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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 […]
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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 […]
July 25, 2016 by Vertical Axion
There’s a new technology in the area of memory and storage. MRAM. If you haven’t heard of it, you’re not alone, but it’s one of two promising up and coming technologies that stand to change the storage game forever. The acronym stands for Magnetoresistive Random Access Memory, and there are three key things that make […]
July 23, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Samsung made a surprising new product offering with little fanfare. There was so little fanfare, in fact, that you may have missed it. The company is now selling a staggering 4TB SSD with a 2.5 inch form factor, which means it’s small enough to fit into a laptop. The only announcement the company made about […]
July 22, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Vectra Networks has found an old, longstanding vulnerability in Windows, and it comes from a rather unexpected source. Printers. Way back in 2007, an eternity ago in the world of tech, Microsoft introduced a convenient new feature that was widely lauded by network administrators. This service called Microsoft Web Point-and-Print stated its purpose was to […]
July 21, 2016 by Vertical Axion
By now, the headlines will scarcely surprise anyone. Yet another business has suffered a major data breach. This time, it was Omni Hotels, a luxury hotel chain. The breach, which was discovered on May 30, 2016, began December 23, 2015 and was not completely eradicated from the company’s network until June 14, 2016. Unfortunately, we […]
July 20, 2016 by Vertical Axion
The world’s hackers are branching out. No longer content to simply breach the digital fortresses that today’s businesses and governments have become, they’re now beginning to turn their attention to automobiles, too. In recent weeks, four vehicles with electronic key FOBs and digital security measures have been stolen. No trace of them has been found […]
July 19, 2016 by Vertical Axion
In the old days, before the rise of the iPad and iPhone, hackers were mostly content to leave Apple alone. They had such a tiny slice of the computer market that it was generally deemed as being more trouble than it was worth to create a virus that would only impact such a small number […]
July 18, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Identity theft is a large, pervasive, and growing problem. In fact, statistics show that the instances of identity theft jumped a staggering 57% last year alone, this, according to figures from the fraud-prevention service Cifas. The firm’s research into the increase of identity theft found that much of the growth has seen fraudsters targeting a […]
July 16, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Most people engaged in legitimate business have no idea just how profitable hacking can be. Hummingbad is a case in point. Part of the “Hummer” family of Trojans, this bit of malware is the most widely installed Trojan on the mobile device ecosystem, impacting more than two billion Android users worldwide. The Trojan originated in […]
