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TangleBot is a malware that allows hackers to gain full control over the infected device, allowing them to steal personal information and other important credentials. Once the malware is installed on the infected device, attackers gain several permissions, including the ability to spy on communications with the device as well as use of applications like the camera, the device?s location, listening in through the microphone, and more. Suffice to say that this malware is capable of doing a lot of harm, especially since it has permissions to do so much. It can essentially monitor and record just about all user activity, from websites visited to credentials entered to recording video and listening to audio. This particular brand of malware spreads through text messages and infected links sent to the device. The user is encouraged to click on a link referencing the subject of the SMS message, usually something related to the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccination appointments or local power outages. After the user follows the link, they go through a series of messages allowing the attacker privileges that no applications on your phone should allow. As you might suspect, many of the best practices that keep your users safe can also be used to secure your company from mobile malware. Using a bit of scrutiny when handling suspicious links can go a long way toward keeping your organization as secure as possible, but only if you encourage your staff to always be wary of what they are clicking on, both on the desktop and on the mobile device. These practices are especially important in today?s workplace environment where many organizations have employees who are working remotely either part of the time or full-time, and especially important if the devices are company-owned and used to access sensitive workplace data. There are ways to secure devices that involve whitelisting and blacklisting various apps, including the ability to disable installing applications via links. In general, employees should be advised not to download applications that are not approved? particularly those that allow for insane amounts of permissions. White Mountain IT Services can help train your employees to identify and avoid threats of all kinds. Furthermore, we can equip your company with the tools needed to prevent infections and keep threats to a minimum. To learn more, reach out to us at (603) 889-0800.
We?ll walk you through exactly what happens when you deploy data backup in the event of a disaster recovery incident, as well as what you should aim for and how to proceed following the event. What Happens with Disaster Recovery? True to its name, disaster recovery aims to help your organization prepare and respond to events that impact its ability to sustain operations. These events could include natural disasters like floods and electrical storms, hardware failure, and hacking attacks. The goal is to minimize data loss while ensuring operational continuity, no matter the circumstances. Disaster recovery has two primary aspects: data backup and establishing a disaster recovery strategy. Data backups are copies of your data that are stored off-site in a safe location to be later deployed through the use of your disaster recovery solution. The disaster recovery solution itself deploys the data backups to temporary hardware that can keep a minimum level of operations and functionality. If you don?t implement data backup and disaster recovery, such scenarios as those mentioned previously can completely wipe out your organization. What Are Your Goals? You should have clearly defined goals for your data backup and disaster recovery plan. Basically, you need to identify the absolute minimum baseline of data and operational continuity your organization needs to get back in business following a disaster. This asks a lot of difficult questions of you, the business owner, such as what data needs to be a priority, what aspects of your organization?s operations need to be maintained in the event of a disaster, and who is required in order to ensure all of this can be pulled off without a hitch. You should also ensure that you focus on minimal downtime following such an event, as downtime is often associated with hidden costs that you might not budget for otherwise. How Should You Move Forward? By now it should be clear that your organization cannot hope to move forward without a contingency plan for the future. The truth of the matter is that data backup and disaster recovery are but one part of a comprehensive business continuity plan. White Mountain IT Services can help your organization ensure that it is not caught unawares in the event of a disaster scenario or other business-ending situation. Not only can we equip you with the means to take automatic data backups, but we can also ensure that you can restore these backups in a quick and efficient manner. To learn more about our data backup and disaster recovery solutions, reach out to White Mountain IT Services at (603) 889-0800.
Neglecting to Upgrade Your Technology Can Bring Several Deficits Higher Costs The financial issues that older technology can cause are threefold. First off, older technology tends to be more expensive to keep up and running. Secondly, older systems don?t have the assorted power-saving features that more up-to-date ones come with. Third, older tech tends to cause difficulties for a business? team members, who will frequently take time trying to make it work to some degree. As a result, their productivity suffers (as we?ll return to in a few moments) and your costs leap up. Compliance Issues Businesses of all sizes need to uphold the requirements that various authority figures and regulatory bodies have placed on them. Of course, ?needing to? and ?doing? are two separate things. Not ?doing? so could open up your business to consequences from regulatory bodies along with the threats that many of these compliances are meant to avoid. Security Vulnerabilities Here?s the facts: one of the primary motivations to upgrade your technology is to ensure that it is properly fortified against attacks, as older tools are less and less likely to be kept updated by the manufacturer. Maintaining them properly (including cycling them out when the time comes) helps to limit the risk that your business is apt to face. Tanked Productivity We?ve all experienced slow load times and patchy connections before, and so we all have a pretty good idea of how they can be detrimental to the amount that we can accomplish in a given time. The older (and more outdated) a piece of technology gets, the more these outliers become the norm? and not one that a quick reboot will fix. Speaking of fixes, that brings us back to the point we mentioned earlier: the more time your team needs to spend to get their essential tools working, the less time they have to actually put them to use. Ensuring your IT is up-to-date helps to cut back on this time and maintain the levels of productivity you?d like to see. Frequent Crashes and Downtime Finally, we come to the fact that older, outdated technology frequently just doesn?t work as well. System crashes can become more common, and downtime will more and more frequently rear up its unproductive head. Keeping your technology updated (cycling it out when the time comes) can help minimize these impacts. We Can Help You Determine When, and What, to Upgrade Using our remote monitoring and maintenance tools, we?ll be given a clear picture of when a piece of your IT infrastructure is becoming more of a problem than it is a solution, allowing us to resolve the issue for you. Working with us will give your business a clear roadmap to follow when it comes to upgrades, as well as complete support in making them. Give us a call at (603) 889-0800 today to learn more.
Keep in mind that, as always, these kinds of tips are not designed to be a replacement for asking questions when you do not know what to do next. If any of these tips go over your head and you are uncomfortable with doing some troubleshooting on your own, by all means, contact your help desk. It is better to ask questions and get help when it?s needed than to do something you are uncomfortable with, resulting in a potentially disastrous situation. Restart the Program or Application Your first step toward figuring out your technology issues is to determine if it is a hardware or a software problem. Therefore, your first response should be to try closing your programs and seeing if that helps. If this works, then great?you can get right back to work. Just make a quick note and be sure to report the issue to IT, though. The last thing you want is to let a problem become persistent. Check Your Internet Connection For connected services, your Internet connection is vital, but sometimes you might accidentally disconnect from your network or lose your connection. When all else fails, check to see if you are still connected to the Internet. Most apps that require it are pretty good about telling you when your connection has been lost, but it does not hurt to check. If there is no connection, try restarting the router and see if that helps. Power the Device Down and Turn It Back On When you aren?t sure what the problem is, one of the best things you can do is to first try turning your device off and back on again. No, we are not simply restarting it. We are doing a hard reset, or power off. Sometimes just giving your device a break for a moment is enough to get it back to normal, but other times the issue that you?re having will persist. If this does not work, then try these other tricks. Of course, when you find that these tactics do not work, it helps to consider as many details as possible regarding the situation that you require help with. Is it the computer itself that is not working properly, or is it the software on your computer? Can you explain in detail what happens when you experience the issue? Try replicating the problem yourself if it is a repeat issue?this will give you the knowledge you need to explain in detail to the help desk, which will go a long way toward helping them help you. If you want to give your team the ability to seek technology assistance when it?s needed, White Mountain IT Services has answers. We can equip your organization with a help desk that gives your team access to the expertise it needs to sustain operations and resolve problems with your technology. To learn more, reach out to White Mountain IT Services at (603) 889-0800.
What Kind of Centralized Authority Are We Talking About? Let?s establish something from the get-go: you need to be sure you have absolute control over your business? technology. You need to have the ability to dictate who can access what, and what devices can be used to do so. In order to get this kind of control, you need to rule over your domain? domain in this case referring to your network, your business? group of computers that share rules and managerial controls. To accomplish this, some of your server resources need to be dedicated to managing and enforcing your IT policies across your network. These resources are referred to as the domain controller. The domain controller makes sure that any device that is added into the domain is held to the same policies. This helps to enable a few key features: Policy Enforcement Establishing control over your network through the use of Active Directory helps to set limits that apply to different user groups, commonly as a means of securing against threats like shadow IT and less-than-adequate passwords. Standard Enforcement With Bring Your Own Device and remote work gaining popularity?particularly as of late?it is important that the security in place at home is the same as it is in the office. Your domain controller can be used to ensure that access to your network is only granted if certain requirements are met. Asset Management There?s a lot of technology that a business needs to maintain, each with its own software and various configurations to account for. Centralizing your authority requires that this information is kept in a specialized database. Centralized Management Active Directory and similar services are simpler to manage through the control that centralized authority provides. Divvying up users into groups, Active Directory makes it easier to give these groups different permissions. Managerial Efficiency Centralizing a network makes it a lot easier to keep everything maintained and secure, although remote work and Bring Your Own Device policies can make it somewhat more challenging. How to Establish Your Authority Over Your IT The first step to consolidating your control over your business? technology is actually ensuring that the user?s experience while under this control is nice and seamless. This can be accomplished by controlling things to the point that a user only has access to what they need, with the added benefit of the security this approach offers. We Can Help You Accomplish This Reach out to us to find out what we can do to simplify your network management. Give us a call at (603) 889-0800.