Category: Security
MSPs and the law: What you need to know
Security breaches at large retailers, banks, and Equifax have grabbed the lion’s share of headlines recently. Meanwhile, the idyllic image of a small-town Main Street attorney working out of a plate-glass window front office with a shingle hanging outside has...
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?”...
Tech Time Warp: The First Ethical Hacker
These days, the concept of an ethical hacker is so commonplace the profession has its own Certified Ethical Hacker designation, bestowed and governed by the International Council of E-Commerce Consultants. The ethical hackers of the world put their genius to...
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...
Tech Time Warp: The Sasser worm teaches a lesson
In early May 2004, computer users worldwide learned a hard lesson: Don’t procrastinate when it comes to installing a security patch. Users at the Taiwanese post office, the train station in Sydney, and some of Wall Street’s biggest banks found...
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...
