Ever found yourself in the unfortunate circumstance of having to support devices on your internal network that tend to pose a higher security risk than you’re comfortable with? Perhaps an older Windows 2003 or Windows 2008 server, or an outdated kiosk device that is managed by a 3rd party vendor. … Read More
Coronavirus Scams: What to Look Out for and How to Stop Them.
The world has quickly changed over the past few weeks, but the one thing that hasn’t is the inclination of shady characters to exploit individuals and organizations with a variety of coronavirus scams. As well as what to look out for, we highlight some IT best practices to help you … Read More
How to Protect Your Office 365 Tenant – Essential Implementation Steps.
With many organizations choosing to move services to the cloud, the difficulty for most is related to the overall Security within the Cloud. If you are using Office 365 for services such as Email, Instant Message, Collaboration, File Storage or even as a fully-fledged cloud Phone System, Microsoft provides multiple … Read More
Using Aruba ClearPass for Network Access Control [Use Cases].
Organizations today love the idea of anywhere, anytime connectivity, but in their rush to get everything connected, often ignore the need for secure Network Access Control (NAC). In this article, we show you how you can use Aruba ClearPass to identify, control and respond to common network access issues and … Read More
12 Dos and Dont’s at Christmas for trouble-free IT.
It’s the holiday season—many of us have already given thanks, and some of us are now celebrating with friends and families. Some of us fortunate enough might be busy donating money and/or volunteering our time to help those less fortunate. As always, we need to remain vigilant for individuals who … Read More
Malware Evolution or in Other Words “All Your Data Are Belong to Us.”
It’s a twist on a popular internet meme based on a phrase from the classic arcade game, Zero Wing. Only, in this case, it’s not a game. It’s your data – your files and documents. It’s your pictures and your videos. It’s your finances. It’s your life. It’s worth more … Read More
Gmail IP Address Ranges – Here’s How to Find ALL the Public Ones.
If you’re like most firewall administrators, you dislike the idea of opening up port 25, 465, and 587 for outbound traffic to the -entire- internet. Doing so can result in your organization’s public IP address getting blacklisted in a hurry if any of your internal devices get infected with malware, … Read More
Nonprofit IT Security Plan for Data, Systems and Processes.
As if running a nonprofit organization, raising money and helping the community isn’t enough of a struggle. Every nonprofit must worry about hackers targeting their computer network. Charities are extremely vulnerable for a variety of reasons so we’ll look at how to create a nonprofit IT security plan to protect … Read More
Managed Service Provider (MSP): What They Do and Why You Need Them.
For most organizations, IT is ‘plumbing’ – you know you need it, and it needs to work, but you’d rather not have to roll up your sleeves to work out how to flush your caches or fix that data leak! A Managed Service Provider (MSP) is a technology consultant who … Read More
Security Risks Affecting Your Network and How to Deal with Them.
Infiltrating the security of your core business network could be devastating for any sized business, particularly small businesses. Ransomware freezes the system, holding it hostage for a fix. Viruses corrupt data and destroy entire databases throughout a computer network. Spyware steals company secrets or uses personal data. Any one breach … Read More
Is Cyber Insurance a Necessity or a Luxury?
Many of us view insurance as a necessary evil. We loathe paying the premiums, but we all deal with it at some point—whether it’s health insurance, car insurance, homeowners/renter’s insurance or some other type of insurance. Add one more type of insurance to the list, now there is cyber insurance … Read More
Minimise the risk of ransomware with these 10 effective methods.
Ransomware is a type of virus/malware that restricts access to an infected computer (by encrypting the files) and requires the person pay a ransom to the malware operators to remove the restriction and gain access to those files again. The risk of ransomware attacks is an increasingly popular security concern … Read More
Configuring Secure LDAP using a 3rd party Certificate Authority
Some of the documentation that is available out there for configuring Secure LDAP on a Windows server is rather sketchy at best, or in some cases, it’s just really old and doesn’t necessarily apply to newer Microsoft Server operating systems. The following information below can be used on a … Read More
What are the main causes of computer virus infections?
Computer virus infections are the nightmare of a business owner. That’s hardly a surprise, though. After all, what business owner wants to deal with computer infections that can cause severe damage to their data and important documents? It’s no secret that computer viruses can cause companies to lose: Client data Customers … Read More
Your Guide when It Comes to Choosing a Strong Password
What’s the first thing you do when you open your laptop? If you’re someone that cares about protecting their personal data, then your answer would be “I enter my password”. Nowadays, we use passwords for basically every account that we have online and sometimes even for our phone. Choosing a strong … Read More
The most common cases of phishing and how to avoid them
Phishing is the act of obtaining sensitive company data and financial details by using deceiving methods. Surprisingly, many businesses and institutions still fall prey to common cases of phishing nowadays. While people have learned how to avoid such intrusions over time, the methods themselves have been perfected. That means that the risk of falling … Read More
Looking at security & technology procurement
Organizations need to have an overarching corporate strategy for staffing and product/service acquisition, if they expect to maintain a holistic approach to information security & technology procurement. A key question that needs to be answered is: Build or Buy? Many organizations – especially smaller organizations – take a one-off approach … Read More
Protecting Yourself from your Vendor’s Data Breach
It is increasingly likely that one or more of the vendors or providers that you rely upon will experience a data breach or sensitive data disclosure of some kind in 2016. There are things that you can begin to do today, which will protect you and your organization from any … Read More
Top 5 network security best practices
In this article we look at the top 5 network security best practices that all businesses should be following. #1 – Install a Unified Threat Management (UTM) appliance to improve your network security at the edge. Install a Unified Threat Management (UTM) appliance that supports most or all of the … Read More
Protecting your data from Ransomware: Cryptolocker and Locky
As an IT service provider, there is no more chilling phone call from a client as “The accounting system is broke and we cannot open our Microsoft Office files either.” A quick login and file check stumbles upon some of the worst evidence of a ransomware attack as you could … Read More
How to balance security and compliance
Businesses of all sizes not only face increasing security threats, but also greater regulatory compliance requirements. Here are some strategies to help find a balance between Security and Compliance and align your information security activities with your industry/regulatory compliance requirements. Security and Compliance Despite considerable efforts within the information security … Read More
Is your data protection policy protecting your employees and students?
It seems like a regular occurrence these days that we’re hearing about a company’s employee records or customer data getting stolen by hackers. Well-known companies like Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Home Depot, Target, Anthem Insurance, and others have fallen prey to data protection breaches that resulted in private information getting stolen. … Read More
The top Security Trends to watch for in 2016
In this article, we look at some key Information Security trends to look for as we begin 2016, along with the things you need to consider if you want to stay ahead of the curve… It should come as no surprise that the stakes for information security have been steadily … Read More
How web browsing is crippling your infrastructure & compromising security
Ask anyone what the most resource-intensive applications on their end-user devices are, and you will normally receive a laundry list of software with heavy graphical or number-crunching output. ArcGIS, Solidworks, Google Earth, AutoCAD – these are normally the sorts of culprits one would normally expect a systems administrator to name … Read More
Using the SonicWALL SSL VPN with Windows domain accounts via RADIUS
Setting up the SonicWALL firewall for using SSL VPN is pretty simple, even when it comes to utilizing Windows Domain Accounts via RADIUS authentication. The following article is a step by step guide how to configure the firewall and Windows Servers to accomplish this. Configure Windows Server for RADIUS authentication … Read More
Active Directory Design, Optimization, and Automation
Part 1 of our Network Remodeling / Redesigning / Restructuring Services series Active Directory is the central repository for nearly all networks today. Some of the most important roles it is responsible for are: end-user authentication, security, and the ability to automagically control how servers, client computers, and end-users are provisioned … Read More