The Tabush Cloud & Managed IT Blog

A disaster in the IT world comes in many forms – natural disasters, ransomware, a cyber breach, and acts of terrorism, just to name a few.  These disasters disrupt normal business and can ultimately have severe and expensive consequences on a company’s reputation and bottom line.

The bad news is many companies think these disasters can never happen to them and don’t take the proper precautions; the good news is that prevention of many disasters is attainable, and planning ensures that when there is a disaster, your company is prepared to get back to business as usual.

There is an increase in the frequency and efficacy of data breaches that can bring a firm’s operations to a standstill. Data breaches are often the result of vulnerable hardware and software where security measures may be weak or out of date, presenting an opportunity to hackers and ransomware. Far too often, businesses do not realize they are victims of breaches for days or even weeks, and by then, there is often nothing that can be done to repair the damage.

We recently sent a message to our clients warning them of an increase in phishing activity. We find it to be so rampant that we wanted to make this information available to the public as well.  For help with your business IT and security contact Tabush Group.

Over the past few weeks, we noticed an uptick in ‘phishing’ emails, which appear to be from Microsoft Office 365 or other popular cloud service providers, trying to get recipients to provide their log in credentials or other sensitive information. While we employ many layers of defense from top vendors for email filtering and content security for our clients, the bad guys are hard at work trying to beat the security systems; and sometimes, these things get through.

We want to provide you scenarios that you and your colleagues should be mindful of. Always be suspicious of anything that appears out of the ordinary, including:

Did you know that October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month?

It's a great annual reminder for you to take a look at what you and your company are doing to protect your business and systems from potential cyber attacks that could cripple your operations and cost you thousands of dollars in lost revenue.

Cyberattack = an attempt by hackers to
damage or destroy a computer network or system

Due to several highly publicized data breaches at well-known large brands, cybersecurity has been a hot topic in both tech and main stream media recently. Just because the topic of data protection is currently at the forefront of news reports, it’s important to be aware that it’s in fact always a relevant and important topic. Additionally, it’s just as important for small and midsize businesses (SMBs) as it is for large corporations. A lack of security in your IT infrastructure can lead to an interruption in the ability of your team and business to function.The New York Times recently profiled several small businesses whose operations were put in jeopardy because of cyberattacks.

Your company’s IT system and its performance is at the forefront of your business and the security of your information is of the utmost importance. Whether it is perceived to be relevant to your firm or not, it is important to realize that any organization’s protection is salient.

There are many perceptions, programs and headlines that buzz within the technology industry. Lately, many of those have revolved around one thing: The security of your information and the privacy that it should have.

Technology has been progressing at an amazing rate, especially over the past 20 years. Think back to 1994 and you probably couldn't imagine the Smartphone, DVR, Netflix, Wifi, GPS, or Facebook. Despite these amazing innovations, we seem to be going backwards when it comes to digital security. Viruses, malware, spam, and hacking are much bigger problems than ever before, and it seems to be getting worse. How could this be???

A few months ago I wrote about the Target credit card breach, asking how it could happen. In the past few years it’s also happened to Marshalls/TJ Maxx, the California DMV, Michael’s, PF Chang’s, Neiman Marcus, Sally Beauty, and I'm sure many others that didn’t make the headlines. Then there are the thousands of personal PC's containing years of family photos and videos which may have been maliciously destroyed.

Unless you've been living in a bubble without access to the news or Internet for the past 3 months, you've heard about the massive security breach that Target suffered. Hackers were able to get into Target's computer system and download over 110 million credit and debit card numbers. While we don't know who these 110 million lucky winners are, you can rest assured that if you weren't in that group, someone very close to you was.

Last week, more details on how the attack occurred were released. Apparently, Fazio Mechanical, a HVAC contractor who does work for Target, had someone hack into one of their PC's through a targeted phishing attempt. Fazio's systems were set up with certain access to Target's system to communicate work orders, invoices, etc. The hackers used that connection to access Target's database containing credit card numbers, and somehow downloaded it all from there. This is shameful at best.