Directive Blogs

Using the most up-to-date versions of your technology’s operating systems is one of the best ways to stay secure. Yet, some organizations forego the jump to more recent operating systems due to the immense up-front expense represented by upgrading multiple servers or workstations at once. Unfortunately, this can be detrimental to your organization’s security, and potentially even put your business’s future at risk.

A new malware swept across the globe Tuesday, incorporating facets of many ransomwares that have made headlines recently. While it originally appeared to be a variant of the Petya ransomware, it has been determined that it shares more in common with WannaCry. However, “NotPetya,” as it has been named, has a few additional features that experts say make it worse than either of its predecessors.

On June 12th, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued a warning to power grid operators and electric utilities concerning a newly surfaced malware called CrashOverride (aka Industroyer). Only, it’s not entirely new. The world has seen this before and the fallout from it is concerning.

Just over a third (36 percent) of businesses don’t back up business data at all, and apparently this number isn’t keeping some IT providers up at night (not the case for us). Your businesses’ data is precious, irreplaceable, and extremely expensive to lose. Let’s talk about how delicate and dangerous it is to not have it backed up.

Run your Windows Updates and be very skeptical about opening unsolicited emails. Failure to do so may result in a very dangerous strain of ransomware that could infect your entire network and spread to your clients, partners, and prospects.

On Wednesday, several users found themselves the victim of a convincing phishing attack. The attack was designed to look like an invitation to view and edit a Google Doc, and is designed to steal your Google credentials and spread through your contacts.

ATMs are, surprisingly enough, not the most secure pieces of technology out there, though there are efforts to improve security by taking advantage of mobile devices. Granted, this won’t be enough to protect against the considerable vulnerabilities in ATMs. In order to maximize security and minimize the amount of damage done by vulnerabilities, the user needs to understand how to protect themselves while using ATMs.

Sometimes Mother Nature simply isn’t on your side, or you’re unfortunate enough to experience a troublesome disaster that threatens to knock your business off its feet. While various parts of the world are known for experiencing deadly natural disasters, other regions might not be as prone to them, giving business owners the wrong idea. It’s not a question of whether you’ll be hit with a crippling disaster, but when.

One of the major password managers out there, LastPass, has become the victim of a major vulnerability. Google researchers from the Zero Day Project discovered this, along with other flaws within LastPass.

It’s National Clean Out Your Computer Day! To kick off this important day, we’d like to remind business owners that this is a valuable opportunity to make sure that you’re taking good care of one of your greatest assets: your company’s technology. Let’s go over some of the best ways that you can optimize the performance of your office computers.

Guess what? Today is National Clean Out Your Computer Day, and we know the perfect way to celebrate! Go grab yourself a can of compressed air and your trusted IT technician, because it would be a shame if you were to miss out on this annual opportunity to improve your computer’s performance.

The branch of malware known as Ghost Push now has a new component, Gooligan, and it certainly lives up to its name. Google was struck by an attack that infected over one million Android users, with over 13,000 additional devices adding to that total on a daily basis.

If we told you that automated teller machines, or ATMs, were susceptible to hacking attacks, would you believe us? You should; there are a plethora of ways for hackers to infiltrate and steal money from ATMs, with the latest being so dangerous that even the Secret Service has issued warnings about it.

If you have the most recent addition to Samsung’s growing collection of smartphones, we hope you haven’t grown too attached to it. The company is recalling the Galaxy Note 7 on reports that the batteries explode. This event is largely considered one of the more high-profile recalls in the history of consumer technology.

Hackers continue to innovate and cause trouble for businesses of all industries and sizes. One of the more interesting recent tactics includes utilizing a malicious Twitter account to command a botnet of Android devices to do its bidding. Twitoor is considered to be the first real threat to actively use a social network in this manner, making this a major cause for concern.

Every security professional’s worst nightmare consists of the National Security Agency (NSA) being hacked. While there’s no proof that the NSA itself has been hacked, there is some evidence to suggest that some of the exploits used by the agency are up for grabs on the black market. What this means is that a lucky group of hackers could potentially get their hands on some very dangerous tools.

The Internal Revenue Service is one organization that you don’t want to mess with. Thanks to their antics filing fraudulent tax returns through the often-exploited Get Transcript site managed by the IRS, Anthony and Sonia Alika have to do some time in the slammer; and that’s not even mentioning what they have to pay the IRS in restitution.

Ransomware, the malware variant that has appeared more and more frequently has struck again, this time targeting users of Microsoft Outlook in a zero-day attack. A malware variant of Cerber (a ransomware) was recently utilized in a large scale attack on users of the messaging program, sent via phishing emails to corporate users.

The ransomware machine keeps moving forward, despite significant opposition. In particular, the ransomware tag-team duo of Petya and Mischa have steamrolled most attempts to block them from accessing critical systems, always finding ways to outsmart security professionals. Now, these ransomwares have adopted a Ransomware as a Service model, which has made significant changes to the way that this ransomware is distributed.

In the latest round of security patches released by Microsoft, 27 vulnerabilities were fixed. Affected software includes major titles like Windows, Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, and the new Edge browser. It’s imperative that you apply these security patches as soon as you can, or else your system will be exposed to some serious threats.