How an MSP Can Help You Grow
Tom owns a small financial firm. Over the last few years, Tom and is firm have been making money for their clients. So much in fact, that their
clients are bringing in new clients. He made those clients money, and word ontinued to spread. He had a realization that he was faced with a choice. Did
he stop taking on new clients or accept that he had to take his small firm to he next level. Tom, like many, chose the latter. However, he had a lot of
concerns. One of which was if his current technology was equipped for the job.
Tom isn't a tech expert and as handling things on his own for the most part, which was fine when he only ad a 3 man team. As they get ready to expand, he realized that wouldn't be sufficient any longer. He knew he needed a partner who could handle those things for him, so he could focus on his client and his business, so he called on an MSP. Growing isn't easy, and a great MSP like Delval Technology Solutions can alleviate some of those growing pains.
Time management is important to any business owner. An MSP can save you valuable time during the growth process. It allows you to have a team of experts behind you, taking the guesswork out of what hardware and software would be the best fit to grow you business. They can also help you add users quickly and not only advise you on the proper tech steps to take, but also implement needed changes in an efficient manner. With an MSP, you have a team with up to date knowledge and resources at their disposal, which brings us to the next point.
Tom is a financial expert. He always had an affinity for numbers and trends, and took great joy in helping his clients reach their financial goals. While technically proficient, he is not by any means an expert and he's smart enough to know that. He is concerned with keeping his network secure and his company within the bounds of regulation. By partnering with an MSP, he got his expert guidance. They handle his network, making sure his team's questions are handled in a timely matter, hat his servers are optimized, and that his team can work from anywhere at any time. Tom's peice of mind comes from knowing that his network isn't just managed it's secure. A great MSP, such as Delval Technology Solutions treats cyber security for what it is, a living breathing thing that needs to outpace the criminals. Tom has his network monitored, and the Dark Web combed for data on a monthly basis. They also train his staff on cyber security, making sure everyone on his growing team was prepared to aid in the fight against cyber crime.
An MSP will also handle compliance. Each industry is subject to a series of laws in regards to their network practices. Not only do these laws vary by state in many instances they are constantly amended on top of new ones being added. It can be confusing to stay up to date on these laws
and the penalty for not adhering to the guidelines can cost your company thousands if not millions of dollars. With an MSP you have a team who is on top of the compliance issues and makes sure someone like Tom is within regulation.
This brings us to the final point, and it’s a matter of cost. Adding
IT personnel into your staff is a costly endeavor. Each member of the team will
cost you between $80,000-100,000 a year. Depending on your company needs, one
IT staff member most likely isn’t enough. What if you needed to add an IT executive?
A qualified CIO will run you almost $200,000 a year and requires you to relinquish
some control to them. Tom needed to add more advisors, more accountants, a new
secretary and that was just the beginning. He knew an MSP would give him the
expertise and backup he needed without having to drop hundreds of thousands of
dollars on a full scale IT team. In fact, his yearly contract with an MSP is
under the cost of a single IT person for his team.
The choice for Tom was an easy one. He signed a contract with an
MSP that would be able to fufiill his needs. He did his due diligence, as not
all MSP’s are created equal. Tom found one that treated him like a partner,
ready to work with him to grow his enterprise, instead of as a client. He found
Delval Technology Solutions, and he was glad he did. Now, he was ready to do
what he did best, making money for his clients, without having to worry about
his IT. Be like Tom, contact the DTS team today!
Three Ways AI Cybersecurity Can Benefit Your Business in Pennsylvania
The days of solely using passwords to secure your network and data are over. And your IT team may be comprised of some of the best tech experts you know — but in today’s digital landscape, and with the ever-evolving skill of cybercriminals, it may not be enough to give your Charlotte-based business the protection it needs.
The answer may be found in AI cybersecurity, which is artificial intelligence that picks up where your team leaves off. Implementing AI doesn’t mean you have to fire your IT staff. Rather, it will enhance their work through constant network monitoring and lighten their burden, freeing up members of your team to spruce up your website or carry out other duties to help grow your business.
Here are some other ways AI cybersecurity can make you safer than you have been before:
It Quickly Detects Intruders
AI can teach itself all about your network and quickly familiarizes itself with who is permitted to access to it — and more importantly, who isn’t. Whether through passwords, retinal scans or multiple layers of authentication, AI acts as your company’s ultimate gatekeeper. Unlike humans, who need to carefully vet everyone requesting access and decide on each one, AI cybersecurity does so quickly and without compromising quality, preventing employees and customers from having to sit through long wait times while waiting for access.
It Never Gets Tired
Wouldn’t it be great if hackers had the decency to stick to a schedule? Or how about if they called ahead to let you know what time they planned to infect your network with ransomware? Of course, that isn’t the case. The truth is your company needs network monitoring 24/7/365 — but you and your employees are human and need to rest. AI cybersecurity, however, never drops its guard. Whether it’s 3 a.m. on a Sunday or while the turkey is getting carved on Thanksgiving, you will have the peace of mind in knowing your network is getting effective and efficient cybersecurity. No matter when a cybercriminal intends to strike, AI is ready to detect and resolve the incident long before it starts.
It’s Consistent
Even your best, most reliable employees miss a day of work on occasion. Sometimes it’s sickness, other days it’s car trouble — or they have some well-deserved time off coming their way. AI cybersecurity is always there. It never needs a sick day or arrives late because of a blown tire. You know what to expect, when to expect it. And knowing that AI has your cybersecurity covered no matter the time, day or holiday means you can allow your staff up to serve your customers and enhance your business.
Get the Protection Your Business Needs
Equipping your network with AI cybersecurity is essential. If you decide to outsource your cybersecurity to an MSP in Pennsylvania, make sure it is one that offers the most modern, innovative and up-to-date protection available. It needs to provide your business with round-the-clock monitoring designed to protect your data throughout all hours of the night. Using old, cookie-cutter cybersecurity is your way of inviting smart, sophisticated hackers into your network. Contact our team to learn more about our cybersecurity services and schedule a no-risk, no-cost security assessment.
The Government Response to CyberCrime
Cybercrime is on the rise in the United States. With increases of hundreds of precents and an estimated $590 million dollars paid out in attacks in the first half of the year alone, the threat is growing exponentially, and effecting American businesses. After a massive attack on the Colonial Pipeline which caused a brief gas shortage and other attacks on infrastructure by foreign actors, many wondered when our government would act. Currently there is legislation on the table which we will explore in this article.
The first of these bills has to do with compliance, specifically how long a company has to report a critical infrastructure attack. While CISA (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency) has asked for flexibility, definite timelines being propose. There are three bills that have been introduced with this at the helm. In the Senate the two competing bills have a 24 and a 72 hour limit on reporting respectively. Critics have claimed that the 24 hour bill doesn't give organizations sufficient response time and takes away needed manpower. In the House, the bill calls for a 72 hour minimum and creates a Cyber Incident Review Board where critical infrastructure organizations must report to.
These are all being proposed to be added to the final draft of the Defense Authorization Bill. Also included in the House version of the bill is a change to the CISA directors assignment. It would make them a non-political 5 year appointee, similar to other intelligence agencies. The bill earmarks $500 million in cyber-security grants at the state and local levels. Further, it includes authorization for incentives for the cyber-security industry to find and report vulnerabilities as well as will implement a cloud based system of information sharing related to cybercrime for government officials.
The Senate has additional earmarks including $21 million dollars in discretionary spending to the CISA head. It allows for the Department of Homeland Security to step in and provide funds and aid in the case of a significant, devastating attack. The Senate has also set the state and local grant to a billion dollars in their version.
These changes can affect businesses that fall under the broad designation of infrastructure. Currently there are over one hundred compliance laws that have been passed in the last year alone between the local and the federal level, on top of the existing compliance laws on the books. While these laws vary by industry, one thing is the same across the board, the fines that come with violating these laws, while varying in amount are constant. Adding a federal mandate would also add a criminal element to not reporting these violations properly.
All this regulation may seem like a lot. However there is a bright spot. Reporting of cyber attacks is up over 60% from 2020. This allows for these attacks and those who carry them out are studied and documented. This allows for companies to strengthen software, create updates that patch vulnerable holes in the network, and cyber security experts such as Delval Technology Solutions to be even better adapt at preventing these attacks.
The fact is, if you are reading this, chances are you aren't a compliance expert. You are an expert in your field, running your business with all of the peaks and valleys that come with it. The best thing you can do, no matter what the outcome of these defense bills, is to partner up with experts.
Having an MSP, like your friends at Delval Technology Solutions, by your side gives you access to experts. These experts follow the trends, in security and compliance, to make sure you stay on the right side of regulation. On top of that you get someone monitoring your network, protecting your endpoints, and helping you make sure that your network and your business are protected. You will have a plan that allows you to be prepared if you ever are attacked while working with a partner working hard to ensure you never are. They even train your staff to ensure that everyone in your organization knows what to be on the lookout for.
Facebook Outage, DNS Servers and Your Business
Last week, a curious thing happened. About twenty four hours after a whistleblower spoke about the algorithms Facebook and it’s associated
properties used and a member of the team rebutted these claims, an outage occurred. Facebook, WhatsApp, Oculous and Instagram all went down for nearly and entire day, and speculation ran rampant as to the cause. We have witnessed massive ransomware hacks, on police departments, sports teams, and infrastructure this year. One had to wonder, was Facebook, a company worth the GDP of many countries that possesses Pentagon level cyber security, compromised to a level in which it couldn’t operate? According to internal sources at Facebook, that wasn’t the case. In fact, it was an issue that happens more frequently then cyber attacks, a DNS server error.
DNS stands for Domain Name Systems. DNS handles many things. The main one is that it allows for computers to translate words in domain names
into numerical data that allows for computers to connect to one another, the internet, and their network. This data is what is referred to as an IP address.
The server translates the requests and sends the user to the appropriate server in the network or on the internet. DNS was created to make the internet easier to use for everyday people. Instead of having to type a set of seemingly random numbers into a toolbar to navigate to a web page or to an internal server, DNS was created to allow the usage of words to get people to their virtual destination. Originally, these arraignments were made by hand, but as the demand and connectivity to the internet grew, it was obvious that was not a system that would work for everyday people.
DNS serves as a way to handle the growing navigational needs of our digital world. The DNS directory is a worldwide directory, stored in it’s
own special servers called dns servers. These servers are interconnected to one another and connected to the internet at large, synchronizing directory
information and making it available to servers around the world.
Internal DNS servers can fail, and when they do, it can shut down enterprises. Last Mondays outage not only blocked access to Facebook and
it’s associated platforms for millions of users, but internally at Facebook it shut down communications. For those who were not logged into their work
stations, they were locked out until the issue was fixed. For others who were logged in before the crash, they were unable to communicate with one another. This compounded the problems faced by Facebook consumers, as the very people who were supposed to be working to get the network back online were unable to communicate via their terminals. In fact, it also locked many at their main campus out of the facilities entirely as the security doors reading the key cards couldn’t communicate with the main server. If Facebook was a house, it was on fire, 911 couldn’t answer the call and the water lines were down.
The culprit for this appears to have been an update to their network that wiped out all of the DNS information that Facebook and it’s properties used for the internet to find Facebook, and it’s consumers suffered as a result. They weren’t the only ones, in six hours Facebook lost 60 million dollars or 222,000 dollars a minute. Facebook may have been able to withstand these outages, but for many companies an outage can spell impending doom. If you are a business owner, you know that downtime is the enemy. How do you prevent an outage? Well, truth of the matter is they are avoidable, not preventable. Making sure you have a DNS network that can handle the volume you need it to is a key component. Load balancing can help split the traffic between servers as to not overwhelm them. There are more procedures, however, if you aren’t a tech minded individual, these are things that may be hard to implement and may not make much sense.
This is where having a strong MSP to run your network comes in. Partnering with an MSP such as the folks at Delval Technology Solutions can
help you alleviate your concerns and ensure that your DNS servers don’t fail. An MSP offers expert level network management and guidance, at a fraction of the cost of hiring an in house team. For more information, feel free to contact us while you are here, or set an appointment and see all of the things an MSP can do for you.
Phishing Attack: Red Flags To Avoid
Human beings are trusting. This is actually a proven scientific fact, we are wired to trust when oftentimes we shouldn't. This is a partial explanation for people getting conned throughout history. The conmen of the past have been replaced however, by a new breed, hackers and cyber-scammers. Are you being scammed? Here's some red flags to look out for.
Have you gotten a notification that you won some contest you never entered or have been approved for a loan you never applied for? Don't proceed! These are red flags of phishing attempts. At first glance they may seem like they are coming from reputable companies such as PayPal or Facebook but they are from scammers looking to take your money or information. You must give consent to enter a contest, be it filling out information or buying an associated item like a ticket. No bank, anywhere, is just approving people for loans that didn't apply for one.
Sometimes these things are less obvious. You get an email from a higher up in your organization, with an urgent message. They need your help with money, but it must be in the form of a gift card. You are going to be logged out permanently, so you must click this link and enter your information. If it doesn't make sense, double check everything. Look at the sender information. Did they send it during business hours? Look at the email it was sent from, does it perfectly match up? Even then if it's an out of the ordinary request, your best bet is double check with them directly. Even if the email looks correct, the person may have had their account accessed directly from a hacker. Read it carefully for spelling and grammatical errors that may be minor but reoccurring. Usually, the people sending these are either using bots or come from a country that English is not the first language.
This occurs on social media also. You get a friend request from a friend on your friends or connection list. It seems odd since you are already connected to them. The best thing to do in that case is message the person directly. Ask them directly, "hey did you open a second account? I wanted to double check before I added you." Social media is also where we oftentimes keep clues as to our passwords for various accounts. In fact, one of the biggest ways that hackers are able to get this information is posts that make users indicate their birthdays, pets names, or other personal information that can serve as partial passwords for potential brute force attacks on accounts.
We all carry around smart phones that are usually connected to everything from our social media accounts to our bank accounts. These phishing attempts often come in the form of a text message. You can usually spot them using similar methods to phishing emails. They come from an unfamiliar number. Look for the same spelling and grammar errors you would, as well as links and urgent calls to action. Remember, because our phones link to just about everything we have, an sms attack could leave you more vulnerable than an email attack.
Now that you know the red flags to look for, you may be wondering why do they matter? Phishing attacks are usually the precursor to ransomware, a plague that has been hitting corporations around the country with no end in sight. Once these phishing attacks are carried out, these hackers have access to not only your data and credentials, but your network. From there your data, credentials, and even access to your account is sold for pennies on the dark web to other hackers to carry out financial cybercrimes on your business.
There are many ways to protect your business from these attacks and their attackers. The best way to do this is by partnering with a top-class MSP such as Delval Technology Solutions. By partnering with an MSP you get security features such as endpoint security, monitoring, and offer proactive management to keep you one step ahead of hackers. The best part, they train your staff on cyber security protocols and social engineering to make sure your whole team knows what to look for to keep your network safe.
The FBI Warns of Ransomware Attacks in Pennsylvania
Ransomware attacks have become commonplace as part of national security discourse. Awareness of cybersecurity issues has been raised by the White House, FBI and several corporate giants as a result of increasing risk to businesses of all sizes across the nation.
Ransomware attacks are one of the fastest growing and most dangerous cybercrimes in today’s digital landscape. A world record was set this year for the largest ransomware payout, according to Business Insider, with the attacked insurance company shelling out $40 million to recover their data. Additionally, ransom fees are skyrocketing according to the National Security Institute, averaging a 3,900% increase from 2018 to 2020.
So, what can you do to protect your Pennsylvania-based business? Continue reading to find out the risks posed by ransomware and the steps you can take to protect your business now.
How Ransomware Works
Ransomware works by utilizing social engineering tactics, such as phishing, to lure users into revealing sensitive information or providing access to otherwise secure networks and systems. Once the malicious actor gets access, they encrypt the data and hold it for ransom in order to decrypt it. However, the mayhem no longer stops there.
As time has passed and ransomware-wielding criminals have become savvier, exposing the data breach to critical people, like investors and customers of the business they hack, increasing pressure on all sides to have the affected business pay out and pay out fast.
These ransoms are typically held to a time limit and request cryptocurrency as the form of payment, as it is nearly impossible to trace by law enforcement. And considering many forms of ransomware originate under the anonymity of the dark web, only about three out of every 1,000 cybercrimes are arrested and prosecuted, according to Third Way Think Tank.
The Overwhelming Majority of Experts Advise NOT to Pay
Ransomware is on track to cost its victims about $265 billion annually by 2031, with an attack happening as often as every two seconds, according to Cybersecurity Ventures.
But if it happens to you, keep your wallet shut.
The FBI advises never to pay the ransom. By paying the ransom and not reporting the crime, it makes the attacker harder to trace and exposes your business as a prime target, then causing future retargeting efforts to be focused your way. Many businesses run themselves into the ground trying to recover from ransomware attacks on their businesses.
And even if you do decide to pay as an attempt to keep the situation concise and quiet, Forbes estimates that nearly 92% of ransomware victims end up losing their data for good regardless of meeting the demands.
How to Recover from a Ransomware Attack
If you don’t invest in ransomware prevention, you could experience extensive downtime, reputational damage, loss of potential future business, expensive compliance penalties and more if you were to be attacked. It’s the unfortunate reality that over half of SMBs who experience a cyberattack end up having to close their doors.
Here are the recommended steps to take after a ransomware attack occurs:
- Notify your cybersecurity team and authorities immediately.
- Remove all affected devices from the network.
- Disable cloud-based accounts and auto syncing.
- Change all passwords across the network.
- Do a complete wipe and restore across all devices.
- Restore lost files from your last backup onto clean devices.
- Re-enable cloud accounts.
We’ve seen too many businesses allow it to get to this point, rather than investing in long-term, comprehensive protection from the start. We have reached the point where cybersecurity is no longer an option. Much like auto or home insurance, we need cybersecurity to protect us from potential threats that could lead to a catastrophe before it happens. Otherwise, the burden of recovery rests fully on your shoulders.
Proactive Protection: Partner with Delval Technology Solutions
At Delval Technology Solutions, we understand our responsibility as Pennsylvania's leading experts in ransomware prevention, cybersecurity and managed IT services. Our number one priority is to stay ahead of the current state of cybersecurity to provide a zero trust, comprehensive environment for you to work productively and with ease. Regardless of the size of your business, industry or current objectives, a partnership with our experts can provide the peace of mind you need and the tools you deserve to get your jobs done well.
To request a security assessment with one of our experts, reach out to us today. Together, we’ll identify your weaknesses and fortify your business for today’s threats and tomorrow’s possibilities.