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The Cyber Kill Chain model breaks down a Ransomware attack in seven stages. This article will give you an understanding of our security solutions and what is effective based on the current stage of the Ransomware. 

Macros – they are normally delivered as attachments in the form of a Microsoft Word document. Macros can either make your life easier by automating those repetitive stuff or destroy all of your work in seconds. It is exploited by attackers to infect systems and make demands against the victim.

During my career in the support and service industry I’ve often wondered, “Am I or my team delivering the best possible service and support for our clients?”

We have all been in the situation where we are out of the office but require access to critical business resources. Maybe its double checking budget numbers in a report or accessing the updated presentation that you are scheduled to give in 10 minutes. Whatever it is, you need access to that resource now and the access needs to work. Microsoft's service at office.com fills this need with easy to use, feature rich, web applications.*

Do you have an old computer equipment graveyard? I’ve been to many new client’s offices only to be asked, “how do I get rid of all this junk taking up an entire storage room?”. We appear to have a habit of believing that at some point, that old computer, monitor, set of cables or printer may come in handy. And you definitely cannot throw electronics out in the trash. So, we stack them up and close the door.

Ransomware scans network locations where the infected user has read and write access. Files under documents, desktop, and the shared folders you have access are examples of locations vulnerable to getting encrypted. Imagine if an administrator account or someone using an account that has full read and write access to the server gets infected. Easily, everything on the server and the network will be affected. It can halt the operations and affect the productivity of not just one person but the entire organization.

The ability to connect to your work place computer or remote desktop server remotely provides an added productivity to some employees. However, the risks of having this incorrectly configured outweigh the convenience it provides.

Almost every small and mid-sized business (SMB) owner is being inundated with information promoting cloud this or that, making it nearly impossible to determine who or what to trust. After all, deciding to migrate to the cloud is often fraught with risk and uncertainty, leading many business owners to stick with what they know. Often, what they know and are comfortable with, is a file server installed in the secure confines of their office. This is a tangible investment in purpose-built hardware running Windows Server OS, a topology referred to as a “client / server network”. In this mode of network, which has been around since the 70s, each computer connects to the local server for access to files and applications. This centralized way of computing has served us well, but the emergence of cloud computing has turned the model upside down. I would describe cloud as decentralized computing, opening a seemingly endless array of servers and services for computers and other devices to connect to. This can be empowering, but at the same time, dangerous if not conceived and designed with security and manageability in mind. Another important consideration is how analogous the devices become connected to this cloud network. Collaboration and sharing of information should be a paramount concern; moving to the cloud without easy access to shared data is destined to fail. The more homogeneous security and collaboration is, the more complete the cloud solution will be.

As more and more small and mid-sized businesses migrate application workloads or whole environments to the cloud, I am seeing several trends emerging. The maturity of cloud computing is allowing many organizations to stake their claim and build out significant presence. Salesforce, HubSpot, Office 365, and Xero are common services that business may subscribe to, but you are very likely creating separate silos of data for each one.  In fact, you may already have two or three copies of client data floating out there – keeping each of these up to date individually is a big challenge.

Over the last several years, the threats to business networks in terms of hacking (denial of service attacks), malware (keyloggers and password stealers), ransomware (WannaCry, Petra, CryptoLocker) and viruses in general have grown exponentially.  And the recent introduction of Spear Phishing, targeted emails from what appear to be trusted sources, make it harder and harder for business to protect their networks and data.