Security – Page 3

Equifax Information Breach – Are You Affected?

September 18, 2017 by William Chriscoe

We are highly recommending that all our clients go to the following website to verify whether or not they have been impacted by the Equifax breach that made national news last week. If you have been affected, Equifax will provide you with a year of free credit monitoring. Be sure and read the fine print of the agreement. We have been told accepting the agreement prevents you from joining any future class action lawsuits. Make the right choice for yourself. Click here to see if you have been affected.

If you have, there are three options available to you:

1- Equifax will give you the one year of credit monitoring, but there may be strings.

2- You can call all three credit bureaus and do a credit watch. It’s free, and requires companies to verify the request for credit is legitimate. The downside is crooks would just bypass this.

3- You can call all three credit bureaus and do a credit freeze. It’s $10 per bureau, but your credit is locked down. The downside it will be $30 a pop if you ever need new credit.

32-Bit CCleaner Compromised By Hackers

September 18, 2017 by William Chriscoe

A popular windows operating system cleaner, CCleaner, has had the 32 bit version compromised by hackers. Luckily the majority of folks now have 64 bit operating systems. If you aren’t sure if you are affected, you can just download the latest version, and run your anti-virus and/or Malwarebytes scan(s) to verify your system is clean. More details about this can be found here.

Sans Ouch! Newsletter – Password Managers

September 6, 2017 by William Chriscoe

One of the biggest complaints I hear from clients is the necessity for long and complicated passwords required by websites to protect their accounts and personal information. Once you need passwords for more than two or three websites, people have a hard time keeping them straight in their heads without committing them to paper, or saving them as a file somewhere on your computer. Another issue is that password that you only use in case of an emergency, for example an email password in Outlook or Thunderbird. A solution to this issue is to use a password manager. This Sans Ouch! newsletter gives you great information on the basics or password manager programs. It pays to do your research and choose the program that works best for you. I personally use and recommend LastPass. It has both free and paid versions, and is easy to learn. If you need any help in setting up a password manager, please give us a call.

Scambusters: Can You Trust Your Facebook Friends?

June 14, 2017 by William Chriscoe

Facebook scams are at an all time high. I know I usually get at least one friend request from someone pretending to be one of my established Facebook friends every week. This excellent article from Scambusters gives you plenty of information on how not to become a victim, and how to lessen the chance someone would ever want to spoof your Facebook account by hiding your friends list from everyone but yourself. I highly recommend you implement that recommendation immediately.

Sans Ouch! Newsletter – Lessons From WannaCry (Latest Ransomware Attack)

June 12, 2017 by William Chriscoe

The latest Ouch! newsletter has great information regarding the recent WannaCry ransomware attack, and how to make sure you are as prepared as possible to not be a victim of this, or any of the next generation variants that will eventually show up. Unfortunately, the “bad guys” are making too much money to stop.

Cyberattacks Are Here to Stay…Unfortunately

May 15, 2017 by William Chriscoe

You have been hearing about the scary cyberattack causing all types of problems on a global scale in the news. The good news is if you are using a currently supported operating system (Windows 7 or higher) you are protected. If you use Malwarebytes Premium you would have been protected regardless of whether or not your operating system was still supported. Companies and individuals running unsupported or unpatched operating systems are the real targets of these crooks. Microsoft in an unprecedented move, even released a patch for XP and Vista operating systems to stem the ransomware’s impact. I’m afraid it’s going to get worse before it gets better. Remember: keep your operating system updated. If you are not already using Malwarebytes Premium, now may be the time to start. This is just the beginning of the new norm. Please contact us if you have any questions about your security status/risk.

Sans Ouch! Newsletter – Securing Today’s Online Kids

May 3, 2017 by William Chriscoe

The latest Ouch! newsletter has great information regarding how to help children be safe and secure online. Good communication and education are the keys to achieving this goal.

WordPress Websites Are Under Attack; Make Sure You Aren’t Part of the Problem

April 18, 2017 by William Chriscoe

Unpatched home routers are being used to attack WordPress websites across the Internet. Wordfence, a WordPress website security company, has documented the problem in detail, and developed a simple tool to test your home router to see if it’s vulnerable. It contains detailed information on how to interpret the results. The main thing to keep in mind is that if the router is owned by your Internet Service Provider (ISP), you will probably have to contact them. If you own your own router, you will need to deal with any issues discovered. As always, if you need help with this or any other issue, we are here to help.

Your Privacy On The Internet

April 5, 2017 by William Chriscoe

There has been a lot in the news recently about Congress repealing privacy laws that will allow Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to sell their subscriber’s usage data to interested third parties. The first thing to know is that the laws that have been repealed, were actually never enacted! We the people, are in the same boat we were in before the repeal made the news. I think we can all agree that any loss of privacy is a step in the wrong direction, and something that we all need to try and hold our elected representatives accountable for.

The good news is that there is no need to go subscribe to a Virtual Private Network (VPN) service, at least not at this time. The data ISPs collect is not broken down to the individual level. It’s very broad and generic. For example, they are not selling the fact that Bill was on msn.com at 10 am on Monday morning, however the fact that 20% of NC internet users access msn.com daily is data that advertisers will pay good money to find out. Continue accessing the Internet with confidence, at least for now.

Sans Ouch! Newsletter – Passwords/Passphrases

April 5, 2017 by William Chriscoe

The latest Ouch! newsletter has great information regarding how to create complex passwords/passphrases that are easily remembered and hard for crooks to hack. Short or “normal word”passwords are typically the weakest link in account security. Following the recommendations in this article will help your accounts safe.