Ulistic Projects Blog

5 Incredible Benefits of Effective Managed IT Services

Managed IT services are one of the many ways an organization can choose to handle their IT needs. With managed IT services, a third-party handles the entirety of the tasks and responsibilities regarding managing IT and keeping the company running. The difference between this and many traditional third-party services is that it’s provided for a set cost. Instead of having access to an hourly consultant rate, you’ll be paying a flat rate monthly (or annually) in exchange for total coverage.

Every arrangement is slightly different and must be outlined very clearly in the Service Level Agreement (also known as the SLA). This document will arrange not only the cost structure, but also the exact services that are included in the partnership, and the metrics that are used to define success or failure.

There are many reasons that companies elect to go with managed IT services to handle their day-to-day needs. Here are five of the most compelling reasons:

1. Provides Total Alignment Between Both Parties

In a managed services agreement, both parties are aligned for maximum efficiency and performance. Since it’s not an hourly rate, the third-party is incentivized to handle your IT in an efficient and effective manner. Otherwise, they have to spend more time and manpower resolving your issues, which brings down their effective hourly rate.

Additionally, if they don’t live up to the metrics set forth by the SLA, they may be liable for penalties or even complete termination of the contract. In this way, it’s in both companies interest to do the very best job possible.

2. Focuses on Being Proactive versus Reactive

If you’re paying by the hour, the services you’ll receive are going to be reactive. When your company notices an issue, they’ll reach out to the third-party to help fix it. Managed services provide proactive support. Since they’re working for you no matter if there’s a problem or not, much of their time is spent preventing problems in the first place. This results in much smoother daily operations and the avoidance of problems that could potentially hurt your businesses but would be unavoidable with another type of arrangement.

3. Contains Simple Cost Structure

The simple cost structure of managed IT services will be much appreciated by your accounting department and whoever is setting the budget. Instead of seeing costs vary wildly by the amount of support required in a particular month, the amount will be a flat fee. You’ll also likely save a great deal of money versus hiring a fully functional team in-house since you won’t need to pay for things like recruiting, onboarding, benefits, and continued training.

4. Makes Projects Easier to Manage

When you need to roll out a brand-new technology or simply update an existing one, it can take a great deal of time and resources. This is especially true if the third-party isn’t used to the way your business operates each day and has to fit the entire roll out into a small window of time. If you have continuous support, however, it’s a much more manageable process. They can work on the project when they have a spare moment in the day. Since they’re fully integrated into your day-to-day processes, they’ll have a much better idea of how to implement a new system from end-to-end, including training and providing post-launch support.

5. Offers Access to True Experts

Unless you’re a massive organization, it’s unlikely that you can afford to recruit, train, and maintain the very best in the IT field. With an agreement with a top-notch IT firm, you gain access to experience and perspectives that you would be unlikely to otherwise access. These talented professionals will be able to help you with all of your IT needs, from daily maintenance to improving upon your existing systems and processes.

Managed IT services are only one of the many ways that a company can choose to handle its IT needs. However, it offers many advantages over some of the other options, including handling IT in-house and going with an hourly consultant-based fee schedule. If you believe that your business could benefit from controlled costs, improved support, and access to an incredible variety of IT talent, managed IT services might be the best option for your business.

What You Need To Know About OAuth Phishing Attacks

Amnesty International has reported that OAuth Phishing attacks targeted dozens of Egyptian human rights defenders since the beginning of this year. They are warning that these human rights defenders should be vigilant and contact them if they receive any suspicious emails.

“Since January 2019 several human rights defenders and civil society organizations from Egypt started forwarding dozens of suspicious emails to Amnesty International. Through the course of our investigation, we discovered that these emails were attempts to access the email accounts of their targets through a particularly insidious form of phishing known as OAuth Phishing … We estimate the total number of targeted individuals to be in the order of several hundreds.” Amnesty International

What Is OAuth Phishing?

The Egyptian authorities are using a new spear-phishing technique called OAuth phishing. OAuth is an industry-standard protocol used for authorizations. All computer users should beware of OAuth Phishing.

OAuth Phishing is being used to abuse the legitimate authorization feature of online service providers that lets third-party applications gain access to an account. OAuth is the protocol used by many companies, including Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft. It’s used to manage access to user data across these and other platforms.

With access to a user’s email account OAuth can add events or flight times to their calendars. The OAuth Phishing hackers use malicious third-party applications to trick users into giving them access to their accounts.

OAuth Phishing targets OAuth tokens instead of passwords. When a user grants a third-party app the right to access their account, the application uses the OAuth token instead of a password. Egyptian authorities are gaining unauthorized access and use third-party apps to compromise users’ accounts.

How Does OAuth Phishing Work?

The hacker uses phishing emails with fake security warnings from Google to trick victims into clicking on a malicious link. The victim is instructed to click the “Update my security now” button. When they do, they’re sent to a third-party application called “Secure Mail.” This prompts the OAuth process.

But that’s not all. They are then asked to give the “Secure Mail” app access to their Gmail or other accounts. They’re told to click on the “Allow” button. When this happens, the hacker gains access to the victim’s account.

Now the attacker can use a malicious application to:

• Download other messages, attachments and files.
• Search for and read their messages.
• Install filters and forwarding rules.
• Inject macros into Word documents.
• Access users’ contacts.
• Get into OneDrive and search for downloaded files.
• Extract emails by searching for keywords.
• Setup malicious Outlook rules.

Amnesty International warns that these OAuth phishing attacks also target users’ Yahoo, Gmail, Outlook and Hotmail accounts.

How Can You Prevent Your Employees From Being Victimized By OAuth Phishing?

The best way is to be educated. Security Awareness Training is the go-to solution to keep employees informed about security threats and how to avoid them. But, because OAuth phishing can be difficult to detect and the victim authenticates through a legitimate site, people are still being tricked.

OAuth Phishing can be hard to identify. And, even with Security Awareness Training, people are being tricked. They’re trained to look for suspicious website URLs and to use Two-Factor Authentication. But these tactics don’t work to prevent OAuth phishing.

Phishing messages can convince users to click links that deliver malware or reveal their user credentials. Now with new tools, OAuth is being used for this. The account can be accessed until authorization is explicitly revoked. Not even password resets or using 2-factor authentication will work to stop it.

Train and test your users to:

• Spot phishing messages and specifically OAuth phishing messages.
• Know how to submit suspicious email messages if they find them.
• Defend and respond to OAuth attacks.

Along with Security Awareness training, companies must ensure that their IT service companies have set up the technology, policies and remote monitoring and management to detect these OAuth attacks.

What Does OAuth Recommend?

You can visit this page for security guidance. They say that if a suspicious or malicious third-party application is found in the OAuth environment that all permissions should be revoked. Then review remote monitoring logs to learn what was compromised.

They also suggest that you:

• Limit the number of third-party applications that can be accepted.
• Disable any third-party applications that you don’t need.
• Search and monitor all third-party applications that have been approved for use, and check for suspicious activity.
• If you use Microsoft Office 365, be sure to monitor your application permissions in the Cloud App Security.

The Bottom Line

All of your employees should be educated about the dangers of OAuth and other phishing attacks. They should always use best practices and only access applications that they trust.

Also, make sure that you and your IT provider periodically review the list of applications that you use. Revoke access to all applications that you no longer need.

The top concern for CEOs today isn’t competitors or a recession — it’s cybersecurity. See why this is becoming the biggest challenge for an organization’s top executive.

Why Today’s CEOs are Worried About Cybersecurity

A business’s top executive has plenty on their minds: the potential of a major recession, competitors nipping at their heels and a shortage of talent. However, none of these hot topics are the top concern for US CEOs in 2019 — that banner falls to cybersecurity. When there are so many other issues facing organizations, why is cybersecurity the highest business concern for CEOs? Perhaps part of the issue is the continual cycle of mainstream media coverage of the massive breaches such as Equifax in 2017 that affected millions of individuals and can cost billions of dollars to resolve. It could also be the high-profile challenges that Facebook, Yahoo, Under Armour and Marriott have been facing over the past few years. A recent poll of over 1,400 CEOs and senior executives by The Conference Boardpoints to some of the reasons cybersecurity is a top strategic consideration for CEOs in 2019.

CEOs Struggling to Find the Right Cybersecurity Leaders

One of the key threats facing today’s CEOs is the ability to adequately resource their cybersecurity teams. This relatively new need is one that is causing a significant shortage in the hiring market, with organizations wrestling with budget requirements for an increasingly-expensive skill set. Unfortunately, the dearth of talent is not just at the executive leadership level, it is also causing IT departments around the country and the world to flounder as they attempt to staff up to meet the growing needs of cybersecurity as well as data compliance requirements. These individuals will be in high demand for the foreseeable future as gaining knowledge about cybersecurity requires time and investment in education. Savvy CEOs and other technology leaders have been growing these skills internally for the last several years, but having a split focus between cybersecurity requirements and their “day job” can quickly cause individuals to fall behind in the ever-changing security landscape.

Keeping Cybersecurity Initiatives in the Limelight

It’s relatively easy for CEOs to keep shorter-term strategies top-of-mind for their executive teams, but there are no quick solutions to enhancing your organization’s cybersecurity. This requires a long-term, focused effort — and resisting the siren songs of short-term gains to ensure that your strategic focus on IT security stays in place. Changes in the economy or in the competitive marketplace may tease CEOs to redirect some of the funds or teams to other parts of the organization, but it’s crucial that top executives stay in tune with the benefits that cybersecurity provides to the organization. In many cases, the changes that need to be made to make your organization more secure will also have payoffs in the efficiency of your operations, too.

Marketplace Perception of a Data Breach

The extremely negative perception and sheer quantity of negative publicity that can come with a data breach are reason enough for CEOs to be overly concerned about the cybersecurity within their organization. It doesn’t take long for smaller, leaner competitors to enter many marketplaces, and these organizations can receive positive publicity if larger organizations are caught up in a breach situation. How the business handles their communication around a massive breach, ransomware or other cybersecurity incidents can be as damaging as the incident itself if the CEO isn’t careful. These situations require a great deal of proactive communication and notification to customers along with the major effort required to evaluate the incident and begin remediation. Without a comprehensive incident response plan in place, the situation becomes that much more difficult for leaders throughout the organization.

Creating a proactive field for cybersecurity does start at the top, which makes it encouraging that CEOs are considering cybersecurity their very top initiative for 2019. As long as this focus on IT security and the value for the business continues strong over the next few years, businesses should be able to prepare adequately to weather this type of storm.

What Is Network Segmentation?

Businesses that offer WiFi to their customers or have sensitive data needs should consider network segmentation as a necessary component of their IT solution.

With network segmentation, your wireless services are separated into different parts, allowing you to better control access and data flow.

Network segmentation splits your wireless services into different segments or subnetworks. By establishing separate networks, you significantly reduce your company’s security risks.

Instead of putting all your corporate and guest traffic on the same WiFi network, segment the activity to keep sensitive data apart from visitors, reduce risk.

Why?

When devices are connected to the same network, by default they can “talk” to other devices on the same network. That increases the potential for devices to listen to network traffic without any rules or monitoring in place.

The risk is lower if all the devices on your network are trusted and managed by your company. However, you could have a problem when less trustworthy devices are connected, such as guest and visitor smartphones, legacy computers and servers, or employee personal devices.

How Does Network Segmentation Work?

Network segments are designed with their own hardware and only allow credentialed users to access the services. Rules are built into network configurations to determine how devices on subnetworks can connect with each other.

Network segmentation limits the impact if there is a system intrusion by containing the threat within a subnetwork.

What Does a Typical Segmented Network Look Like?

For many small- and medium-sized businesses, there is only a need for a simple, two-subnetwork structure. A corporate subnetwork would be used for company-owned and -managed devices, providing access to the internal company subnetwork and, through a firewall, to the internet.

A guest subnetwork would be built to provide access to the internet only, also through a firewall. It keeps those guest devices disconnected from the corporate subnetwork from the start. Employee-owned devices can also be connected to a guest subnetwork.

Your business, whether it’s a medical practice, retail operation, auto dealership or professional services firm, may want visitors and guests to have WiFi access. It’s an appreciated service for those who need connectivity and do not want to use up their allotted data. If that service is the expectation or norm, you want to make sure it’s done carefully.

What Are the Security Benefits of Network Segmentation?

Security is the primary reason to choose network segmentation. The benefits are considerable

• Stronger Security Standards. Segmentation allows you to better protect your most sensitive data. With layers of separation among your segmented networks, you’re putting up additional barriers to all users — whether well-intended or not.
• Slowed Access for Attackers. If there is a breach to one segment of your network, it will be more difficult and take more time for the attacker to reach other parts of your system.
• Minimized Threat from Outside Devices. Outside devices may have been hacked for the sole purpose of accessing corporate networks when connected. Often hackers install programs that lie dormant until connected to a wireless network. If compromised guest devices are contained within a subnetwork, the impact is minimal.
• Better Policy Development. Strong network segmentation means your company can better restrict user access. Using a policy of least privilege lets you limit user access to files and systems to only what’s necessary.
• Limited Damage. Network segmentation lets you reduce any damage inflicted by successful attacks. A breach to a single device within a subnetwork will mean less time and money to repair the damage of a widespread, system-wide assault.
• Improved Performance. An added benefit of having segmented networks are the performance gains. With fewer devices on each subnetwork, local traffic is minimized and broadcast traffic can be isolated and prioritized.

What’s Needed to Start Network Segmentation?

If your internal IT staff does not have experience with network configuration, it’s a smart move to work with a local managed services provider to complete the project. Your business should do the following in preparation for a segmentation project:

• Identify your network and data security needs, including the sensitivity of data you use and the business impact of compromised data and system downtime
• Know where the data you want to keep safe is stored and how they could be separated
• Determine who needs access to information on your network and limit access to only what is necessary by department or role
• Identify those who will be responsible for monitoring and maintaining your network. A managed IT services company can do both remotely with net-generation firewall solutions

Network segmentation is a strategic move to keep data protected and accessible only by those who need it.

Keeping An Eye On The Dark Web?

Do you know about the “Dark Web”? It’s the part of the Internet where your private data – passwords, social security, credit card numbers, etc. – could be for sale right now. Do you know how to check if they are?

 

 

The Internet isn’t all funny videos and social media.

Between phishing, malware, and a seemingly never-ending list of scams, there are a number of serious dangers that are important to be aware of.

But there’s an even a darker corner of the web where few people dare to venture that can have a wide-reaching and severely damaging effect on your business: the Dark Web.

Recently, cyber thieves released a huge list of compromised emails and passwords known as Collection #1. It contains 773 million records, making it one of the largest data breaches to date. If your information has ever been breached, it’s most likely on this new list – and that list is on the Dark Web.

Even the federal government has had a hard time locating those responsible and stopping them. The Department of Homeland Security made their first bust involving criminals selling illegal goods on the Dark Web just last year. The arrests were made after a year-long investigation. Though this is good news, it doesn’t even scratch the surface of all the criminal activities taking place on the Dark Web.

The bottom line is that you can’t wait around for the government or anyone else to protect your business from cyber thieves. You have to be proactive about securing your database. Your personal and business information should not be for sale on the Dark Web, but how can you stop this?

What Is The Dark Web?

The Dark Web is a small part of the much larger “deep web” – the common name for an extensive collection of websites that aren’t accessible through normal Internet browsers. These websites are hidden from the everyday Internet — or Clearnet — users through the use of overlay networks.

They’re built on the framework of networks that already exist, and there are a lot of them. In fact, the Deep Web makes up the majority of the information online. Which, when you consider how vast the corner of the Internet you frequent is, is nothing short of terrifying.

This unseen part of the Internet is a perfect place for less than scrupulous individuals to connect, network, and share tools, tips, and information. And it should go without saying that whatever their up to on these sites is nothing good.

Personal information such as school and medical records, bank statements, and private emails are all part of the immense Deep Web. To gain access to this information, you must be able to access an overlay network using specialized software and passwords. This is a good thing, because it keeps sensitive information safe, and prevents search engines from accessing and indexing it.

Why Is The Dark Web Used To Sell Private Information?

The added security of the Deep Web makes it attractive for those who want their online activities to remain anonymous. Unlike the Deep Web, which prevents outsiders from accessing information, the owners of Dark Websites allow anyone with the right browser to access their sites. One of the most popular of these is The Onion Browser, more commonly known as Tor.

The Dark Web is like “The Wild West” of the Internet. It’s an area beyond the reach of law enforcement, hence the complete lack of regulations or protection. Although not everyone who uses the Dark Web engages in illicit activities — it has a history of being a platform for political dissidents and corporate whistleblowers — many visitors are there for less than upstanding reasons.

Cybercrime costs US businesses billions of dollars each year. The majority of information hackers steal from businesses ends up on the Dark Web for sale to identity thieves and corporate spies.

But, the real danger is that it provides communication and educational training ground for hackers and would-be hackers. Although the competition among different hacking groups is fierce, there’s still a willingness among cyber criminals to share techniques and assist one another.

It’s this access to the “tools of the trade” and the guidance required to pull off successful hacks, attacks, and scams that makes the Dark Web so dangerous to your business. Anyone with the time and inclination to learn how to steal valuable data from your business can check out an online tutorial or two, pay for some basic hacking software from one of these marketplaces, and set their sights on you.

While they might not be the stories that make national headlines, small and mid-sized businesses are targeted every day by cybercriminals looking to make a fast buck.

How can you protect yourself?

When a news story comes out about a large corporate hack, businesses often scramble to learn how they can better protect their businesses – but that’s the wrong time to start thinking about it.

Don’t wait until a breach occurs – start protecting yourself now. The advice you should follow centers around educating your employees about the dangers of online crime and developing company procedures to prevent it from happening.

The first step is to make sure you (and your staff) use stronger passwords…

Top 4 Password Mistakes To Avoid

Length and Complexity

Keep in mind that the easier it is for you to remember a password, the easier it’ll be for a hacker to figure it out. That’s why short and simple passwords are so common – users worry about forgetting them, so they make them too easy to remember, which presents an easy target for hackers.

Numbers, Case, and Symbols

Another factor in the password’s complexity is whether or not it incorporates numbers, cases, and symbols. While it may be easier to remember a password that’s all lower-case letters, it’s important to mix in numbers, capitals, and symbols in order to increase the complexity.

Personal Information

Many users assume that information specific to them will be more secure – the thinking, for example, is that your birthday is one of a 365 possible options in a calendar year, not to mention your birth year itself. The same methodology applies to your pet’s name, your mother’s maiden name, etc.

However, given the ubiquity of social media, it’s not difficult for hackers to research a target through Facebook, LinkedIn, and other sites to determine when they were born, information about their family, personal interests, etc.

Pattern and Sequences

Like the other common mistakes, many people use patterns as passwords in order to better remember them, but again, that makes the password really easy to guess. “abc123”, or the first row of letters on the keyboard, “qwerty”, etc., are extremely easy for hackers to guess.

Maybe you think your passwords are fine.

It’s certainly possible – but it’s one thing to skim over a list of common password mistakes and assume you’re probably still OK.

Sure, maybe that one password is based on your pet’s name, or maybe that other password doesn’t have any capitals or numbers – what’s the big deal, really?

If you’re so confident, then why not put it to the test?

Click here to test how secure your password is – take a few minutes and try a few.

…

How’d you do?

Probably not as well as you’d hoped, right? The reality is that truly complex passwords can be difficult to come up with, and even more difficult to remember.

Top 3 Tips To Keep Your Data Off The Dark Web

Train staff members on the proper handling of corporate data and procedures to limit data loss, including ways to handle phishing scams.

Besides an initial onboarding training session, all employees should attend refresher courses throughout the year. The vast majority of cybercriminals gain access to a company’s network through mistakes made by employees.

Require the use of strong passwords and two-factor authorization.

It’s advisable that you assign strong passwords to each individual employee to prevent them from using passwords that are easy to guess, as well as implementing two-factor authorization.

Consider investing in hacking insurance and conduct penetration testing.

The cost of cybercrime will exceed 6 billion dollars by 2021. That’s a lot of money. Investing in cyber attack insurance is a good idea for businesses with a great deal of exposure.

Unfortunately, all these tips are meant to be preventative – they’ll increase your security and protect against cybercriminals taking your data in the first place. But what if you’ve already experienced a breach?

Even worse, what if you’ve experienced a data breach, but you don’t even know it? Case in point: it takes most businesses up to 6 months to find out that they’ve experienced a data breach.

What if you’re one of them?

How can you find out if your data is already up for sale?

What About Dark Web Scanning?

There’s only so much you can do on your own – but there are now more direct ways of checking whether your data has been compromised on the Dark Web. Many security vendors now offer cyber-surveillance monitoring solutions that can scan the dark web for your credentials.

One of the most popular of these solutions is Dark Web ID, which is designed to detect compromised credentials that surface on the Dark Web in real-time, offering you a comprehensive level of data theft protection – it’s an enterprise-level service tailored to businesses like yours.

This Dark Web monitoring solution keeps tabs on the shadiest corners of the online world 24 hours a day, 7 days a week – no exceptions.

Features include:

• Security Awareness to keep your staff prepared to spot and stop hackers from harming your business
• Password Manager to help you and your staff maintain complex, hard to crack passwords
• Multifactor Authentication to prevent external parties from accessing your systems with stolen passwords
• Data Leak Prevention to make sure the integrity of your business data
• Vulnerability and Patch Management to make sure no weakness in your cybersecurity is overlooked.

This isn’t a matter of “what you don’t know won’t hurt you”. In fact, it’s the opposite. You can’t afford to ignore the dark web.