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June 6, 2016 by Vertical Axion
You’ve probably seen the joke email before. Something to the effect of, “If you don’t forward this message to six people within twenty-four hours, your teeth will fall out, your car will break down, and all the files on your computer will be deleted.” Ransomware isn’t quite to that level yet, but it’s getting awfully […]
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June 4, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Not long ago, we learned that last year’s high profile LinkedIn hack was much bigger than initially thought. When the hack occurred, the company assured its user base that it was limited in scope to some 6.3 million user accounts (LinkedIn has some 400 million users all told, which made this a serious breach, but […]
June 3, 2016 by Vertical Axion
The Graham Cluley website today had an article with the most appropriate title I’ve seen regarding this subject. “Don’t believe everything bad you read on the internet.” I’d like to follow that up myself with a little piece of advice from a professional in the field (me.) “Don’t use Reddit as a source for news, […]
Not even dentists are safe from hackers, and if they’ve been targeted, your company could easily be targeted in much the same way. Recently, the ADA (American Dental Association) sent USB flash drives out to dental offices all over the country. The drive contained updated billing rates and instructions for filing claims with various insurance […]
June 2, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Have you been pwned? (Relax, old people, that’s really really old slang for “owned”, which translates in modern-geek to “hacked”) In just the last few weeks of 2016, millions of passwords have been leaked across the net. I’m sure someone has a list somewhere, but I can think of the following just off the top […]
There seems to be no end of trouble for the beleaguered Flash Player and those who use it. Not long ago, yet another critical security flaw was found in the player, designated as CVE-2016-4117 by security researchers at FireEye. As is generally the case with zero-day exploits like this one, Adobe responded almost immediately with […]
June 1, 2016 by Vertical Axion
If you have an account on LinkedIn, you may recall that they suffered a data breach back in 2012. At the time, they force-reset the passwords of all users believed to be impacted. Unfortunately, it now appears that the breach was much worse than was initially thought. The technology site Motherboard has been in contact […]
May 28, 2016 by Vertical Axion
There have been a lot of articles all over the web, outlining the width and breadth of various data breaches, some of which have seen the hackers make off with tens, or even hundreds of millions of consumer records which contained a variety of sensitive information. The question that seldom gets asked, however, is what […]
May 26, 2016 by Vertical Axion
It may sound like science fiction, but researchers have now proven that computer viruses can not only be transmitted via your computer’s audio system, they can even communicate with each other via that same medium. The hard-to-believe story began some three years ago, when security expert Dragos Ruiu found several of his PC’s infected with […]
May 24, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Microsoft has made a number of good, smart, customer-centric moves lately, especially where Windows 10 is concerned. Their latest decision to quietly kill off a feature called WiFi Sense is a continuation of that trend. If you’ve not heard of WiFi sense, you’re not alone. The feature was little publicized, and rarely used. What it […]
May 23, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Yes, even the FDIC, the government agency that insures banks, is vulnerable to data breaches. In this instance, a cluster of internal breaches was reported recently as part of congressional oversight, where activities that put consumer information at risk must be brought to the attention of congress. It was recently discovered that a number of […]
May 21, 2016 by Vertical Axion
An old scam has recently gotten a facelift to make it less threatening, and it has proved to be devastatingly effective. You’ve probably run across scam sites offering technical support for your computer system before. Typically, they replicate the dreaded “Blue Screen Of Death,” and warn you that your computer has a serious problem. To […]
May 20, 2016 by Vertical Axion
If you’ve ever booted up your computer and gotten a cryptic “drive not found” message, you’re not alone. In fact, about one third of all data loss occurs because of this very error message. Drives simply failing to appear on your directory structure at all. Of course, when that happens, all the data they once […]
May 18, 2016 by Vertical Axion
You’ve probably heard by now that hacks and attacks are getting more and more sophisticated as time goes by. This latest malware attack, is a perfect example of this increasing sophistication in action. The simple reality is that hacks succeed more often when they are disguised as a helpful program that people instinctively want to […]
May 17, 2016 by Vertical Axion
ADP is the world’s largest HR firm, handling tax and payroll accounts for more than 640,000 companies that collectively employ millions of people. It may be possible that your company is one of the hundreds of thousands that rely on ADP for this function. Much has been said in the recent past about the growing […]
May 16, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Not long ago, a company called Hold Security issued a report of its rather disturbing finding. A massive database was found for sale in the dark corners of the internet, containing nearly three hundred million email addresses and passwords. This information was collected from all of the biggest email providers, including Mail.ru, Aol, Google, Yahoo, […]
May 14, 2016 by Vertical Axion
The news keeps getting worse for users still clinging to the aging Windows XP operating system. First, Microsoft itself stopped supporting the platform, no longer providing the millions of users still working with the OS with critical security patches to minimize the danger from the hacking community. Then Google followed suit, nixing support. Now Dropbox […]
May 13, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Alex Holden is one of the good guys. You’ve probably never heard of him, but he works for Hold Security, and spends his time in the dark corners of the internet, scouting out what data the hacking community has for sale. Holden’s latest finding shows that a hacker was selling an extensive database containing the […]
May 12, 2016 by Vertical Axion
The numbers are in, and they’re pretty grim. Trustware has released their annual Global Security Report, which outlines the current trends in cybercrime. Chief among the findings in the report is that fully 60% of the hacking attacks the company investigated in 2015 were driven by the desire to acquire credit card information. As you […]
May 11, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Earlier this year, Bangladesh Bank, one of the largest in the nation of Bangladesh, was successfully breached. The keen hackers made off with a staggering $80 million, when they used the bank’s system to hack into the SWIFT network, which is a cooperative system responsible for handling the vast majority of the world’s cross-border payments. […]
May 10, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Does your company work with health information in any capacity? If it does, be advised, HIPAA violations are real, and can cost you and your business big money. The most recent company to find itself in the crosshairs of the Department of Health and Human Services is the Feinstein Institute, which is a non-profit biomedical […]
May 9, 2016 by Vertical Axion
On the heels of the FBI’s dustup with Apple Computer, the Judiciary committee of the U.S. House of Representatives has advanced a bill to the full chamber that would give cloud-stored data and emails more than 180 days old some much needed protection from law enforcement searches. The new bill would update a 30-year old […]
May 7, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Windows XP was, by any measure, the most successful and ubiquitous operating system of all time. To this day, now two years after Microsoft formally ended support for the platform, there are still tens of millions of computers running XP. Fully, this is approximately 10.9% of the PCs on the planet. That’s dangerous, and if […]
May 6, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Here’s the hard reality: Even if you devote sufficient resources to get the best security money can buy to protect your business from hackers, you might still be at risk. The reason? Well, in addition to the fact that there’s no such thing as security that a determined hacker can’t breach, there’s the simple fact […]
