Technology Advisor Blog

Have you experienced an increase in the number of "local" junk calls to your cell phone?  You're not alone.  Scammers have yet another tactic to get through to you by "spoofing" a phone number.  When your phone rings and you see a local number, you're more likely to pick up.  After you pick up, your number is proven to be a "real" number which is more valuable to scammers and the number of calls increases.  

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.

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.  

At the HIMSS Healthcare IT Conference last week in Las Vegas, Roger Severino, Director of the US Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR), the HIPAA enforcement agency, made some news when he said that health care providers may share Protected Health Information (PHI) with patients through standard text messages. Providers must first warn their patients that texting is not secure, gain the patients’ authorization, and document the patients’ consent.  Note that this only applies to communications with patients.

Today is Cyber Monday, and that means that billions of transactions will occur on line.  That also means, as TransUnion puts it, "what's convenient for shoppers can also be a huge opportunity for savvy identity thieves, who steal information provided on Internet transactions for their own monetary gain."  

A new wireless security vulnerability related to WPA2 encryption puts almost every WIFI device at risk for hijacking and eavesdropping.  This was the major headline yesterday and we've been busy updating security on our managed clients.