Network Services Group

Think twice about selling or donating a Mac

Posted on Tuesday March 05, 2019 | security, privacy, macos, mac, itunes, imessage, icloud, disk utility, apple id, apple

Today's computer users often forget or are unaware of how much sensitive information their devices store. The ability to save passwords, credit card numbers, and personal messages is undeniably convenient, but it's also a huge liability. If you're thinking about getting rid of your Mac, make sure to follow these steps first.

Why you need managed services in healthcare

Posted on Monday March 04, 2019 | technology, staffing, response times, proactive, managed services, healthcare it, business continuity

Cybercriminals are increasingly targeting the healthcare industry for its perceived vulnerability. Nowadays, more and more hospitals are realizing that overall patient care not only involves medical attention, but also entails securing patient data. For many healthcare organizations, it's crucial to work with the right managed services provider (MSP) to ensure transactions are seamless and patient data is constantly protected.

Qbot Malware Resurfaces In New Attack Against Businesses

Posted on Saturday March 02, 2019

itwbennett writes: Security researchers at Varonis have uncovered a new attack using a new version of the venerable Qbot malware that "creates scheduled tasks and adds entries to the system registry to achieve persistence," writes Lucian Constantin, reporting on the attack for CSO. "The malware then starts recording all keystrokes typed by users, steals credentials and authentication cookies saved inside browsers, and injects malicious code into other processes to search for and steal financial-related text strings." The researchers "found logs showing 2,726 unique victim IP addresses," writes Constantin, but because "computers inside an organization typically access the internet through a shared IP address, the researchers believe the number of individually infected systems to be much larger." The malware first appeared in 2009 and was found to be uploading 2GB of stolen confidential information to its FTP servers each week by April 2010 from private and public sector computers, including 1,100 on the NHS network in the UK. A modified version of the malware resurfaced in April 2016 that was believed to have infected more than 54,000 PCs in thousands of organizations around the world. As Varonis now reports, Qbot is making yet another comeback.

How A Lobbying Firm May Have Submitted Fake FCC Comments

Posted on Saturday March 02, 2019 | Government, Politics, The Internet

Remember when dozens of Americans said their names were used for fake comments sent to America's FCC opposing net neutrality? Now Gizmodo's taken a hard look at their past interviews with Dan Germain, the CTO of a company that helps lobbyists construct digital "grassroots" campaigns -- and at the conservative nonprofit Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF). Attempting to confirm or disprove the alleged link between CQ and CFIF, Gizmodo initiated its own review of the API data logs last week, focusing on comments from dozens of people who claim they were impersonated online.... [T]imestamps contained in the API logs reveal an unmistakable correlation between the use of CQ's API key and numerous identical comments containing CFIF's text... By comparing the API logs to comment data that the FCC had already made publicly available, Gizmodo found more than a dozen comments containing CFIF's boilerplate language... In each successful case, the comments were received by the FCC while CQ's API key was in use, with the logs reflecting deviations in the timestamps roughly equivalent to the blink of an eye... Prior to CQ becoming a subject of interest in an ongoing criminal investigation, Germain explained at length that his company had created a platform specifically to direct comments to the FCC and that it had been operational since at least 2016.... Whereas many of the groups responsible for uploading millions of comments requested only one or two API keys, logs show that CQ, over a period of several months, requested no fewer than 114. The article notes that identical comments using language from CFIF "are now suspected of having been uploaded using CQ' software" -- and that they were submitted to the FCC "several hundred thousand times."

How to minimize Wi-Fi hiccups

Posted on Friday March 01, 2019 | internet connection, router, office wi fi, wi fi fixes, wi fi issues, wi fi speed

Today, you simply can't survive without a Wi-Fi connection. Businesses need fast, secure, and reliable internet to get work done and satisfy customers. But what about when you experience Wi-Fi issues? These fixes ought to do the trick!

Why is HTTPS important?

Posted on Thursday February 28, 2019 | web browsing, security, phishing, https everywhere, https, http, firefox, encryption, chrome

Many internet users still do not understand what the padlock icon in their web browser's address bar is for. It represents HTTPS, a security feature that authenticates websites and protects the information users submit to them. This is an important feature that lets users know whether the site they are visiting is secure or not.