Category: Network and Desktop Security Articles

Technology has become so deeply interwoven into the fabric of our daily lives that many of us can only vaguely remember what it was like before computers, mobile phones, and PDAs. Nowadays, many of us check e-mails and log in to our social networks as a daily habit. We also rely heavily on technology for work. Whether the job is research-based, technical, or creative, almost all professionals need to have a computer with a working Internet connection to be able to work properly and efficiently.

A good number of offices tend to be very lenient when it comes to Internet usage at the office. After all, even if most companies give out special work e-mail accounts as a standard protocol, not all work-related messages are sent exclusively to that account. If we are able to check our personal e-mails at work, we can be sure that we are up to date in whatever is going on in the business. Enabling instant messaging software and widgets and being able to visit social networks such as Facebook and Twitter from time to time also helps in taking away the blandness of an office routine, making work more bearable and fun. Sometimes, though, it provides too much fun.

Being allowed access to your own personal pages during office hours is a double-edged sword, not only in terms of productivity but also in ensuring the security of your company’s local network. Your company depends on a complex, perpetually running and continuously changing network. Despite its large capacity and standard network security functions, office connections are still extremely delicate. One little glitch has the potential to throw off the entire operation. For small businesses that give their workforces unlimited permission to visit personal sites and pages using office network resources, their lenient attitude could open a network up to certain operational and security risks.

The Speed Turns Slow

Video streaming through the Internet takes up a whole lot of bandwidth. Frequently watching videos on YouTube, playing Imeem or downloading and playing online games during office hours can cause a lag in Internet speed and make the local area network act up.

The Guard Goes Down

Every time you visit a website on your office computer, you are giving viruses and other digital threats an opening to infect your network. You also become susceptible to being baited by phishers and online scammers. These risks exist whenever you log on to the Internet, whether at home or from your office desktop. However, offices usually run on a shared network server, meaning if you have unwittingly downloaded a virus from an e-mail, that virus can easily spread and infect the other office computers.

Everyone should be more cautious about what he or she surfs on the Internet while at the office. None of us want to be the cause for the great crash of the company server. The best way to keep IT security high is to make sure that all network security measures are updated and enabled. Having a third party server and desktop management specialist on board can help a business maintain its internal IT’s health.

Take everything in moderation. The rule holds true even in using your office computer for personal use. The reason why we go to the office five days a week is to work, not to surf the Internet at one’s leisure. By taking extra care as we browse through our personal pages during office hours, and by observing proper work conduct, we can consistently release productive output and maintain efficient IT security.

To learn more about securing your IT systems, visit the All Covered website or call 866-446-1133.

Contact All Covered

del.icio.us | Reddit | Slashdot | Digg | More

Since the Internet started growing explosively around two decades ago, email has provided individuals and businesses the enormous convenience of being able to communicate anytime and anywhere, wherever people can hook up to an Internet connection. With email, people can send messages with attachments such as photos, documents and other digital files. As more businesses welcomed email as an integral business communication tool, a lot of successful business transactions have been consummated solely through this marvelous electronic communication wonder.

However, the Internet, along with email as one of its components, has been created on the basis of trust. The early developers of the Internet exchanged ideas and collaborated freely on the early Internet as their platform for their research collaborations, trusting that they are communicating and exchanging classified files with people they know. But as the years progressed, and as email and the Internet advanced as a whole, the number of users exchanging messages through the Internet has grown tremendously.

Today, many perpetrators of online theft are devising schemes that are aimed at grabbing unsuspecting individuals’ personal data. Some online thieves are even creating means to penetrate businesses and take away precious corporate information. One such scheme is phishing. Phishing is a fraudulent online correspondence that has been created to dupe people into giving away personal information such as credit card numbers, TIN numbers, bank account numbers and ATM card PINs. Phishing can also take your Web identity, allowing the perpetrator to transact business online using your identity and other information that is pertinent to you.

Hackers who carry out phishing campaigns do so by sending emails that usually ask you to confirm or update information including your bank account number, your email password and ATM PIN number. One such phishing scam is an email disguised as coming from a bank. Other scams are posed as messages coming from online payment services such as PayPal or Xoom, asking you to validate your username and password.

It is sad to note that thousands of people and many businesses have already been deceived, and have lost millions of dollars in the process. And as more and more people and corporate entities have become aware of this fraudulent activity, online scammers have been diligently working on other schemes that they believe they can pull off to steal other people’s hard-earned money.

To avoid having you or your business become a victim to phishing and other online scams, here are some practical tips from ThinkPlanInvest.com.

10 Steps to Avoid Falling Prey to Phishing Scams

1. If you are doubtful about the credibility of the email, DO NOT click on any link provided in the email. This may trigger malicious codes to be installed on your PC.

2. Before you share any information on a website in response to an email, always ensure that the URL shown in the email matches the URL of the bank website. If it does not, you have valid reason to suspect that there’s something fishy.

3. Do not open unexpected e-mail attachments or instant message download links.

4. Check the web address carefully. One trick is to mouse over the link that has been sent to you. The actual destination URL is shown on the bottom of your browser. If it is not the website you thought or if it has strange extensions, like “.cn” or any other foreign country extension do not click on it.

5. Check for the Padlock icon at the bottom right corner of the webpage. It must be always ‘On’ during secure transactions.

6. Ensure that you have installed the latest anti-virus/anti-spyware/personal firewall/security patches on your computer.

7. Always use a non-admin user ID for daily work on your computer.

8. Do not access banks or make payments using your debit or credit card from shared or unprotected computers in public places like cyber cafes.

9. Do not transfer funds to or share your account details with unknown/non-validated sources, especially those luring you with commissions, attractive offers or prizes.

10. If you receive an email from a friend and the tone or language is out of character, don’t open any attachments or follow any links. On Facebook, a common phishing scam has included getting messages from friends with links that install a Trojan horse if you follow the link. The messages come from hacked accounts.

To find help in securing your IT systems, visit All Covered or call 866-446-1133.

Download PDF

Contact All Covered

del.icio.us | Reddit | Slashdot | Digg | More

Disaster can strike anytime and anywhere, and when it does, whether natural or man-made, it will do so without remorse, destroying virtually anything that stands in its way. When a calamity strikes, it could also destroy your business’ critical asset; your company’s data and network system.

Because of the uncertainties brought about by natural and man-made disasters, you, as a small business owner, should ask yourself whether your company’s data is disaster-proof. Data and network systems are some of the most mission-critical assets of small businesses. Unfortunately, many companies take for granted the all-important task of proactively protecting their companies from data loss, simply because disasters occur only every once in a while. However, one in every five businesses experience data loss due to sudden power outage as a direct result of natural disasters. This underlines the importance of data and disaster recovery systems for businesses.

How will disasters affect your business?

The impact of disasters to any company, big or small, can be devastating. Today, data and other IT systems have become completely indispensable to small companies. One disastrous blow to a company’s data facility could disrupt their entire operations, leading to a loss of opportunity, additional expenses incurred for repairs and data recovery, a significant drop in productivity level, stalled cash flow, and because of this, it is of utmost importance to create a solid plan that will prepare your business for any disasters that could strike anytime in the future. Sufficient and proper planning on recovery strategy should be carried out so that your business will be able to get back on its feet after a disaster.

Just how important are data backups?

Implementing a backup system is a sure way to keep your business’ important data safe in the event of a critical systems failure. Backups are very important for a quick recovery or restoration of lost or damaged data. Because of this, a solid plan for data backup should be prepared and implemented before it’s too late.
Once a backup system is in place, it is important that businesses conduct at least weekly backup operations in order to minimize data loss and enable faster data restoration. The frequency of doing backups is determined by the volume of data that a company stores in its servers. The bigger the volume of data the company deals with on a regular basis, the more often the data backup should be done.

Preparing your company’s data recovery

When planning for your business’ data recovery strategy, initially, your company should conduct a business impact analysis in order to identify the physical and non physical effects of disasters on your business’ operations. This way, your company will be able to have a greater insight on recovery priorities and develop a solid IT strategy for recovery. This sort of analysis will also help your business identify the vulnerable areas of your IT network, a very essential step in building a strong recovery strategy.

The benefits of outsourcing

As companies become more dependent on virtualization and as IT infrastructure becomes a vital component of small business, nothing can be more disastrous than when these aspects are completely devastated by disasters. And because most small companies do not have the budget for an in-house IT staff to take care of their data and network systems, the best practice is to turn to a reliable IT services provider that will not only help you significantly save cost on IT maintenance, but also help you prepare and deploy an effective and comprehensive recovery solution.

To learn more about how to look for the right IT solutions company for your IT needs, visit AllCovered.com or call 866-446-1133.

Contact All Covered

del.icio.us | Reddit | Slashdot | Digg | More

The minute you connect any portion of your IT environment to the web, your entire network will become vulnerable to multiple threats on multiple fronts—it doesn’t matter if it’s your iPhone or your email server—any device, regardless of size, can create the weak spot that provides an open door to your IT infrastructure.  To protect your system from risks, you need to know where your network is vulnerable.  Typical weak points are as follows:

• VPN- virtual connections between your home and corporate network can easily spread viruses and malware from one location to the other.
• Firewall- a misconfigured firewall gives access to local resources through the internet.
• Wireless- unsecured wireless networks broadcast signals that unauthorized users can hijack inside or outside your building.
• Mail server- improperly configured servers can be forced into relaying spam.
• Email- in addition to sending infected attachments, hackers now use “phishing” and “redirects.”  Phishing schemes attempt to lure an email recipient into entering personal, financial, or proprietary business information into websites that appear legitimate.  Re-directs will reroute a seemingly respectable hyperlink to a malicious or infected site.
• Web-email- an infected email from a web based service such as Yahoo, Hotmail, or Gmail can easily infect your workstation and then your entire corporate IT environment because web email will bypass most of your network’s security.
• Web browser- Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari all have various vulnerabilities that can expose your workstation to malicious applications if you browse to an infected or compromised web site.
• Laptops- because most laptops are set to detect unsecured Wi-Fi points (Barnes & Noble, Borders, McDonalds, Starbucks, etc.), and because many users automatically allow the connection, it is easy to pick up viruses and malware and bring them back to office if you connect to those points.
• USB drives- portable storage devices, mobile phones and mp3 players can transport viruses from an unprotected home computer and infect your entire corporate IT network.

While there are multiple security vulnerabilities on a typical IT environment, a good security plan can address these weaknesses.  To learn more about securing your IT network, please call the security experts at All Covered at 866-446-1133.

Contact All Covered

del.icio.us | Reddit | Slashdot | Digg | More

In 2008, there were more security breaches on computer networks than in the four previous years combined.

According to Verizon Communications, Inc., hackers made off with at least 285 million electronic records in 2008.  Identity thieves are getting better at exploiting careless mistakes that leave companies and individuals vulnerable to attack.  These 285 million compromised records were all used in crimes involving stolen identity (e.g., buying homes and medical coverage under someone else’s identity) or in crimes such as making counterfeit credit cards.  Ninety percent of the breaches investigated could have been avoided with basic security measures (93% of all compromised records in the study came from the financial sector).

One of the key findings in the study is recognition of how valuable so-called “non-critical” computers are to hackers.  Peter Tippett, vice president of research and intelligence for Verizon’s business security solutions division says “Criminals aren’t looking to crash through the front door with a brazen computer attack. Often they’re content to feel around the edges and look for vulnerabilities that can get them in through the equivalent of a side window.”  Even by tapping into computers of low-level employees who don’t handle sensitive data, hackers can get a toehold for installing more malicious software that scans the network traffic and looks for vulnerabilities in other computers.

The study also found that data breaches are getting more severe because criminals are using sophisticated new programs that were custom-designed for particular attacks and weren’t known to the security community or law enforcement.

For a business that does not have Unified Threat Prevention, that’s a risk that leaves key corporate data, financial information, and private employee and customer information unprotected.

Don’t take any chances when it comes to protecting your business’s data, documents and reputation.   Stay up-to-date with the newest, most reliable technology, and protect yourself from the ever-increasing threat of malicious outside attacks. For more information on how you can protect your company’s data call All Covered at 866-446-1133.

Contact All Covered

del.icio.us | Reddit | Slashdot | Digg | More