Amicus MSP

31 Days of Tech Tips: Day/Tip #23: Over 90% of malware was delivered by email in 2019. Year after year, email holds the top spot as the number one entry point for cybersecurity breaches. This is significant not only because they carry important information, they offer direct communication between you and your client. A breach impacting your client’s data can damage the hard-earned trust you’ve built with the business. Extremely sensitive data is frequently being shared wit...h staff, 3rd party vendors, or clients by email. Encryption should be utilized for anything deemed as too sensitive to be seen outside of the parties involved. Whether for mobile apps, browser-based webmail, or Outlook, the encryption solution needs to meet your staff wherever and however they work. Encryption options are an inexpensive, easy to implement tool that every business needs to consider. Honor the sanctity of your client’s personal information by protecting it while in your hands. Looking for a technology partner to help support your business? Please reach out to us at www.amicusmsp.com See more

31DaysofTechTips:Day/Tip #22 : While remote connectivity to the office has become the norm, connecting safely is still an afterthought for many businesses. Using tools like Remote Desktop requires open ports in your firewall which create security holes exposing your network to a variety of attacks. A secure solution for remote work is created by implementing a Virtual Private Network (VPN) for remote staff. A VPN provides private encrypted tunnels, from anywhere staff... may be working, directly to your office network. Ports are closed to the cyber-criminals and all data transmitted back and forth is rendered unreadable by the encryption during its journey. It’s relatively painless to configure, easy to use, and inexpensive as well! Once connected to the network, staff can access the onsite tools as if they were using a computer in the office. They can access files as their normal permissions allow, transfer files back and forth from the server, and print documents to the office printers. Looking for a technology partner to help support your business? Please reach out to us at www.amicusmsp.com

31 Days of Tech Tips: Day/Tip #21: All good things must come to an end. For better or for worse, evolving product lines usually require that support for old software and hardware is eventually phased out. The cost of supporting past products endlessly is cost prohibitive and sometimes impossible for manufacturers and software developers. With the end of support comes the end of security patches. Any new security holes discovered are left un-closed and fixes are no longer cr...eated for bugs or errors. Every business owner will come to a point where they must bite the bullet and pay to upgrade aging infrastructure. Fortunately, most companies in the technology space will publish End of Life notices online. Ensure your IT team is keeping track of these dates to ensure proper budget forecasting. Prepare to replace equipment before it reaches its end of life date. Unsupported legacy equipment can be rendered non-functional when connected devices go through driver, software or operating system updates. This type of surprise can be crippling so plan accordingly. Looking for a technology partner to help support your business? Please reach out to us at www.amicusmsp.com Follow @amicusmsp for more Tech Tips!

31 Days of Tech Tips: Day/Tip #20: Planning for a security breach is like planning for a natural disaster. They may never come, but when they do, having a plan in place can have a tremendous effect on how well you and your business will weather the storm. Work with your IT team to ensure there is a plan of action for each type of security breach. The examples below happen to businesses every day. Without proper planning, some of them can be ruinous, and each requires its ...own approach to be dealt with properly. Think about what steps your team will need to take for the following scenarios: An e-mail account is breached and currently sending spam to clients. An e-mail account is breached and client data has been compromised. Your internal network is breached and data has been compromised. Your company’s workstations have been infected with ransomware, locking up all your data. Your e-commerce site has been brought down from a distributed denial of service attack. A bad actor has penetrated your cloud ERP platform that is being hosted by a 3rd party. Looking for a technology partner to help support your business? Please reach out to us at www.amicusmsp.com

31DaysofTechTips:Day/Tip #19 : Beyondtraditionalnotionsofhacking,themajorityofcybersecuritybreachesstemfromsocialengineering.Whetherintheformofanemailtrickingusersintoprovidingsensitiveinformationorsimplyaccessinganareathatwasleftunlocked,thesemethodsareremarkablyunsophisticatedyeteffectivewaysthatcriminalsaccessyourinfrastructure. ... Maintaincompanywideaccesscontrolpoliciestosecureyourdataandinfrastructure. 1) Ensureserverroomsandnetworkrackshavelockingdoors. Haveatrustedemployeemaintainaccesstothekeys. 2) Providestaffwithlockingdrawersorlocksontheirofficedoorstokeepsensitivedatafrombeingeasilyaccessed. 3) Staffshouldshutdowncomputersnightlytopreventremoteaccessedwhileawayfromtheoffice.OnlyleaveonforafterhoursmaintenancewhenarrangedwithIT. 4) Donotshareuseraccountsorpasswords.Provideindividualuseraccountstomaintainaccountabilitywhenable. Looking for a technology partner to help support your business? Please reach out to us at www.amicusmsp.com

31 Days of Tech Tips: Day/Tip #18: Cybercrime is a growth industry, the number of attacks and costs of recovery trend upward each year. Because of these realities, implementing antivirus (AV) protection is as important as it has ever been. ... AV tools fall into three primary tiers; free versions, paid consumer versions, and enterprise grade versions. Free and consumer grade AV tend to be bloated with unwanted extras that slow your computer down significantly. They also include frequent popup messages urging you to pay for add-on features that can be confusing for staff. Windows already offers the built-in AV Defender which generally works as well as any baseline consumer version on the market (and no, Macs are not immune to viruses.) Businesses require, secure, effective, and efficient tools. Enterprise AV solutions offer a nimble, streamlined experience. The advanced security measures such as cloud-based, AI enabled behavior analysis, and professionally monitored AV support eliminate the need for end users to manually handle virus alerts. Looking for a technology partner to help support your business? Please reach out to us at www.amicusmsp.com Follow Amicus MSP for more Tech Tips!

31 Days of Tech Tips: Day/Tip #17: According to an article byTechJuryinJune,18, 2020, Digital consumers spend nearly 2.5 hours on social networks and social messaging every day. Along with the benefits of a business social media presence comes the risk of drawing attention from bad actors. These accounts hold a treasure trove of information for cybercriminals to harvest. Stored payment information, answers to account security questions, and most importantly our act...ivities and habits are all available and ripe for the picking. Tips for a safe and secure social media experience: Protect devices that access social media: Update to thelatest versions of software and firmware. Use security software to protect against malware, viruses and phishing attacks. Limit the sharing of personal information such as addresses and locations that you frequent. Disable location services or geo-tagging that shows others where you are or aren’t, especially when travelling. Connect only with people you trust or who have been vetted. Looking for a technology partner to help support your business? Please reach out to us at www.amicusmsp.com Follow us for more Tech Tips!

31 Days of Tech Tips: Day/Tip #16: One of the first things cyber-criminalswill check when trying to access your data is whether you have left a default username and password in place within your network infrastructure. It’s an open door to your data.These default logins are readily available on manufacturer’s websites and user manuals for any hacker to find and use. Consult with your IT team to ensure that your entire infrastructure is configured with complex non-defau...lt passwords. This is also true for home networking devices such as routers and modems which are frequently installed by the homeowner as opposed to a professional technician. With business owners and staff working remotemore frequently, it is critical to ensure your home network is secured as well. Looking for a technology partner to help support your business? Please reach out to us at www.amicusmsp.com #cybersecurityawareness #business #technology #network #password

31 Days of Tech Tips: Day/Tip #15: IT technicians have been beating the back up your data! drum for decades, but not all backup solutions were created equal. External hard drives and NAS setups won’t cut it during a severe security breach. Consider unknowingly backing up malware infected data. Recovering data that is also infected is crippling for a business. Without a clean older version of a backup, it could potentially lead to total data loss. As a response to these co...ncerns, Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BCDR) planning was developed. Uptime for any business is critical. A well-executed BCDR plan backs up your environment as well as your data. When only backing up files, it can take days for larger businesses to recover data into a usable state. BCDR solutions can provide working replicas of your environment and data within minutes while also maintaining multiple versions of historical backup states to mitigate the effects of corrupted, infected or encrypted data. Avoid the cost and stress of downtime protect your business with a BCDR plan. Looking for a technology partner to help support your business? Please reach out to us at www.amicusmsp.com See more

31 Days of Tech Tips: Day/Tip #14: The internet has become the backbone of modern business with the push towards cloud technology and VoIP taking communication where analog phones could only dream. In the old days, when your internet access was down, customers could still call to get through on your analog phone system. Now however, if your VoIP shares the same internet service provider as your business, one outage can take your entire system offline. If your business dep...ends on constant communication with customers and staff, consider implementing a fail over internet circuit which takes over when your primary circuit goes down. The failover circuit should be purchased from a different internet service provider than your primary circuit. This ensures that if an outage occurs with one provider, the other provider is most likely unaffected. Plan ahead, avoiding one serious outage can often cover the cost of the extra circuit by eliminating the associated downtime while ensuring your customers have a seamless experience. Looking for a technology partner to help support your business? Please reach out to us at www.amicusmsp.com See more

31 Days of Tech Tips: Day/Tip #13: Update software and firmware regularly to improve functionality and close newly discovered security holes. Implementing a well-designed patch management system minimizes potential impacts to the workflow of your business. Patch management steps:... Inventory of your equipment and track which are currently patched and which are still pending. Identify available patches for your devices and prioritize those that resolve major vulnerabilities. Set a regular monthly schedule for patching. This allows staff to plan for any potential outages during network or device updates. Create a change management process to plan for any patching related issues that could affect the business. Ensure critical systems are backed up. Have a roll-back strategy which places infrastructure back into a pre-update state. Test, and then test again. Patch a test machine first before rolling out any company wide updates. If the machine is free of issues after patching, roll the updates out to larger groups of machines. Looking for a technology partner to help support your business? Please reach out to us at www.amicusmsp.com

31 Days of Tech Tips: Day/Tip #12: DNS Protection Using DNS protection helps ensure that, as you explore the internet, you arrive at the actual websites you intended. The Domain Name System (DNS) is what translates the numeric IP address of a website into a legible word-based address that we humans use to navigate the internet. Unfortunately, because DNS was not designed with security in mind, it can be manipulated to compromise devices leading to sensitive data exposure.... Bad actors can utilize a variety of hacking methods such as DDoS, man-in-the-middle and cache poisoning to redirect your web browser to compromised sites. This can lead to installation of malware or keyloggers onto your device among other security concerns. Looking for a technology partner to help support your business? Please reach out to us at www.amicusmsp.com See more