Think about all the online accounts you have, from social media to banking to email. With so many accounts, it's imperative to make sure they're secure. Creating a strong, unique password is one of the best and easiest ways to protect yourself from hackers. Listed below is how you can create passwords that are hard to crack and keep your digital life safe.
While email attachments are a huge part of your digital life, they're also a favorite sneaky entry point for hackers, viruses, and scams. We've all been there, a quick click before we even think. That split second of laziness can turn into a massive headache for you and your whole job.
Before you tap that little paperclip and potentially wreck your day (or your company's network), you need to take a beat. Listed below is an essential checklist for safely opening files sent via email.
While still imperative to get right, passwords aren’t nearly as secure as you would expect them to be. They can be guessed (especially if proper password practices haven’t been followed), stolen in data breaches, or phished from a well-meaning employee.
Passwords are essentially the lock built into the front door of a building. They’re enough to keep out honest people, but what about the people who are willing to go to the deep web and 3D print the master key to the type of lock you use?
Did you know that during World War II, Allied codebreakers didn't only crack the German Enigma code with pure math? They also used clever tricks, like baiting the Germans into sending predictable messages, to expose the machine's inner workings. History proves this approach worked then, and, unfortunately, continues to work now.
This art of manipulating a system to reveal its secrets has found a new, high-tech home in the world of artificial intelligence. It's called prompt hacking, and it's basically a form of digital social engineering aimed directly at the AI models businesses are starting to rely on.
It's a familiar challenge for businesses: how do you build customer loyalty and a strong user experience while also ensuring that their data is protected? Sustainable success depends on mastering this delicate balance. Instead of choosing one over the other, the goal is to optimize data protection without hindering your ability to engage customers and drive growth.
Here’s a challenge: go to any cybersecurity news website and see how far you can go before seeing an article about some new type of ransomware attack. It’s everywhere, and it’s scary, but that doesn’t mean your organization has to cower in fear. With the right tools and resources at your disposal, you too can fight back against ransomware. Listed below is how you can protect your business from ransomware and the threats it poses.
All businesses need a little IT assistance from time to time, whether it’s for a simple issue with some software or a full-blown technology emergency. Cybercriminals will often pose as IT support in attempts to capture this low-hanging fruit. Your employees should know how to spot the following warning signs from a fraudulent tech support squad.
A successful business is a secure business. You probably have a good lock on the front door, maybe an alarm system, and secure cabinets for critical documents. You do all of this to protect your business' physical assets from threats. So why wouldn't you do the same for your digital assets?
Just as you have physical security measures, your company also needs strong cybersecurity policies. They help create clear rules for employees to follow and a plan to fall back on if an incident occurs.
Business owners have a lot of responsibilities, and while you can hire a lot of people to cover some of the more stressful ones, it might feel strange to outsource your company’s technology management. You know IT is imperative, so that’s why you feel like you have to do it yourself, or at least in-house, but in reality, you’re the last person who should be working with your technology—and we’ll explain why.
Tips are great as long as they actually work. Business owners need more technology tips than just about anything else, whether that is app-specific or general care of technology. Macro Systems tries to do our best to offer useful tips a couple of times a month, but this week we wanted to focus on what is probably the most critical tip we can provide.
There’s a reason why we tend to focus on security; it’s not a matter of if you experience a cyberattack, but when. It’s your responsibility to make sure that you’re ready to act in the right way when faced with these attacks. One of the best ways you can be prepared is by working with a managed service provider like us. Listed below are three ways we, as a managed service provider, can help you take the fight to cybersecurity threats.
Although most days you should lock your computer when ending the day, shutting down your PC and rebooting it on occasion can provide some huge benefits. Doing so helps you avoid some of the more common computer problems that can be incredibly disruptive.
Cyber scams can be very well-crafted and dangerous, and a significant portion of this danger stems from the scammer's ability to effectively utilize the psychological triggers that we all possess to some degree. Today's security training tends to focus on what signs we all need to keep an eye out for, but it does little to explore why modern scams are as effective as they are.
Let’s fix that by taking a moment to examine the tricks the scammers play so you can be that much more prepared to stop them by understanding how they work.
Ransomware has become one of the most dangerous modern threats to businesses, and when you consider what’s at stake with a ransomware infection, you’ll realize we’re not exaggerating. The worst variants of ransomware will attempt to extort you through any means necessary, and when you don’t give in so easily, they’ll pull out the big guns: double and triple extortion.
They say a man’s home is his castle. We’d contend that a more apt comparison is that someone’s business is more like their castle, realistically speaking.
As such, it is critical to ensure your security in every way possible. Much like a traditional castle was constructed to keep threats out, your business’ security needs to be approached in a similar way.
While we aren’t suggesting that you literally dig a moat or maintain cauldrons full of boiling oil, you do need to implement security measures that serve the same purpose for your business and its network.
In a time when Internet connectivity is so critical, manufacturers have met this demand by creating products that feature the ability to connect to apps or other Internet-based dashboards. Alas for users, there is a lot that can go wrong when organizational practices don’t do enough to protect their customer’s privacy; or, simply look to exploit it. Listed below is a look at how the smart devices you rely on can be undermining your family’s privacy.
There are few things as universally annoying as the constant stream of spam emails these days. From ludicrous pharmaceutical offers to urgent pleas for financial assistance from other nations’ royalty, our inboxes can often be likened to a digital landfill. What many people don't realize is that behind this persistent nuisance lies a huge, and surprisingly lucrative, industry.
One of the greatest threats to today's businesses is a cyberattack and the consequent data breach. These types of threats usually target outdated systems that haven’t been patched or upgraded with fixes to vulnerabilities. Listed below are some of the most likely outdated hardware and software issues you may encounter on your own infrastructure so you can address them and keep your business safe.
With so many devices now connecting to the Internet, decreasing your business’ threat surface area is more critical than ever. Your threat surface area consists of any device that connects to your organization’s IT infrastructure, and if you’re not careful or forget a couple of oddball wearables, you could be looking at a data breach. Listed below is how you can prevent that from happening.
Fairly recently, news circulated that a data breach had exposed 16 billion passwords for numerous logins, including social media accounts, virtual private networks, corporate tools, and more. Effectively, every online service imaginable was represented in this breach.
This is very bad… arguably unprecedented.
That being said, this impression is at best misleading. Listed below is a look into the truth of the matter, while still acknowledging that there are some lessons to be learned.
