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Mostly, people do celebrate the holidays. According to Pew Research, between 90-and-95 percent of Americans celebrate Christmas. As a result, many businesses will not be staffed for Christmas. One element that has to be taken into consideration is cybersecurity. While a study by IBM suggests that cyberattacks don?t peak during the holidays, many organizations like to hire seasonal help to make operations run more smoothly. This opens these companies up to social engineering attacks and other malignant computer issues. This extra risk, along with the undeniable amount of stress and reliance these computing systems have on them, make it crucial to have a full-scale cybersecurity plan in place. That?s why many organizations have consulted with IT professionals like White Mountain IT Services to protect their business? network and infrastructure through diligent planning. ?It takes roughly six months to really prepare,? said Peter Tran of RSA, a computer security firm. Another expert, Demetrios Lazarikos of Blue Lava Consulting stresses testing systems to ensure their cyber security protocols are strong, ?The fear is that the system will break. You test the system; you stress it; you try to anticipate the traffic.? He goes on to say that different types of attacks, including Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks create big issues, and that if there is no dedicated incident-response plan in place, a company?s IT is a sitting duck. By having a plan to protect, test, and guard the systems your business depends on to ensure no infiltrations happen, and any that do are mitigated quickly, any company, especially one that depends on its IT to succeed (think eCommerce), can sustain themselves until business returns to normal after the holidays. The IT support leaders at White Mountain IT Services understand how important cybersecurity is for the sustainability of your business, and are committed to helping New Hampshire businesses protect their networks through any type of situation. Call us at (603) 889-0800 to learn more.
A year-long partnership between Google and UC Berkeley yielded a study of how online accounts are cracked. They found that businesses are much more vulnerable to phishing attacks than actual legitimate data breaches. Google found that keyloggers were one of the primary contributors to this trend, capturing an estimated 788,000 compromised credentials. Phishing, on the other hand, had exposed 12 million credentials. Data breaches contributed 3.3 million credentials to the total. This information led Google to the conclusion that phishing attacks were a much greater threat to businesses, backed up by research showing that up to 25 percent of the passwords that were still in use were stolen in phishing attacks. Data breaches provided credentials currently used by individuals only seven percent of the time. Phishing is known to do much more than just allow unauthorized users to enter a network or infrastructure. In some cases, phishing can help malicious entities spread viruses or install malware on unsuspecting victims. There are usually signs of such a breach, though, even if they aren?t obvious at first glance. The problem is that it?s not always apparent when such a breach occurs, with the worst-case scenario being a complete and sudden halt to operations. Either way, the point stands that the first step toward a data breach could very well be a phishing attack. While phishing attacks are more common than data breaches, a data breach has the opportunity to cause more damage than you can possibly imagine. Take your worst-case scenario and double it–that?s probably a good estimate for how much trouble a data breach could cause for your organization. A phishing attack steals specific data, but a data breach can expose so much more, including the data of your staff, customers, and vendors. Besides the obvious data security problems associated with phishing attacks, it?s just downright embarrassing to have been had by hackers. It can leave a scar on your business that?s difficult to recover from. To learn more about how you can protect your business from security threats, reach out to us at (603) 889-0800.
To begin to set this up you have to open Cortana?s Settings. To do this, click on the Cortana Icon on the taskbar. Then select the gear-shaped icon in the Cortana window to access Cortana?s settings. Make sure that the Let Cortana respond to ?Hey Cortana? setting is toggled on. Then select Learn how I say ?Hey Cortana?. You will then be asked to answer six phrases to help Cortana determine the way you say ?Hey Cortana?. Once you?ve completed that step, return to Cortana?s settings and make sure that the try to respond only to me option is selected. Now you have Cortana?s full attention. You can have her help you with any number of issues, while helping you navigate Windows 10. Do you use Cortana? Siri? Google Assistant? Alexa? Bixby? If so, which are your favorites? Leave your thoughts with us in the comments below.
Recovery Point Objective (RPO)The Recovery Point Objective is a name for the amount of data that you can restore in the event of a disaster. The recovery point objective is determined by how much data can be saved following a data loss incident, be it an internally caused affair or one caused by external threat actors. The data loss could be caused by something as wild as a natural disaster (flood, fire, power surge), or unpredictable as user error or a hacking attack. Either way, you?re staring data loss in the face with no real guarantee of how much you can expect to lose. The type of data backup you implement will have a major impact on how much you lose in the event of a disaster. For example, tape backup has long been a staple in the business environment, but it?s not the ideal way to approach disaster recovery in a loss scenario. Tape backup is resource-intensive and can only happen once a day during your business?s off-hours. This means that you could potentially lose an entire day?s worth of data in the event of a disaster–much more than if you were to implement a cloud-based backup system. Recovery Time Objective (RTO)Once you have found out what portion of your data you can recover in the event of a data loss incident, you?ll be able to determine an adequate recovery time objective, or RTO. You want to have a clear idea of how long it will take to get back in action following a major data loss incident. Any time that your business isn?t operating as usual is time that?s not being spent productive–downtime, also known as one of the most dangerous things for any business in the wake of a critical data loss incident. Your goal should be to minimize downtime whenever possible, which includes ditching your tape backup solution and replacing it with one which allows for a quick and efficient restoration process. Cloud-based backup allows for minimum downtime by allowing for automatic backups every fifteen minutes. It?s just one way that BDR can allow for maximum recovery with minimal downtime and loss on your business?s part. Does your business need to implement a more dynamic data backup and disaster recovery system? A cloud-based BDR is the answer. To learn more, reach out to us at (603) 889-0800.
We say that wireless charging is an innovation, but in reality, it?s been around for quite some time. There just wasn?t much practical use for it up until recently. Wireless charging has existed since the late 19th century. Nikola Tesla used magnetic resonance coupling to transmit electricity across air currents via a magnetic field. While the concept was interesting, it simply wasn?t used for much of anything. Nowadays, however, wireless charging is trying to redefine mobility. But how does it work, exactly? Let’s find out. Modern Wireless ChargingThe specifics behind wireless charging have shifted primarily to a magnetic field that?s created between two copper coils. This limits the distance between the device and the charging pad, but makes way for many advantages as well. Here are some of the different types of wireless charging that can be seen in modern electronics: Charging pads: You place your device on these and it is charged. Charging bowls: You place your device within the vicinity of these chargers and it gets a charge. Uncoupled radio frequency: You can charge your device up to a few feet away from the charger. These devices all work in largely the same way, using similar technology to create a wireless charging field around it. What determines the charge radius is the size of the copper coils. Due to the charge pads having smaller coils, they have a more limited scope of charging. Large coils, on the other hand, allow for charging at a distance. However, a technology like this comes with a loss in power, depending on the tactic used. An MIT physics professor Marin Soljacic found that electricity could be transferred over the distance of two meters, but at the cost of losing 60% of the power during the transition. He went on to form a company called WiTricity, which creates wireless charging technology for use in cars and other devices. After working tirelessly, the company managed to create technology that could supply power anywhere within 25 centimeters at 92% efficiency. Clearly, the sky is the limit for this technology, but how will your business use wireless charging? Let us know in the comments, and be sure to subscribe for more informative blog articles about technology trends and ideas.
