IT Support Archives - Foster Institute

Avoid These 3 Really Good Hacker Tricks

Mike Foster — Fri, 27 May 2016 09:45:29 +0000

Attackers prey on people trusting others. Watch out for these three common tricks.

1. Refuse to permit tech support to access your computer to help you.

If this is your known service provider, then maybe you will decide to trust them. However, nobody else.

Last week, I connected a new well known web-cam that is highly rated. It didn’t work properly, so I called tech support. Their opening line, “I will send you a link to click, that will permit me access into your computer so that I can fix the problem.” I gently told him there was no way he was ever getting remote access. He was shocked, and had to go ask his manager what to do next…

2. Believe your anti-virus.

The camera company’s tech support rep, now with the manager with him, told me to download a special driver and run it on my computer. When I started to download the driver onto a “test” computer, my anti-virus program identified the driver as a virus. So I refused to install the driver. Without missing a beat, he said, “That’s ok, you can trust anything from us – it is safe.”

I wonder how many of their customers have been duped. Even if the tech support had no intention of infecting their customers’ computers, how can they be sure that their software isn’t already compromised without their knowledge? Never let convenience override your choice to do something reckless.

3. Never answer online quizzes.

I love my wife. One day, she was so excited to tell me what her rock band would have been called in High School. She took a quiz on Facebook that told her. I asked what her rock band would have been called. The band name generated by her filling out the online quiz including the street she grew up on, followed by her favorite pet’s name, and the name of the high school she attended. Like I said earlier, I love her so much. But please don’t ever fill out any online quizzes again – ever. You can be duped into giving away too much information. Attackers can combine the answers with other information they discovered elsewhere on the web, and it makes it lots easier for them to assume someone’s identity.

Please forward this to everyone you care about…

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Be Secure or Be Compliant – Which Should You Do First?

Mike Foster — Thu, 17 Dec 2015 22:12:28 +0000

If your organization meets requirements so that you are compliant with HIPAA, PCI DSS, SOC 2, or any other standard it does not mean you are secure. In fact, many organizations that are compliant are some of the least secure. Some executives, understandably, believe that meeting standards indicates that the organization’s network is secure. One does not guarantee the other.

Being compliant: Might help you if you get sued for a breach
Being secure: You may not have a breach

Do both, but choose which one to do first.

If your customers or prospects want you to be compliant in order to do business with you, then compliance probably needs to be top priority. Otherwise, make your systems secure first.

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This Hacker Tells All

Mike Foster — Tue, 08 Dec 2015 17:30:14 +0000

CNN Money just published an insightful interview with a hacker. You may find it interesting.

Read the interview by entering this search phrase into Google:

My hack stole your credit card site:money.cnn.com

Forward this to your friends who want to discover this hacker’s point of view on attacking tens of thousands of companies…

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Cyber Security’s Three Essential Steps

Mike Foster — Wed, 25 Nov 2015 19:12:03 +0000

In this time of gratitude, which is perhaps the most important foundation of happiness and success, it is important to thank you for helping make the world a safer place. Three controls, perhaps the most important three controls, help protect you from cyber-threats. They are:

1. Keep critical operating system and application patches up to date, especially Flash, Java, Reader, and your browsers. Updates fix security loopholes in programs. The fear of a patch causing a program to malfunction can be reduced with proper testing, performing a staged rollout, and having a rollback plan.

2. Utilize Application Whitelisting. Application whitelisting allows you to specify what programs are permitted to run, such as Microsoft Office, your accounting program, and anything else your team needs for business purposes. Because of not being on the ok list, the majority of malicious software is blocked from running. The reason most companies don’t use application whitelisting is that their IT Pros know it can be a daunting process to set up and make it work well. Therefore, we can set that up for your IT pros. Why should they need to learn something when it only needs to be done once? The upkeep can be simple from then on.

3. Reduce the number of users with Local Admin rights as much as possible. This removes a user’s ability to install programs on their computer. As a result, it greatly hinders the ability for attackers to install malicious software too.

Other than implementation, none of those cost any money. You already paid for the technology. Emphasize the importance of, and support your IT Pros, as they implement these 3 powerful controls in your network.

Wishing you a thankful week and thank you all for remembering cyber-security as part of your main strategy for successful business operations!

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