Hackers have discovered a new way to attack the corporate computer system through the devices of employees working at home due to the coronavirus epidemic. The threat is designed to take advantage of the vulnerabilities created by the increasing use of corporate virtual private networks (VPNs) and the elimination of personal verification.

The latest hacker campaign was launched and used voice phishing. Additionally, cybercriminals have launched phishing campaigns – with random targeting to gain access to employee tools across multiple companies – with the ultimate goal of gaining access.

Phishing has evolved into sophisticated and coordinated campaigns to obtain confidential and proprietary information and trade secrets through their VPN. Criminals have discovered this type with the help of company employees.

It’s harder to find safety when your employees have keystrokes. Cybercriminals removed the victim company’s clients’ information database to leverage hidden credentials in other attacks. The monetizing method may vary depending on the company, but they are very aggressive with a tight schedule between the initial breach and a disruptive cashout system.

VPNs are widely used in today’s remote work environment, and they aim to create a secure platform for remote employees to log in to their company’s network from home. Many companies use VPNs since they provide secure remote connections and allow the company to monitor the activities of employees on the web and detect potential security breaches.

How do scammers do this?

The cybercrime group sets a goal for the company and conducts extensive research on its employees. Attackers collect victim files of employees based on scraps of their virtual presence on social media.

The attacker can find out the employee’s name, location, place of work, position, company tenure, and even the employee’s home address from an employee’s social media profile.

After that, the hackers register the domain and create phishing web pages that copy the login page to the company’s internal VPN.

The attacker then contacts an employee on his mobile phone and pretends to be an internal IT professional or help desk employee for security reasons. Using the information collected about that employee during the visible research phase and convincing the employee, the employee gains confidence that the fraudster needs to log in to a new VPN link to address security issues or other technical requirements. The attacker sends a link to a fake VPN page to an unsuspecting employee, which looks exactly like the company’s VPN login site. The employee enters his username and password in the domain and clicks on the login link. If applicable, the employee also completes a two-component authentication or one-time password request.

With one click on a VPN link, the attacker has a complete set of employee credentials. Attackers use this access to my company’s databases, records, and files to obtain information to pressure the company for ransom or to be used in other cyber attacks.

Take precautions

Employers should seriously consider their safety protocols and take steps to prevent employees from inadvertently falling into phishing traps by continuing to work remotely.

Advice to employers includes:

• Restrict VPN connections only to managed devices using mechanisms such as hardware checks so that only the user input is not sufficient to access corporate VPN.
• If possible, limit VPN access hours and reduce access beyond the usually allowed time.
• Use domain monitoring to track the creation or change of the company’s brand name domain.
• Actively scan and monitor web applications to detect unauthorized access, alterations, and unusual activity.
• Implement the principle of minimum privilege, enforce software restriction policies or other restrictions and monitor authorized user access.
• The formal authentication process for employee-to-employee communication can be applied to public telephone networks as another element is used to authenticate phone calls before discussing sensitive information.

Depending on the organization, not all consultant advice is feasible. But all companies must heed the agency’s warning and seriously evaluate security protocols, VPNs, and network access to protect their confidential and proprietary information and trade secrets.

Separately, companies should continue to engage employees and train them on the proper use of the network, security concerns, and when to call a certain IT number.

Cybercriminals will continue to take advantage of remote employees. Therefore, companies should regularly remind employees that any requests for their login and credentials (or other personal information) should be suspicious and remind employees where to go and who to contact if they have any security issues.

Whom to contact to prevent the attack of cybercriminals?

After understanding the danger of cybercriminals, you might think about preventing the attack. We at “AccuIT” have experienced technicians to ensure maximum productivity and uptime in Microsoft-based client/server network infrastructure and security. By properly deploying and maintaining computer assets, AccuIT will help your business reduce downtime and IT-related support calls from the start. So contact us today and avoid the risk of cybercriminal attacks.

Cloud computing offers businesses a variety of advantages, such as efficiency, economy, and scalability, that allow them to perform business tasks quickly and efficiently. With cloud computing services available to everyone regardless of their size or type, companies are increasingly turning to adopt them as a way to streamline their business processes and become more competitive. You should always seek help from an IT service provider to evaluate your business to ensure that you are ready to use cloud services.

Companies should not rush to adopt cloud computing without proper planning and evaluation. 

The number of small businesses that involve cloud computing may grow over five years. 

Here are a few things to consider if you want to migrate to cloud technology.

1. Return on investment (ROI) and cost.

A well-organized migration to the cloud should always be based on migration costs, including the provider’s fees for the first three years. After that, you have to consider your infrastructure because sometimes, you can get the guarantee of a third party that will help you dramatically reduce costs and allow your business to better plan and prepare for future migration.

2. Business Impact Analysis.

If you do not have the complete infrastructure to evaluate how this migration will affect your business, you should analyze the business impact of the application. For example, it’s not a good idea to start with an app that your company relies heavily on. Otherwise, it would be best if you also planned to move the workload to gain experience by first putting your most important business application in the cloud. For example, email servers, intranets, and departmental applications may be the first to use the cloud.

3. Development and testing against production.

You can start with a less critical development and testing environment. Keep the configuration and infrastructure you use with your product the same as you move to the cloud to reduce the likelihood of problems and issues.

4. Performance is essential.

It would be best not to consider moving environments that require intensive data processing or performance-sensitive applications because if there are any issues with these requests, such as increased response time, your business will suffer.

5. Complexity.

Avoid moving complex architecture systems with several points that need integration between various applications.

6. License.

You should evaluate the supplier’s cloud model and assess whether modification from this custom model will be costly in the future. In addition, license and User Terms and Conditions may vary from one vendor to another and the cloud service provider. So, you must always check to see if the seller has allowed you to run additional copies of the same event under the same license.

7. Service level agreement.

Evaluate Service Level Agreement (SLA) to understand the service provider’s responsibilities, such as uptime, redundancy, and recovery. Some vendors may have specific SLAs. So, if your SLA is too difficult, the cloud vendor will not agree to support it.

8. Security.

Security factors can be your top priority when choosing a cloud vendor. Before moving to the cloud, you should check that the cloud service provider has adequate security measures and any regulations or data security restrictions that the cloud service provider must support.

9. Future migration needs.

Think about the consequences of moving your environment to another location with a new cloud service provider later. Migrating to cloud technology is not as easy as shifting to a physical office.

10. Reliability and Internet bandwidth.

Internet bandwidth requirements and service reliability are two of the most overlooked aspects of migrating to the cloud, which is crucial because you will be utterly dependent on your cloud service provider if you move your IT infrastructure to the cloud. Hence the credibility of the cloud service provider is significant to you. You should consider the number of users of your company, the nature of the business, and your location to evaluate the service provider. In addition, you should ask your cloud service provider about availability and bandwidth requirements to access the service.

Whome to contact for migrating to cloud?

After understanding the necessity of the cloud migrating factors, you may be searching for the best IT service provider to solve your issues. We, AccuIT, provide IT support and services, including migrating to cloud technology. Call us today! 

Managing technology in an organization can be a time-consuming and costly intrusion for small businesses that need the capital to purchase hardware, software, and security and dedicated staff to take care of them. Responsibilities will be more when money and time are scarce.

Your company can grow as much as your technology allows. However, if you fail to invest in the right tools, you will become helpless because other people take advantage of opportunities that you cannot pursue.

Digital transformation is everyone’s business. The people who lead your company don’t just need to know how the new technology works. They also need to understand how this technology will affect their operations and position in the market.

Check these signs in your company to determine if you need a managed IT service:

1. Your customer expectation is rising.

Consumer expectations are rising every year. Companies must face this challenge or lose ground because competitors provide customers with an intuitive, seamless experience.

Changes are needed when your technology hinders business value. Technology is continuously evolving, and companies have to evaluate the workforce and tools to learn and grow.

There is no requirement to lead the industry in technology-driven customer experiences. But, staying with the basic expectations of service, customization, and ease of use will allow your customers to earn their business.

2. You are open to cyber security risks.

No one is entirely safe from cyber threats. But if you are not upgrading your system for a longer duration, the situation will become more dangerous. In addition, most consumers decide to share personal information whether they trust the company or not. So the company has to handle the customer’s personal information responsibly.

Even if you do not keep personally identifiable information, older devices sometimes leave data traces that hackers can exploit. Vendors may also use outdated systems that expose their customers to potential abuse. Stay away from threats by modernizing your system and working with partners who take information security seriously.

3. You are using repeated solutions to keep working.

Using repeated solutions indicate that your company is in dire need of upgrades. Sometimes you may need to change your process before your technology. However, in most cases, outdated techniques force you to compromise and take extra steps to achieve the desired results.

Thus, while workarounds help reach solutions, they can hide problems and create confusing processes. Moreover, workarounds can quickly become a new, informal business process rather than a temporary solution to an emerging issue.

4. Your IT team spends all their time putting out fires.

Your technology team will always be the first to suffer from immediate breakdowns. Hence, more companies realize the value of investing in technology than simple maintenance costs.

Talk to IT leaders and team members to determine how much time they spend on maintenance against new projects. If the answers are too much for the care, start looking for technology options that can take away the burden of your IT teams.

Involve the entire leadership team in the process. Your IT experts know how your options will integrate into your existing system and explain the benefits of adding new tools. Finally, find a solution by contacting a managed IT service to help your IT teams spend more time staying active. 

Hence you can hand over all the complex tasks to contractors who provide managed solutions at a fixed cost to concentrate on your primary objectives peacefully. 

Realizing the cost

The service provider will update the hardware regularly as part of the agreement. Therefore, there is no necessity to invest in new hardware and infrastructure from time to time. Instead, these investment costs are moved from the balance sheet to the profit and loss statement and replaced with regular and fixed costs. This idea makes it easier to plan a business, especially for a growing company.

When disaster happens

Cost is usually the most enjoyable benefit of managed services, but other payoffs such as reliable operations can also be availed. If a disaster happens, it will spoil the server room, and an alternative server has to be borrowed to load the data. 

The data centers responsible for allowing the employees to access email and remote desktops fail to operate in the event of a disaster. Managed IT service providers can find excellent solutions to these problems.

When the system is adequately planned and implemented correctly, the rewards of managed service approach can be significant – financially for management and functionally for IT staff and employees.