Virtual Business Solutions Blog

It doesn’t take much to get us to start ranting about the dangers of phishing, and it’s a topic that we won’t stop talking about for some time. Unfortunately, phishing comes in enough forms that it isn’t always so simple to spot. For this week’s tip, we just wanted to run through the different formats phishing can take, focusing on how to identify each type.

Remote work has seen unprecedented adoption in the past few years. While we’re all for the benefits that this trend brings, it is critical that any business that embraces remote or hybrid work does so securely.

Let’s discuss a few measures that your business can and should implement to achieve this security.

Most organizations are trying to figure out how to secure their IT against the constant flood of threats out there. Unfortunately, the biggest threat out there isn’t something that you can actively protect against. Can you guess what it is?

Unfortunately, it’s your employees, and their potentially lax password practices—and while you can’t really protect yourself against insecure passwords, you can minimize the likelihood that they’ll be used.

Unfortunately, the number of cyberattacks is consistently growing and many of those attacks target business end users. This means that any account that requires a password for access could conceivably be compromised should attackers gain access to its credentials. At Virtual Business Solutions, we promote the use of multi-factor authentication (also known as two-factor authentication or 2FA) to mitigate some of the risk inherent with the use of password-based accounts in business. 

Small businesses have a lot to worry about in terms of technology, but one of the things that often gets overlooked is network security. Some small businesses feel that they are too small to be considered a viable target for hackers, but they are wrong; all businesses have data valuable for hackers in some form.

When security breaches and data breaches are mentioned in the same breath so often, it’s easy to look at them as one and the same. However, we want to take a moment to explain the differentiating factors between the two, as it could be all the most important for protecting your business in the future.

Simple passwords are just not an effective security practice, so if you’re still using credentials like Password, 123456, Guest, or Qwerty, listen up. You need better password hygiene practices before you suffer from a data breach. Here are some ways you can make a better password to protect your business from threats.

iPhone users should be aware that, should you encounter a pop-up that reads “Your Apple iPhone is severely damaged”, you don’t need to be concerned—beyond the concern you’d have for any other threat, that is. This pop-up is just a recent iteration of a common phishing scam that aims to fool people into downloading apps that enable hackers to access personal information.

While security researchers do their best to find security vulnerabilities in software and systems before they are actively exploited by attackers, they can’t be successful all the time. There are too many threats and too many variables to consider, and zero-day exploits are often discovered well after they are actively being exploited by threats. How can you keep zero-day exploits from impacting your business?

There is a scam going around that convinces organizations to pay for their Google Business Profile, and if you paid for this free service, you’ve fallen for the trick. Google is taking legal action against the scammers who have dragged their name through the mud, using Google’s notoriety to defraud businesses who just want to look competitive.

It’s the holiday season, and you know what that means: lots of gift-giving and online shopping. Regardless of what you and your family celebrate this holiday season, you should be prepared to handle the influx of phishing attacks which always surface around this time every year, including both the usual methods and the more sophisticated ones.

For millions of people, the rubber ducky is a benign reminder of childhood. Depending on when you were a child, the rendition of Sesame Street’s Ernie singing “Rubber Duckie, you’re the one,” is ingrained in your mind every time you hear the term. Unfortunately, the Rubber Ducky we are going to tell you about today has only fond recollection for people who are looking to breach networks they aren’t authorized to access or deliver malware payloads that are designed to cause havoc. 

We often talk about scams and cyberthreats, and lately our advice for dealing with a potential phishing threat is to simply avoid it altogether.

Ransomware is one of the more dangerous threats out there today, and since it is so prominent and dangerous, it is a popular choice amongst hackers. To combat this threat, a community has formed around the cause, encouraging users to not pay the ransom by providing free malware removal tools for the most popular ransomware threats.

What do you do if you have forgotten your wireless router’s password? You could restore the router back to its default settings, of course, but what if you have, like a dummy, never changed the router’s password in the first place? This Internet password repository could be your saving grace.

If you watch technology news, you might notice that there is one day out of every month that gets a lot of attention from the technology sector, and that day is what is called Patch Tuesday. This is the day each month when Microsoft issues all of their patches and security updates, and it’s important to know when this day falls each month—at least, for your IT team it is.

We’re not shy about sharing how important it is for a business to have comprehensive cybersecurity throughout its entire infrastructure. That’s why we wanted to share what some recent data has shown about the importance of having visibility into your infrastructure.

Spoiler alert: it’s really, really important.

At first glance, cybersecurity might seem incredibly complicated and difficult to understand, but even a baseline understanding of some of the principles of cybersecurity can go a long way toward protecting your business. Let’s discuss some of the common-sense ways you can keep your business secure, even if you don’t have an internal IT department to ask for help from.

How often do you get emails from individuals claiming to be working with a business who wants to do business with yours or sell you a product, completely unsolicited and even perhaps a bit suspicious? These types of messages can often land small businesses in hot water, as it only takes one phishing email landing in the wrong inbox at the wrong time to put your business in jeopardy.

This past year saw a dangerous 86% increase in the most dangerous types of malware out there, so we want to ask you an important question: are you ready to protect your business from the different types of threats you might encounter? We know a technology solution that might help this mission along, and we want to share it with you today: artificial intelligence.