07.17.2020
Not a great week for Cybersecurity
This week has been a doozy, as the old saying goes. From a disturbing Twitter hack to a serious vulnerability with Microsoft's DNS Server to nation-state hacking against organizations engaged in finding a vaccine for COVID-19, there's been a flurry of malicious activity. If you are still questioning whether or not your organization is at risk, my advice is to assume that you are. To not could be catastrophic. In the case of the Twitter hack, an employee was the victim of a targeted phishing attack that got them to divulge credentials allowing the hacker into backend administrative systems. Once in, the hacker sent out tweets under the accounts of several public figures. The tweets in question involved a cryptocurrency scheme.
The vulnerability in Microsoft's DNS role on Windows Server could allow a hacker to take control of systems and then attack other connected systems from there. This issue was so serious that it generated an emergency alert from the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to immediately patch impacted systems.
All three of these incidents represent different ways that cybersecurity threats impact us all. It's imperative that you continually reevaluate your cybersecurity posture. Talk with your IT department or partner and be sure you are doing everything that you can to help protect your business. We are available to help, call 714-660-1811.
First and foremost, what is a DDoS attack? DDoS stands for Distributed Denial of Service. Simply stated, this type of attack floods a given service with massive amounts of traffic from distributed sources making the service unavailable and the source difficult to pin down. As an example, if a hacker or hacker group wants to make a given web site unavailable, they can flood that site with so many requests that the site can't keep up. As a result, the site becomes unavailable to people who are legitimately trying to use it.
Our clients on our managed services have never seen a message like this screen shot below, however we received a call from a prospect in trouble. Ransomware will lock your computer and encrypt ALL of your files. Why? They want you to pay a ransom to decrypt your files. I'm sure you've heard on the news hospitals and numerous small/medium businesses have simply PAID the ransom just to keep operating. Most you do not hear about because of the bad PR this can cause for businesses.
Here's a few tips if you happen to be a victim of ransomware or cryptoware virus infection. Quickest thing to do is unplug your network cable from the computer or wall, do this immediately so the virus can not infect the rest of your network, computers, servers, etc.
Call us, we can assist in clean up, restoration, and best practice proactive maintenance to avoid these business crippling situations.
If you have your wifi router stuck in the telephone closet far away from where you need coverage, or if you added a big box store wireless network extender, both are likely problematic. Upgrade your wifi with a business grade wifi access point. We install the units in the area you need them the most, they look like a ceiling mounted smoke detector. If you need additional coverage additional access points can be installed, however in most offices 1 unit covers around 3K sq. ft of open space.
These units are faster, provider long range coverage and are much more secure then consumer grade wifi access points.
Our favorite feature is the ability to create multiple wifi SSID's. Example being you can have 1 for internal "smart" devices, another for employee access and another for "guest" access. With guest access we remove the ability to reach other devices on your network for security reasons. For the employee access, the password can be updated/changed where there is staffing changes, while leaving the internal (smart or IoT) devices unchanged.
The performance is top notch, especially if you are consistently rebooting your D-Link wifi unit from Staples. Don't open your business network to the flaws of consumer grade wifi equipment.
07.31.2018
Frightening Facts of Email Attacks
Most businesses, like yours, run on email. From internal communications to customer service. Unfortunately, this makes email an effective tool for cyber criminals. Here are some facts on why email security matters.
Email is popular for Hackers - 66% of malware is delivered via email.
SMB (Small/Medium Businesses) are targets too! 50% of small and medium businesses have experienced at least one cyber breach.
SMB's pay a high price. $879k was the average value lost during a cyber breach.
Attacks happen to everyone. 85% of organizations have been victims of a phishing attack.
Don’t be taken advantage of by cyber-criminals. Let Newport Solutions cyber-defense and risk management systems protect you from costly ransomware attacks.
If you are looking for help with these services we can assist:
IT Support
Virus Removal
Data Backup Services
WiFi Setup
Network cabling installation
VoIP for small businessesIT SUPPORT orange county ca
If you are looking for the best IT support company in Orange County, CA including Newport Beach, Costa Mesa, Fountain Valley, Orange, Anaheim, Brea, Irvine, Tustin, Santa Ana consider Newport Solutions, Inc. your fastest choice. Affordable IT support for your SMB (small/medium business). Ask about our data backup solutions.
Contact us at 714-660-1811
07.20.2018
Protect Key Documents at a Fraction of the Cost – data backup solutions, orange county, ca
Many businesses only back up critical servers in order to keep costs low. But why risk the security of valuable data contained in documents saved on workstations and potentially compromise your client relationships? SolarWinds Backup Documents delivers the ability to manage backup and recovery for all business documents—designed to prevent downtime from natural disasters, hardware failures, accidental deletions, ransomware, and user error. Provide an extra layer of security for your customers by protecting their critical business documents simply and affordably. Contact our office for a cost savings quote 714-660-18111
07.16.2018
Safeguard your users with Web Protection
Web threats have increased dramatically in recent years. From phishing sites to lost passwords and ransomware / malware downloads, the risk of a security breach has never been greater. Newport Solutions includes the best-in-class Web Protection service that will keep your users safe and productive. It complements traditional antivirus engines and firewalls by letting you define your own content-filtering policies, website blacklists, time- and content-based browsing policies, and much more. Keep you network Safe. Threat protection – Protect against malware, phishing, adware, botnets and spam. • Bandwidth monitoring – Monitor daily usage with automated bandwidth checks and alerts. • Access controls – Keep users away from sites that could cause a data breach or legal liability. Improve user productivity and gain complete control of your network.
The Department of Homeland Security is aware of Russian based threat actors targeting network infrastructure devices.
The campaign launched Monday is designed to encourage businesses and individuals to protect their systems including routers, switches and firewalls through changing passwords and configuring their devices to prevent them from being hijacked.
Routers have long been known to be vulnerable to hijacking. Multiple studies have found that companies often install routers with the default passwords, or weak passwords such as 1-2-3-4, making them childs play to break into.
Assistant secretary for cybersecurity at the Department of Homeland Security was quoted: “This is a global threat, once you own the router, you own the traffic that is traversing the router. It is fairly widespread and can cover everything from large enterprises to small home offices.”
Managed NSI clients should not worry as we have already updated routers to complex credentials. However if you are unsure of your firewall status please reach out to us.
Source: https://www.usatoday.com/
We recently had a client have their cable provider drop connection for a few hours one day. It wasn't the first time. Depending on many circumstances, it can be common problem that internet goes down, which can be a major cost of downtime for any business, especially one that runs their VoIP phones and has cloud servers/services. Although most national cable providers offer a business-class internet service, most of them are on their residential network. Hence the affordable price tag, compared to a carrier class internet connection like a T1 which come with a (SLA) Service level agreement. This means guaranteed uptime, and we can talk about at another time. A simple approach to having uptime, especially when your main internet connection can go offline at the worst unexpected time, is to setup a 2nd internet connection. This does not mean if you have a cable connection through Spectrum to purchase a 2nd internet from Spectrum, because if there is an outage in the area I can certainly bet it will affect both connections. Instead look for a 2nd provider from the phone company for example, like a simple DSL internet connection for backup. This will be your backup connection and sometime to failover to. It would be a hassle to disconnect your main connection and plug in a 2nd internet connection. Instead their are main routers that accept 2 internet connections, specifically known as dual WAN. For this client a PepLink balance 20 fit the bill, and was simple to setup. The router has some smarts and uses both active connections called "load balancing". This is better than failover as sometimes your primary connection will be degraded, not completely offline and the router will NOT know to failover automatically. Whereas load balancing
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