Category: Featured

Tech Time Warp: Swen worm poses as security patch

Tech Time Warp: Swen worm poses as security patch

The hits for network admins kept coming in late summer/early fall 2003. Just weeks after the Blaster-Welchia-SoBig.F triple punch, the Swen worm wriggled its way onto at least 1.5 million computers. Like so many other pieces of malware, Swen exploited...

/ September 24, 2021
Cybersecurity implications of PIPL

Cybersecurity implications of PIPL

Idyllic fields of corn and soybeans spread out in all directions from a small midwestern manufacturing campus. Tucked within a town of around 20,000 people, the facility seems worlds away. But a recent data breach on the company’s servers illustrates...

/ September 22, 2021
3 MSP marketing ideas for National IT Professionals Day

3 MSP marketing ideas for National IT Professionals Day

Thanks to social media and marketing, there’s a holiday every day of the year. These social media or marketing holidays are a great way to engage with your audience through MSP marketing, build brand awareness, offer sales or specials, and...

/ September 21, 2021 / 2 Comments
Tech Time Warp: The first FORTRAN program runs

Tech Time Warp: The first FORTRAN program runs

Although FORTRAN was not commercially released until 1957, the date September 20, 1954, is also significant in the history of the groundbreaking computer language. That’s when the first FORTRAN program successfully ran while in development at IBM. John Backus worked...

/ September 17, 2021 / 1 Comment
MSPs need to keep an eye on “soft targets”

MSPs need to keep an eye on “soft targets”

I talk to MSP owners weekly about cybersecurity trends in the industry and which trends are the most troubling. By far, what I hear about most in 2021 is ransomware. And the statistics bear out the fear of ransomware hitting...

/ September 15, 2021 / 3 Comments
Pioneers in Tech: Luis von Ahn turns everyone into a crowdsourcer

Pioneers in Tech: Luis von Ahn turns everyone into a crowdsourcer

Depending on your point of view, a CAPTCHA or a reCAPTCHA is either an annoyance (who can read those fuzzy letters, anyway?) or a boon to security, preventing fake account creation, spam commenting, fraudulent transactions, and more. But did you...

/ September 10, 2021 / 1 Comment
Unified IT service delivery: Future proofing with automation

Unified IT service delivery: Future proofing with automation

COVID-19 has forced all industries to rethink how they work. Now that remote and hybrid work are the new norm, enterprises are concerned about running into technical issues that could hamper productivity. Customers expect MSPs to maintain a unified IT...

/ September 7, 2021 / 1 Comment
Tech Time Warp: Happy birthday to the Computer Misuse Act

Tech Time Warp: Happy birthday to the Computer Misuse Act

Happy 31st birthday to the British Computer Misuse Act (CMA), which went into effect Aug. 29, 1990, as one of the first cybercrime laws on the books. Although the CMA has undergone several revisions, many cybersecurity experts believe it’s desperately...

/ August 27, 2021
Tech Time Warp: The One-Two-Three Viral Punch of August 2003

Tech Time Warp: The One-Two-Three Viral Punch of August 2003

August qualifies as the dog days of summer. It’s a good time to take it easy and use some PTO.  But that’s not something the network administrators of 2003 could do, thanks to an onslaught of viruses. August 2003 brought...

/ August 20, 2021
IT leaders start to move past COVID-19 era

IT leaders start to move past COVID-19 era

As organizations of all sizes continue to wait and see how the next phase of the COVID-19 pandemic might evolve, a survey of 400 IT leaders at organizations with more than 500 employees suggests IT leaders, in terms of setting...

/ August 19, 2021