To handle the deluge of daily tasks, your internal IT team needs to run like a well-oiled machine. From managing security and ticket flow to conducting routine maintenance and proactive monitoring, your team requires expert efficiency to stay at the top of their game.
But all too often, common pitfalls can complicate your to-do list, creating extra work for your team. Recognizing these time traps is the first step to avoiding them—the second step is developing a fool-proof plan to avoid them in the future.
Pitfall #1: Windows 10 and the Perils of Patching
Consider this: When a new patch is released, hackers immediately swoop in to compare the update to the preexisting operating system. This helps them identify where the security loophole is—then use the information to exploit end users and corporations that are slow to patch the breach. In 2018, attackers exploited patch updates to steal valuable personal data on users and payment information. While these instances only account for 6% of the year’s total breaches, the negative consequences for those attacked are profound.
For years, Patch Tuesday helped IT teams keep track of the Microsoft® software updates. But with Windows 10, system fixes are no longer released on such a predictable schedule. That doesn’t mean patching stops being a top priority though. Managing patching is essential to safeguarding your software and machines against external threats.
The best way to avoid this common pitfall is to standardize your team’s policy for automatic Windows 10 patching. Set up alerts to update your team as soon as a patch is released—and enable broad discovery capabilities that cover your company’s entire inventory of production systems. Remember: It only takes one vulnerable computer to put your entire network at risk.
Pitfall #2: Incorrect Ticket Routing
Your internal IT team may field countless help desk tickets a day, and to maintain your high level of customer service, the pressure is on to correctly route each ticket to an expert technician. But with manual routing, there are endless opportunities for mistakes. What’s more, if your team isn’t routing tickets based on knowledgeable resources, you’re creating delays that can throw off the entire routing process—which is bad for business.
To avoid the obstacles that come with ticket routing, consider ditching manual in favor of an automatic ticket routing program. Workflow automation is quickly becoming an industry standard. As more IT teams make the switch, it’s becoming increasingly important that you do the same.
Pitfall #3: The Flaws of Manual Processes
Try as you may, human error is impossible to avoid. And in a complex IT environment, manual processes create the potential for errors that can put your entire workflow—and your system’s security—at risk.
What if a real emergency hits and your team needs to respond quickly? In this instance, the small, day-to-day IT tasks should be set aside in order to deal with the bigger problem. But if these tasks still follow a manual process, forgetting them is out of the question.
The best way to avoid this scenario is by nixing manual processes in favor of automation, whenever possible. For cases where manual is still essential, make sure the process is formalized—and that your team is fully trained to follow protocol.
Pitfall #4: Maintaining an Inventory of Assets
It’s up to you to keep your team’s project on track—but when information is owned by multiple managers and dispersed across countless spreadsheets and documents, project management can be next to impossible. And the more complex the project, the larger your inventory of assets. Talk about an organizational pitfall.
To avoid asset chaos, you need to find a solution that allows key documents, data, and configurations to be readily available to the team members that need it most. This will cut down on the time you spend pinging John for that report or chasing down Sarah for that serial number.
There are a number of solutions that allow for easy asset inventories. Many companies opt for free options, like Google Drive, to cut down on costs. But in doing so, you often lose out on optimal information security. More advanced options at a price are designed to expertly guard and intuitively aggregate assets—meaning everything is kept organized and safe.
Pitfall #5: Repetitive Admin Tasks
There are some things in life we, unfortunately, can’t avoid. Admin tasks often fall into that category. But these day-to-day to-do items, like tracking time, aren’t just tedious—they take valuable time away from other, more vital tasks. When this happens, either the admin tasks aren’t completed, or the more important responsibilities aren’t completed up to par—a no-win situation.
Ask yourself a question: Is your time really best spent making sure your techs are entering their time or tracking down that rogue endpoint? No, probably not. In lieu of hiring a full-time administrative assistant, try using a program that can consistently complete admin tasks. This way, you can focus your attention on bigger, more important projects while the tedious—but necessary—tasks get done.
Pitfall #6: More Reactive Than Proactive
As an expert IT professional, you can spend a lot of time putting out fires. System bugs, holes in security—whatever the issue, once you fall into the habit of taking a reactive approach to problems, you’re already losing efficiency. And when you’re inefficient, the end users’ productivity is plummeting.
A proactive approach to solving internal infrastructure issues is far superior, allowing you to fix infrastructure issues before they happen. The right software can help make this process that much easier; but before choosing one, consider these two key components of proactive IT problem-solving.
First, you need the ability to easily monitor and remotely control sessions. This will give you valuable insight into your team’s workflow and efficiency. Second, search for a program that facilitates system response monitoring. This will help improve your overall response time, so you’ll spend less time putting fires out. Renewed speed will also impress your end users, earning your team a reputation for efficiency.
With the right product and processes in place, your team will gain a firmer grip on proactive operations—and be more prepared to tackle reactive situations.
This article was provided by our service partner Connectwise.com
Managed Security Services—the Opportunity, the Risk, and the Challenge
Worldwide SMBs are projected to grow their spending on remote managed security to an estimated $21.2 billion by 2021, making it the highest growth area in the managed services market. Yet many IT service providers are shying away from this services goldmine because they don’t possess the people, process, or technology to address increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks. Ironically, your customers believe you are handling ‘all things’ security related, which begs the question; is there a way to have a common language to communicate and mitigate the ambiguity of ‘who owns the risk?’
Why does your customer feel you are responsible for ‘all things’ security related? Have you ever said any of the following things to a prospect and/or customer? “We are your outsourced IT department. We reduce your risk and exposure. Our Virtual CIO (vCIO) meets with you quarterly to ensure your business and technology requirements are in alignment. You pay one monthly fee that is outcome driven. We do it all!” For more than ten years, our industry has preached managed services at every industry event and customer/prospect engagement. Our industry has prophesized managed services and therefore conditioned our customers that ‘we do it all!’
With today’s attacks becoming more sophisticated, the days of securing ourselves and our customers through a tools-based model (endpoint and firewall protection, email security/backup, and DNS) are not enough. Some managed service providers (MSPs) have started to add phishing services with security awareness training, which is an excellent step in meeting compliance for security awareness training.
To recalibrate our customer’s mindset, we need to be able to speak a common language about how the threat landscape has changed, and what has worked for years, won’t work in the future. A cybersecurity risk assessment is necessary to identify the gaps in your customer’s critical security controls and to determine actions to close those gaps. Learning how to perform a risk assessment, and more importantly, the art of having the conversation about ‘who owns the risk,’ are the critical next steps an MSP should be taking with their customers if they are not today. Vulnerability scanning and continuous monitoring would be critical next steps, post risk assessment.
This article was provided by our service partner : connectwise.com
5 Ways Your Business Benefits from Automation
1: Improved Organization
Automation tools distribute information seamlessly. For instance, when you automatically create a quote for a new project and can invoice it from the same system, all of the information regarding the project is in the same place. You don’t need to go looking for it across multiple systems.
Automation ensures that the information is automatically sent where you need it, keeping your information current, and preventing your team from spending a lot of time looking for it.
2: Reduced Time Spent on Redundant Tasks
One of the biggest benefits to IT automation is the amount of time your team will save on manual, repeatable tasks. Leveraging automation helps your team reduce the time spent on creating tickets and configuring applications, which adds up over time. Based on estimates, it takes 5 to 7 minutes for techs to open up new tickets due to manual steps like assigning companies and contact information, finding and adding configurations, and more.
With automatic ticket routing, you can reduce the time spent on tickets to just 30 seconds. For a tech that works on 20 tickets a day, that results in 90 minutes a day, or 7.5 hours a week, in additional productivity.
3: Well-Established Processes
The best way to leverage the most benefit from IT automation is to ensure you create workflows and processes that are set up in advance. Establishing these workflows will ensure that you create a set of standards everyone on your team can follow without having to do additional work. Once these workflow rules are established, these processes can help establish consistency and efficiency within your operations – and ensure you deliver a consistent experience to your customers, regardless of which tech handles their tickets. The Rosemead serving auto accident lawyers can help with accident cases.
Furthermore, the documented, repeatable processes can help you scale by making it easier to accomplish more in less time. Your team can focus on providing excellent customer service and doing a great job when they don’t need to waste time thinking about the process itself.
4: Multi-department Visibility
Maintaining separate spreadsheets, accounts, and processes makes it difficult to really see how well your company is doing. To see how many projects are completed a day or how quickly projects are delivered, you may need to gather information about each employee’s performance to view the company as a whole.
Automation tools increase visibility into your business’s operations by centralizing data in a way that makes it easy to figure out holistically how your company performs, in addition to the performance of each individual team member. You can even isolate the performance of one department.
5: Increased Accountability
With so many different systems in place, it can be difficult to know exactly what is happening at every moment. For instance, if an employee wanted to delete tasks they didn’t want to do, you’d need processes in place to know this went on. What if deleting something was an accident? How would you know something was accidentally deleted and have the opportunity to get the information back?
Automation reduces human errors by providing a digital trail for your entire operation in one place. It provides increased accountability for everybody’s actions across different systems, so issues like these aren’t a problem.
Automation is an easy way to develop the increased accountability, visibility, and centralized processes required for your company to grow and serve more clients. When selecting the right automation tools for your business, ensure that whatever solutions you’re evaluating helps in these key areas. Technology that help you manage workflows, automate redundant tasks, provide consistent experience to all your customers will help you provide superior levels of service to your customers – and help improve your bottom line.
This article was provided by our service partner : connectwise.com
Top Pitfalls of the Internal IT Team (and How to Avoid Them)
To handle the deluge of daily tasks, your internal IT team needs to run like a well-oiled machine. From managing security and ticket flow to conducting routine maintenance and proactive monitoring, your team requires expert efficiency to stay at the top of their game.
But all too often, common pitfalls can complicate your to-do list, creating extra work for your team. Recognizing these time traps is the first step to avoiding them—the second step is developing a fool-proof plan to avoid them in the future.
Pitfall #1: Windows 10 and the Perils of Patching
Consider this: When a new patch is released, hackers immediately swoop in to compare the update to the preexisting operating system. This helps them identify where the security loophole is—then use the information to exploit end users and corporations that are slow to patch the breach. In 2018, attackers exploited patch updates to steal valuable personal data on users and payment information. While these instances only account for 6% of the year’s total breaches, the negative consequences for those attacked are profound.
For years, Patch Tuesday helped IT teams keep track of the Microsoft® software updates. But with Windows 10, system fixes are no longer released on such a predictable schedule. That doesn’t mean patching stops being a top priority though. Managing patching is essential to safeguarding your software and machines against external threats.
The best way to avoid this common pitfall is to standardize your team’s policy for automatic Windows 10 patching. Set up alerts to update your team as soon as a patch is released—and enable broad discovery capabilities that cover your company’s entire inventory of production systems. Remember: It only takes one vulnerable computer to put your entire network at risk.
Pitfall #2: Incorrect Ticket Routing
Your internal IT team may field countless help desk tickets a day, and to maintain your high level of customer service, the pressure is on to correctly route each ticket to an expert technician. But with manual routing, there are endless opportunities for mistakes. What’s more, if your team isn’t routing tickets based on knowledgeable resources, you’re creating delays that can throw off the entire routing process—which is bad for business.
To avoid the obstacles that come with ticket routing, consider ditching manual in favor of an automatic ticket routing program. Workflow automation is quickly becoming an industry standard. As more IT teams make the switch, it’s becoming increasingly important that you do the same.
Pitfall #3: The Flaws of Manual Processes
Try as you may, human error is impossible to avoid. And in a complex IT environment, manual processes create the potential for errors that can put your entire workflow—and your system’s security—at risk.
What if a real emergency hits and your team needs to respond quickly? In this instance, the small, day-to-day IT tasks should be set aside in order to deal with the bigger problem. But if these tasks still follow a manual process, forgetting them is out of the question.
The best way to avoid this scenario is by nixing manual processes in favor of automation, whenever possible. For cases where manual is still essential, make sure the process is formalized—and that your team is fully trained to follow protocol.
Pitfall #4: Maintaining an Inventory of Assets
It’s up to you to keep your team’s project on track—but when information is owned by multiple managers and dispersed across countless spreadsheets and documents, project management can be next to impossible. And the more complex the project, the larger your inventory of assets. Talk about an organizational pitfall.
To avoid asset chaos, you need to find a solution that allows key documents, data, and configurations to be readily available to the team members that need it most. This will cut down on the time you spend pinging John for that report or chasing down Sarah for that serial number.
There are a number of solutions that allow for easy asset inventories. Many companies opt for free options, like Google Drive, to cut down on costs. But in doing so, you often lose out on optimal information security. More advanced options at a price are designed to expertly guard and intuitively aggregate assets—meaning everything is kept organized and safe.
Pitfall #5: Repetitive Admin Tasks
There are some things in life we, unfortunately, can’t avoid. Admin tasks often fall into that category. But these day-to-day to-do items, like tracking time, aren’t just tedious—they take valuable time away from other, more vital tasks. When this happens, either the admin tasks aren’t completed, or the more important responsibilities aren’t completed up to par—a no-win situation.
Ask yourself a question: Is your time really best spent making sure your techs are entering their time or tracking down that rogue endpoint? No, probably not. In lieu of hiring a full-time administrative assistant, try using a program that can consistently complete admin tasks. This way, you can focus your attention on bigger, more important projects while the tedious—but necessary—tasks get done.
Pitfall #6: More Reactive Than Proactive
As an expert IT professional, you can spend a lot of time putting out fires. System bugs, holes in security—whatever the issue, once you fall into the habit of taking a reactive approach to problems, you’re already losing efficiency. And when you’re inefficient, the end users’ productivity is plummeting.
A proactive approach to solving internal infrastructure issues is far superior, allowing you to fix infrastructure issues before they happen. The right software can help make this process that much easier; but before choosing one, consider these two key components of proactive IT problem-solving.
First, you need the ability to easily monitor and remotely control sessions. This will give you valuable insight into your team’s workflow and efficiency. Second, search for a program that facilitates system response monitoring. This will help improve your overall response time, so you’ll spend less time putting fires out. Renewed speed will also impress your end users, earning your team a reputation for efficiency.
With the right product and processes in place, your team will gain a firmer grip on proactive operations—and be more prepared to tackle reactive situations.
This article was provided by our service partner Connectwise.com
Top 5 Things SMBs Should Consider When Evaluating a Cybersecurity Strategy
SMBs are overconfident about their cybersecurity posture.
A survey of SMBs conducted by 451 Research found that in the preceding 24 months, 71% of respondents experienced a breach or attack that resulted in operational disruption, reputational damage, significant financial losses or regulatory penalties. At the same time, 49% of the SMBs surveyed said that cybersecurity is a low priority for their business, and 90% believe they have the appropriate security technologies in place. Clearly, SMBs are not correctly evaluating cybersecurity risk.
Many of us can relate – each day we ignore obvious signs that point to a reality that is in direct contrast to our beliefs. For example, as each year passes, most of us get a little slower, muscles ache that never ached before, we get a bit softer around the middle, and we hold our reading material farther away. Yet, we are convinced we could take on an NBA player in a game of one-on-one or complete the American Ninja Warrior obstacle course on the first try.
While it’s unlikely that most of us can make the improvements needed to compete with elite athletes, the same can’t be said for enterprise cybersecurity. The journey is not an easy one given the security talent vacuum, a lack of domain understanding at the executive level, and the complexity of implementing a long-term, metric-based strategy. But, if you are an SMB struggling to run up and down the proverbial court, here are five things you should consider when building a better security practice:
1. Experienced staff are valuable, but expensive, assets.
Although enterprise cybersecurity is a 24/7/365 effort requiring a full roster of experienced professionals, many SMB cybersecurity teams are underequipped to handle the constant deluge of alert notifications, let alone the investigation or remediation processes. In fact, only 23% of survey respondents plan to add staff to their security teams in the coming year. For many SMBs, the security staffing struggles may get worse as 87% reported difficulties in retaining existing security professionals. To fill this gap, SMBs are increasingly turning to MSPs and MSSPs to provide the expertise and resources needed to protect their organizations around the clock.
2. Executives understand what is at stake, but not what action to take.
As the threat landscape becomes more treacherous, regulatory requirements multiply, and security incidents become more common, executives at SMBs have become more acutely aware of the business impact of security incidents – most are feeling an urgency to strengthen organizational cybersecurity. However, acknowledging the problem is only the first step of the process. Executives need to interface with their internal security teams, industry experts and MSPs in order to fully understand their organization’s risk portfolio and design a long-term cybersecurity strategy that integrates with business objectives.
3. Security awareness training (SAT) is low-hanging fruit (if done right).
According to the 451 Research Voice of the Enterprise: Information Security: Workloads and Key Projects survey, 62% of SMBs said they have a SAT program in place, but 50% are delivering SAT on their own using ‘homegrown’ methods and materials. It should be no surprise that many SMBs described their SAT efforts as ineffective. MSPs are increasingly offering high-quality, comprehensive SAT for a variety of compliance and regulatory frameworks such as PCI-DSS, HIPAA, SOX, ISO, GDPR and GLBA. SMBs looking to strengthen their security posture should look to partner with these MSPs for security awareness training.
4. Securing now means securing for the future.
The future of IT architecture will span both private and public clouds. This hybrid- and multi-cloud infrastructure represents a significant challenge for SMBs that require a cybersecurity posture that is both layered and scalable. SMBs need to understand and consider long-term trends when evaluating their current cybersecurity strategy. With this aim in mind, SMBs can turn to MSPs and MSSPs with the experience and toolsets necessary for securing these types of complex environments.
5. A metrics-based security approach is needed for true accountability.
In a rush to shore up organizational security, SMBs might make the all-too-common mistake of equating money spent with security gained. To be clear: spending not backed by strategy and measurement only enhances security posture on the margins, if at all. To get the most bang for each buck, SMBs need to build an accountable security system predicated on quantifiable metrics.Again, this is an area where SMBs can partner with MSPs and MSSPs. This serves as an opportunity to develop cybersecurity strategy with measurable KPIs to ensure security gains are maintained over time. MSPs can help SMBs define the most applicable variables for their IT architectures, whether it be incident response rate, time-to-response or other relevant metrics.
The strategic reevaluation of organizational security is a daunting task for any organization, but given the risks SMBs face and their tendency to be underprepared, it is a necessary challenge. These key points of consideration for SMBs embarking on this critical journey underscore the importance of building an accountable and forward-looking security system and highlight the ways in which SMBs can work alongside MSP or MSSP partners to implement the right cybersecurity system for their organizations. I hope this will be the wake-up call all SMBs need to unleash their inner cybersecurity all-star.
This article was provided by our service partner : webroot.com
How to protect yourself as the threat of scam apps grows
As the threat of bogus apps continues, what can we do to protect ourselves against these fraudulent practices?
There’s nothing new about advertisers and app developers using deceptive practices, but the Touch ID scam that Lukáš Štefanko wrote about recently is a significant twist in this ongoing story. Of course, iOS users are not alone in facing these dilemmas; as Lukáš wrote earlier this year, Android users are experiencing their own flood of predatory app tactics too.
What can we do to protect ourselves against these fraudulent practices?
Be aware of the limitations of app store review processes
The policies and review procedures of major app stores do keep out a large number of fraudulent apps. While there are always more things they might and probably should be doing to continue to improve this problem, it is an ongoing learning process for all of us.
Due to the incredibly large total number of apps and updates that each major app store sees every day, much of the work involved in the review of new submissions is automated. This means that each app likely has functionality that will not necessarily be seen by a human or be tested specifically. Even very well-known and more-or-less legitimate app vendors have been caught doing things to try to evade having certain functionality reviewed. This means it’s still crucial to do our own due diligence.
Read reviews
While most scam apps do in fact include numerous positive reviews, these often show signs of phoniness. Wording may be very vague, downright nonsensical, or exhibit repetitive patterns (including different reviews repeating the same phrases or having similar usernames, for example). It’s a good idea to re-order the ranking options on reviews to see a more balanced picture: depending on the particular app store, you can sort the reviews to see those that have been deemed “most helpful” or that are ranked “most critical” first.
Be patient
The best time to figure out whether an app is a scam is before you download it. While it may be hard to calm the fear of missing out, it’s best to wait a few days or weeks before downloading brand new apps, to let other people be the “guinea pigs”. This way you can read what other people have to say about the app’s functionality before making a decision.
Use apps by developers you know and trust
If at all possible, it’s a good idea to stick with reputable app developers. If you’re new to a platform, that may be easier said than done. In that case, it’s a good idea to do a little more research first, to get a better sense of whether a particular developer already has other well-reviewed and popular apps that are currently available for download.
Be aware of valid functionality
While it can be hard to keep up with the complete picture of what each new device can do, it’s a good idea to be at least somewhat aware of the functionality of your device. For example: fingerprint data are not accessible to apps, only a “yes” or “no” verdict about whether your fingerprint matches the one previous stored on your device. This is to say that apps cannot use a scan of your finger to give advice on calorie data, nutrition information, how much water you should drink, or to present ancestry analysis. (It’s worth noting that you couldn’t really get valid information on any of those things from a scan of your finger even if the app could access those data.)
If your phone has existing functionality like a QR reader or a flashlight app, it might not be a good idea to install an app that does that exact same thing, especially as many of these apps have a history of being problematic. If you’re looking to specifically try a different app than one your phone already has – like a mail reader or an internet browser – be sure to read some third party reviews first, to see which options are well-reviewed and popular.
Dig deeper
There are a variety of things you can look at to find information that might indicate a predatory app. Do the developers have other apps available already, and are they reviewed well? Do they have a website that appears professional, including contact information? What results are returned if you do an internet search for the name of the app or developer plus the word “scam”? Can you find more information on third-party sources regarding subscription rates or in-app purchase prices? (Apple may offer information about the latter within the app description.) Does the app purport to give you a free or discount version of more expensive for-fee app? (These scams often cost more than just money!)
Request a refund and report bad actors
If you’ve gotten as far as having already downloaded an app that turned out to be a scam, ask the app store or the bank attached to your payment card to refund the charge. If the purchase was in the form of a subscription, this may be more complicated, but it will soon become worth your time and effort to have gone through the entire process. You can also report fraudulent apps to the app stores themselves, as well as contributing reviews that describe your experience.
It’s time to push back against “dark patterns”
Many of us already vote with our wallets when it comes to sub-optimal software behavior, by choosing not to purchase or support companies that fail to consider privacy or security, or that behave in ways that we consider too predatory or problematic. But there is another area that more people should be aware of, that describes a more understated category of sketchy behavior.
“Dark patterns” describe the scenario where a user interface is designed to intentionally trick or emotionally manipulate you into clicking where otherwise you might not. In the case of the Fitness Balance app, it takes advantage of the fact that the Home button on some iPhones or iPads can serve two purposes: your finger is already resting on a (fingerprint) sensor in a way that can also be used to select an option on the screen. Newer versions of the iPhone require you to make two distinct actions for these things; you must take your finger off the sensor for a moment after a fingerprint scan, before it can be used to select an option.
Some dark patterns are much less obvious, because they take advantage of expectations that we may not be consciously aware that we have, or because they cause us to be more inattentive.
Here are a few examples of scenarios in user interfaces that predatory app makers may try to manipulate:
In cases where emotional manipulation is in play, there may be a confirmation dialog that tries to guilt-trip or scare you into changing a selection. This is where things can get a little nebulous: when is it a legitimate warning, rather than unnecessary fearmongering? This can be something of a value judgment, which is subject to our own interpretation. Whatever you decide, you can let software vendors know that you value a clear and predictable user experience that does not rely on fear, uncertainty and doubt.
This article was provided by our service partner Eset.
What’s Next? Webroot’s 2019 Cybersecurity Predictions
At Webroot, we stay ahead of cybersecurity trends in order to keep our customers up-to-date and secure. As the end of the year approaches, our team of experts has gathered their top cybersecurity predictions for 2019. What threats and changes should you brace for?
General Data Protection Regulation Penalties
When the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) became law in the EU last May, many businesses scrambled to implement the required privacy protections. In anticipation of this challenge for businesses, it seemed as though the Data Protection Authorities (the governing organizations overseeing GDPR compliance) were giving them time to adjust to the new regulations. However, it appears that time has passed. European Data Protection Supervisor Giovanni Buttarelli spoke with Reuters in October and said the time for issuing penalizations is near. With GDPR privacy protection responsibilities now incumbent upon large tech companies with millions—if not billions—of users, as well as small to medium-sized businesses, noncompliance could mean huge penalties.
GDPR fines will depend on the specifics of each infringement, but companies could face damages of up to 4% of their worldwide annual turnover, or up to 20 million Euros, whichever is greater. For example, if the GDPR had been in place during the 2013 Yahoo breach affecting 3 billion users, Yahoo could have faced anywhere from $80 million to $160 million in fines. It’s also important to note that Buttarelli specifically mentions the potential for bans on processing personal data, at Data Protection Authorities’ discretion, which would effectively suspend a company’s data flows inside the EU.
AI Disruption
The Fouth Industrial Revolution is here and the markets are beginning to feel it. Machine learning algorithms and applied artificial intelligence programs are already infiltrating and disrupting top industries. Several of the largest financial institutions in the world have integrated artificial intelligence into aspects of their businesses. Often these programs use natural language processing—giving them the ability to handle customer-facing roles more easily—to boost productivity.
From a risk perspective, new voice manipulation techniques and face mapping technologies, in conjunction with other AI disciplines, will usher in a new dawn of social engineering that could be used in advanced spear-phishing attacks to influence political campaigns or even policy makers directly.
AI Will Be Crucial to the Survival of Small Businesses
Our threat researchers don’t anticipate a decline in threat volume for small businesses in the coming year. Precise attacks, like those targeting RDP tools, have been on the rise and show no signs of tapering. Beyond that, the sheer volume of data handled by businesses of all types of small businesses raises the probability and likely severity of a breach.
If small and medium-sized businesses want to keep their IT teams from being inundated and overrun with alerts, false positives, and remediation requests, they’ll be forced to work AI and machine learning into their security solutions. Only machine learning can automate security intelligence accurately and effectively enough to enable categorization and proactive threat detection in near real time. By taking advantage of cloud computing platforms like Amazon Web Services, machine learning has the capability to scale with the increasing volume and complexity modern attacks, while remaining within reach in terms of price.
Ransomware is Out, Cryptojacking is In
Although we’re unlikely to see the true death of ransomware, it does seem to be in decline. This is due in large part to the success of cryptocurrency and the overwhelming demand for the large amounts of computing power required for cryptomining. Hackers have seized upon this as a less risky alternative to ransomware, leading to the emergence of cryptojacking.
Cryptojacking is the now too-common practice of injecting software into an unsuspecting system and using its latent processing power to mine for cryptocurrencies. This resource theft drags systems down, but is often stealthy enough to go undetected. We are beginning to feel the pinch of cryptojacking in critical systems, with a cryptomining operation recently being discovered on the network of a water utility system in Europe. This trend is on track to continue into the New Year, with detected attacks increasing by 141% in the first half of 2018 alone.
Targeted Attacks
The prominence of cryptojacking in cybercrime circles means that, when ransomware appears in the headlines, it will be for calculated, highly-targeted attacks. Cybercriminas are now researching systems ahead of time, often through backdoor access, enabling them to encrypt their ransomware against the specific antivirus applications put in place to detect it.
Government bodies and healthcare systems are prime candidates for targeted attacks, since they handle sensitive data from large swaths of the population. These attacks often have costs far beyond the ransom itself. The City of Atlanta is currently dealing with $17 million in post-breach costs. (Their perpetrators asked for $51,000 in Bitcoin, which the city refused to pay.)
The private sector won’t be spared from targeting, either. A recent Dharma Bip ransomware attack on a brewery involved attackers posting the brewery’s job listing on an international hiring website and submitting a resume attachment with a powerful ransomware payload.
Zero Day Vulnerabilities
Though the cost of effective, zero-day exploits is rising and demand for these exploits has never been higher, we predict a decrease in high-profile breaches. Invariably, as large software systems become more adept at preventing exploitation, the amount of expertise required to identify valuable software vulnerabilities increases with it. Between organizations like the Zero Day Initiative working to keep these flaws out of the hands of hackers and governmental bodies and intelligence agencies stockpiling security flaws for cyber warfare purposes, we are likely to see fewer zero day exploits in the coming year.
However, with the average time between the initial private discovery and the public disclosure of a zero day vulnerability being about 6.9 years, we may just need to wait before we hear about it.
The take-home? Pay attention, stay focused, and keep an eye on this space for up-to-the-minute information about cybersecurity issues as they arise.
This article was provided by our service partner : Webroot
Reducing Risk with Ongoing Cybersecurity Awareness Training
Threat researchers and other cybersecurity industry analysts spend much of their time trying to anticipate the next major malware strain or exploit with the potential to cause millions of dollars in damage, disrupt global commerce, or put individuals at physical risk by targeting critical infrastructure.
However, a new Webroot survey of principals at 500 small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), suggests that phishing attacks and other forms of social engineering actually represent the most real and immediate threat to the health of their business.
Twenty-four percent of SMBs consider phishing scams as their most significant threat, the highest for any single method of attack, and ahead of ransomware at 19 percent.
Statistics released by the FBI this past summer in its 2017 Internet Crime Report reinforce the scope of the problem. Costing nearly $30 million in total losses last year, phishing and other social engineering attacks were the third leading crime by volume of complaints, behind only personal data breaches and non-payment/non-delivery of services. Verizon Wireless’s 2018 Data Breach Investigations Report, a thorough and well-researched annual study we cite often, blames 93 percent of successful breaches on phishing and pretexting, another social engineering tactic.
Cybersecurity Awareness Training as the Way Forward
So how are businesses responding? In short, not well.
One of the more insidious aspects of phishing as a method of attack is that even some otherwise strong email security gateways, network firewalls and endpoint security solutions are often unable to stop it. The tallest walls in the world won’t protect you when your users give away the keys to the castle. And that’s exactly what happens in a successful phishing scam.
Despite this, our survey found that 65 percent of SMBs reported having no employee training on cybersecurity best practices. So far in 2018, World Cup phishing scams, compromised MailChimp accounts, and opportunist GDPR hoaxers have all experienced some success, among many others.
So, can training change user behavior to stop handing over the keys to the castle? Yes! Cybersecurity awareness training, when it includes features like realistic phishing simulations and engaging, topical content, can elevate the security IQ of users, reducing user error and improving the organization’s security posture along the way.
The research and advisory firm Gartner maintains that applied examples of cybersecurity awareness training easily justify its costs. According to their data, untrained users click on 90 percent of the links within emails received from outside email addresses, causing 10,000 malware infections within a single year. By their calculations, these infections led to an overall loss of productivity of 15,000 hours per year. Assuming an average wage of $85/hr, lost productive costs reach $1,275,000 which does not necessarily account for other potential costs such as reputational damage, remediation cost, or fines associated with breaches.
One premium managed IT firm conducted its first wave of phishing simulation tests and found their failure rate to be approximately 18 percent. But after two to three rounds of training, they saw the rate drop to a much healthier 3 percent.1
And it’s not just phishing attacks users must be trained to identify. Only 20 percent of the SMBs in our survey enforced strong password management. Ransomware also remains a significant threat, and there are technological aspects to regulatory compliance that users are rarely fully trained on. Even the most basic educational courses on these threats would go a long way toward bolstering a user’s security IQ and the organizations cybersecurity posture.
Finding after finding suggests that training on cybersecurity best practices produces results. When implemented as part of a layered cybersecurity strategy, cybersecurity awareness training improves SMB security by reducing the risks of end-user hacking and creating a workforce of cyber-savvy end users with the tools they need to defend themselves from threats.
All that remains to be seen is whether a business will act in time to protect against their next phishing attack and prevent a potentially catastrophic breach.
You can access the findings of our SMB Pulse Survey here.
This article was provided by our service partner: Webroot.
Patch Management Practices to Keep Your Clients Secure
Develop a Policy of Who, What, When, Why, and How for Patching Systems
The first step in your patch management strategy is to come up with a policy around the entire patching practice. Planning in advance enables you to go from reactive to proactive—anticipating problems in advance and develop policies to handle them.
The right patch management policy will answer the who, what, when, why, and how for when you receive a notification of a critical vulnerability in a client’s software.
Create a Process for Patch Management
Now that you’ve figured out the overall patch management policy, you need to create a process on how to handle each patch as they’re released.
Your patch management policy should be explicit within your security policy, and you should consider Microsoft’s® six-step process when tailoring your own. The steps include:
Notification: You’re alerted about a new patch to eliminate a vulnerability. How you receive the notification depends on which tools you use to keep systems patched and up to date.
Assessment: Based on the patch rating and configuration of your systems, you need to decide which systems need the patch and how quickly they need to be patched to prevent an exploit.
Obtainment: Like the notification, how you receive the patch will depend on the tools you use. They could either be deployed manually or automatically based on your determined policy.
Testing: Before you deploy a patch, you need to test it on a test bed network that simulates your production network. All networks and configurations are different, and Microsoft can’t test for every combination, so you need to test and make sure all your clients’ networks can properly run the patch.
Deployment: Deployment of a patch should only be done after you’ve thoroughly tested it. Even after testing, be careful and don’t apply the patch to all your systems at once. Incrementally apply patches and test the production server after each one to make sure all applications still function properly.
Validation: This final step is often overlooked. Validating that the patch was applied is necessary so you can report on the status to your client and ensure agreed service levels are met.
Be Persistent in Applying the Best Practices
For your patch management policies and processes to be effective, you need to be persistent in applying them consistently. With new vulnerabilities and patches appearing almost daily, you need to be vigilant to keep up with all the changes.
Patch management is an ongoing practice. To ensure you’re consistently applying patches, it’s best to follow a series of repeatable, automated practices. These practices include:
Take Advantage of Patching Resources
Since the release of Windows 10, updates to the operating system are on a more fluid schedule. Updates and patches are now being released as needed and not on a consistent schedule. You’ll need to let your team know when an applicable update is released to ensure the patch can be tested and deployed as soon as possible.
As the number of vulnerabilities and patches rise, you’ll need to have as much information about them as you can get. There are a few available resources we recommend to augment your patch management process and keep you informed of updates that may fall outside of the scope of Microsoft updates.
Utilize Patching Tools
You don’t want your technicians spending most of their time approving and applying patches on individual machines, especially as your business grows and you take on more clients. To take the burden off your technicians, you’ll want to utilize a tool that can automate your patch management processes. This can be accomplished with a remote monitoring and management (RMM) platform, like ConnectWise Automate®. Add-ons can be purchased to manage third-party application patching to sure up all potential vulnerabilities.
Patch management is a fundamental service provided in most managed service provider (MSP) service plans. With these best practices, you’ll be able to develop a patch management strategy to best serve your clients and their specific needs.
This article was provided by our service partner : connectwise.com
Password Constraints and Their Unintended Security Consequences
You’re probably familiar with some of the most common requirements for creating passwords. A mix of upper and lowercase letters is a simple example. These are known as password constraints. They’re rules for how you must construct a password. If your password must be at least eight characters long, contain lower case, uppercase, numbers and symbol characters, then you have one length, and four character set constraints.
Password constraints eliminate a number of both good and bad passwords. I had never heard anyone ask “how many potential passwords, good and bad, are eliminated?” And so I began searching for the answer. The results were surprising. If you want to know the precise number of possible 8-character passwords there are if all of the character sets must be used, then the equation looks something like this.
A serious limitation of this approach is that it tells you nothing about the effects of each constraint alone or relative to other constraints. (I’m also not sure if there were supposed to be four consecutive ∑s or if the mathematician was stuttering.)
We choose to use a Monte Carlo simulation to analyze the mathematical impact of the various combinations of constraints. A Monte Carlo simulation uses a statistical analysis approach that provides a close approximation of the answer, while also providing the flexibility to quickly and easily measure the impact of each constraint and combination of constraints.
A look at minimum length limits
To start, let’s look at the impact of an eight-character length constraint alone. There are 95^8 possible combinations of 8 characters. 26 uppercase letters + 26 lowercase letters + 10 numerals + 33 symbols = 95 characters. For a length of 8 characters, we have 95˄8 possible passwords.
If a password must be at least 8 characters long, then there are also about 70.6 trillion otherwise viable passwords you are not allowed to use (95+(95^2 ) +(95^3 ) +(95^4 ) +(95^5)+(95^6 )+(95^7)). That’s a good thing. It means you can’t use 95 one character passwords, 9,025 two character passwords, and so on. Almost 70 trillion of those passwords you cannot use are seven characters long. This is a great and wholly intended effect of a password length constraint.
The problem with a lack of constraints is that people will use a very small set of all possible passwords, which invariably includes passwords that are incredibly easy to guess. In the analysis of over one million leaked passwords, it was found that 30.8 percent passwords eight to 11 characters long contained only lowercase letters, and 43.9 percent contained only lowercase letters and numbers. In fact, to perform a primitive brute force attack against an eight-character password containing only lower case letters, it’s only necessary to try about 209 billion character combinations. That does not take a computer very long to crack. And, as we know from analyzing large numbers of passwords, it’s likely to contain one of the most popular ten thousand passwords.
To beef up security, we begin to add character constraints. But, in doing so, we decrease the number of possible passwords; both good and bad.
Just by requiring both uppercase and lowercase letters, more than 15 percent of all possible 8-character combinations have been eliminated as possible passwords. This means that 1QV5#T&|cannot be a password because there are no lowercase letters. Compared to Darnrats,which meets the constraint requirements, 1QV5#T&|is a fantastic password. But you cannot use it. Superior passwords that cannot be used are acceptable collateral damage in the battle for better security. “Corndogs” is acceptable, but “fruit&veggies” is not. This clearly is not a battle for lower cholesterol.
As constraints pile up, possibilities shrink
If a password must be exactly eight characters long and contain at least one lower case letter, at least one uppercase letter and at least one symbol, we are getting close to one-in-five combinations of 8 characters that are not allowable as passwords. Still, the effect of constraints on 12 and 16 character passwords is negligible. But that is all about to change… you can count on it.
Are you required to use a password that is at least eight characters long, has lower and uppercase letters, number and symbols? Just requiring a number to be part of a password removes over 40 percent of 8-character combinations from the pool of possible passwords. Even though you can use lowercase and uppercase letters, and you can use symbols, if one of the characters in your password must be a number then there are far fewer great passwords that you can use. If a 16 character long password must have a number, then 13 times more potential passwords have become illegal as a result of that one constraint than the combined constraints of lower and uppercase letters and symbols caused. More than one-in-four combinations of 12 characters can no longer become a passwords either.
You might have noticed that there is little effect on the longer passwords. Frequently there is also very little value in imposing constraints on long passwords. This is because each additional character in a password grows the pool of passwords exponentially. There are 6.5 million times as many combinations of 16 character pass words using only lowercase letters than there are of eight character passwords using all four character sets. That means that “toodlesmypoodles” is going to be a whole lot harder to crack than “I81B@gle”
Long and simple is better than short and hard
People tend to be very predictable. There are more symbols (than there are in any other characters set. Theoretically that means that symbols are going to do the most to make a password strong, but 80 percent of the time it is going to be one of the top five most frequently used symbols, and 95 percent of the time is will be one of the top 10 most frequently used symbols.
Analysis of two million compromised passwords showed that about one in 14 passwords start with the number one, however for those that started with the number one, 75 percent of them ended with a number as well.
The use of birthdays and names, for example, make it much easier to quickly crack many passwords.
Password strength: It’s length, not complexity that matters
As covered above, all four character sets (95 characters) in an eight character password allow for about 6.634 quadrillion different password possibilities. But a 16 character password with only lowercase letters has about 43.8 sextillion possible passwords. That means that there are well over 6.5 million times more possible passwords for 16 consecutive lowercase letters than for any combination of eight characters regardless of how complex the password is.
My great password is “cats and hippos are friends!”, but I can’t use it because of constraints – and because I just told you what it is.
For years password experts have been advocating for the use of simple passphrases over complex passwords because they are stronger and simpler to remember. I’d like to throw a bit of gasoline on to the fire and tell you, those 95^8 combinations of characters are only half that many when you tell me I have to use uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and symbols.
This article was provided by our service partner : webroot.com
Author: Randy Abrams
Don’t Ignore Security Activity That Could Help the Most
We tend to think of security as the tools—like email scanning, malware, and antivirus protection—we have in place to secure our network. But did you know that the process of asset management helps you minimize the threat landscape too?
Management of software and hardware has historically been treated as a cost-minimizing function, where tracking assets could be the difference between driving or reducing value, from an organizational perspective. However, even the best security plan is only as strong as its weakest link. If IT administrators are unaware where assets reside, the software running on them, and who has access, they are at risk.
Understanding the device, as well as the data, is what matters here. Having an in-depth knowledge of the network of devices and their data is the first step in protecting it. Often, organizations have the tools in place to support and maintain the device, but once in place on the network, it can be easy to set it and forget it until it need repair, replacement, or up for review. Conducting asset management on a regular basis should be a fundamental function for your security plan and can strengthen the security tools you already have in place. Remember, asset management has to be continuous for it to be truly effective.
When you’re conducting continuous asset management you can always answer the following questions should an incident occur:
Companies struggle with consistent and mature asset management because they often don’t have the time or dedicated resources to stay on top of it. However, an IT asset management program can add value by reducing costs, improving operational efficiency, determining full cost, and providing a forecast for future investments. Oversight and governance help to solidify policies and procedures already in place.
ConnectWise Automate® complements and strengthens security tools and processes by significantly improving the ability to discover, inventory, manage, and report. Additional tool sets–like antivirus and malware protection—can be added to help further protect data and reduce operational risk.
A recent study of the Total Economic Impact of ConnectWise showed, “Organizations estimated that they could shorten engineers’ involvement by 60%, thus cutting the cost of hardware maintenance by $1.2 million.”
This article was provided by our service partner : Connectwise.