The Hidden Dangers of Free VPNs: Are You at Risk?
Free VPNs may seem tempting, but they could be exposing your data to cyber criminals. We tell you how to protect your business.
4 Dangerous Ransomware Myths Proven False
What Is Data Protection? Why It’s Important and Why Cybersecurity Can’t Be Separate
Ransomware is one of the most pervasive and dangerous forms of malware or computer virus. Not only is it dangerous for individual desktops and mobile devices, but it can be positively catastrophic for businesses of all sizes in Long Island, NYC.
A ransomware attack occurs when a virus installs itself on a device, like a desktop or phone. It finds and encrypts sensitive data or locks down the device completely unless a ransom is paid, usually in cryptocurrency like Bitcoin.
Unfortunately, many business owners believe that they are safe from ransomware, or believe other harmful myths about this digital threat. Today, we’ll bust four myths about ransomware so you’re better equipped to protect yourself and your business in the future.
Myth 1 – Ransomware Attackers Only Target Big Companies
Many small to mid-sized business owners erroneously believe that their enterprises are safe from ransomware attacks. They think ransomware cybercriminals only target big businesses with tons of customers and lots of extra money in the bank. This is not true in the slightest.
In truth, most ransomware attackers don’t know the identities of their victims. They send out ransomware attacks, such as phishing emails, rather indiscriminately. If they get anyone to install the virus on a computer terminal, they’ve succeeded. Most individuals don’t know what to do, and will pay the ransom out of desperation.
According to a Cybersecurity Special Report by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and RSM, 23% of middle-market company executives reported at least ransomware ransom or attack in 2022. This demonstrates how any brand can be vulnerable to ransomware attacks, not just big businesses.
If you think your small business is safe just because you’ve been fortunate enough not to run into a ransomware attack yet, think again. Sooner or later, you and your employees will know what to do when you’re targeted (albeit blindly) by a ransomware-armed cybercriminal.
Myth 2 – Paying a Ransom Demand is Safer
By nature, each ransomware virus demands a ransom from its victim. Some business owners and individuals think that paying the ransom demand is safer, especially if the ransom message says that the criminal will delete sensitive data or expose sensitive files if payments aren’t made ASAP.
In truth, you should never pay a ransom demand if a device is infected with a ransomware virus. Ransomware creators can’t be trusted – they’re criminals, after all. More importantly, there’s nothing stopping those criminals from carrying out whatever ill ideas they have in mind after you fork over the cash.
It’s a much better idea to work with incident response or IR cybersecurity specialists. They can deal with ransomware attacks, evaluate the situation, and help you get access to sensitive data quickly without having to pay the bad actors. Even if paying the ransom is the right move, you should only do it with a cybersecurity negotiator on your team.
Whatever you do, don’t keep a ransomware attack to yourself. Inform your employees or your cybersecurity specialists so the proper response can begin at the earliest opportunity.
Myth 3 – Antivirus Will Always Keep You Safe
Strong antivirus software is certainly a great tool in your overall digital defense toolkit. However, it won’t universally keep yourself or your company safe from ransomware and other malware attacks.
The truth is that digital defenses must constantly keep up with newly evolving viruses and cyber attack threat vectors. Even the best antivirus firewall can have gaps in its armor from time to time. Therefore, a new ransomware virus that hasn’t been detected and studied before might slip through and attack your business’s sensitive files.
Furthermore, many ransomware attacks occur through antivirus software because of employee negligence. One of the most common vectors for ransomware is a phishing email, which is a scam email that installs a virus onto a user terminal when it is opened.
Therefore, you can’t just rely on antivirus to keep your enterprise safe. You must also:
- Use regular cloud security monitoring for your sensitive files. Such monitoring and alert you as soon as a cyber breach is detected
- Train your employees to recognize and avoid ransomware threats. For instance, teaching your employees basic cyber hygiene skills, like not opening suspicious-looking emails, can do wonders to reduce the vulnerability of your business to ransomware attacks
Myth 4 – Backups Are Enough to Protect Against Ransomware
It might be tempting to think that backing up your sensitive data is enough to protect you if the worst comes to pass if your business crashes with a ransomware attack. However, backups can’t always be relied upon to save the day, nor can they always protect your brand from reputational damage amongst your customers.
In fact, many cybercriminals now have advanced malicious tactics to compromise backup files, locking them down or deleting them if ransomware victims don’t pay the fines.
So-called double extortion attacks involve cybercriminals encrypting and stealing data at the same time. So even if you do have a backup of key data ready to go, the criminals can still leak that sensitive data unless you pay the demanded ransom.
Given these threats, you shouldn’t merely rely on backups to protect your business and its reputation. Instead, keep the above tips in mind – such as training your employees and hiring cybersecurity specialists – to shore up your business’s digital defenses as much as possible.
Are You Properly Backing Up Your Business Data?
Contact LI Tech for the Best NY Cybersecurity Assistance
As you can see, ransomware is far more dangerous than you may have initially realized. Even though some of your ideas about ransomware have been busted, remember that you can protect your business and your personal files by working with the right security partners.
At LI Tech, our capable specialists can draw up a list of security best practices for you and your employees to follow. We also offer a spread of managed cloud security services in Long Island, NYC. Contact us today to see how we can keep you safe from ransomware.
3 Ways AI Makes Almost Any Business Task Easier
AI tools like ChatGPT and Google’s Bard can help you boost productivity and actively grow your business. How? We have the details.
Google Calendar Has a Great Update for Hybrid Workers
Want your team to know where you are when you’re not in the office? We explain how Google Calendar’s new feature lets you share multiple work locations each day.
LinkedIn Takes Action to Tackle Fake Accounts
LinkedIn is introducing new verification features over the coming months to help tackle fake accounts.
Here’s How Cyber Criminals Try to Hack Your Accounts While You Sleep
Have you ever received a notification on your phone while you’re sleeping, asking if it’s really you logging in?
It’s called a fatigue attack and Microsoft Authenticator’s latest feature will help to protect you.
Windows 11 Optional Update: Why It’s Better to Wait
Microsoft has just announced an option for people to trial new features before their general release in Windows 11. This isn’t about fixes to security flaws – everyone gets those at the same time. This is an opportunity for businesses to jump the queue to receive new features and updates first. Sound exciting? Yes! Worth the risk? Not quite. Our …
Read More
Are You Properly Backing Up Your Business Data?
Every modern organization collects a wealth of data on its customers, clients, and more. But that data must be protected and easily retrieved in the event of an IT infrastructure outage or cyberattack. This guide explains why you should properly back up your business data and how data protection solutions safeguard your data for maximum protection.
Why Back Up Business Data?
Businesses just like yours must back up crucial data for two key reasons:
- Modern legislation such as the CCPA and GDPR fines companies for not properly protecting and backing up customer or client data. Therefore, you need to back up business data so you have it for easy retrieval by your clients and customers.
- Losing data can significantly and negatively influence business operations. It can make it harder for you to keep your organization secure, lead to lost sales, and more.
Imagine a scenario in which you have all your customer relationship data included on a single server. However, that server crashes and the data is lost. At that point, you now have to start from scratch rebuilding your consumer relationships, including the contact information, their preferred methods of contact, and more.
What Data Should You Back Up?
Backing up all business data is important, but two specific types of data are more vital than others.
Customer Data
As touched on above, you must keep sensitive client or customer data secured and backed up at all times. Customer data includes personal identifying information, order histories, personal preferences, and much more.
Company Data
You’ll also want to protect company-specific data, like passwords for your servers, sensitive organizational information like your order flow or vendor ID codes, and so on.
The last thing you want is a cybercriminal gaining access to sensitive corporate data, then blackmailing you by threatening to release that information to your competitors or your customers.
Read more in our blog: What Is Data Protection? Why It’s Important and Why Cybersecurity Can’t Be Separate
Best Data Protection Solutions | Backup Technologies and Methods for Businesses in Long Island, NYC
Given the importance of backing up crucial company data, it’s wise to implement a back up policy ASAP. But many companies may not properly back up their business data.
For example, they may simply copy over important files once a month onto a separate hard drive. Or they might use secondary or subpar technologies to back up server files, only to find that a server outage results in most of the data being lost during a single unlucky incident.
If your company hopes to back up data properly, you need to use the right technologies, methodologies, and services. Data protection solutions include:
- Cloud data backup technology. By integrating with the cloud, you can save your data off-site or in multiple locations, allowing easy retrieval in the event of an outage
- Regular backup sessions. By regularly backing up company or client data, you’ll never run into a problem where you forgot to back up data after a major sale or meeting, then lost it because of a crash or attack
- Data backup virus protection. Cybercriminals may try to crash your IT infrastructure specifically to get to sensitive data. Proper IT security policies and managed services can help you prevent this outcome
Read more in our blog: 4 Dangerous Ransomware Myths Proven False
How LI Tech Solutions Insulates Your Business from Disaster
Above all else, the best way to properly back up your business data is to rely on managed services providers like LI Tech Solutions.
As dedicated managed IT services providers in Long Island, New York, our enterprise data protection solutions and other services are just what you need to make sure your data is backed up safely and correctly every single time.
Disaster Recovery Services
LI Tech’s disaster recovery services are designed to insulate your business and sensitive data from all manner of hazards, ranging from cloud or other technology breakdowns to operator errors to cyber sabotage to environmental calamities and more.
Specifically, we take several key steps to safeguard your data, apps, and systems before that crucial digital information is lost. These steps include:
- Identifying any application interdependencies and automating shutdowns or reboots in the right order based on tested scenarios
- End-to-end data encryption, which acts as a flexible and effective safeguard for any environment, whether it’s the cloud, virtual, on-premises, or something else
- Support for 20 platforms and workloads with as much scaling as your organization needs. You can choose a data backup location such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon S3, and more
- Regular backup analysis and improvements to protect your business, its data, and its people from ransomware, phishing, and other forms of cyber attacks
If your business ever encounters a disaster that causes its infrastructure to collapse or its data to be lost, you can rest assured that LI Tech’s backups will have you “back up” and running in no time.
LI Tech Data Protection Solutions: Scheduled Backup Services
More than that, LI Tech takes responsibility for scheduling and implementing regular data backups for your organization. With regular backups, all crucial data should be secured on the cloud or elsewhere. You’ll never run into the disaster scenario where sensitive data created or collected a day previously is lost because of an ill-timed server outage.
As an added benefit, when you hire us to schedule your data backup services, your people can focus on other elements of your business.
Data Protection in the Cloud: Challenges and Best Practices 2024
Full IT Infrastructure Review | Long Island Tech Solutions
In addition to the above services, LI Tech Solutions will plan and carry out a full IT infrastructure review for your organization if you choose. The infrastructure review can identify:
- Potential points of weakness in your IT infrastructure, like your servers or hard drives
- How a data loss could potentially occur
Armed with this information, we’ll then upgrade or streamline your IT infrastructure depending on what you need. Such improvements can lower the likelihood of data loss entirely or protect your business from catastrophe.
Contact LI Tech for Data Protection Solutions in Long Island, NYC
All in all, LI Tech is the number one managed IT services provider on Long Island, NYC. We serve brands just like yours by offering not only disaster recovery and data backup services but also IT security services and more. Contact us today to see how we can help your brand thrive in the modern digital environment!
Bot Malware Is a Growing Security Threat
Bot malware is a worrying new security risk. Malware bots steal whole user profiles – that’s a complete snapshot of your ID and settings.
The Stages of a Systems Development Life Cycle
A system is basically some sort of information technology like apparatus or freeware. Executives of projects and programs often take part in SDLC, alongside system and system programmers, what is system development life cycle architect coders, and even prospective users. The Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) meaning is a method for creating high-quality, low-cost software in a short amount of time.
Theoretically, this model helps teams to address small issues as they arise rather than missing them until later, more complex stages of a project. The information system will be integrated into its environment and eventually installed. After passing this stage, the software is theoretically ready for market and may be provided to any end-users.
System Development Life Cycle
This includes conducting interviews, studying existing processes, and identifying stakeholders’ needs. The gathered information serves as a basis for designing a system that meets users’ expectations and addresses organizational challenges. The report provides valuable information on the production costs, supply chain dynamics, and raw materials that are essential to the Life Cycle Assessment Software market. It also analyses the impact of COVID-19 on the industry and provides recommendations on how businesses can adapt to the changing market conditions.
Systems analysis and design (SAD) can be considered a meta-development activity, which serves to set the stage and bound the problem. SAD interacts with distributed enterprise architecture, enterprise I.T. Architecture, and business architecture, and relies heavily on concepts such as partitioning, interfaces, personae and roles, and deployment/operational modeling to arrive at a high-level system description. This high-level description is then broken down into the components and modules which can be analyzed, designed, and constructed separately and integrated to accomplish the business goal. SDLC and SAD are cornerstones of full life cycle product and system planning. This includes all the specifications for software, hardware, and network requirements for the system they plan to build.
The best of the bug capturing tools
They did not have a proper concept of what the possibilities would be on the short term. This Software Development Life Cycle approach is common for smaller projects with one or two developers. The V-shaped paradigm, also known as the Verification and Validation model, is an offshoot of Waterfall that stresses testing at each stage of development.
Some members do not like to spend time writing, leading to the additional time needed to complete a project. When teams have clarity into the work getting done, there’s no telling how much more they can accomplish in the same amount of time. Empower your people to go above and beyond with a flexible platform designed to match the needs of your team — and adapt as those needs change.
System Development Life Cycle Guide
During this stage of the system lifecycle, subsystems that perform the desired system functions are designed and specified in compliance with the system specification. Object-oriented analysis and design (OOAD) is the process of analyzing a problem domain to develop a conceptual model that can then be used to guide development. During the analysis phase, a programmer develops written requirements and a formal vision document via interviews with stakeholders.
- Let’s walk through the four key elements of a Scrum model as depicted in Fig 10.4.
- From a research standpoint, it is crucial to monitor the system to gain an understanding of whether it is benefitting the business as expected and how the performance is influencing workflow.
- Rapid development cycles help teams identify and address issues in complex projects early on and before they become significant problems.
- This is an early-stage plan or feasibility analysis for the company to acquire the resources needed to enhance an existing service or construct new infrastructure.
- The Forensic Laboratory does not perform development or modification on purchased software packages.
However, it is vulnerable to early delays and can lead to big problems arising for development teams later down the road. Depending on the skill of the developers, the complexity of the software, and the requirements for the end-user, testing can either be an extremely short phase or take a very long time. Take a look at our top 10 best practices for software testing projects for more information.
The 7 stages or phases of the System Development Life Cycle
The System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) provides a well-structured framework that gives an idea, of how to build a system. It consists of steps as follows- Plan, Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement and Maintain. We will delve into the significance of each stage, emphasizing the critical role played by System Design in the overall process. After training, systems engineers and developers transition the system to its production environment.
Many organizations subdivide their SDLC methodologies into a larger number of phases than the five referenced in NIST guidance, potentially offering closer alignment of SDLC phases and corresponding RMF tasks. As such, the move is done during off-peak hours, to ensure a minimal impact on business operations. Both professionals and end-users should be able to reap the benefits of the new system during this phase. During the fifth phase the system is installed in the production environment.
Software Management
As it is still challenging to go back and make changes, this model is best used when there are no unexpected requirements. In contrast to other structured SDLC approaches, Waterfall’s approach to completing each stage before moving on to the next is the simplest and most time-tested. Although the switch is complex and fraught with uncertainty, the danger is reduced significantly because it is typically implemented during off-peak hours. This is the point at which both end-users and system analysts should be able to see the fruits of your labors in the form of a polished, fully functional project. Web application and API protection (WAAP) in any customer environment — all via one integrated platform.
Process checks include review of timelines and expenses, as well as user acceptance. The 2023 “Life Cycle Assessment Software Market” research report meticulously explores industry segmentation by Types [Cloud Based, On-premises], Applications [Large Enterprises, SMEs], and regional dynamics. This comprehensive analysis illuminates the current market landscape, spotlighting emerging trends, and untapped opportunities under the market dynamics section. Moreover, it unveils the market’s CAGR status, with its historical and future performance. Once when the client starts using the developed systems, then the real issues come up and requirements to be solved from time to time.
ABOUT TOOLSHERO
Developers have to follow the coding guidelines described by their management and programming tools like compilers, interpreters, debuggers, etc. are used to develop and implement the code. The next phase is about to bring down all the knowledge of requirements, analysis, and design of the software project. This phase is the product of the last two, like inputs from the customer and requirement gathering.