Security Topics 3 Tactics for Reducing your Risk of Being Tricked When Shopping Online During the last few months of every year it is not uncommon to see an increase in online shopping. With more events to attend and plan for, increased travel and travel times, we are often faced with shopping online or not at all because we are so limited for time.
Security Topics 5 Key Ways to Protect Yourself Against Dangerous Scams Pt 2 In the previous post, we dicussed the first two of five key ways to protect yourself against dangerous and common scams. This post covers an additional three ways to help protect your data privacy and security. While new types of scams are continually being introduced, there are often universal aspects
Security Topics 5 Key Ways to Protect Yourself Against Dangerous Scams Pt 1 Digital scams attempting to access anything of value from you will never go away. New types of scams are thought of regularly, and the tactics or language used in them also changes over time. However, there are often universal aspects to scams, that when known and understood can help you
Security Topics 3 Things You Need to Know Before Using a Third-Party VPN Service A virtual private network, or VPN, is used to create a private tunnel between two different devices on the internet. The purpose of the VPN is to provide an additional layer of protection between devices. If you work remotely, you likely connect to your work environment for items like shared
Security Topics 5 Takeaways from Last Week's Tech Outage Caused by CrowdStrike Last week's technology outage affected a multitude of systems across many businesses in a variety of industries. Most people experienced some aspect of this outage, even if their own device remained unaffected. You might have been trying to travel or simply visit a website that was down. This
Security Topics Security Update: Why Malware Protection on a Device is Not Enough There are several different names for security software you can install on your devices. Malware protection, anti-virus, and endpoint protection are a few more common ones and each is slightly different so it is important to know the differences when you purchase one. Having some form of malware protection is
Security Topics Security Updates: Possible Ticketmaster Breach & Fake Antivirus Websites Most weeks there are stories of data breaches, ransomware attacks, spoofing, phishing, new malware threats, and more. It can be overwhelming trying to keep up with all of these threats, so we cover some of the larger ones that are likely to affect a great deal of people. The purpose
Security Topics One Thing you must Understand When Entering Security Settings on Accounts There are a lot of things to consider when creating new user accounts with different websites/apps. Some things to consider include using different user IDs or email accounts, using different passwords, using complex passwords/passphrases, using multi-factor authentication, and signing up only for accounts when you really benefit from
Security Topics How to Authenticate Microsoft Accounts When Someone Else Configured Multifactor If you use Microsoft Office products, you know they have pushed for subscription based services for the last several years. More recently, multifactor authentication has also been pushed out amongst nearly all subscription accounts, which can make those accounts a challenge for administrators to manage. This post discusses how to
Security Topics Security Update: Recent AT&T Data Breach and Important Security Tips If you check technology news you will likely find dozens of stories about data breaches, ransomware attacks, and systems taken down because of attacks or to prevent data loss. The sheer number of these attacks can be overwhelming and make it hard to keep up with what you need to
Advanced Topics The Reason More Emails are Bouncing Back and What you Can do About it If you have recently noticed more of your emails being bounced back to your inbox, without being delivered to their intended recipients, you are probably sending to Google or Yahoo email accounts. Google and Yahoo recently implemented stricter controls on incoming emails to protect their users. This enhanced security has
Security Topics 3 Things to Ask a Hosting Company Before Moving your Website There Websites are a great way to creatively represent a person, group of people, business or other entity. Websites can be a great way to communicate things about you or your business in a way that would otherwise be challenging. One of the greatest things about websites is that you can
Security Topics Security Threats: Malware Exploits Google Login Flaw and 23andMe Data Breach With the start of another new year, there are already several security threats you should be aware of, along with some everyday reminders for data protection. At the beginning of the year there is typically an increase in phishing scams as people wait on multiple tax forms and information coming
Security Topics Why The Edge Browser Now Has a Suitcase Icon & What it Means If you use a device running Windows 11 and install updates, you may have noticed that Microsoft's Edge browser now has a briefcase icon overlaying its logo. This change was rolled out in one of the more recent updates to the Edge browser. The addition of the briefcase
Security Topics 3 Ways to Close Random Popups that are Hard to Dismiss While random popups are something we are faced with year-round, the prevalence of bad ads, popups, and scammy offers always seem to increase at the end of the year. This is especially true before and after Thanksgiving, as Christmas Day nears, and between Christmas and New Years when there are
Security Topics Important Service Functionality End Dates for Microsoft Products You Need to Know While hardware typically alerts users of an impending end date by beginning to fail, having slower response times, or crashing altogether, software applications often provide far less noticeable changes. However, software changes can be just as important as hardware changes and being aware of these can have a big impact
Security Topics The One Thing Most People Don't Know About Keychain - Apple's Password Service If you have ever used an iPhone you know there are lots of places that passwords can be stored. For example, for email accounts, apps, wireless networks, and more. This is most noticeable when you switch to a new phone, especially if you do not restore an encrypted backup onto
Organizational Tips 3 Important Steps to Take Before Laying off Employees In light of all of recent news about employee cutbacks, it is important to keep in mind what steps a business should take before letting employees go. Additionally, if you are an employee these are things you should expect, and can rest assured these steps are not personal. The items
Security Topics New Security Threat: 3CX Phone App for Desktop Computers Unfortunately, as we often state in security posts, new threats are always being released and this week was no exception. Another important security vulnerability has been identified and it could pose a serious risk to businesses and their employees. This week's threat comes in the form of a
Security Topics 0-Day Security Threat: Mobile Devices using Samsung Modem Chips New vulnerabilities are consistently being found in both newer tech devices and applications, as well as devices and applications that have been around for years. Vulnerabilities can be found in software after changes are implemented or through complementary hardware running the application. Additionally, older applications that are no longer supported
Security Topics Security Update: New Threat Spreads via User's Email Accounts There has been a large increase recently in the number of user's email accounts being compromised. With each account that is accessed by an unauthorized user, this threat continues to spread by reaching out to that user's contacts. This post discusses this recent security threat, what
Security Topics Security Alerts: Meta, Mastodon and Windows 8.1 Finally Retiring Tis the season for...increased security risks. Not exactly how the saying goes, but unfortunately, this time of year the threats to data privacy and security can be increasingly dangerous. There are several reasons this happens, for example, we usually purchase more - both online and in-store, we are typically
Organizational Tips How to Quickly Remove 3 Types of Autofill Items that are Incorrect Autofill can be a wonderful feature that saves time and allows us to let go of certain details - like someone's email address or a specific website address, etc. Unfortunately, if you ever misspell one of these, autofill can work against you by pulling up the wrong information
Security Topics Security Alerts: Twitter, Student Loan Forgiveness & Safer Web Browsing With the end of the year holidays quickly approaching, now is a great time to remember how important it is to be hyper-vigilant about the websites you visit, the emails you open, the links you click and the attachments you open. The reason this is especially true at this time
Security Topics Uber Breach - Why Even Multi-Factor Cannot Protect Against Every Threat Adding multi-factor authentication (MFA) is an additional security step users can take to help protect their accounts from unauthorized access. MFA can be accomplished in several ways. It may require a code sent in email, text, or provided via an authenticator app. In a recent post we discussed the different
