WyzGuys Tech Talk

The was a short article that appeared in Silicon Beat that reiterates something I have been recommending for a long time.  The weakest point of entry into your computer network is your all too human employees.  The study found that 31% of cyber attacks start out from “unintended disclosures.”  Usually what has happened is that an employee has read and responded to some sort of clever phishing email, and provided user credentials to the network.  Another 24% were ...

If you are using any of these excuses in your business you are likely already in trouble.  Don’t say we didn’t warn you!

1. I’m too small to be a target.  Sorry, but false.  Small and medium size businesses are seen as prime targets by my cyber-crime organizations just because they are usually poorly defended, easy to hack, and have assets worth the effort.  If you have cash in a bank account, that can be enough to attract an attack.
2. Internet security ...

You do a certain amount of business online.  You belong to a number of social networks.  You shop at major retailers who have loyalty or rewards programs.  You have all sorts of fun apps on your smartphone.  Your smartphone knows your geographic location to within a few inches.  You have a collection of wearable devices that keep track of your footsteps, your travels, your heartbeat, temperature, and respiration, that record everything you see in front of you.  What happens with ...

If you are using one of these passwords, you might as well not have a password.  This is according to a recent post on the Microsoft blog.

• Password
• Letmein
• Monkey
• A pet’s name (i.e. Fluffy)
• 12345678

This five is from another list on the CBS News website that lists the 25 most commonly used passwords in 2013.

• 123456
• password
• 12345678
• qwerty
• abc123

Two of these passwords were common to both lists.

You may be wondering how we know what ...

Doing Sunday Funnies on Saturday.  Sorry – by Sunday I tend to forget to do it.  Sometimes Sunday is a “laptop free day.”  Hey – it happens.

A shout out to my friend and former barber Milo David.  Yes – Colorado is too far to drive for a haircut!  Anyway he shared this on Facebook, and I couldn’t resist, since I love the movie “Taken” and kind of like the State Farm commercial.

According to Bruce Schneier in the September issue of his newsletter Crypto-Gram The NSA and the British counterpart the GCHQ are engaged in a worldwide port scanning operation in order to find vulnerable computers that can be recruited and turned into an ORB, or Operational Relay Box.  Basically our government is creating large “standing armies” of botnets that can be used to attack our “enemies,” real, imaginary, or otherwise.

The issue for business or personal computer users is this:  ...

So in the last two years there have been over 400 retail companies, including many big national chains, that have fallen victim to the BackOff or other Point of sale (POS) malware exploits, revealing millions of credit card and customer records.  So how does this exploit work?

My friends at Calyptix Security sent me another article that should be interesting to anyone who is running ...

This article was written by guest blogger Richard Thompson.  Richard Thompson works for MilesTek which has been providing complete connectivity solutions since 1981. His goal is to provide relevant information to tech conversations across the Internet.  Richard discusses some common vulnerabilities in network switches that can be exploited by cyber-attackers.

Network switches are the hardworking hardware devices we rely on to connect computer networking devices. With so much emphasis put on developing software to combat attacks (such as ARP Spoofing), ...