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Archives for April 2017

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An Easter Malware Warning from Homeland Security

malwareThe United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), a division of Homeland Security, published an important warning this morning regarding the upcoming holiday weekend and cybersecurity:

As the Easter holiday approaches, US-CERT reminds users to stay aware of holiday scams and cyber campaigns, which may include:

    • unsolicited shipping notifications that may actually be scams by attackers to solicit personal information (phishing scams),
    • electronic greeting cards that may contain malicious software (malware),
    • requests for charitable contributions that may be phishing scams or solicitations from sources that are not real charities, and
    • false advertisements for holiday accommodations or timeshares.

US-CERT encourages users and administrators to use caution when reviewing unsolicited messages. Suggested preventive measures to protect against phishing scams and malware campaigns include:

This is as good of a time as any to ensure your data has the most up-to-date protection. Update your antivirus software, or contact Great Lakes Computer to learn about our data security products. If you believe you’ve been the victim of an attack, call us immediately so we can remediate the malware and ensure you are protected against future threats.

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EMV Adoption Leads to Surge in E-Commerce Fraud

POS SystemEMV chip cards and readers were only introduced in the US in October of 2015. Yet, you already have chip cards in your wallet and use them daily. You also know, all too well, the growing pains associated with introducing this new POS technology. It has been plagued by slow processing and a slow learning curve on behalf of the users, both retailer and consumer. But, the EMV chip is doing the job it was meant to: it prevents magnetic stripe fraud that has plagued our credit card system. As a result, criminals have turned their attention elsewhere.

Finextra tells us more:

In late 2015 the US finally followed much of the rest of the world when Visa and other card schemes switched the liability for fraud-related losses to retailers that have not upgraded their hardware for EMV.

Experian notes that the increase in e-commerce fraud follows a similar trend pattern from countries that previously rolled out EMV cards – UK, France, Australia, and Canada – that also saw gradual increases in card-not-present fraud.

“We suspect that the EMV liability switch and increased adoption by merchants of chip-and-pin enabled terminals have had a profound impact on driving up e-commerce attacks,” says the firm.

Fraudsters that typically relied on committing counterfeit fraud have shifted their focus to the digital channels where they could have more success, and as more attackers enter a rapidly growing mobile and online commerce space it becomes increasingly difficult for merchants to spot them.

This means that businesses need to expect the increase in e-commerce fraud to continue over time and to be prepared to deal with it by employing a multi-layered approach that pairs transactional data elements with details about the user and their device.

Experian says that the biggest component of credit card fraud trends is the fact that 2016 was a record year for data breaches. There were 1,093 breaches, a 40% increase from 2015, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center.

Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission recently revealed a jump in consumers who reported that their stolen data was used for credit card fraud, from 16% in 2015 to more than 32% in 2016.

Most brick and mortar businesses, that are now protected by EMV chip readers, also operate in an e-commerce capacity. Now that they’ve gotten one “data security” door closed, another one opens. It is critical to have up-to-date Point-of-Sale systems as well as a secure network environment to act as a fortess around your data. Great Lakes Computer can help you for all of it, be it POS maintenance and repair or network monitoring. We can ensure your payment data has the best level of protection possible against all cyersecurity and criminal threats.

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The Key to Preventing Costly Network Downtime

Network MonitoringThe phrase “downtime” should bring one image to mind: a pile of money burning to ash. That’s what network downtime does to your profits, destroys them. It’s difficult to fully grasp the total cost of downtime because it’s so muliti-faceted. In 2015, downtime was estimated to cost US businesses $700 Billion, that’s with a B. Billion. It costs you in income, employee productivity, customer retention, and more. And the cost of being offline has increased 40% from just seven years ago, with no signs of slowing. So, what’s causing it and what is the solution?

Network Computing gives us their take:

IT downtime causes

IHS reports that network interruptions are the biggest factor contributing to downtime, but what causes the actual network interruptions? Where does all of this costly downtime actually come from?

In an interview, Matthias Machowinski, research director for enterprise networks and video at IHS, told me that equipment is the major source of overall downtime, as measured in hours.

Indeed, according to Machowinski, equipment failures and other equipment problems contribute to close to 40% of all reported downtime. Service provider problems and internal human errors each make up nearly 25% of downtime. Trailing these bête noires are system attacks, which, despite all of the cybersecurity hype these days, contribute to only about 10% of all downtime.

How to reduce IT downtime

Machowinski said the most popular technique for mitigating downtime is network-monitoring implementations. Sixty-four percent of respondents in the IHS study indicated that they are pursuing this strategy, and Machowinski thinks it’s a good one.

“You don’t want the user to be your early-warning system,” he said.

The second-most popular downtime-mitigation technique (at about 57%) — one that Machowinski especially recommends — is incorporating more redundancy into networks. Added redundancy can solve both on-premises equipment failures and problems with hosted service providers, he said.

“Equipment is going to fail at some time or another,” Machowinski said. With redundant networks, there’s still some connectivity, even if backups aren’t running at 100%, he explained.

To this end, he recommends “keeping spares on hand…or at least being able to source a spare relatively quickly – preferably same date, maybe within hours.” He further suggests that IT departments take advantage of premium support offerings from vendors in order to more efficiently source replacement equipment and keep downtime to a minimum.

Contact Us for Server Monitoring and Troubleshooting

Keeping your systems up-to-date, running, and secure is a full-time job. Maybe you can’t afford a full-time IT person to do it, but can you afford the cost of downtime if you don’t? Managed Services is your best option. We offer many levels of server monitoring and troubleshooting protection here at Great Lakes Computer. You can either choose to have information sent to you or handled by our experienced technical staff. We can also work with you to develop a recovery plan to keep computer issues from hurting your company. Contact our experts today to keep you business running smoothly.

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