Technology Advisor Blog

A few clients have asked us about recent notifications received from Network Solutions (and others):    "Action Required: Notice Regarding Your Domain Name(s)".  In this day and age, we recommend that all users stay alert when opening email, and we welcome questions about the legitimacy of received mail - better safe than sorry!

This notification states as follows:

"This notification is being sent to you as a contractual requirement of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) WHOIS policy. When you registered your domain with us, you agreed to keep your contact information in Account Manager current, and the WHOIS policy mandates that we ask you to verify and/or update this information periodically. Further, ICANN requires us to remind you that providing inaccurate or dated contact information may be grounds for domain name cancellation."

In this case the message IS legitimate, and we always recommend as an extra precaution that you go straight to the website in question (in this case, the company you registered your domain name with, typically Network Solutions), rather than clicking through the link in the website.  Yes, we just said the email was "real", but as a "best practice", don't follow links in emails when you don't have to. 

You don't have to reply to the email, it's just a reminder to check that the current information is still valid, and t

The FBI has issued an important warning about certain consumer-class routers after a massive malware attack was detected.  Turning the router off, then on again is a simple and important step to help stop the malware.  Additionally, it's recommended that you update the password and make sure the firmware is up to date.  The malware is capable of blocking traffic,  collecting information that's transmitted through the device, and disabling devices entirely.

We've all seen the headlines of the major cybersecurity incidents:  Target, Yahoo, Equifax, Sony, etc... Cybersecurity is a topic that affects everyone, and we view it as a public safety issue.  With all the headlines over the past years, at this point, most people "get it" that cybersecurity is a big problem, but the education can't stop there.   

Ekaru Offers Monitoring and Alerting of Stolen Digital Credentials, Increasingly Valuable Asset on Dark Web

In case you missed it... here's a review of our latest webinar on cybersecurity from earlier today.

This past week a Massachusetts school district paid $10,000 ransom to unlock its files after a cyber attack.  The Police Chief commented that there is no further investigation of this crime because solving this crime is "impossible". This is unfortunately a sign of the times.

You need to send an important update or invitation to all your clients and you're ready to hit the "send" key.  Don't!  

We hope you're keeping up with organizing your "Inbox" in Outlook using different folders to group your mail.  You may also want to organize your "Sent Items" folder into different sub-folders.  Perhaps you have some company related emails you want to group or perhaps you want to track your sent items by major projects.  If you add a sub-folder, you may be alarmed to see that all the mail is listed with your name.  As you can see below, my messages in my newly created "TEST FOLDER" folder for sent messages are all listed by who sent the message.  Me!  Not helpful.  I already know who sent them!

Facebook is in the news recently for some not so good reasons.  In case you missed it, a research firm called Cambridge Analytica harvested the personal information of 50 million Facebook users, and used this to "influence" the Presidential election.  After days of silence, Facebook executives have finally come forward and would like users to think that this was an isolated case by some bad actors, but the real problem here is that this actually hits at the core of the Facebook business model.  

Everyone thinks they won't click on a phishing link, but when we run tests, there's always someone who does!