Technology Advisor Blog

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.

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.

For those that are heading back into the school education system, student, teacher, or administrative professional, this blog is just for you!
In the summertime, business general activity is low, however cybercriminals utilize this time to calculate an abundance of phishing scams to isolate, rush, and cause anxiety within the victim. Once fall hits, these tactics are no different, just using another mask to hide their cyber threats in plain sight.

For a lot of us, to put our best selves forward, we need peace of mind that ‘home’ is safe. According to USA Today, devices such as Ring, wyze and other forms of surveillance cameras have seen a significant increase in popularity for folks to monitor their own front door, their children or pets while on a trip, or just simply having that confirmation that your significant other arrived home safely. In other cases, it provides full streaming, detecting motion indoors/outdoors, two-way talk, and more.

When it comes to establishing your business on a social media platform, a lot of teamwork and insight goes into its strategy. These calculations apply to tone, values, visuals, color, and messaging to find the right audience to interact with your content. What’s also important in maintaining social media is the security of general accounts and who monitors activity across these accounts. In the case of our social media presence at Ekaru, a small business MSP specializing in cybersecurity located within the outer metropolitan area of Boston serving small to medium sized clients. Our values are to be friendly, helpful, insightful, provide knowledgeable articles that align, bring up conversations surrounding awareness of good and bad cybersecurity practices to learn from. Along with cybersecurity practices to implement within your business, questions you may ask yourself are ‘how can I maintain a healthy social media presence that can apply for my business and self?

It’s Summertime!!! You know what that means, our accumulated PTO is finally put to use to enjoy the outdoors and travel. For some, people travel is local, while others travel internationally for an adventure like no other. While traveling, your cellphone is your most prized possession, capturing memories, laughs and a focal point into monitoring your social media and other necessities.

Although many of us have learned how to recognize scams, bad actors remain persistent and continue to send various fraudulent messages to our devices. Most of the time, they don’t care if the scam attempts are obvious or sophisticated, their main intention is to fatigue you to the point of becoming flustered and making a rushed decision to trick you. Some scams are isolated incidents, some are nationally present happening to your friends, family and coworkers.

Over the weekend, I received a text message on my personal cell phone from a ‘First Name-Last Name-###@RandomOrganization.org’. 
The first thing I noticed right away was how detailed, long, and grammatically formatted the text was upon viewing. Usually, a lot of scam messages feel urgent. They’re trying to create an emotional response, utilizing that heightened state to influence victims to their CTA of malicious links. Mimicking an automated promotional SMS message businesses provide for their patrons that sign up to receive a discount. Seeing the message’s length, it is possible it can come off as legit before reading the contents within.
The second factor I noticed was the message coming from a random organization, stated within the message that they were from the Massachusetts Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). These two did not match and that was my first indicator that this was a smishing attempt using the DMV to take aback trick anyone receiving the message. While I may have known the first indicators as someone new to cybersecurity but practices good cybersecurity hygiene, let’s continue the remaining text to dissect how to further identify this smishing attempt.

Before social media and the responsibility of maintaining multiple accounts, folks tended to keep their passwords written down on paper, stored in what they considered a safe place, or saved into their phone. These are dangerous cybersecurity risks being practiced and they need to be addressed promptly.
The problem is passwords are often weak, reused or exposed in personal data breaches that are out of your control. In the last decade, we have been introduced to Password Managers and following right after, Multi-Factor Authentications (MFA). Both provide thorough measures to protect users’ information and safety. As an effect, this shield has caused bad actors to get creative and find other tactics to infiltrate your systems.
We’re going to go over what MFA is and why it matters to implement for your small business and in personal life or really, anywhere it’s available!