Buckeye IT blog

Every so often, we come across a bit of news that helps to teach not one, but two cybersecurity best practices at the same time. With the recent news of a cache of hacked Spotify accounts, we find just such an opportunity. Let’s review the two lessons to be learned.

Despite all that has gone on, many businesses have managed to stay open by embracing the remote capabilities of today’s technology. This is undeniably fortunate… however, it is crucial that we also acknowledge the importance of cybersecurity as these actions are taken.

Flash Player is going to be going out of support, the 24-year-old software being retired at the end of this year. That's a pretty big deal: Flash Player, at least initially, was a solution that most users have used at one time or another. What will this loss mean for your business’ processes?

Network security is paramount to a business’ success with the number of security incidents and data breaches that could potentially upend it. While this sounds like a task of marginally epic proportions, managing your security can be greatly simplified via a few basic activities. Let’s go over four such security-boosting actions that you should direct your attention to.

Business success is often tied to the quality of your business relationships. There are a lot of people you need to trust: your vendors to get you whatever supplies you need, your team to complete their responsibilities without letting in threats, and your customers to turn to you for what they need. Unfortunately, cybercriminals are willing to take advantage of such trust to accomplish their own ends.

With the 2020 U.S. Election under a month away, there has been a lot of concern that outside interests would try to influence the results. Microsoft has recently disrupted a huge coordinated hacking effort that had designs of altering the election infrastructure needed for a fair and secure election. Let’s take a look at the effort and Microsoft’s response in today’s blog.

When you take a long look at cybersecurity, you need to understand that the main purpose of it is to protect people’s ideas, people’s identities, and people’s effort. It isn’t all about protecting money, even though that obviously is a consideration. This notion led us to a thought experiment that Gizmodo recently undertook: What would happen if all the data stored in the world was suddenly leaked, open for the world to see? We’ve put together some of the responses. 

While businesses have always needed to focus on their data security, the COVID-19 pandemic has only made this more of a challenge. Let’s go over why this is, and how many industries (especially the healthcare industry) have had to adjust as a result.

A business’ employees are perhaps its greatest weakness in terms of its cybersecurity, although they also have the potential to be one of its greatest advantages if trained properly. To demonstrate this, let’s consider a few examples that exemplify either case.

Remember a few months ago when Google and Apple joined forces to come up with a system to help state and local governments establish a COVID-19 Exposure Notification system? If you didn’t, you aren’t alone. A lot has been going on lately. Just to catch you up, the two tech giants recently pushed out an update across nearly all modern smartphones so state and local governments can deploy apps to notify people when they may have been exposed to COVID-19. Let’s do a deep dive on what this means for your privacy.

Quick Marty! Hop into the DeLorean! Let’s time travel back to a simpler time, back in the late 90’s!

Back then, you could walk into any store that sold software and you’d see two types of antivirus protection - orange boxes that said Norton, and red boxes that said McAfee.

Today, like most things, life isn’t as simple. There are a lot of choices, and… well, you shouldn’t be going to a store to buy your antivirus these days. Let’s discuss!

When it comes to your business, especially its technology, some of the buzzwords you hear floating around can be pretty convincing, almost intoxicating. Unfortunately, like most buzzwords, many of these are aggrandized beyond their worth to the average small-to-medium-sized business. Let’s take a look at how this can impact a business’ perception of its cybersecurity, as well as dig into the reality behind these terms.

Businesses today should be accepting card-based payments, regardless of their size. In addition to the convenience it offers to customers, it’s the most secure means you have of being paid. To protect consumers and their personal and financial information, many card providers have adopted a unified regulation that applies to businesses that accept these payments. Let’s review this regulation and how it impacts the average small-to-medium-sized business.

We all store data on our computers. Whether you have family photos and text documents on your home computer, or databases and on-premises applications running your entire business, data is typically stored in exactly the same way. If you knew how delicate your data actually was, you’d never let a single file exist in one place ever again. Let’s explore that.

“Hello sir/ma’am, I am a member of royal [sic] family and I am in grave danger in my country. If you send me money to get out safely, I will share my great riches with you as reward.”

Scams like this one have become a punchline for many, which makes you wonder why they are still commonly used by cybercriminals. As it turns out, there’s a very compelling reason that they do so, one that’s been known for years.

The COVID-19 pandemic has put a lot of stress on people.  Nowhere is this more true than in the small business arena. Small businesses, many of which were forced to suspend or severely alter their operations, are also dealing with cyberattacks. Let’s take a look at the effects COVID-19 has on small businesses regarding cybersecurity. 

The World Health Organization has been busy dealing with one of the biggest calamities in contemporary times, the COVID-19 pandemic that has had much of the world on pause for the past few months. Unfortunately, they’ve been dealing with an increase in cyberattacks. Today, we’ll take a look at some of the issues the WHO is having with cybercriminals. 

At this point, it’s hard to believe that anyone needs to be told that cybersecurity is important, but some organizations are still doing the bare minimum to protect their network and data. That can’t go on forever. Today, we thought we would discuss how to put together a cybersecurity policy that covers all the bases, and will give you the peace of mind that you are actively combating today’s most present threats to your network, infrastructure, and data. 

When it comes to protecting your business, cybersecurity is a huge consideration that must be kept in mind. However, it isn’t the only consideration. Some of the biggest threats to your business can actually come from your own team. Let’s go over the three kinds of insider threats that you need to be on your guard against, and how to avoid them.

Millions of people are still using the Microsoft Windows 7 operating system despite it being completely unsupported. When Microsoft pulled the plug on support for the OS in January, most industry professionals expected there to be some exploits found pretty rapidly. It turns out that the very first exploit was actually Microsoft’s fault, and that Windows 7 support had a little life in it after all.