage networks and provide tech support, garnered plenty of headlines. That’s because it was the biggest ransomware attack on record, affecting more than…
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Double Extortion Attacks More Prevalent than Ever
Ransomware is still all over the place – attacks are up 62% globally and 158% in North America since 2019. But ransomware-only attacks have mostly been replaced by more sophisticated – and ruthless – attacks. In a traditional ransomware attack, a cyber criminal finds a way onto business networks (often with stolen usernames and passwords)…
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Biggest Ransomware Attack Ever, a New CISA Director Confirmed, and a Patch Nightmare
Early July had several cybersecurity events with big impacts on small and mid-sized businesses. Here are three you that should know about. REvil’s Kaseya Attack Hits Thousands of Businesses Worldwide, US Will Respond The biggest news story this week was a ransomware attack targeting Kaseya VSA, software used by large businesses and Managed Service Providers…
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On-Site Backups Wiped Remotely, Malware Call Centers, and a New Federal Data Breach Bill
Congress continues to crawl towards new legislation to contain cybersecurity damage. Meanwhile, traditional antivirus techniques now miss most attacks, and Western Digital customers wake up to empty backup drives. Signature-Based Anti-Malware Tools Now Miss Most Attacks Traditional anti-virus and anti-malware apps look for specific strings of code in files (or data transfers) to determine if…
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What Is Doxing? And What Does It Have to Do With Cybersecurity?
It sounds bad. It is bad. But what is it? Doxing Doxing is shorthand for “dropping dox” (documents), a phrase invented by hackers in the 90s. Dropping dox means to publish embarrassing or incriminating documents about a person or company online. It’s normally done to punish them for some perceived wrongdoing. People differ on what…
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Who Pays All of These Ransoms, Anyway?
Taking down corporate networks for cash is quickly becoming a dangerous career. Just last week, the FBI elevated ransomware to a threat level equivalent to terrorism. While that might make some people think twice about joining a cybercrime ring like REvil or GandCrab, they’re still not having any trouble finding recruits. Ransomware is prevalent because…
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A White House Request, Billions of Stolen Passwords and Another Infrastructure Attack
The first half of 2021 has been a dangerous time for business networks, and it’s not getting any better. In the last two weeks, 8.4 billion stolen passwords were posted online, a ransomware attack shut down 20% of US beef and pork slaughterhouses, and the White House reached out to the entire businesses community to…