Small Business IT Security: Save Money, Save Face

A few strategic steps can ensure that limited IT budgets don’t increase cybersecurity risks. By Mark Lachniet Mark Lachniet manages CDW’s Solutions Practice for Information Security.   As a security analyst and licensed private investigator, I have often performed computer forensics work in the aftermath of a security breach. The work provides up-close-and-personal views of…

No Internet Censorship in China?

A senior Chinese official known as the “gatekeeper” of the country’s internet has denied that the country censors online information.

Lu Wei, chief of the State Internet Information Office, said China does not censor but “manages” internet content in Zhejiang on Wednesday. Lu was answering a CNN reporter’s question in a press conference ahead of the Second World Internet Conference to be held in Zhejiang’s famous water town Wuzhen next week.

“It is a misuse of words if you say ‘content censorship.’ But no censorship does not mean there is no management. The Chinese government learnt how to manage the internet from Western developed countries, we have not learnt enough yet,”

What is 360 Safe Browser?

If you have ever used one of your Chinese colleagues computers, you have probably encountered a web-browser that looked like Internet Explorer, but definitely was not. Developed in 2011, it quickly became a favorite among Chinese users and in Nov. 2012 surpassed Microsoft IE as the most used browser in China (57% of China Internet surfers). Advertised as a safer alternative to Internet Explorer, it comes bundled with a number of other free software (Anti-Virus, Chat, Etc) and advertising platforms (Adware).

While not intentionally malicious the software brings with it frequent advertising pop-ups, online activity trackers, and is very difficult to remove after it has been installed. For IT Professionals the software causes conflicts with Paid-for Anti-Virus Clients, and the bundled software can remove security features common to Corporate Networks (Active Directory)..

Should you Virtualize Everything?

Okay, maybe not everything. I would offer that there are only a few reasons left for some servers to remain as physical devices:

You want to virtualize more, but you can’t afford more hosts/infrastructure yet.
Some of your servers are turnkey appliances.
Some of your servers have support contracts that require physical platforms or some other requirement from the original deployment.
Some of your administrators believe that virtualization is a fad that will pass soon.
Some of your administrators do not believe that the I/O performance difference between VMs and physical servers is negligible.
Some of your applications require access to hardware that can’t be done in a VM, such as a licensing USB stick, a connection to a tape drive, or other peripheral media…

Shadow IT and the CIO Dilemma

Shadow IT is nothing new. It’s a threat long wreaking havoc on CIOs and IT administrators.

But only recently have we begun to realize the magnitude of the issue.

For years, we’ve known that employees and lines of business are bypassing IT departments to
get the cloud services they want to get their jobs done—whether it’s the streaming music service
that curates the ultimate focus playlist, or the cloud storage apps that keep documents in a row.
More recently, the acknowledgement of rogue IT has been quickly followed by a conversation
around the unintended and potentially dangerous consequences: increased security risks,
compliance concerns and hidden costs.

To shed new light on the issue, Cisco mined data from Cloud Consumption Service
engagements with hundreds of large enterprise customers across United States, Europe,
Canada and Australia. The data came from actual customer use discovered over the network,
not surveys. The findings were eye opening, to say the least…

How to Spot Phishing Attacks

Phishing Attack means that hackers lead the victims to reveal their personal information by Email or fake website and use for fraud. To protect yourself from phishing attacks, you should: Don’t trust the emails asking you to do something strange Check URL of the links which ask you to fill out banking information Use Anti-Phishing tools…

China Cracks Down on VPN Use

Since the end of 2014, the China Firewall as begun actively blocking all VPN traffic. VPN connections becoming slow & unstable Many VPN Proxy service providers are shutting down as a result of the crackdown The disruption has mainly affected corporate connections such as universities while home connections that use standard broadband systems have been unaffected.…

Dell Pre-Installed Software Vulnerability

VULNERABILITY WITH PRE-INSTALLED DELL PC SOFTWARE   Recently, a security vulnerability has been identified in the pre-installed software that comes with all new Dell PCs. Older versions of  the Dell System Detect software have an exploitable weakness that can allow hackers to gain control of a PC when accessing fake versions of the Dell website.  Weakness…