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August 22, 2016 by Vertical Axion
In late 2016 or early 2017, Bluetooth 5.0 will be released, and by all indications, this will be the version of the technology we’ve all been waiting for. It’s about to take a giant leap forward in terms of functionality. At present, Bluetooth’s primary purpose is to wirelessly connect devices, and to track Bluetooth beacons, […]
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August 20, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Battery life for mobile devices is their single biggest weakness. The greatest challenge in growing and managing the exploding “Internet of Things” isn’t the devices themselves, but rather, the power required to wirelessly transmit the data they’re reporting. Energy is money, and even as research continues to extend battery life to new horizons, there is […]
August 19, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Security researchers from Check Point have unearthed a new vulnerability dubbed QuadRoot that leaves potentially 900 million or more Android-based smartphones vulnerable. The attack manifests when a user unwittingly installs specially designed malware which executes the attack. This is often disguised as an app, which the user can be directed to via a variety of […]
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August 18, 2016 by Vertical Axion
By now, it’s a familiar story. Conventional wisdom holds that you want to use a different password on every site or service you log into and that you want to change your passwords regularly, in order to maximize security. What if conventional wisdom isn’t true though? There’s a growing body of evidence that it isn’t. […]
August 17, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Ransomware has made some inroads into the realm of smart devices, but until quite recently, Android devices were the target of choice. That seems to be changing now. Increasingly, we’re seeing iPhone users targeted by this type of attack. This particular attack can manifest when the hacker gains a user’s Apple ID account information. Once […]
August 16, 2016 by Vertical Axion
In fact, your Microsoft Account Credentials are almost certainly vulnerable, but until the rise in popularity of Windows 10, it hasn’t been nearly as big an issue as it is today. The unfortunate reality is that Microsoft has known about the flaw in their software that allows this bug to function since 1997, and in […]
August 15, 2016 by Vertical Axion
USB drives. They’re ubiquitous. They’re everywhere. You probably have several floating around your office, or nearby. We tend to use them so often that we don’t even think about it, and that’s a potential problem. At a recent Black Hat hacking convention, a demonstration was performed that proved just how easy it is to gain […]
August 13, 2016 by Vertical Axion
If you have a Yahoo email account, you’re not alone. The company is one of the largest free email account providers on the internet, which unfortunately means that when they suffer a data breach, it tends to impact a lot of users. Back in 2012, Yahoo reported a data breach which they estimated impacted about […]
August 12, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Banner Health, based in Phoenix, AZ, has the dubious honor as having been the recipient of the largest healthcare related data breach so far in 2016. The cyberattack was launched on June 17, and potentially impacts 3.7 million Banner Health patients. Not only is the number of patient records exposed noteworthy and disconcerting, but so […]
August 11, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Does your company currently have a formal email policy? If you don’t, you need one, and sooner, rather than later. As the first “killer app” in the world of computing, email is, to this day, one of the most widely used communications tools in business. Unfortunately, it’s also the source of the most breaches and […]
August 10, 2016 by Vertical Axion
In recent months, we’ve seen an upsurge in the number of attacks that have been executed by exploiting wireless peripherals attached to computers. Hackers can even intercept signals sent to your PC via wireless mouse and use them for their own purposes. If they can do it to a wireless mouse, then a keyboard is […]
August 9, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Public WiFi is ubiquitous. Pretty much anywhere you go these days, you’re going to find a free network you can connect to. Stop in to grab some coffee, free WiFi. Grab lunch at the restaurant downtown? Free WiFi. It’s everywhere, and that’s at least part of the problem. At this year’s Democratic National Convention, security […]
August 8, 2016 by Vertical Axion
The FBI has recently shut down a particularly nefarious ad server called the AdGholas group, which used a new and innovative method of infecting computers and managed to avoid detection for several months. The hackers employed advanced steganography techniques via code embedded in graphics files, which marks the first time in history that malware has […]
August 6, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Video streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu Plus, and others are becoming so ubiquitous that they’re a fixture in everyday life for tens of millions of people. Unfortunately, hackers have proven incredibly adept at taking well known, popular trends and turning them against us. The latest example of this used Netflix as a springboard. […]
August 5, 2016 by Vertical Axion
So what do you do when you offer an unlimited data plan and people actually take you up on your offer? Well, if you’re Verizon, you start banning them. Currently, Verizon is offering an “unlimited” plan. The problem, however, is that if you use large amounts of data, they’ll kick you off the network, and […]
August 4, 2016 by Vertical Axion
According to security company Infoblox, a staggering 83% of the networks they’ve studied contain some form of malicious activity. The news is as staggering as it is grim, but if there’s a silver lining to be found in the report, it is that the company has broken out the biggest and most commonly found threats. […]
August 3, 2016 by Vertical Axion
The annual “Cost of a Data Breach” study has been released, and the results aren’t pretty or encouraging. Between 2013 and now, the total cost to a company hit by a data breach is a staggering $4 million, which is a nearly 30% increase over the last three years. Worse, between 2014 and 2015, we […]
August 2, 2016 by Vertical Axion
System administrators have their hands full dealing with “Leap Seconds,” the extra second periodically added to the day by scientists working with UTC (Coordinated Universal Time), used by computer systems around the world. These leap seconds are necessary in order to keep clocks in step with the earth’s gradually slowing rotation. If these “extra” seconds […]
August 1, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Do you consider yourself to be a power user, where computers are concerned? Do you have one or more members of your staff you’d put in that category? If the answer to either of those questions was yes, then Seagate’s new Barracuda Pro desktop drive is almost certain to make you smile. This is hands […]
July 30, 2016 by Vertical Axion
If your company deals with protected health information, then you know what a maze of regulation HIPAA rules can be. The Federal government has recently signaled just how seriously they take data breaches, by fining Oregon Health & Science University $2.7 million for two breaches that impacted a total of 7,066 individuals. Compared to other […]
July 29, 2016 by Vertical Axion
If you use Microsoft OneDrive, it’s time to review your usage rate, and perhaps start thinking of switching to a different cloud-based storage solution. When the service was first rolled out, users with a free OneDrive account got fifteen gigabytes of storage space. That’s generous, but unfortunately, it also ended. The company announced in April, […]
July 28, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Security researchers at the firm ESET have recently warned of a total of 8 apps found on the Google Play store. These apps, at first glance, appear to be designed to help users increase their number of followers on various social media platforms, and as such, may have found their way on a variety of […]
July 27, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Last July, Android users got a nasty surprise. The surprise came in the form of a new type of attack directed against smartphones. Dubbed “Stagefright,” it allowed a hacker to assume total control over the target device, simply by sending a properly encoded multimedia message to it. The bug that allowed this type of attack […]
July 26, 2016 by Vertical Axion
How solid is your firm’s web security? According to recent findings by the penetration expert Ilia Kolochenko, probably not very good. Kolochenko should know. He is the CEO of High-Tech Bridge, and he and his research team have just finished an extensive review of business internet vulnerabilities. The results aren’t pretty. The two biggest highlights […]
