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September 9, 2016 by Vertical Axion
In some important ways, the media has a tendency to distort the reality where hacking and data breaches are concerned. The stories that tend to make the headlines are the external breaches that see hackers making off with tens of millions, or even hundreds of millions of customer records. They’re good stories. They get clicks […]
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September 8, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Although a number of tech companies have been working hard to create new and ever more robust security and authentication protocols, a recent survey revealed that the American public in general remains highly skeptical of the new procedures, and only a tiny fraction of the population actually employs them. The survey results reveal that more […]
September 5, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Sage, LLC, a British company providing business software solutions for clients around the world, was the latest victim of a data breach. This one, however, came from inside the company itself. This is an increasingly common problem, though not as widely reported as the high profile data breaches from hackers outside the company’s firewall. One […]
September 3, 2016 by Vertical Axion
What do you do when you get a popup window generated by some piece of software you use, informing you of a critical update? Do you stop what you’re doing right then and perform the needed update? Most people don’t, according to recent research. In fact, a full ninety percent of users simply close the […]
September 2, 2016 by Vertical Axion
You’ve probably seen the headlines. This year, hardly a week goes by that there isn’t a report of a company in some way connected to the health care industry falling victim to ransomware. If you think it feels like they’re being specifically targeted, you’re not imagining things. According to the latest research by FireEye, hackers […]
August 31, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Adobe’s beleaguered Flash player may finally be seeing its last days, at least if Google has anything to say about it. The player has been exceedingly popular, and at its peak, a vast number of websites relied on it heavily to display content and advanced features to website visitors. Unfortunately, in recent years, a number […]
August 30, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Microsoft is a company that definitely understands the need for better and more secure information systems. Like many other tech companies, they’ve been pushing hard for two-factor authentication protocols covering large swaths of their online ecosystem. Unfortunately, their approach has been rather messy and unfocused. They’re attempting to remedy that situation by announcing the rollout […]
August 29, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Remember not long ago, when the big credit card issuers went on at some length touting their latest advances in smart chip technology? The new tech was supposed to vastly improve the security of credit cards, rendering them virtually immune to hacking. Well, it turns out that might have been a bit of an overstatement. […]
August 27, 2016 by Vertical Axion
There have been a number of scams in recent years involving malware that creates false flag problems on your desktop. The faux problem is presented, along with a phone number you can call to get help resolving the issue. Consider this a kinder, gentler form of ransomware. Because it all looks very official, and the […]
August 25, 2016 by Vertical Axion
The unfortunate reality is that most instances of hacking occur from within a company itself. It’s true that the high profile cases that make the news are successful breaches from outside the company, but the statistics bear out the fact that this is less common than internal breaches. Recently, an employee of Tampa General Hospital […]
August 24, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Do you trust what your eyes tell you? If you’re looking at a computer monitor, that trust might be misplaced. At a recent DEFCON presentation in Las Vegas, researchers demonstrated how it’s possible to hack into a monitor’s firmware and make changes to what a user sees on their computer, without actually breaking into the […]
August 23, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Does your company rely on Oracle Systems’ Micros to handle point of sale transactions? If so, you should change your password immediately. The company has recently reported that a sophisticated Russian cybercrime syndicate has successfully breached their system, exposing the account information of more than 330,000 Micros users. The potential impact to your business cannot […]
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 […]
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. […]
