Recent Blog Posts
What Industries are Often Targeted By Ransomware? Lately, ransomware has been increasingly directed towards a few industries, in organizations of all sizes. These industries are as follows: Professional Services Education Government IT Services Healthcare Manufacturing Utilities Finance Let?s briefly discuss the situation surrounding each of these industries. Professional Services The various businesses that fall within the umbrella of professional services?ranging from everything from accounting to consulting to legal assistance?have all been targeted by ransomware attacks with uncomfortable frequency. This is largely due to many of them possessing sensitive data that cybercriminals seek out, and with many small organizations lacking sufficient cybersecurity, they become relatively easy targets. Education Considering the sheer amount of data that school systems collect and store on their students?in addition to the faculty and staff that work there?it should be no surprise that educational institutions have been attacked more and more in recent years. 2021 saw operations disrupted across over 1,000 such institutions throughout 88 attacks. Emsisoft, an antimalware provider who provided that previous stat, also reported that at least half of the 2021 incidents resulted in employee and student data being stolen. Government Government processes?all that fall under that umbrella term?are pretty important, which makes it chilling to think that 40% of surveyed IT decision-makers from government organizations around the world had been impacted by ransomware within a year prior to the survey. One only has to consider the shutdown of Ireland?s national health service in May 2021, 2019?s ransomware attack on the City of Baltimore that shut down services for months, or 2019?s lockdown of a United States Coast Guard facility to see how severe attacks like this can be. IT Services While it may seem like we?re blowing up our own spot, it is important to recognize that even the experts can be suckered by ransomware attacks. This not only highlights how truly dangerous ransomware can be, but also how important it is to ensure that you have an IT provider you can trust, like White Mountain IT Services. Healthcare It?s little wonder that healthcare organizations are a favorite target of those who use ransomware to their own selfish and nefarious ends. With tons of critical data and systems being used at all hours in hospitals and health centers, they tend to be highly motivated to pay the demanded ransom to avoid loss of life. Manufacturing As of late, manufacturers have been demonstrated to also be popular ransomware targets, specifically by having much of their data published online (as many now threaten to do if a ransom payment isn?t received promptly, or a business refuses to pay a second ransom). Manufacturing was actually the most common industry sector to have stolen data leaked online, and since it was also the most well-prepared industry to restore backed-up data, the least likely to fork over a ransom. Utilities On the opposite end of the spectrum, however, are those who provide oil, gas, and utilities. According to Sophos, these organizations are much more likely to pay ransomware demands? and cybercriminals know it. Remember the Colonial Pipeline shutdown a few years ago? While the Department of Justice managed to recover half of the ransomware payment back from the attackers, the attack still crippled a lot of the United States? eastern operations through fuel delivery disruptions. Finance When it has been said […]
What are Some Best Practices for Managing Remote Workers? There are plenty of ways that you can do a better job of managing your remote workers, including: Establishing Communication Standards Without maintaining clear and open communications, your remote workers are going to become islands?separated from the rest of your team and isolated. Setting an expectation for how and how often your team members are to communicate and collaborate helps to encourage them to reach out and interact more. Delegate Responsibilities and Hold Them to It Remote workers are just the same as your in-house ones? the only real difference is where they are doing the work. Therefore, it is important that you treat them just the same and hold them to the responsibilities you give them. Now, if these tasks are too much of a challenge in a remote environment, there are many ways to delegate these tasks, from breaking them down into smaller jobs to discussing the process in detail with your team members to incentivizing their work processes. Provide the Necessary Tools for Success Fortunately, many businesses are already using tools that are well-suited for remote work, like cloud-based software and storage and mobile-friendly devices. One particular tool that we strongly recommend?whether or not remote work is in play, to be honest?is a unified communications and collaboration platform. A UCC platform gives you a single tool that provides numerous options for communication amongst your entire team. Acknowledge the Impacts of Overwork and Isolation While many people might assume that those working remotely are kicking back and accomplishing less over the course of the workday, these people would be (for the most part) very wrong. In many, many cases, remote workers are subject to pressure to accomplish more simply because of that assumption. Pairing this kind of overwork with the isolation of working remotely over a long period of time can develop some seriously negative feelings and detrimental impacts to their productivity. Acknowledging this and making efforts to reduce both will help bring you a more successful remote team. Give All the Support You Can As we?ve suggested thus far, your remote team members will need the same things your in-house team members will, including support in numerous forms?not just the IT support required to keep them productive, but also the emotional support that enables them to maintain that productivity over extended periods of time. Listen to them, check in on them, and try to develop support networks for your team members to utilize. Collect Feedback Here?s the long and the short of it?remote work only works if it works for your remote workers. One of your most valuable sources of data is the people you have working remotely. While things might seem hunky dory on the surface and work is being done, your team members may be experiencing some challenges coping with things on their end. Don?t be afraid to ask your team for an account of their experience, possibly using anonymous polling or one-on-one check-ins with your team members. You might be surprised what you learn, or how good some of the ideas that come from your team members are. We Can Help You Embrace the Benefits of Remote Operations In terms of actually enabling remote operations, that?s where we come in. We?ll help you implement and […]
As is the case with most things, you?ll need to take some proactive measures. Activating Your Notification History in Android Android devices offer a functionality called Notification History, buried in their settings, where you can see a list of the notifications you?ve received. Of course, this isn?t activated by default, so you?ll need to go through a simple process: Access your Settings either by swiping down on your home screen to get to the integrated shortcut, or by navigating through your applications to find them. Once there, access your Notification settings, and from there, Advanced settings. You?ll then see Notification history. Tap it to access it. Once you do, you?ll be presented with a deactivated switch. Turn the switch to On, and you?ll have a list of the notifications you recently dismissed! Can I Do This With an Apple Device? Unfortunately, once an Apple notification has been acknowledged?either by being opened, cleared, or deleted outright?it is gone for good. Let us know what else you?d like to know about! If your business works with us as its managed service provider, you?re able to lean on us for assistance with your IT. Find out more about what we can do for you by calling (603) 889-0800.
From Start to Finish, IT Powers the Modern Workday Tell me this: what is the first thing you do each day when the workday starts? Probably get the aforementioned cup of coffee, sure, but once that?s done, you likely log into your workstation. That?s IT. You then probably spend the better part of your day just doing whatever it is you were hired to do, whether it’s producing a product, delivering a service, or meeting with those you work for and with. Most of the time, you?ll be using a tool of some sort to do so. That?s IT. At the end of the day, you likely submit the time you spent doing each of your various tasks as part of your timesheet. That?s IT. IT is everywhere in the modern office space? so, the question is, how well managed is it in yours? With IT Being So Ubiquitous, Managing It and Maintaining It is Critical Considering that IT is present in so many of your business? processes?practically all of them, for some businesses?it is all the more important that you have a handle on it. White Mountain IT Services can assist you in doing so. Give us a call at (603) 889-0800 to learn more.
To begin, let?s analyze what social engineering really is, and why it works so well on us. Social Engineering is Emotional Hacking When all is said and done, that?s really what it boils down to. Instead of trying to find the right combination of 1s and 0s to bypass your cybersecurity, social engineering is the use of the right emotions and thought processes to bypass your human employees. Let?s examine the stained shirt example I provided above. While it probably wasn?t as effective coming in through text, chances are good that you?ve also experienced the old-fashioned version where someone pointed at your shirt and flicked your nose when you looked down?more than likely, many times. Why do we keep looking? We do so for the same reason that social engineering works?hearing that we have something on our shirt has some effect on our emotions. We fear that we?ll look silly, or sloppy, in front of people we respect and (more importantly) we want to respect us. The need to confirm that the stain is there becomes so urgent in the moment that we have to look down immediately, despite being intimately familiar with this kind of trick. In addition to all this, this trick is usually played by someone we trust. This will be important to keep in mind later. Of course, in a business-focused social engineering attack, the stakes won?t often involve a bit of the special sauce from the #5 value meal on your shirt. The professional kind of social engineering plays on different fears and anxieties that are more directly related to the workplace. Since this usually takes some preparation, let?s go through the steps that the person behind the attack will generally take: How an Attacker Prepares Their Social Engineering Attack With some variance in the time spent by an attacker based on how sophisticated they want their attack to be, the first step the attacker will take is to plan their attack, doing their research to figure out their most effective option to fool someone. Let?s step into their shoes for a moment and run through what this research might look like. Let?s say we wanted to attack XYZ Widget Company. As social engineers, our first step is to collect as much data as we can on them. The Internet and its plethora of open-source intelligence (OSINT) make this easier than you might expect. For example, we could turn to the company?s LinkedIn, and discover that Jane Doe and John Q. Public both work there in customer-facing roles. A quick jaunt over to Facebook might reveal that Jane enjoys doing crossword puzzles and fantasy sports, while John is big into DIY activities, ranging from cheesemaking to quilting. From there, it?s an easy matter for us to reach out to either Jane or John using the OSINT we?ve collected and gain some of their trust. Once this trust has been established, we stand a pretty good chance of convincing them to give us more access than is warranted, or share information that they shouldn?t have shared. Of course, we could also take the simple route and instead try our luck with fear tactics. It?s generally a safe bet that an employee doesn?t want to get in trouble in the workplace, so sending a message that claims […]
