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Irvine, CA - Juniper had a flaw in their networking equipment that may have allowed breaches in government networks for as long as three years. I would presume the same risk applies to Juniper users in private enterprises as well.The [...]
Tustin, CA - The most interesting part of this BlueCross BlueShield announcement is not that they found the breach on August 5th. What is interesting when you read further into the announcement is that they say “Our investigation further revealed [...]
Over the years we have seen many new clients come to Alvaka Networks feeling like they are hostages to Information Technology. IT Hostages feel this way for many different reasons. Most often the person feeling this way is the CFO, Controller, CEO, COO, IT manager or an IT technician for the most part in that order in terms of frequency.
Why do you feel that way?
Any federal employee or contractor that has been through a background check and whose information may have been compromised in the OPM breach, beware of any emails or phone calls that are claiming to be from the government or others [...]
VISA just released this Security Alert. It affects everyone who uses a Point-of-Sale (POS) terminal to accept credit card payments. If you use that small device by your register to slide cards in order to accept payment you may be at risk.
VISA has identified malicious code that can allow hackers to gain access to the credit card information you are receiving through these POS terminals. Some of the service providers who maintain these devices are not following good security practices and
"From my perspective, OPM compromised this information more than three years ago," he added. "And my take on the current breach is 'so what's new?'"
In fact, the breach was unprecedented in its breadth and scope: "Security-wise, this may be the worst breach of personally identifying information ever,"
I was recently asked to be part of a webinar moderated by Elliott Markowitz, The VAR Guy. Elliott wanted me to share my thoughts on the top threats facing small to mid-size businesses. My answer is not scientifically derived, but based upon what I am seeing most often in the past two years of IT and security management in my world. I am seeing the top threats from these five areas:
1. Ransomware – Organized crime groups that encrypt all your important files and hold your data hostage until you pay....
David Berkus writes a very good weekly blog on “cutting edge business success tips.” The series of blogs is called Berkonomics and it is worth your time to go there and register to receive the weekly e-mails. Here is an example of his writing on the topic of “Switching Costs.” You can sign-up HERE. Dave’s series of blogs is also available in three Berkonomics books.
While I love reading Dave’s blogs and I am therefore sharing the information above, my main reason for writing this blog today is to share another piece of the endless wisdom that comes from Dave. This week his blog e-mail started with this paragraph:
First, let me PLEAD with you to take care with your email and strengthen your email password. A clever hacker invaded....
Alvaka Networks COO/CISO Kevin McDonald is a featured author in this month’s CAPG Health magazine. He writes about the obligations under HIPAA and HITECH to protect health information and how failure to do so can cost $359 per record breached. [...]
I just read on BleepingComputer.com a new post about a variation of the CoinVault ransomware. This one is called BitCryptor and unless you have a good backup it sounds like you will be paying the ransom if you are hit.
Here are some key characteristics:
