Category: Security

Updated March 16, 2021. 

On Tuesday, March 2, Microsoft announced that it had detected a string of four 0-day exploits being actively used to attack versions of on-premises Exchange Server. Patches are available, and organizations are being strongly advised to identify, update, and verify vulnerable systems as quickly as possible.

We've created this post to collect related resources and information and will be updating it regularly. Read more

Have clients who don't want to pay for third-party security tools, or simply want additional layers of security? See how many attack tactics you can block or monitor for using built-in Windows tools.

For more than a month now, practically any discussion on cybersecurity has centered around the story. You know the one.

And, hey, justifiably so. It’s a huge story that truly does have it all — big-name victims, alleged state-sponsored threat actors, sophisticated tradecraft, threats to national security, not to mention potentially massive ramifications on U.S. cyber policy and regulations.

Plus, it keeps getting bigger!

But while our news feeds continue to be flooded with updates and organizations continue to ponder how they would deal with a similar attack, “bread-and-butter” cybercrime keeps quietly chugging right along. Every day, standard malspam campaigns snag hordes of new victims. Ransomware may be in the unfamiliar position of no longer being the “it” threat, but it continues to pad criminals’ wallets with fresh Bitcoin.

As former Director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Chris Krebs and Red Canary Director of Threat Intelligence Katie Nickels both point out, there’s a tendency to “fetish-ize” state-sponsored actors and overlook the “boring criminal” stuff.

That “boring criminal” stuff is the majority of threat activity that MSPs and their clients are going to face, and despite years of stack and awareness building, many attacks continue to find their way through defenses. Worse, they’re only becoming more damaging and more costly. Read more

In recent years, ransomware has proven to be one of the most destructive cyber threats facing the private and public sectors alike. This issue has never been more salient than during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to a surge in remote working and phishing attempts against businesses and hospitals. The specter of ransomware, combined with current trends towards remote work, places an urgent need for IT professionals to rethink their security practices and take an informed consideration of the true costs of ransomware.

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Protect your clients from this year's scariest scams and creepiest compromises by teaching them how to see through the most common malspam and phishing disguises.

To celebrate Halloween and the last day of Cybersecurity Awareness Month, we're shedding light on two of the most popular disguises criminals are using to sneak their way past defenses and into inboxes. Share these with your clients as a reminder to stay vigilant and what you're hard at work protecting them from day in and day out. Read more

With cyber attacks rapidly evolving and becoming more damaging, MSPs are actively seeking out fresh ways to level-up their security offerings beyond traditional antivirus (AV). For many, endpoint detection and response (EDR) tools represent a natural next step. But how many MSPs have actually adopted EDR? What about these tools works — and doesn't work — for MSPs? And how does that compare with the traction EDR tools are getting in the internal IT world?

We surveyed 160 MSPs, MSSPs, and IT professionals to find out. But before we see what they said, a quick primer. Read more

Managed services providers and their customers have become increasingly popular targets for cyber attacks.

Ransomware criminals, in particular, have singled out MSPs and their customers as prime candidates for extortion, and they've adapted their tactics to create nightmare scenarios.

Rather than simply encrypt the MSP's systems, attackers use compromised MSP employee credentials to hijack the MSP's software tools and use them to deploy ransomware to all of the MSP's customers at once. Read more

With exploitation "highly likely," Microsoft is urging Windows users to patch now, and has even issued fixes for out-of-support versions including Windows 2003 and Windows XP.

This month's Patch Tuesday was a doozy. Read more

Photo by Mike Petrucci

With cyber attacks on small businesses increasingly common, is 2019 the year "it'll never happen to us" mindset finally gets put to rest?

Businesses don't need to be massive corporations or house treasure troves of sensitive information to be frequent targets of cyber attacks. In fact, recent cybersecurity statistics show that, despite their size, small businesses account for the majority of data breaches (58%). Read more

Photo by Bank Phrom

A rise in coordinated Ryuk ransomware attacks represents a major new threat for MSPs and their clients in 2019. Here’s what you need to know.

Ransomware was already at the top of many MSPs' security concerns. Now attackers are deploying it more strategically, making it an even bigger threat. To understand what's dangerous about this new trend and what you and your clients need to be doing differently to protect yourselves, let's dig into two recent high-profile attacks deploying ransomware called Ryuk. Read more