If Time Warner Cable and Comcast Can Get Hacked, Then We All Can

The number of high-profile hacks that have occurred over the past several years continues to climb, and it won’t let up anytime soon. Now, another incident involving Time Warner Cable, a large ISP in the United States, shows that even large companies that deal with sensitive information aren’t invincible from data breaches.

The breach, which happened on January 7, 2016, is estimated to have leaked up to 320,000 Time Warner Cable customers’ email addresses and passwords. Time Warner Cable was informed of the data breach by the FBI, and the cable company proceeded to explain the situation to their customers through both email and direct mail. Users were advised to change their passwords for good measure, but Time Warner Cable continues to deny that their systems exhibited signs of a data breach.

This isn’t the first time that a major ISP has had information breached or stolen by scammers. In November 2015, Comcast dealt with a breach of nearly 200,000 customer credentials, which were found on the black market. This prompted Comcast to reset the passwords. Even though this incident was blamed on phishing attacks that suggested users should hand over their credentials, what happened with Time Warner Cable is up for debate.

Time Warner Cable is under the assumption that the theft was potentially caused by phishing attempts directed at the company, or the result of a data breach of other companies that store Time Warner Cable’s customer information. Regardless of why or how the data was stolen, the fact remains that Time Warner Cable has lost face with their clientele--something that every business owner needs to take into account when dealing with sensitive client credentials.

It ultimately falls on your shoulders to ensure that your business doesn’t face a similar catastrophe, in which your clients’ personal information is leaked or stolen. The most dangerous part of losing track of your organization’s data is the fact that it can lead to immense financial issues. Businesses that fail to recover their data following a critical data loss incident typically go out of business within one year following the incident. Add in the compliance fines, and you have a situation that can quickly escalate beyond your control, breaking your budget and grinding operations to a halt. This is why it’s so effective to prevent breaches from happening in the first place.

Time Warner Cable suggested that their clients change their passwords, which is actually sound advice, regardless of whether or not you’ve been hacked. If you’re still using default passwords, or haven’t changed yours in several months, you could stand to change your password to something more secure. Your passwords should be long and complex, utilizing several different upper and lower-case letters, numbers, and symbols. This makes it much harder for a hacker to crack your account through brute force.

Password managers are great tools to help you keep track of complex passwords, without the pain of remembering different strings of characters for each of your accounts. A password manager stores all of your company’s credentials in a secure location, and calls them only when needed. This makes a password manager an invaluable tool for maximizing your password security.

For more information, give us a call at (732) 360-2999.

3 Technologies That Make it Totally Possible to Trash Your Printer

Businesses are trying to cut costs wherever possible, but the cost of printing isn’t always the most obvious first choice. Businesses consume exorbitant amounts of paper and ink every year, and these resources cost a significant amount of money that could be better spent elsewhere. Thankfully, there are a ton of great solutions that can virtually eliminate the costs of unnecessary printing.

Eliminating the amount of printing your business does accomplishes the following goals:

• You use less paper, reducing your environmental footprint.
• You spend less capital on paper, ink, and toner.
• You reduce the amount of clutter in your office.

There are two technologies that have made storing files vastly easier, without increasing the cost of printing. Combined, your files can be stored digitally in an organized manner, allowing you to keep your office clean and tidy.

The PDF 
One of the best technologies that keep your office clutter-free is the PDF. Called the Portable Document Format, the PDF does exactly that; it’s a file format that lets users view documents in an electronic environment. The great thing about a PDF file is that it lets you view documents without the need for certain application software or hardware, letting you view the document as-is. Since a PDF is a digital document, they can be stored and filed away on a computer or network, but read on virtually any type of device. This eliminates the need to print physical documents out, reducing the amount of resources you expend on them.

Digital Signatures
There are several occasions when a business might need to print out a document that must be signed, like a contract or maybe even a receipt. In this case, it often can’t be avoided that a physical document is needed; you can’t “sign” a digital document, right? Wrong. Instead of asking the document’s recipient to print out the document, sign it, and fax it back to you, digital signatures can be completed in the click of a button. With digital signing solutions, users can send and receive signed documents, all without unnecessarily printing them out. As you can imagine, this saves even more space in your business’s filing system, and helps you get more prompt responses from the signee.

Electronic Record Filing
An electronic record filing system is the cornerstone of keeping your business free of physical filing storage. In the past, you might have had to deal with filing cabinets filled with all kinds of documents, like employee files, vendor and customer agreements, etc. These filing cabinets can quickly grow too large to maintain and are difficult to organize. If your records are stored electronically, you don’t have to worry about running out of space, and your files are stored in an easy-to-access library or interface. Plus, they can be backed up.

Net It On can help your business dodge unnecessary printing costs by equipping your organization with a quality document management solution. To learn more, give us a call at (732) 360-2999.

Tip of the Week: Know What Email Spoofing is So You Don’t Get Taken

Have you ever been the target of an email spoofer? This can be a difficult question to answer, especially if you don’t know what you’re looking for. Email spoofing can appear to be from legitimate sources, but the most important indicator is if the message looks like spam or fishy in general. If you ever receive a message like this, you might wonder why your spam filter didn’t catch such an obvious trap.

Email spoofing is when a hacker sends you a message that’s disguised as someone else, particularly someone you know or are associated with. This doesn’t necessarily mean that your contact has been hacked (though it could be possible), but it’s still a problem on your end. It’s up to you to identify and delete messages before you inevitably fall for one of these phishing scams. The only way to eliminate the threat of hackers is to take them seriously, and approach scams in an educated and informed manner.

How Email Spoofing Works
Email spoofing is a simple process that sounds like a lot of work, but the reality is that anyone with the proper tools can pull it off. All a spoofer needs is access to what’s called a Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) server, and an email software. SMTP servers are fairly simple to find for free, which makes it easy to spoof names. The one on the receiving end will still see the true email address, but it will appear to be from the address or name that the spoofer enters.

Despite how easy it is to attempt an email spoofing campaign, there are still plenty of checks available that make it more challenging to pull off these days. The most notable check is called Sender Policy Framework (SPF), which takes the IP address of the sending server and then compares it to the SPF record of the appropriate domain. If the two don’t match, the receiving server denies the message. The Huffington Post describes how this works using the following example:

Let's say someone tried to spoof Bill Gates (billgates@microsoft.com): They would send an email on his behalf > the recipient server would then talk back to microsoft.com and say "Hey, I have an email that is coming from 123.123.123.123 stating that it was sent from billgates@microsoft.com."; > microsoft.com would then tell the recipient server, "No, sorry, it should be coming from 111.111.111.111." and the message would never get delivered.

What You Can Do Against Spoofing
Email spoofing, while easy to pull off, often can’t make its way through modern email solutions like Gmail and Outlook. Even if it does make it through a spam filter, spoofed messages can still be somewhat tricky to identify at times. In particular, a spoofer who has researched their target, and who they’re posing as (i.e., “phishing”), can represent a significant risk. What you want to do is look at the email address that sent the message. If it’s different from the email address you have on file, you know it’s a spoofer.

Another obvious way to spot a spoofer is if they make absolutely no attempt to disguise themselves, or if they pose as an institution that you regularly attend. If the message holds any suspicious links or attachments, make sure that you don’t click on them. Chances are that you could be walking right into a phishing scam. If the message asks you to confirm your credentials, don’t do as they ask. Organizations like banks or government agencies will never ask you to confirm information through email. Never log into a website using the links provided in an email unless you’re absolutely positive it’s not a spoofer. Instead, try to navigate to the website through your web browser using their normal URL.

One of the best ways to protect your business from email spoofing is to use an enterprise-level spam blocking solution, like the one Net It On offers. By utilizing such a powerful security tool, you can prevent most of your spam from even hitting your inbox, which means you don’t have to deal with potentially malicious or wasteful messages. To learn more about how you can fight against spoofing and other types of online threats, give Net It On a call at (732) 360-2999.

It’s Time to Move On: Microsoft Pulls the Plug on Internet Explorer 8, 9, and 10

If you’re still using Windows 8 (instead of the much improved 8.1), we’ve got bad news for you. Microsoft has ceased offering patches and security updates for the Windows 8 operating system, which means that if you want to be using the most secure and up-to-date operating system, you should make the switch to Windows 8.1 or Windows 10.

On January 12th, 2016, Microsoft stopped supporting both Windows 8 and older versions of Internet Explorer (8, 9, and 10). Basically, this means that businesses continuing to use this software will no longer receive patches or security updates, which are critical for ensuring maximum network security and minimal data risk. Keep in mind that this doesn’t mean that the software will disappear from your workstations. All that the end-of-life announcement means is that they won’t be updated anymore, turning the unsupported products into “use at your own risk” gambles.

For those familiar with Microsoft’s product support policies, the end of life for Windows 8 might sound out of character for a Windows operating system. For example, Windows 7, which was released over six years ago in 2009, won’t reach its official end of support date until 2020. In comparison, Windows 8 was released in 2012 and only lasted a few solid years. Why?

Microsoft’s choice to stop supporting Windows 8 makes complete sense, especially considering how unpopular the operating system is (not to mention how easy it is for users to upgrade to 8.1). According to NetworkWorld, a study by NetMarketShare puts Windows 8 global use at around 2.76 percent, while 8.1 sits at over 10 percent. As a free update that fixed many of the common complaints that consumers had about Windows 8, Windows 8.1 doesn’t give Microsoft much of a reason to continue supporting Windows 8.

Another huge reason that Microsoft likely cut the cord on Windows 8 so prematurely is due to their efforts to push Windows 10, their latest operating system. Users of Windows 7 and onward have no-doubt been hassled by Windows 10 upgrade notifications, which continue to grow more irritating over time. Despite Microsoft’s continued heckling, Windows 10 is a great operating system that’s more than capable of replacing Windows 8. Before upgrading, however, it’s important to consult a professional technician to ensure that your company’s legacy software will be compatible with your new operating system.

Using outdated operating systems can put your business at risk, especially if these operating systems are no longer supported by their creators. An operating system that doesn’t receive regular patches and security updates becomes a liability. Hackers are always coming up with new ways to exploit vulnerabilities and steal information, so it’s only a matter of time before they come up with ways to compromise Windows 8.

The primary problem with continually updating your business’s hardware and software solutions is that it can ultimately be both costly and time-consuming. For a small or medium-sized business, unexpected expenses can be crippling and budget-breaking. In some cases, legacy applications could be completely incompatible with more recent operating systems, forcing you to invest heavily in new technology solutions. This is why it’s always a best practice to clarify with qualified tech professionals that your upgrade policy won’t completely derail your operations.

To make sure that your technology systems are always up to date and secure, Net It On offers a remote management and maintenance solution that lets us deploy patches and security updates as needed. For more information, give us a call at (732) 360-2999.

Luging at Laurita Ice Sculpture Fest!

Laurita Ice Sculpture Festival

Hackers Take the Law Into Their Own Hands, Is This a Good Thing?

In 2015, we saw countless hacking attacks against major corporations, from health insurance providers like Blue Cross Blue Shield and Anthem, to government offices, like the United States Office of Personnel. Due to the stigma associated with hacking, we often forget that there are a lot of hackers out there who try to use their skills for good--or, at least, less awful purposes.

Vigilantism is a frowned-upon and dangerous practice. Even though it’s been immortalized and glorified by various superheroes, like Batman and the Green Arrow, it’s a slap in the face to the laws that govern the land. However, there are situations where it takes criminals to defeat criminals. Hackers who use their skills to take down other criminals might seem admirable, but it’s important to consider why society may benefit from their actions.

Authorities are having a hard time protecting people from the surge of questionable online activity, and the fact that the world has let the Internet become a place where the message of hatred, bigotry, and fear-mongering can reach the world’s population in unprecedented ways. On the other hand, whether or not the actions of hacktivists like Anonymous are right is up for debate. While they might not be attacking users for the sake of attacking them, they’re still performing illegal activity. This fact can’t be ignored. However, if their cyber attacks on terrorist groups and other dangerous entities can help to make the world a safer, less hate-filled place, we think that’s something that even the authorities can agree with.

Whether or not your business is the target of vigilante hacking groups like Anonymous might not be apparent, but we can assure you that there are plenty of bad hackers out there who would do anything to get ahold of your business’s private and sensitive information. Regardless of what type of hacker is targeting you, you need to be prepared with a Unified Threat Management (UTM) solution designed to keep your business safe from all manners of threats. A UTM is a comprehensive security tool that combines enterprise-level firewalls and antivirus solutions with preventative measures, like spam-blocking and content-filtering solutions. The goal of a UTM is to limit your organization’s exposure to online threats as much as possible, reducing your chances of being targeted.

It should be mentioned, though, that no solution is perfect. Just like the world will always contain cruel and unusual entities, the Internet will spawn some vile threat that may one day seep between the cracks of your defenses. When that time comes, at least you’ll be ready.

What are your thoughts on the increased hacktivist activity? Do you think that what they’re doing is right, or should they be punished for breaking the law? Let us know in the comments. If you’d like any more information about UTMs and other security solutions, reach out to us at (732) 360-2999.