Why Keep Rolling the Dice?

Wanna know the secret to outmatching ransomware and hackers?

Two words: Proactive cybersecurity!

Now, I know you’re probably thinking…

“What are you talking about? I’m just a small business. Am I really in danger of a cyberattack?”

A 100% yes to that!

You see, times have changed and cyber threats are becoming more and more sophisticated and cybercriminals will target anyone these days… including small businesses.  I’m sure you already know that just one data breach is enough to potentially ruin your business and the trust of all your clients!

So if I were you, I wouldn’t take this sitting down… I’d start being proactive about it!

What does that mean? It means being preventative. You take into account all potential threats and vulnerabilities. You see, traditional cybersecurity is reactive. By that, I mean your IT service provider sets up alerts so they’ll know if a cyberattack happened. But by the time they get the alert, it’s already too late… Cybercriminals already have your data.

That's why you have to be one step ahead of them and you can do that by implementing proactive cybersecurity measures in your business.

Click to Call or Email us today to schedule a meeting today if you want to know more about proactive cybersecurity.

Small Business Wake-Up Call

We’d been meaning to post this for a while now. Our primary business model is contractual by nature. We operate as a virtual employee for our partners. We do the occasional limited-scope break/fix work on the side, but our partner network always gets priority and our full resources. When onboarding new clients, one of the things we like to do is perform a security audit. And this is why:

One day, a prospective client, whose business existed in the custom flooring industry, called to report finding their accounting workstation locked with a notice that someone was currently logged in via Remote Desktop. Their accountant worked remotely most of the week, and this was normally not an unusual sight. What prompted the phone call was the fact that the accountant happened to be standing in the office at this time.

Below is a photograph of the Users with access to the accounting workstation. Besides the Administrator and Guest accounts, which were disabled, there was only one User account which was valid. The rest were created by an intruder (or intruders) to enable unadulterated access to QuickBooks and company files. This was bad. Not only was it bad, it was also too late.

The rogue accounts were added silently, using exploits predictably derived from having no IT department and no security policies and procedures in place. Simply allowing the workstation to be used both for work and for general Internet browsing by other employees led to the eventual total compromise of the system. Books, banking information, employee and customer personal information… all captured to be resold on the Dark Web.

Well, we figured out how it happened and how to stop it from continuing. But why did this happen? The management believed their business was “too small” to have to worry about Cybersecurity. My friends and fellow small business owners of the Gulf Coast, this used to be the case but times began changing several years ago. Yes, it’s still fairly unlikely this could happen to your business tomorrow, but the probability factor is quickly growing every year. This is the new criminal underworld. Eventually, your number may come up, regardless of what industry you serve. If you use Internet-connected technology in any form, the reality is you have a 24/7 target on your back.

We understand that the benefits of managed IT and Cybersecurity are largely invisible. It can seem like the money paid out isn’t justifiable as there’s no obvious manifested product. Let us assure you, while the short-term benefits may not be something that are readily seen, the long-term lack of these pillars of modern business are easily observed when things finally go sideways. Some of the social and legal consequences of being discovered as the reason why the sensitive information of your vendors, employees, or customers have been compromised and publicized can be enough to death-stroke a small business. Whether it comes in the form of a lawsuit ruling you can’t afford or a smear campaign on social media you aren’t able to ride out, the end result can be devastating at the very least.

While the expertise that Cyclone 365 offers isn’t free, as expertise never is, we are more than willing to work something out with the small and micro-businesses of the South-East. We want to see everyone’s businesses locked down, safe, and able to continue to innovate and evolve.

Click to Call or Email us today to schedule a meeting to discuss your company’s Cybersecurity needs.

Making small business fun again!

As a small business owner, I’d imagine you’ve got enough on your plate as it is!

There’s always something going on with accounts, HR, legal, sales, the workstations and servers, customer service… sometimes it feels like there’s no end to the number of hats you have to wear from time to time. Why not hand off one of those hats to someone else? Someone who would enjoy wearing it!

Companies that partner up with us all have one thing in common: They don’t need to worry about their IT anymore because we do the worrying for them.

Our job is to keep an active eye on your IT and make sure everything runs smoothly. We also make plans to help evolve or expand your business from a technology standpoint.

We work hard to find and fix problems, preferably before you even know anything was about to happen. This helps keep you from having to pick up the phone every other day and start looking for random computer techs to patch up issues they may not actually be qualified to handle. Your best bet is to just hand everything off to us and let us do our thing.

Click to Call or Email us today to schedule a meeting to discuss your company’s IT needs.

A Few Words About Windows 11

Are you excited for Windows 11? We’ve been using it for a while now and, so far, it’s pretty nice. This new version of Windows has had a facelift and looks a lot more like MacOS or certain distros of Linux. That’s a good thing in our book. Your mileage may vary, though. Either way, things are changing.

Taking cues from MacOS and Linux, there’s instant messaging (remember that?!) built into the OS. It comes in the form of Teams. You can also use widgets from the taskbar and even run Android apps. Microsoft is finally headed in, what appears to be anyway, a right direction. It’s been a while since that’s happened.

You can upgrade to Windows 11 for free at this time, but there’s a few things you’re going to need to consider before you pull the trigger:

1. Windows 11 is unproven. When you upgrade to the latest OS, and nothing rings more true of a Microsoft OS, you will undoubtedly encounter some hidden bugs and unexpected incompatibilities. Your production environment (the computers you rely on every day at the office) is not the place to be trying out new things. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!

2. Windows 11 has relatively steep requirements. Microsoft likes to tout enhanced speed and efficiency with every new OS they release. But, as history has revealed time and time again, this isn’t true. In fact, the opposite has always been true. With every iteration or update of Windows, it continues to get bulkier and slower. This means older computers will have significantly reduced performance. Just to have a decent experience, you’re going to want a relatively new PC. What with the electronics shortages still plaguing the world, expect to pay a premium on what you’re able to find on store shelves or from vendors.

3. Windows 11 has unusual security requirements. Building off the steeper hardware requirements is a new factor: TPM chips. You’ll have to have Secure Boot coupled with a TPM chip in your computer in order to install Windows 11. These two features greatly enhance physical security of the computer while at the same time increase trackability of the hardware over the Internet. We know a few ways around these issues, but in general, you’ll need a pretty darn new PC or laptop in order to satisfy Microsoft.

Windows 11 looks like it could end up being a homerun for Microsoft. But, just like every other Windows operating system, it’s fine for Day 1 deployment on home computers and totally a bad idea to roll it out on your office network. At least, not until a good 6 months to a year have passed while they iron out the bugs.

Click to Call or Email us today to schedule a meeting to discuss your company’s IT needs.

Let's Have a Serious Talk About Security

If your network and computers are compromised, and hackers help themselves to your data, the impact on your business and lifestyle could be quite severe.

Not only will it hurt the confidence of your existing clientele and potentially permanently damage your reputation with prospects, it can also end with your business facing serious legal action and fines. A lot has changed in the legal space over the last several years when it comes to cyber security. “I don’t understand that stuff” won’t cut it in court. Here’s three reasons to take your data security seriously:

1) In 2019 there were over 1470 reported data breaches in the United States that exposed over 164 million sensitive records. Guess where that ends up? Dark web and social media. Guess who has their name in lights afterwards? You.

2) It can take several months for businesses to notice they have a breach. Why? Because they don’t understand or take IT seriously and usually work with under-skilled or non-existent IT departments. Hiring your college buddy’s son who worked at Best Buy for a couple years isn’t the answer when things heat up, and by then it’s too late.

3) The average cost of a data breach for a large company is over $3 million, with the United States having the highest average at $8.64 million. Will you pay $3 million at your small or medium-sized company? No, of course not. But you’ll be on the hook for a figure that WILL sting just as bad in relation to your company size AND you’ll still have the job of hiring qualified talent to discover, understand, and close the wide-open security holes in your network that let the bad guys in, in the first place.

Cyber security is one of those things, like car insurance, that’s largely invisible apart from the monthly cost, until the moment comes and goes that you needed it. The world’s changing. Fast. It’s unfortunate, but you have to change with it to survive. There’s bad people out there and they’re not a dying breed. Click to Call or Email us today to schedule a meeting to discuss your cyber security needs.