Keeping you up to date on the latest in tech and cyber. Feel free to forward to interested colleagues and acquaintances.

Ransomware on the Rise

Cyber Security becomes more valuable by the day as attacks increase in frequency and complexity.

Microsoft reports they experience 300 million fraudulent attempts to access their cloud services everyday. Sophos reports on providers of “hacking as a service” increasing through 2022 and into this year.

At this rate, insurance execs are warning that Cyber attacks will soon be joining Natural Disasters in being uninsurable. The enormity of the impacts cyber attacks could have, if critical infrastructure is targeted, is simply too large for insurance companies to anticipate and remediate.

This fear was made real here in the Bay Area when the City of Oakland recently declared a State of Emergency after it fell victim to a ransomware attack that disabled key technical infrastructure and brought city services to a halt. By encrypting Oakland’s data with their own key, the hackers now have sole control over that data and are releasing small portions of employee information to demonstrate their capability and bolster their demands. Understanding your own Cyber Security readiness is critical as threat actors increase their activity.

Managing Your Detection and Response

At JustWorks we have been implementing the Gartner leading cybersecurity managed detection & response, Sophos MDR, for our customers to ensure they have 24/7/365 threat detection and response. Sophos’ Endpoint and Network monitoring approach ensure our customers’ IT Systems are secure no matter where they work. Utilizing AI threat identification to prevent attacks in conjunction with a dedicated team of specialized cybersecurity experts to handle the intensive work, Sophos MDR offers the best Cybersecurity as a Service, while keeping costs and resources down.

Sophos services can also help at any stage of a cyber attack. Whether you would like to assess if your data has already been compromised, or are currently in the middle of an active attack, Sophos’ round the clock SOC can respond to and resolve attacks rapidly.

If you’d like to know more about how we can implement Sophos MDR for your business systems, give us a call on 866-JUSTWOR or email info@justworks.net

It’s 10 PM, do you know where your children are logged in?

As the White House backs a Senate Bill that would ban Tik Tok for Federal Employees, it’s time to think about what apps your family is giving their information to. This short and very polished film by the Financial Times highlights the challenges for managing identity security for youth in today’s digital society.

Watch it at home with your family to get a conversation started.

Keeping you up to date on the latest in tech and cyber. Feel free to forward to interested colleagues and acquaintances.

2023 kicks off with tech turmoil

Seems like every tech business in California is rushing to lighten their payroll ahead of what many expect to be a tough year ahead. Even Microsoft!

This is when the tide goes out and we all find out who has been swimming naked. With so many tech businesses based on new revenue models, who will survive the coming changes ?

Evaluating tech vendors is what we do at JustWorks. It requires in-depth knowledge of the tech industry, the history of firms (who has bought who recently), technical evaluation of the products/services they offer, analysis of each vendor’s cyber security posture, and market intelligence to determine if they have a sustainable position against their competition. This is not work that most companies can do for themselves, which is why vendor selection is large part of our work and a significant value we add for our customers.

The End of Passwords …

Bill Gates predicted the death of the password around 15 years ago. In fact, password use has risen, and they remain the default method of authentication for a huge range of services, both at work and home. 

Increasingly complex password requirements place an unrealistic demand on users. Inevitably, users devise their own coping mechanisms to cope with ‘password overload’. This includes re-using the same password across different systems, using simple and predictable password creation strategies. Sound familiar?

Every company needs to do 3 things right now to stop password overload becoming a cyber security threat to the business:

• Stop making users change their passwords!
• Turn on MFA for all remote access. Make every login a proper security check. If the login is at an unusual time of day or from a new location/computer/browser, then ask for another security factor.
• Get a Business subscription to 1Password. Inevitably there will be passwords that need to be shared across teams and you need to have vaults that are controlled by the company, not the user! Every employee added to a 1Password Business accounts get a free subscription for their personal/family use.

ZTNA is coming in February

We are excited to announce that JustWorks is adding Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) from Sophos to our fixed fee services starting in just a few days.

Zero trust refers to a way of controlling access where every request is validated from the ground up and permission is only granted when a valid user authenticates themselves on an approved computer to access an application they are authorized for.

If you’d like to know more “zero trust” for your business systems, give us a call on 866-JUSTWOR to email info@justworks.net

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