There is nothing worse for a company and its customers than being forced to close because of inclement weather. And with winter almost upon us once again, now is a good time to make sure your business continuity plan is prepared for anything and everything mother nature is looking to throw your way. By communicating […]

Although the pace of data breach stories seems to have slowed in 2015 compared to past years, the scary part is that could be because such incidences of cyber attacks have become alarmingly common.

Last month, Travelers Insurance reported that 60% of all attacks in 2014 struck small to medium-sized businesses.

Picture this: you’ve been stuck in IT limbo for years. Relying on friends to get new technology up and running. Tasking a key employee with maintaining systems (in addition to fulfilling their other responsibilities). Perhaps every once in a while you even bring in an IT professional to diagnose problems and resolve major issues.

A new wrinkle in the ongoing battle against malware exploits emerged last month, when security reports from Kaspersky Lab and Symantec revealed a hacking group responsible for targeted attacks on Twitter, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft in 2013 had renewed its cybercrime ways.

Computers, laptops, tablets, smartphones, printers, servers… We can’t live without them, right? But they sure are notorious for causing major headaches.

Perhaps you heard about the 37-year-old Colorado Springs man who took his malfunctioning desktop out back last April and shot it eight times with a handgun, telling the Los Angeles Times that it felt “glorious” to vent his frustrations.

Back in January, we wrote about Windows Server 2003, which Microsoft will end support for in July 14th. Remember the build-up last year for the death of Windows XP? A similar scenario will play out in 2015, as Microsoft announced in November that July 14th would mark the end of life for Windows Server 2003 and Server 2003 R2.

The most immediate impact of this announcement is that any system using Windows Server 2003 will no longer receive updates or patches from Microsoft, which the computing giant said in a white paper “can result in a less stable and less secure infrastructure for your organization.

Hurricane season officially started on Monday, June 1st. And although the NOAA estimates that this year will be a slow one for tropical formation in the Atlantic Ocean, the occasion still highlights the importance of disaster preparedness — especially in light of the devastating thunderstorms, tornados, and floods that struck a broad swath of the country in April and May.

Earlier this year, flaws were discovered in Adobe Flash Player that could allow malicious banner ads running on legitimate websites to infect unwitting computer users.

These “malvertising” exploits have been shown to produce a variety of consequences; some install malware that illicitly inflates ad click numbers, while others can immediately encrypt all files on a user’s local and network drive.

Tuesday, March 31st was World Backup Day, which provides the perfect opportunity to take a serious look at the state of your systems. Is your backup drive located next to your computer? Are you entrusting your critical business data to a free (or cheap) backup option that isn’t built for the business world? Is your current backup solution shored up by disaster recovery, business continuity, and virtualization plans?

And before you think, “Data loss could never happen to me,” consider these statistics:

A 2013 Harris Interactive poll found that 30% of computer users had NEVER backed up their data
FEMA and SBA studies show that 25% to 45% of businesses don’t reopen after a disaster
According to a 2013 Aberdeen group report, Inc.