Little MSP on the Prairie: Cyber threats lurk in the heartland
The Great Plains have romanced explorers and broken the hearts of homesteaders for generations. For the Conestoga wagons traversing the Oregon Trail, the Great Plains were a necessary misery to endure as they headed toward the riches of the west,...
ATM security threats: Jackpotting and beyond
It’s easy to forget ATMs have been around so long. When ATM machines began showing up in my Ohio hometown sometime in the late 1970s, my grandmother found the technology incomprehensible. “Isn’t it nice that the banks give you money?”...
MSPs have to outsmart wily students
There was a time when a teacher using an overhead projector was considered high-tech, but now smartboards, student tablets, smartphones, laptops, and campus-wide networks have turned schools into hubs of connectivity that are often too much for an in-house staff...
Weaponizing artificial intelligence
Fending off ransomware and other malware attacks has already become part of the daily MSP landscape. But in the ever-evolving world of threats, a new one will begin to emerge with greater frequency in the months and years ahead: weaponized...
MSPs Beware: The Future of Ransomware
The idea of a shady cabal or a nefarious cyber army of one holding an entire city’s data hostage while they negotiate for ransom sounds like a plot lifted straight from a 1990s B movie. But yesterday’s fantasy is today’s...
Atlanta ransomware attack highlights IT vulnerabilities of cities
Atlanta, car-clogged highways aside, is the elegant, magnolia-draped metropolis of the South: cosmopolitan, visionary, and Olympic caliber. But, for a few days in March 2018, the daily rhythms of governmental life came to a screeching halt. Water bill payments couldn’t...
Malvertising morphs into cryptotising
In the early days, malvertising was simply about slipping some code into an ad to induce more clicks to drive up a higher ad payout from an unsuspecting advertiser. It almost seemed like a childish prank (unless you were the...
Threat Watch: Cryptojacking
If one of your customers calls or texts you to tell you their system is slow or overheating or gobbling up a lot of power, you need to add a new possible diagnosis to your checklist — cryptojacking. Cryptojacking is...
2018 will be the year of the targeted cyberattack on CPAs
April tax deadlines are looming, and that means accounting firms are neck-deep in returns as everyone races to file on time. While accountants are focused on deductions and earned income credits, bad actors are watching and waiting, ready to pounce...
The never-ending battle against ransomware
Ransomware has largely faded from the headlines since WannaCry and NotPetya wreaked havoc across the globe in 2017. In some ways, ransomware creators were victims of their own success. The attacks garnered so much attention that, as Malwarebytes’ Chris Boyd told...