In today’s digital landscape, no business is safe from cyber threats. Join our summit to learn how to protect your company from devastating cyberattacks.
In this informative session, you’ll learn:
This event is ideal for business owners, IT professionals, and security managers who are dedicated to protecting their company’s data and reputation.
Cyberattacks are becoming increasingly more prominent. You might think that your data isn’t valuable – We will help you learn why that thinking may change. Empower yourself with the knowledge and tools to protect your most valuable asset – your company data!
Don’t wait until it’s too late. Register now to secure your spot at the Cybersecurity Awareness Summit and protect your business from cyber threats!
The step-by-step incident response playbook that could save your business millions
In this comprehensive 60-minute webinar, we’ll move beyond theory to provide you with actionable, real-world strategies for responding to and recovering from cyber attacks. Whether you’re updating an existing incident response plan or building one from scratch, you’ll leave with practical tools and templates you can implement immediately.
Agenda
Who Should Attend
In today’s digital landscape, no business is safe from cyber threats. Join our summit to learn how to protect your company from devastating cyberattacks.
In this informative session, you’ll learn:
This event is ideal for business owners, IT professionals, and security managers who are dedicated to protecting their company’s data and reputation.
Cyberattacks are becoming increasingly more prominent. You might think that your data isn’t valuable – We will help you learn why that thinking may change. Empower yourself with the knowledge and tools to protect your most valuable asset – your company data!
Don’t wait until it’s too late. Register now to secure your spot at the Cybersecurity Awareness Summit and protect your business from cyber threats!
It’s been a year or more with many changes in the way we work. Reliance on technology has come to the forefront as we move to permanent remote work or a hybrid setup with part time in the office and part time at home. Cloud computing provides cyber threat protection and allows people to access the technology that they need to perform their jobs. But handing over the bulk of your IT to a Cloud Services Provider does not absolve you from security threats.
Cyber security concerns grow greater all the time and unless people and companies remain diligent, it can be easy to find yourself the victim of a harmful attack. Below, I’ve listed some ways to educate and thus protect your workforce to enable them to keep themselves and your company data safe.
Firstly, you should provide employees with education opportunities, so they know how to recognize suspicious emails. Whether you’re sending out emails about potential threats or providing courses on best practices, teaching your workforce to be diligent is an excellent first step.
Phishing emails are designed to look like they come from a reputable company or person. These are designed to get you to click – so they tell a story to grab your attention. Whether it’s offering you something for free or telling you there’s been suspicious activity on your account, here are some ways to recognize whether an email is real or just a phishing attempt.
1: Does the sender know your name or is it using a generic greeting? (Hi Bill vs. Dear Customer)
2: Does the email domain match the company exactly? (costco.com vs. costcoenterprisesinc.com)
3: Is the subject line promising something unrealistic? (We have added $18,697 to your account!)
Aside from learning what emails are safe to click on and which ones are not, it’s also good to have some cyber threat protection technology measures in place. These tools can prevent phishing attempts from being successful, but these additional resources on cyber security may also be helpful.
1: Protect your business and home with a secure internet connection. A Virtual Private Network (VPN) creates a more secure connection.
1: Use anti-virus solutions, malware, and firewalls to block suspicious emails from getting through to begin with.
2: Use multi-factor authentication that prevents threats from accessing your data by only guessing your password.
3: A password management tool can help you track and create safe passwords.
The good news is you don’t have to figure these details out by yourself. We suggest becoming partners with a technology solutions provider that you trust. Such a partnership can bring immense value to your company through security best practices and suggestions on the best tools to use to protect your company information. The even better news is that Aktion Associates partners with businesses like yours to provide just this type of support. We have an entire team of cyber security experts. Aktion can also recommend and implement the cyber threat protection tools that will protect you from harmful cyber threats.
In all versions of Windows since the release of Windows Vista, one of the key features the Windows Start Menu supports is a quick search. You can try this by clicking on the start button and start typing. Typing when the Start Menu UI is active will change the screen to a search type screen. This is a great feature if you’re not sure where a program or document is located on your PC. While not an obvious UI element, understanding you can start typing while the Start Menu is active is a very handy feature to quickly find things.
We have seen many instances where users complain the search function cannot find anything. Search UI opens up, but searching does not find anything. We’ve seen this occur on Windows 10 workstations and Windows Server 2016 systems, but not necessarily on all systems. Additionally, we have seen a few isolated instances where at first the keyboard didn’t seem to work when logging into Office 365 with Modern Authentication enabled.
The core issue is CTFMON is not running. You can test this quickly by going to Run… on the Start Menu and starting up CTFMON manually. At this point, test to see if this clears up the Search issue. If so, this will stay running until you next reboot your system.
For a permanent fix, you will want to start Windows Task Scheduler and check to ensure the MsCtfMonitor is set to run automatically for any user who logs on. Launch the Task Scheduler application which is built into Windows and expand the tree on the left under Microsoft –> Windows –> TextServicesFramework. Check the task MsCtfMonitor to ensure it is not disabled. It should be set to Ready as the example below shows.
Most of us are by now aware that the coronavirus (and the associated disease which frequently results from infection, COVID-19) has had major impacts within the IT supply chain. This has resulted in shortages in IT equipment from nearly all major vendors, and across all classes of devices. Savvy business owners are planning for the lack of general availability by ordering what’s in stock when it’s in stock to keep business processes from breaking down.
But not all businesses have turned their attention to the human impacts of a far-reaching epidemic. Widespread concern for safety will almost certainly lead to a much greater demand for remote working capabilities, and IT providers may struggle to keep up. In order to prepare for the possibility that the majority of office employees will follow government recommendations to stay home to help, smart IT leaders are taking the following steps:
1. Increasing bandwidth, remote connectivity infrastructure, and security to help mitigate the increased risk and demand of a higher percentage of remote workers
2. Ensuring that employees understand the methods and capabilities of remote access to the business environment
3. Developing remote user policies and guidelines to ensure that business continues to be conducted on secure, managed endpoints or through zero-trust interfaces
4. Authoring and disseminating response plans and safe practices for reducing risk of spread
A few resources which can potentially be of use as you plan your own response are listed below:
How HR leaders are preparing for the Coronavirus
Checkout Steve Roger’s blog addressing the challenges hardware manufacturers face: Is The Coronavirus Affecting Lenovo Hardware Availability?
Forbes magazine projects that cyber-crime costs will reach $2 Trillion by 2019. That is up from $400-$500 billion in 2015, a quadrupling.
Turn on the news. Frequently, you will hear or read about a new major cybersecurity attack. Not surprisingly, these attacks have a devastating impact on a major business or government entity. Here are a few examples:
Over the coming weeks, I’ll be writing about the 12 Pillars of Cybersecurity. What are the 12 pillars, you might ask? In the past, most companies protected their internal networks with anti-virus software. Then, they added a firewall as they connected their companies to the internet. Those were and are the first two pillars of protection against cybersecurity threats. Later, as businesses implemented e-mail, cyber criminals discovered spam. As a result, anti-spam software was deployed. That is the third pillar.
The problem is that there is too much money to be made by cybercriminals. Consequently, they evolve more sophisticated ways to attack your network to steal your identity and your money. To sum it up, those three pillars are no longer enough to protect your business from a cyber-attack. Aktion believes that to truly protect your company, you need to implement a ‘defense in depth’ strategy. Use the 12 Pillars of Cybersecurity to guide your strategy.
[Stay Tuned-More to Come on Each of the 12 Pillars]
For more information on cybersecurity, try these links:
