David Gewirtz of ZDNet performed what he calls a “thought experiment” to determine what would happen if a cyber war were to knock the United States back to the proverbial “Stone Age,” a term he uses to describe the era of computing that directly precedes the Information Age: when computing wasn’t commonplace or central to our everyday lives. One scenario Gewirtz explores is the possibility of the Stuxnet virus (an extremely complex virus that targets nuclear reactors) being exploited against the United States, alongside several other digital attacks that are designed to weaken the infrastructure. Since some systems rely on older technology, flaws in security can be found and exploited relatively easy if they’re being looked for. Furthermore, the United States’ reliance on electronic payments means that an attack on financial systems could potentially leave it in disarray. However, most scenarios that were considered came to the conclusion that within a few days, normal life would once again commence; primarily because of the assumption that society would “regroup, rebuild, and recover.” Then, Gewirtz takes a darker approach by assuming that the prior statement simply doesn’t happen. These scenarios rely on the assumption that the government’s carefully laid out plans also fall through, and are compromised by hackers. While these might be some dramatic events, Gewirtz urges the reader to “remember that this is a thought experiment, and that clever enemies are capable of playing a long game.” For instance, what would happen if hackers used the files stolen from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, which was breached recently, to infiltrate the government, implant threat actors, and fake information within the system to suit their needs? With personal information, including fingerprint records, at their disposal, hackers would have everything they need to take down systems that everyday society requires to function; all from the inside. With so many vital points hit at once, it’s safe to say that the financial systems and communications infrastructure would be among the first to go down. Without electronic transactions, businesses wouldn’t be able to run. This would be exacerbated by a lack of communications. Since most people don’t use landlines, and instead are opting for mobile phones or simple Internet communications, it’d be difficult for anyone to contact one another without waiting several days for messages. In Gewirtz’s own words: Without financial support and communications, our supply chains would be toast. Goods and services would no longer move across the country. There would be mobs storming supermarkets, hardware stores, and gun shops. Gasoline for vehicles would run out in a matter of days. National government would cease to function. Instead, the primary governance touch points would be some responsible local law enforcement officers. More likely, we would see feudal governance take hold, where those with the most firepower, survival resources, and physical strength would take power. The end result would probably be what would be akin to a technology age of around World War II, though for several reasons, Gewirtz states that society would regress further than that. His reasoning is that society is more structured around technology than it was in the past. Even amidst war, nations were able to communicate with each other because of this sound structure. Would today’s society be able to hold up to these standards? Probably not, simply […]
We’re not here to chastise Ashley Madison users, we’re sure their spouses are already doing a fine enough job of that. Instead, we want to explain that every Internet user needs to hold themselves accountable for their online actions, like web browsing. If you’re not taking careful steps to keep your identity anonymous while online, you could face serious consequences. For starters, you should never assume that any one site is invulnerable to hacking attacks. Just last June, even the United States federal government was hacked and the confidential records of 4 million employees were compromised. No single site is capable of warding off all attackers, especially sites which exhibit a high profile. Essentially, if a skilled hacker wants to find out what you’ve been doing on the Internet, they’ll probably be able to do so. Although, if you take measures to prevent hackers from tracking your online endeavors, you can minimize the chances that they’ll uncover dirt on you. Granted, you may not have anything to hide, but it’s still important that you keep as much sensitive information hidden as possible. You never know who might be watching. Here are five ways you can minimize how much of your sensitive information can be found online: Clear Your Browsing History Clearing your browsing history is often perceived as a sign of sketchy browsing activity, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be. Did you know that deleting your browser’s history is one way to keep hackers from finding your frequently-visited online accounts if your PC were ever to be hacked? Bonus Tip: Many web browsers allow you to have private browsing sessions that don’t store your history locally, like Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Edge. Just keep in mind that your history can still be seen by your Internet Service Provider. Don’t Use Your Real Name Easily one of the best ways to keep your online activity from biting back is by not using your real name. This is easier said than done. Although, many websites like Facebook require real names in order to keep people accountable for what they post. Whenever you can conceal your real name, be sure to do so. Don’t Use Personal Photos For much the same reason why you don’t want to use your real name, you should avoid using personal photos. This is especially true if you don’t want an account to be traced back to you. Be sure to post a generic image of interest, rather than your kids, house, car, or other personal photos. Protect Your Credit Card Information If a hacker is able to capture your credit card information, they may also be able to access to your purchase history. This can be problematic if you’ve purchased something that’s better kept to yourself. Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are an anonymous way to shop online, but not all online accounts will accept them. Therefore, using prepaid credit cards that can’t be traced back to you is always a secure online shopping strategy. Don’t Use Your Personal Email Account Finally, using your personal email to sign up for accounts online can not only be risky, but it can also be annoying when you have an inbox full of spam. Prevent this by creating a “burner” email account from a free online […]
One of the best ways your business can approach mobile devices is by consulting SRS Networks’s technology experts. We can work with you to build the ideal Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) solution, designed to protect your business and approach mobile devices in an organized, secure way. In fact, with the cloud increasing access to data and mission-critical applications, it’s no wonder that businesses are skeptical of this yet-emerging technology, despite the incredible advantages it brings to the table. The largest reason that businesses invest in a cloud IT solution is to make their company’s resources more accessible for their entire organization, from approved devices that adhere to a BYOD policy. This means that your end-users can access documents and files from any of their mobile devices, including laptops, smartphones, tablets, and more. With all of these devices capable of accessing information both in and out of the workplace, it’s reasonable to treat the BYOD trend with a level of skepticism. Take, for example, the average virus infection. An employee visits a site on their smartphone, which infects their device with a virus or some sort of spyware. If this device connects to your network, this infection can become much more widespread. This kind of risk to your network’s integrity is a worst-case scenario, but is completely avoidable under the right circumstances. The best way to protect your network and its cloud infrastructure is to make security a priority for your BYOD policy. A good mobile device management solution should be capable of limiting certain applications’ access to confidential information. It helps if you’re able to blacklist certain apps from accessing your data, and whitelist approved apps that can do so without risking the integrity of your network. This should be done, especially if you’re the one providing your team with mobile devices. The basics will be better than nothing, but to truly optimize your network’s security from the BYOD menace, you need to integrate a much more comprehensive security solution. By limiting access to data based on user permissions, you’ll be more likely to minimize data leakage and keep your network relatively free of potential threats. Give SRS Networks a call at (831) 758-3636 to learn more about how you can protect your network.
“What’s the Weather Like?” Unlike real people, who might judge you for asking about the weather and direct you to the closest window, Cortana will be slightly more helpful and provide an answer for you. In order to use this function, your location service has to be enabled. Also, you can ask Cortana about the weather anywhere else in the world, too. “What’s On My Schedule?” If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to have a real-life personal assistant, Cortana is probably the next closest thing. Cortana can access your Calendar app or your Outlook calendar to inform you of scheduled events. She can even give you specific information about different dates on your calendar. For example, asking Cortana something like, “What do I have planned this weekend?” will provide you with the information you’re seeking. “How Long Will it Take Me to Get to [Place]” Cortana can help you determine how long it will take you to get from your current location to another by using your map application and your location services. You can even ask her for something as simple as how to get from point A to point B, even if it’s nowhere near where you are. “Show Me My Notes” Cortana can pull information from Microsoft OneNote with this command. You can also have Cortana open a specific note by attaching a date to your command. For example, try asking Cortana to show you your notes from last year. “Set a Reminder” Cortana has the ability to drop you a quick reminder for an upcoming event or time, which is way better than writing it down on a piece of paper or your hand. Cortana is flexible enough to understand what you’re trying to say, so the wording of the command isn’t so important. For example, you can say something natural like, “Remind me to pick up dinner at five.” Also, Windows Phone users can have Cortana notify them of a task they need to do if it’s associated with a location they come across. “Create an Alarm” In the same way that you can set a reminder, you can easily have Cortana set an alarm. Cortana can set the alarm to go off only once, or at a regular time. Cortana is shaping up to be a great new tool that can used in the professional environment. For more tips on how to take advantage of technology, subscribe to SRS Networks’s blog for helpful tips each week.
To ascertain whether or not the cloud is right for your business, consider these suggestions. Assess Your IT Infrastructure Business owners will often come across times when they need to do a cost-benefit analysis of integrating new solutions. Many cloud computing solutions state that they only need an Internet connection to transform the profitability of your organization. These claims are often completely overstated. The first element your organization will have to consider is if it has the bandwidth to implement a solution properly. Any cloud service will have a point of contact. Take your concerns about implementing new cloud services to your cloud representative to get a more succinct idea about how easy it is to implement a cloud solution into your organization’s IT infrastructure. If you don’t have the right connectivity, your cloud solution’s effectiveness could be significantly limited. Don’t Jump Right In Face it, cloud computing is cool. Being able to receive the computing power, storage space, applications, and integrated cooperative abilities are likely the factors that have you looking to switch to the cloud. The problem is that if you have years of information that you need to virtualize, a cloud computing implementation gets rather difficult. This is one reason why implementing one function to the cloud, like email or backup, can be the best way to go about making the cloud work for your business. Traditional IT delivery, whether it be processing, storage, applications, or communications needs to be configured and managed in order to maintain it’s effectiveness. Now, with cloud computing, you can deliver your organization all the dynamic capabilities of a full-scale IT infrastructure with very little overhead cost. The tendency to immediately commit to an overhaul of the computing infrastructure should be tabled. Implement one solution at a time to get a good feel for how the cloud is working for your organization. Security is Always Important One element that keeps many organizations from seriously considering implementing a cloud solution is the perceived lack of security that cloud platforms have versus the traditional IT delivery methods. This is a falsehood. The cloud has distinct potential to produce scalable and secure computing platforms. The issue for many business owners is hosting your company’s most integral information, and often the financial information of your customers, in the cloud. If management of these computing systems is done by a third party, how can it be as secure as it needs to be to give them the peace of mind they need to trust the solution properly? The answer is that by having a dedicated security conversation with your cloud provider, you will learn that many cloud platforms are more secure than IT systems that you house at the office. Who Maintains the IT? One of the major advantages of moving your organization’s computing resources to the cloud is that maintenance is no longer your responsibility. The problem is that even though many of the issues you’ve typically had to address are already taken care of for you, IT problems are not eliminated altogether. Before you decide to jump on the cloud bandwagon, determine the computing needs of your organization and plan how you are going to take care of the issues that do pop up. If something does happen and your cloud provider responds with indifference, […]
1. HTML tags – Important HTML tags include the title tag, meta description and meta keywords. Make sure each page of your website has appropriate HTML tags. The title tag of each page should be unique and relevant to that particular page. 2. Alternative text images – Ensure that most of the images on your website have alternative text tags. Alt tags are basically descriptions for images. By adding relevant alternative tags to images, you are allowing search engines to recognize them, which will improve the likelihood of your page showing up in search results. 3. File hierarchy – How simple is your HTML file hierarchy? Check to see if your website’s pages are logically situated and avoid too many unnecessary folders. For example: ‘NFL=>Teams=>PittsburghSteelers’ is a better folder structure than ‘NFL=>Teams=>NFCEast=>PittsburghSteelers’, because here ‘NFCEast’ is redundant and only serves to push the Steelers page deeper down the order. This complexity makes your site less likely to show up on search results for people searching for Steelers websites. 4. Sitemap – A sitemap acts as a navigational guide for your visitors as well as search engines. Does your website have one? If not, then it’s time to put up a site map on your website. 5. Content quality – Read your website content to determine its quality. Is your content written for search engines or actual visitors? Is it stuffed with keywords? Does it truly add value to your audience, or is simply there to fill up the page? Answer these questions and make sure it has value for your audience. Value for your audience translates to better search engine rankings.
While corporate-level data losses and insider theft are well publicized, many smaller businesses have also become casualties of data loss and theft. Following a significant data loss, it is estimated that a small-to-medium sized business can lose up to 25% in daily revenue by the end of the first week. Projected lost daily revenue increases to 40% one month into a major data loss. According to The National Archives & Records Administration in Washington, 93% of companies that have experienced data loss, coupled with prolonged downtime for ten or more days, have filed for bankruptcy within twelve months of the incident while 50% wasted no time and filed for bankruptcy immediately. Finally, 43% of companies with no data recovery and business continuity plan actually go out of business following a major data loss. Still, a survey conducted by Symantec SMB revealed that fewer than half of SMBs surveyed backup their data each week. Only 23% of those surveyed said they backup data every day and have a business continuity plan in place. Businesses play on a much bigger playing field than they did two decades ago. Any disruptive technological event – even the smallest of incidents – can have an amplified impact on day-to-day business and profitability. Being proactive with data recovery solutions, and having emergency response procedures in place prior to a disruption or data disaster, is the only way to minimize downtime and soften the impact of such events.
1. Do you have Antivirus protection? – An antivirus software program can protect you from threats that originate from emails such as phishing and virus attacks. However, the most striking fact is that 61% of small businesses don’t install any antivirus software! If you are one of them, then it’s time to change! 2. How sturdy is your Firewall? – A good firewall system protects your computers from the variety of threats that exist in the virtual world. Examples include harmful cookies, viruses, worms and other such malicious programs used by hackers. 3. Do you use a Spam filter? – Using a simple spam filter for your emails keeps junk out of your inbox. The bonus to having a good spam filter is that your employees save time, as they are not distracted by irrelevant emails, but the major perk here is that the potential virus and phishing threats are lessened as spam emails are unlikely to be opened. 4. Do you do backup your data regularly? – Agreed – backups don’t really protect your data, but they are the only way to recover it if data loss does happen. So, be sure you have a regular and reliable backup plan in place – and it is actually being deployed. Data loss can prove very costly-especially to SMBs, sometimes even resulting in them having to close down. Prevention is certainly better than a cure in such cases.
1. They are asking for personal information – Remember, no bank or financial institution asks you to share your key personal information via email, or even phone. So, if you get an email where they ask for your ATM PIN or your e-banking password, something’s a miss. 2. The links seem to be fake – Phishing emails always contain links that you are asked to click on. You should verify if the links are genuine. Here are a few things to look for when doing that: Spelling – Check for the misspellings in the URL. For example, if your bank’s web address is www.bankofamerica.com, a phishing scheme email could misspell it as www.bankofamarica.com or www.bankofamerica-verification.com Disguised URLs – Sometimes, URLs can be disguised…meaning, while they look genuine, they ultimately redirect you to some fraudulent site. You can recognize the actual URL upon a mouseover, or by right clicking on the URL, and selecting the ‘copy hyperlink’ option and pasting the hyperlink on a notepad file. But, NEVER ever, paste the hyperlink directly into your web browser. URLs with ‘@’ signs – If you find a URL that has an ‘@’ sign, steer clear of it even if it seems genuine. Browsers ignore URL information that precedes @ sign. That means, the URL [email protected] will take you to mysite.net and not to any Bank of America page. 3. Other tell-tale signs – Apart from identifying fake URLs, there are other tell-tale signs that help you identify fraudulent emails. Some of these include: Emails where the main message is in the form of an image, which, upon opening, takes you to the malicious URL. Another sign is an attachment. Never open attachments from unknown sources as they may contain viruses that can harm your computer and network. The message seems to urge you to do something immediately. Scammers often induce a sense of urgency in their emails and threaten you with consequences if you don’t respond. For example, threat of bank account closure if you don’t verify your ATM PIN or e-banking password. Finally, get a good anti virus/email protection program installed. It can help you by automatically directing spam and junk mail into spam folders and deactivating malicious attachments.
Here’s a few other ways downtime can hurt your business: 1. Customer Loss – Today’s buyer lacks patience !important; They are used to getting everything at the click of a mouse, at the tap of a finger. Suppose they are looking for the kind of products/services that you offer and your site doesn’t load or is unavailable—even if temporarily– you are likely to lose them to a competitor—permanently. 2. Damage to Brand Reputation – Customers are now using Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter and blogs to vent their bad brand experiences. Imagine an irate customer who doesn’t know if their card was charged on your site, or not, due to a server error. If it’s your bad day, they could probably be using Facebook or Twitter to share their bad experience, and it could be viewed by hundreds of people, causing irreparable harm to your brand image. 3. Loss of Productivity – When your systems don’t work, this can have a direct impact on your employees’ productivity. Consider a research firm of 200 employees where they primarily rely on internet connectivity to access the knowledge base. If the server hosting the knowledge base is down, there’s a total loss of at least 1600 work hours for one day. 4. Overtime, Repair and Recovery, Compensatory costs – In the above case, imagine the overtime wages the business would have to incur if they were to make up for the work loss they faced owing to downtime. In addition, there’s always the cost of repair—the money the business would have to shell out to fix the issue that caused the downtime and get the server up and running again. In some cases, businesses would have to incur additional costs to make customers happy. These could include giving away the product for free or at a discount, or using priority shipping to make up for a delayed order. 5. Possible Lawsuits – Businesses could also be at the receiving end of lawsuits. For example, a downtime that has an impact on production, delivery or finances of the customer could invite litigation. 6. Marketing Efforts Rendered Useless – Consider a pay-per-click advertisement that shows up for the right keywords on Google, or an extensive e-mail campaign that your business engages in. However, when the prospect clicks on the link, all they see is an error message – Isn’t that a waste of your marketing budget? The bottom line—one natural disaster, one technical snag or just one power outage has the power to put you out of business – both virtually and in reality. It’s probably time to think about how you can mitigate the threat of a possible downtime and whether your MSP can act as an effective and efficient ally in this battle for you.