As we have mentioned several times, humans represent the weakest link in cybersecurity. This means we are terrible at creating strong passwords, and we are bad at remembering them, too. So all of our online service providers have password reset systems that usually include a series of “secret” questions that are supposed to be both hard for an attacker to guess, but easy for the account holder to remember. Unfortunately, this ...
One of the early steps a small business needs to undertake is the creation of a cybersecurity policy. This is not a trivial undertaking, and taking a look at the information below will undoubtedly make this project look daunting to the average small business owner. A good solution would be to find a cybersecurity professional with experience in policy creation and ...
We have been relying on the trusty password for years, but as password cracking technologies improve, even longer and more complex passwords are being solved and sold on rainbow tables. So passwords are for the most part over. Two factor authentication is possibly a solution, but biometrics are becoming a big part of what is next in the field of user authentication. We have already seen fingerprint scanners on some laptops, ...
US-CERT (The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team) has released a report listing the top 30 exploited software vulnerabilities. This shows that one of the biggest problems is still that software is not being patched and updated in a timely manner, if at all. And the HP Cyber Risk Report explores this issue further, and offers four strategies that ...
If you are on LinkedIn, as I am, today is a good day to change your password. It seems that about 6.5 million LinkedIn usernames an password have found their way onto a Russian cyber-crime website. While LinkedIn initially disputed the report of security researcher Per Thorsheim, they recently admitted that they had lost control of some users’ credentials and
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TOR, or The Onion Router is a method of surfing the Internet anonymously. TOR uses a chain of proxy servers and redirection to keep the original IP address (your IP) and hence your identity a secret. One of the problems with using TOR is that there is a bit of a learning curve, and your Internet browsing speed will likely be reduced to the speed of the slowest Internet connection to one of the proxies in your chain.
There is a ...
Continue Reading →The Mac platform has become a popular target of cyber-criminals, partly because they have increased their percentage of the personal computer marketplace from 3% to 7%, partly due to the popularity of the iPhone, and partly because the consumer demographics of Apple customers generally point to people with more money who willing spend more to get the “best.” In any event, if you are an Apple user clinging to the belief that the Mac is invulnerable, you are wrong. You ...
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Google has introduce a Chrome extension called Password Alert that will warn you any time you try to use your Google password at a non-Google site. This is a great way to protect yourself and your Gmail account from phishing attacks that employ a fake cloned Gmail login page in an attempt to get your Gmail user ID and password. ...
All the expensive high-tech cybersecurity goodies cannot prevent someone in your employ from clicking a malicious link in an email and opening a gateway to further network exploitation. That is the findings of ProofPoint in The Human Factor Report 2015. The discouraging point for those of us who advocate employee training as an important part of an overall cybersecurity strategy is that in spite of training, people are still more likely ...
When you discover that one or more computers in your business has been breached, it is easy to get very excited and try to eliminate your risk by taking systems offline, and having your computer support personnel wipe the hard drive and re-install a fresh operating system and set of applications. This is the wrong course of action if you were hoping to take legal action against the perpetrators.
Most local police ...
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