We have the pleasure of working with many businesses, some of whom take more advantage of our remote services than others. We wanted to take a few moments to discuss one of our more discreet client organizations and a challenge we helped them resolve. Hopefully, sharing this won’t land us on the naughty list.
Sustainability is a hot topic nowadays, from how we conduct ourselves in our personal lives to how businesses go about their respective business. If this is something that you want to promote in your business, we figured that the day before Earth Day was as good a day as any to share some of the ways you can do so.
Today is Global Recycling Day, and is intended to remind us of all the materials that can be reused in everyday life, in part as a way to decrease our individual carbon footprint. However, it's valuable to know how much your business contributes in terms of its carbon footprint… and, once you know that figure, how you can reduce it.
The holiday season has a variety of famous key players, including the likes of Santa, Rudolph, and the rest of the North Pole crew. Each year, they use their magic to help spread goodwill and joy to all the nice children of the world… but did you know that they are also responsible for protecting those who make the naughty list from Santa’s villainous counterpart, Krampus?
As the official managed service provider for Santa’s operation, we have been cleared to share the story about how we’ve helped defy Krampus to save Christmas.
With the holidays fast approaching, people are ready to go out and find the best, most perfect gifts for their loved ones. That said, people don’t want to spend their money frivolously; they want to find the best deals while they are available. We’ve compiled a list of some of the best Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals that have been announced so far.
The holiday season is well known as a time off from work to spend with family, but for some, it’s the busiest time of the year. Let’s get to know one such individual for a moment, and what he’s learning can make his job—and his life—much, much easier.
Parker sat at his desk looking at a business card. He watched the snow fall lightly outside his window. He was the last person left in the office, as he typically was this time of year. He put down the business card and got up and walked over to the large pane of glass that was the only insulation from the harsh, cold wintery night. He placed his hand on the window and felt the bitter cold meet the palm of his hand. He stood there for a minute; maybe more than a minute. He began to cry. He was so angry at how things were going.
With the holiday season in full swing, finding good gifts for the technology lover in your life may actually be more frustrating than you’d think. Since there are so many options, people will often get paralysis from trying to find the right gift and end up going the gift card route. Today we will look at five great gift ideas for the technology fan in your life.
This Christmas, technology is everywhere. Traditionally, the holidays were a time when things slowed down for businesses and people spent time with their families and put their work on the back burner. Those days are over. Today’s professional is lucky to get a day off for Christmas; and, because of the way business works today, may be asked to do more than ever around the holidays.
The holidays are getting closer, and picking the right gift for someone is only becoming a more stressful activity. To make things a little easier for you, we’ve found some gadgets that might make the perfect gift for that person on your list who has a particular interest. This blog will go over some of these interests and the gifts that might make their holiday.
Halloween is a time when we celebrate what scares us, like ghosts, goblins, ghouls, and the like. For adults, the holiday becomes more lighthearted with each passing year, due to the understanding that such monsters are fictional. Yet, there exists real monsters who know how to play on people’s fears, namely, hackers.
Granted, it’s highly unlikely that a child will visit your front door this Halloween dressed as a hacker. Nevertheless, the digital doors of your business, i.e., your website and network, are very likely to be visited on Halloween--and every day following. While many of these threats aren’t all that scary and are easily thwarted by security tools like a managed firewall and spam-blocking solution, a threat that’s specifically targeting a user has a greater chance of getting through. If such a hacker successfully breaches your security system, that’s when the nightmare of cyber extortion begins.
Cyber extortion comes in many different forms, and it can be very effective when executed properly. The hackers behind cyber extortion prefer using fear to incite unreasonable action from their victims, even if it means using frightful tactics like blackmail and deception.
Many of these methods work similarly to ransomware. Most ransomware will encrypt the files stored on a victim’s computer, and they will only provide a decryption key if the victim pays a fee. The idea here is to use fear to get users to hand over money (often in the form of untraceable cryptocurrency) in exchange for their precious files. This can be particularly devastating for businesses, as it means they could potentially lose access to all of their mission-critical data.
In the majority of ransomware cases, unless an organization has their data backed up, they’re out of luck and won’t be able to retrieve their data without paying the fine. Now that’s scary!
In an even scarier twist on an already sick scam, there are hackers who will steal information from businesses or individuals, and then offer an ultimatum; either pay up, or the sensitive data gets leaked to the Internet. This may be a worse fate because it allows other, more dangerous hackers to access the data and use it for nefarious purposes. This variety of hackers tend to ask somewhere between $250 to $1,200 for the safe return of the victim's data.
IC3, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, received a significant number of reports indicating that users who had data stolen through high-profile data breaches received extortion emails demanding that they pay a fee, or suffer the consequences. This data could be anything from personally identifiable information, like Social Security numbers, to financial information, like credit card numbers. In some cases, hackers would claim to have information that could cause catastrophic damage to victims’ personal lives, like personal photos and correspondences.
Although, we should point out that there’s virtually no way of guaranteeing that these hackers actually have the files they claim to have. They could just be blowing hot air and fishing for a response, hoping that you’ll be gullible enough to give in to their outlandish requests. However, for this same reason, it’s important that you don’t immediately pay the ransom. What guarantee do you have that they’ll give you the decryption key? The answer: none.
Basically, you should never, under any circumstances, give in to fear and pay the ransom offered by the hackers. Doing so doesn’t necessarily save your information (if they even have it) from being posted on the Internet. All it does is give in to the hacker’s demands by providing them with exactly what they want. Why should you give them this satisfaction, especially after the scare they’ve given you?
Instead, to prevent finding yourself at the mercy of a malicious hacker who’s extorting you for everything you’ve got, then we recommend giving Techworks Consulting, Inc. a call at (631) 285-1527 to get the proactive support your company can use to keep from paying the price. We can calmly walk you through the steps of dealing with a devious hacker, as well as offer ways you can shore up your network security in order to prevent any further data breaches.
This Halloween, be safe and make sure to celebrate what looks scary (but really isn’t), instead of finding yourself in a situation that’s actually scary, like being blackmailed by a hacker.
The perfect holiday gift needs to be something meaningful. Now, a meaningful gift could be something sentimental, or it could be useful. If you’re looking to give a gift that will get plenty of use throughout the year, then consider giving a video-streaming service subscription.
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