Technology Advisor Blog

Coordinating a Wishlist for the holidays with your friends, family and loved ones can be challenging. Especially when no two people are the same. In a lot of cases, whether you utilize your time management right during the season or not, (it’s completely understandable if you don’t, it’s a stressful time in the work-life balance realm), sometimes the best gift, when you don’t know what to get, is a gift card.

In Ekaru’s previous blog, we went over how typos can unexpectedly lead you to mimicked websites designed by hackers to steal your personal information. But what if I told you that on top of having to be hyper vigilant of spelling, you also need to check a URL’s characters if all letters are from the same font?
Tricks hackers use to scam unsuspecting individuals usually consist of spam texts, phishing emails impersonating reputable companies, scams claiming you owe a specific amount of money, creating a sense of urgency - all are attempts to fatigue you and steal your information. For some, these tricks have become easy to spot due to recognizing the signs from their intensive cybersecurity awareness training. However, bad actors use evolving technology and strategies to improve their game and become harder and harder to detect.
One of their strategies to become harder to detect, is the usage of visuals in random letters from different fonts. This is a term we call Internalized Domain Name (IDN) Homograph attack.

As we enter Halloween, the larger national holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas are closing in. It’s a stressful time of year, causing a lot of folks to not act rationally how they usually would. Scammers are aware of this more than ever and will do whatever it takes for you to fall into their trap. How do they try to get you? Sometimes it’s not as obvious, sometimes its overlooking how a website HTTP link is typed out incorrectly. The term for this type of social engineering scam is called Typo squatting.

As many of us have our head in the clouds for Halloween that is on a Friday this year, something spookier has grabbed folks’ attention this week. On Monday October 20^th, people noticed that something was off. Social media apps taking minutes to send messages or to send at all, streaming shows not loading properly, difficulties in sending deposits through Venmo, or even grabbing a drink from Starbucks and their POS systems are down. The cause: AWS had an outage that lasted for over half a day on Monday (great way to start off the week amiright?) For many, frustration and eagerness took over as they could only wait for this to be resolved. But just how many internet services and applications were affected?

This week, we received what looked like an official Request for Proposal (RFP) email from a local business we know. It was well-written, professional, and completely believable.

October is here, and threat actors are ramping up their attacks to the point where its… spooky.
While Halloween is coming up, Thanksgiving and Christmas are also on the horizon, it’s more evident than ever we must remain hypervigilant and not fall for these intricate phishing attempts.

In September, many folks and including some of us in the office, experienced a rise in spam (Vishing) phone calls. You may be wondering ‘Where are all these unknown numbers coming from?” If you’re like me, when you notice an unknown caller ID notify your phone, you never pick up. However, not everyone is like that. However, the Ekaru team is here to teach you all about cold calling scams, how to identify them, reasons why they are potentially occurring, and the steps/services we provide to help protect yourself and others from falling into their trap.

When businesses become further established and credible within their community, the conversations of increasing security measures, budgeting, and overall work morale begin to initiate for further discussion. Understandably, maintaining a growing business can be challenging and shifting your priorities, sometimes causing the complacent “My business won’t get hacked, I’m safe it won’t happen to me.” This type of thinking can backfire especially if you’re not paying close enough attention - there is no "Security by Obscurity"!  At the end of the day, we have all been there and sometimes had to pay for the consequences.
Since there are so many aspects to a business that can pull you in several directions at once it’s hard to pinpoint where to begin conversations on cybersecurity needs. That’s where Ekaru comes in to provide you with the best IT solutions in the Boston Massachusetts area. To make informed decisions about your cybersecurity needs aligned within your budget.

Last week, I didn’t even see a suspicious voicemail notification in my inbox - and that’s the point! Our email security blocked it before it ever got to me. At first glance, the message looked pretty legitimate.  It  was well-formatted, had a sense of urgency - “Your voicemail system has received a new message.  Review it promptly to stay updated”, and looked like something that could easily trick someone into clicking.

Aside from Ekaru’s qualified team providing IT solutions and cybersecurity awareness training, we enjoy giving back to our community.

When you purchase a new device such as a laptop, monitor, or a new smartphone, the first step is transferring all your essential data to the new device. Once you’ve transferred all the essentials, you’re left with your former device, inactive and collecting dust on the shelf.
Understanding the materials that create these tools we use in our everyday lives, it’s evident that you cannot just discard these devices in normal everyday trash bins.

Does this resonate that you recently got that new iPhone, MacBook or monitors? That’s where we come in! Our team at Ekaru hosts quarterly electronics recycling events supported by eWaste.

Microsoft has officially announced that Windows 10 support will end on October 14, 2025. After that date, no more free security updates will be released. For small businesses, this isn’t just a technical detail - it’s a security and business risk. Cybercriminals often target outdated systems, and without regular patches, Windows 10 devices will quickly become vulnerable.