Category Archives: Consumer Alerts

Cybersecurity Services: Are you getting your money’s worth?

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are the biggest targets of cybercriminals, and they often don’t have the necessary budgets, people, processes, and products to protect themselves. Because of this, SMBs are increasingly turning their cybersecurity protection over to managed service providers (MSPs). 

Why we (still) need World Backup Day

      No Comments on Why we (still) need World Backup Day

More than 40 years after the invention of the personal computer, it is astounding that we still need World Backup Day. This year’s event, which takes place on March 31st, the day before April Fool’s Day, ‘is a day for people to learn about the increasing role of data in our lives and the importance of regular backups.’ Here’s the key takeaway: You need to regularly back up your data because the chances of losing some or all of that data are high, and getting higher.

A backup plan can save you from ransomware [infographic]

Names like Locky and CryptoLocker are familiar due to numerous news reports, but if you haven’t heard of the growing threat of ransomware, here’s a quick summary: Ransomware is a type of malware that locks you out of your devices by encrypting your files. In return for access with the decryption key, it demands a payment, typically in bitcoin. In many cases, victims of ransomware cannot recover their files, so a backup is essential.

‘Can you hear me?’ robocalls put consumers on alert [infographic]

I fell for it the first time I answered a call. A friendly female voice hesitated, then giggled the line, “Can you hear me?” After I answered, “Yes”, it took me a few seconds to realize I had been fooled. It wasn’t a silly girl with a bad connection calling me on behalf of Disney Vacations – I had just been targeted by a robocaller. By then it was too late.

9 out of 10 Americans value the data in their online accounts, yet don’t do much to protect it

Most of us have countless online accounts; and without even realizing it, we spread our personal information throughout the World Wide Web. We therefore wanted to find out how people not only value the information they store in their online accounts, b…

After the breach: Putting your cyber house in order

Today’s cybersecurity is good, with most prevention solutions having a 99.9% or higher detection rate for common malware, but once penetrated, identification is usually a case of too little, too late. The mean time to identify (MTTI) a data breach was 201 days, and a mean time to contain (MTTC) was 70 days. In up to 70% of cases, data breaches were detected by third parties.

Your PC applications are (probably) out-of-date

What do millions of desktop and laptop users have in common? I’ll give you a hint: You are busy with some activity on your laptop and a message pops up informing you that one of your software programs or tools needs updating. If you are like most people, you hit the ‘Remind Me Later’ option, and keep doing what you’re doing. Later often never comes. Does that sound familiar?