Technology Advisor Blog

Yesterday we hosted a Cybersecurity Awareness Webinar focused on explaining some of the key impacts to SMBs in plain English. 

Are you still running Windows 7 or Server 2008 in your office?   Microsoft will be ending support for Windows 7 and Server 2008 on January 14, 2020. Microsoft made a commitment to provide 10 years of product support for Windows 7 when it was released on October 22, 2009. When this 10-year period ends, Microsoft will discontinue Windows 7 support so that they can focus their investment on supporting newer technologies.

Last week, Ekaru hosted a Cybersecurity Awareness Training session at the Cameron Senior Center in Westford, MA.  It's part of our mission to raise cybersecurity awareness for EVERYONE.  

Microsoft will be ending support for Windows 7 and Server 2008 on January 14, 2020. Microsoft made a commitment to provide 10 years of product support for Windows 7 when it was released on October 22, 2009. When this 10-year period ends, Microsoft will discontinue Windows 7 support so that they can focus their investment on supporting newer technologies. This is a standard part of their product life cycle.

Big businesses make the headlines but small businesses are NOT immune to Cyber Attacks!  

We do a lot of cybersecurity training at Ekaru and one of things we tell people is to "THINK BEFORE YOU CLICK".  But what do we need to look out for?

This week an astonishing 773,000,000 records were released in a monster breach.  Security researcher Troy Hunt first reported the data set which includes 772,904,991 unique email addresses and over 21 million unique passwords, all recently posted to a hacking forum.

Cyber threats are real and they're local.  Major corporations like Marriott make the big headlines, but too many smaller businesses and institutions think they're "under the radar".  Attacks are widespread and they're automated.  The average firewall is getting hundreds of thousands of intrusion attempts per month, over 50 ransomware attempts, and twelve phishing attempts.   All it takes is ONE user clicking on ONE wrong link and a lot of damage can be done.

It's the holiday season and people are busy, and it's also a season to beware of scams.  There are many different scams related to gift cards, and here's a new one we just saw locally. 

Identity theft is an unfortunate occurrence that is all too familiar with most business owners, but do those individuals know where the compromised data will end up? Often, these business owners are unaware of the virtual marketplace where stolen data is purchased and sold by cybercriminals; a place known as the “Dark Web”.