ATECH MSP Blog

In May of 2021, Ireland’s Health Service Executive, which handles healthcare and social services to the Emerald Isle’s nearly five million residents, was the target of a massive ransomware attack. Even as businesses and municipalities from all over the globe have been dealing with this plight, we mention this because of the aftereffects of this situation. Today, we take a look at the situation and what can be learned from it. 

If a hacker were to find themselves on your network or within one of your accounts, would you be able to detect them and eliminate them? Today we want to share some of our best strategies for how you can identify the warning signs of a hacking attack, as well as how you should respond. This is particularly important for a workforce that is working remotely, so we hope you take these tips to heart.

Network security isn’t just for large, high-profile enterprises; even small businesses need to take it seriously. All businesses have something of value to hackers, and if you don’t believe this is the case for your organization, think again. All data is valuable to hackers, and you need to do everything in your power to protect it—especially against threats like Agent Tesla, the latest version of phishing malware designed to steal your data.

A recent surge of high-profile ransomware attacks strikes again with an assault on the world’s largest meat processor and distributor, JBS S.A. The cyberattack was so disruptive that the company was forced to suspend operations in both North America and Australia, leading to a considerable impact on the supply chain. Let’s take a deeper dive into what lessons can be learned from this situation.

It’s no secret that software often does not work as intended. Developers frequently discover bugs and patch them out. The same can be said for security vulnerabilities. Despite the importance of these updates, small businesses often fail to implement these patches and updates in a timely manner, a practice which can lead to more problems down the road.

We’re all familiar with the idea that pop culture has cultivated in our minds about computer hackers, but as it happens, this impression is just one of the many shapes that the modern hacker can take. This kind of closed-off view is dangerously shortsighted, so let’s take a few moments to dig into the kinds of hackers there are, in ascending order of the threat they pose to your business.

Contemporary movies are filled with high-stakes cybercrime, where a lovable criminal syndicate breaks into a company’s systems to help wreak havoc on the true villains of the film, all the while exposing the company’s dirty laundry. Naturally, this idea can be frightening for any business, whether or not they have any dirty laundry to air out—after all, nobody wants a ruined reputation—and is unfortunately less and less of a fantasy all the time.

As commonly happens with any disaster, COVID-19 has inspired no short supply of scams. While these scams initially focused upon the relief funds that were delivered to people to help sustain the suffering economy, the ongoing vaccine distribution efforts have given those behind these efforts a new means of attack.

Recently, a story broke in Florida that sounds like something out of a terse action film: a hacker managed to access a water treatment facility and subjected the Pinellas County water supply with increased levels of sodium hydroxide. While onsite operators were able to correct the issue right away and keep the public safe from danger, this event is the latest in a line of cyberattacks directed at public utilities. Let’s consider this unpleasant trend.

Browser extensions are nifty little programs that can be implemented into your web browser itself, adding onto its capabilities and utility… at least, that’s the concept. Unfortunately, these programs also give cybercriminals a means of secretly launching an attack. The security firm Avast recently identified 28 such third-party extensions that have been installed—according to the download numbers, at least—by about three million people on Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge combined.

As compared to the past few years, there have been considerably fewer successful data breaches in 2020. While this may sound like exclusively good news, there are a few reasons why this information should be taken with a grain of salt.

To effectively manage the risk that your business is under due to cybercriminals and their activities, it is important to acknowledge what attacks your business may soon have to deal with. Due to the increased accessibility of artificial intelligence and related processes, we predict that cybercrimes will likely use AI to their advantage in the very near future.

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a great number of people working from home. While this is good for the public health, it may unfortunately lead your employees toward a laxer view of cybersecurity. Cybercriminals are sure to take advantage of this if you aren’t careful, so it is important to be particularly aware of your cybersecurity right now.

It isn’t exactly news that businesses of all sizes need to be concerned about cyberthreats - especially since, as time passes, these threats have become more serious and insidious. Up until this point, there have been tried-and-true methods that businesses could leverage to stop these threats, but hackers are very clever when it comes to their attacks. What can a business do?

Working in conjunction with the Ponemon Institute, IBM Security completed a report tracking trends in 2018’s data breaches. As you might imagine, much of the data contained in this report could be seen as troubling to a business.

The dark web has a bad reputation - and for quite a few good reasons. However, like any tool, there is a lot of good that the dark web can be used for as well. Here, we’ll review what the dark web is, how it can be used (and abused), and what the landscape is like.

Habits are hard to break - but there are some habits that simply have to be broken if your business is going to be secure. Many of these habits may have been developed by your employees, which means that it is important that you recognize them.

Malware is a commonality in today’s computing environment, though businesses do everything in their power to avoid encountering it. Some people have difficulty identifying threats, which makes for a dangerous situation whenever they actually have to handle them. We’ve put together a malware guide that will help your employees identify the most common types of threats out there, as well as how to respond to them.

Hackers aren’t the only ones out there developing malware tools, but sometimes, they get their hands on some of the others. This is precisely what happened when Double Pulsar, a malware that the NSA has used in the past, was paired with a Chinese hacking tool and used to attack Hong Kong and Belgium in 2016.

Ransomware is still going strong, and now more than ever it’s important to emphasize the danger that it poses for your organization. Even municipalities and other high-profile targets are at risk of being taken down by ransomware. Since 2013, over 170 government systems at the county, city, or state levels have been attacked.