Archive for the ‘Blog’ Category

How Safe is Your VPN?

Monday, April 20th, 2020

Working from home during the global pandemic has allowed the nations of the world to keep their economies limping along while they search for a fix, but it has come with a price.  Many remote workers’ home offices are utilizing Virtual Private Networks, or VPNs, to to log in, but they lack the level of […]

Zoom Failing the Encryption Game

Monday, April 6th, 2020

It’s a lot easier to get away with bad deeds when the attention isn’t on you… Which is a lesson Zoom is learning right about now,  as the business booms in the wake of the global pandemic. In addition to all the other privacy concerns we outlined in our previous article about Zoom, a recent […]

Be Vigilant Using Zoom

Wednesday, April 1st, 2020

With the Coronavirus raging, more and more people are working remotely than ever before.  Meaning there are more people using online platforms than ever before to conduct meetings, share work and generally communicate with co-workers than ever before. Unfortunately, that also means more hackers are able to take advantage of employees working from home than […]

Why Working Remotely is Better Anyways

Friday, March 20th, 2020

A disruption to your routine, like social distancing to avoid making a pandemic worse, can be the source of stress and anxiety.  If this is your first time working from home, however,  you should know that there are a lot of benefits!  While the thought of working while your children run around the house may […]

Is CMMC Going to Cost My Business a Small Fortune?

Monday, February 17th, 2020

One of the most frequent questions I hear from our clients about the new Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification, after a few choice words, is: “How much is this going to cost me?” It’s a great question, and one I can’t fully answer because, unfortunately, they haven’t even rolled out the auditor program yet!! That being […]

NHS Cyber Security Strengthened

Friday, January 31st, 2020

Healthcare providers in the US aren’t the only ones dealing with increased cyber attacks. A new report shows that while the National Health Service (NHS – the UK’s Government-funded medical and health care services provider) was compromised over 200 times by ransomware attacks from 2014 to 2017, the measures they took to fortify their cyber […]

Is Your Data Being Sold to Marketers by Your Antivirus Software Company?

Friday, January 31st, 2020

“Nothing in life is free.” A lot of people use Avast’s antivirus to protect their computer.  It costs you nothing out of pocket and it’s a pretty effective little cybersecurity tool. Sound to good to be true right? That’s because it is. Did you know that, by default, Avast not only collects your browser activity, […]

United Nations Hack and Cover-Up

Friday, January 31st, 2020

Not only has it been leaked that the UN was hacked, but there’s also evidence suggesting they tried to cover it up. What We Know According to a confidential internal document that was leaked to The New Humanitarian and shared with the  Associated Press (AP), more than 40 servers in Geneva and Vienna were compromised.  […]

Twitter Vulnerability Exposed in a Big Way

Thursday, December 26th, 2019

Ibrahim Balic, a security researcher, recently exposed a flaw in Twitter’s app that allowed to match unique Twitter user accounts with 17 million phone numbers months ago.  He was able to accomplish this by uploading large lists of phone numbers by way of Twitter’s “Contacts Upload” feature that is available on the social media giant’s […]

Ransomware Attack Shuts Down New Orleans

Saturday, December 14th, 2019

It seems like something that only happens in movies and TV shows: It’s Friday the 13th.  You, your colleagues, your entire department, the entire city, in fact, receives the same command to power down their computers immediately and disconnect all devices from the network. But this wasn’t a movie and it wasn’t a TV show… […]

Russian Hackers Hold Nursing Home Patients’ Data Ransom for $14M

Monday, December 9th, 2019

There is a reason hackers have started targeting hospitals and medical practices.  Not only is their cyber security known to be woefully lacking (despite the best efforts of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services [HHS] and HIPAA regulations), but the electric Patient Health Information (ePHI) can literally be life and death.  Meaning?  The […]

PureBasic-based Ransomware Discovered

Thursday, November 14th, 2019

PureLocker, an unusual form of ransomware that attacks enterprise servers, has gone undetected for some time but has recently been revealed by cybersecurity analysts at Intezer and IBM X-Force.  What makes PureLocker so unique is that it’s written in PureBasic programming language.  Malicious software written in PureBasic is difficult for most security systems to detect.  […]

HIPAA Violations Top $100 Billion

Wednesday, November 13th, 2019

HIPAA Violations have been making headlines recently, and for good reason. Fines for violations can be crippling to companies, and the more mobile our data becomes, the greater the risk for security breech. According to the Health and Human Services website, as of September 30, 2019 the OCR has settled or imposed a civil money […]

“Project Nightingale” Raises Data Security Concerns

Wednesday, November 13th, 2019

Ascension is sharing private healthcare information with Google.  The project, dubbed “Project Nightingale,” was put into play to help Ascension centralize its patient database for the over 2600 hospitals in its healthcare system.  Patient information, including names, test results, and dates of birth are also being collected by Google to help develop a new software […]

Social Media Ad Spend Rising to Third Largest Advertising Channel

Wednesday, November 13th, 2019

Global social media ad spending is projected to grow by as much as 20% this year, bringing it up to the number three slot of largest advertising channels according to Zenith’s Advertizing Expenditure Forecast. Zenith is a media ad agency parented by Publicis Media. $84 billion is slated for global social media spending, exceeding print […]

Snowden & Publisher Sued for Book Proceeds

Wednesday, September 18th, 2019

The Justice Department is suing Edward Snowden and his publisher MacMillan and Holtzbrinck. Snowden, a former contractor for the CIA and NSA government agencies, released his book Permanent Record today.  The Justice Department says that Snowden failed to “clear” the book with them, and they are now attempting to recover “all proceeds earned by Snowden […]

Ransomware Attacks North Carolina and Connecticut

Tuesday, October 30th, 2018

The city of West Haven, Connecticut was hit by a ransomware attack that ran for twenty-three minutes on Tuesday, October 16th and infected 23 servers. The city managed to contain the attack by 5:30pm the following day.  With the help of MS-ISAC, a division of Homeland Security, police were able to determine the attack came […]

Välkommen! Now Give Me Your Hand: The Potential Of Implanted Microchips

Friday, October 19th, 2018

Biohax, a passive near field communications device has been inserted in thousands of people in Sweeden.  Certified biohackers insert the 2x12mm tubular microchip under your skin, usually in the area between your thumb and forefinger.  The chip contains no tracking capabilities, no GPS capabilities, and no batteries, and the device itself is Chinese, with German […]

Chinese Spy Chips Found on US Servers

Friday, October 5th, 2018

This is something I’ve been contemplating for a good 20 years. I hate to see my suspicions borne out. As it turns out, China has been putting rice-sized surveillance chips on motherboards manufactured in the country. Since the chips are so small they don’t contain a lot of information, but it’s enough to allow Chinese […]

Unsecured Webcams Leave Open Door for Criminals

Thursday, October 4th, 2018

Security expert Craig Petronella of Petronella Technology Group said you shouldn’t just take a camera out of the box and use it with its factory settings intact. “You have to configure it,’’ he said. “It has a default user name and password and after you get it all set up, you want to change the password to something […]