IT Wurks Blog

Small businesses face a lot of risks, one obvious one being the threat of potential cybercrime and how its influence can impact their businesses. Let’s consider how these influences have taken shape, and the challenges that small and medium-sized businesses must now face as a result.

Chances are, you own a smartphone, and that device helps you to manage quite a bit, both personally and professionally. As smartphones have risen in importance, they have also drawn the attention of hackers who attack via malicious applications. Here, we wanted to offer some tips that can help you spot these malicious apps before falling victim.

Ransomware has become infamous in the past few years, largely due to its involvement in a growing number of cyberattacks during this time. Of course, not all ransomware works in the same way, and recognizing the difference could prove to be useful. Therefore, we’ve taken a few moments and assembled a brief description of the four most common ransomware varieties.

The COVID-19 pandemic has certainly changed the way we do things in a very short period of time. Unfortunately, in times of absolute crisis and anxiety, cybercriminals use it as camouflage to steal data and infiltrate normally-secure networks. Let’s take a look at some of the ways hackers are able to exploit your employees and how you can work to protect your business. 

Malware is a commonality in today’s computing environment, though businesses do everything in their power to avoid encountering it. Some people have difficulty identifying threats, which makes for a dangerous situation whenever they actually have to handle them. We’ve put together a malware guide that will help your employees identify the most common types of threats out there, as well as how to respond to them.

Florida’s Atlantic coast is a destination for millions of visitors each year. One visitor is costing a coastal city a pretty penny. Riviera Beach, a small city just north of West Palm Beach, has been hit with a major ransomware attack. Today, we’ll tell you how it came to be that the small beach city would make dubious history by paying what is the largest ransomware payout in the short history of these attacks.

Ransomware is a contender for the favorite method of attack for hackers. If you think about it, ransomware presents a no-loss situation. Either the victim pays the ransom and the hackers laugh all the way to the bank, or they move on to the next target and give them the same ultimatum.

Hackers aren’t the only ones out there developing malware tools, but sometimes, they get their hands on some of the others. This is precisely what happened when Double Pulsar, a malware that the NSA has used in the past, was paired with a Chinese hacking tool and used to attack Hong Kong and Belgium in 2016.

Ransomware is still going strong, and now more than ever it’s important to emphasize the danger that it poses for your organization. Even municipalities and other high-profile targets are at risk of being taken down by ransomware. Since 2013, over 170 government systems at the county, city, or state levels have been attacked.

When considering cybersecurity, it can be easy to overlook the computers that so many of us typically carry with us every day: our smartphones. However, as attacks to mobile devices have risen considerably in the recent past, it is important to recognize the severity of these attacks, as well as how to avoid them.

With data starting to be treated more like a commodity, companies are spending more time and money attempting to secure the data they have. Some organizations aren’t successful. In 2018 over 446.5 million records were exposed, even as data breaches dropped by 23 percent to 1,244. Today we take a look at some of the most noteworthy data breaches that have happened in the first four months of 2019.

I think by now most people understand just how dangerous ransomware is. Even with some of the ridiculous names they have like Gandcrab, Jigsaw, and WannaCry. Hell, two strains even have names from the James Bond canon: LeChiffre and GoldenEye. But one funny-named strain of ransomware, SamSam, has been devastating information systems for sometime, and has caught the eye of several U.S. law enforcement agencies.

Hackers and other security threats are everyday problems for users all over the world. We’re not even talking about just simple phishing emails--you’d be surprised by how many victims are from straight-up hacking attacks. The security sector has been forced to adapt, growing at an astronomical rate. To help your organization get up to speed on the latest threats and hacks, we’ve put together a list of the first half of 2018’s most notorious breaches and statistics related to them.

You can never be too careful about what you install on your computers. In this most recent example, Google Chrome users are finding themselves targeted by a new type of malware called Nigelthorn.

Have you ever heard of the physicist Erwin Schrӧdinger? He is most well-known for explaining a paradox related to quantum physics which involves a cat. Even though the theory behind Schrӧdinger’s cat is meant to explain something quite different, it can still be applied to a lot of different concepts. In particular, when explaining email security.

One of the crazy things about hackers is that they will do whatever it takes to ensure that they steal as much information and sensitive data as possible. One of the more innovative ways that hackers spread threats is through spam. Unwanted messages have grown from simple annoyances, to the spread of unwanted software and malware, all the way to sophisticated attacks on targeted individuals known as phishing attacks. Do you have ways to secure your business?

Do you know what a botnet is and how it works? It’s basically a network of infected computers that can be used to perform Distributed Denial of Service attacks, overloading target networks and forcing them to endure downtime. They can also be used to distribute malware and other threats. What’s worse than this, you ask? Hackers can purchase botnets on the black market to use against their targets, but a new type of botnet strain is changing the way this works.