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Ferrum Technology Services has been serving the Elgin area since 2007, providing IT Support such as technical helpdesk support, computer support, and consulting to small and medium-sized businesses.

Tip of the Week: 5 Warning Signs of a Phishing Attack

Tip of the Week: 5 Warning Signs of a Phishing Attack

Phishing attacks are a very common threat nowadays. Between the classic message from a supposed Nigerian Prince to a sudden and urgent email from the bank with attachment in tow, we’ve all seen our share of them. That’s the trick to stopping them—being able to spot them. Let’s go over five signals that a message may be a phishing attempt.

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Keep Your Business Safe with These Best Practices

Keep Your Business Safe with These Best Practices

Security has to be a priority for your business. Oftentimes there is a disconnect between those aims and the practices used by businesses. This gap in vigilance can be just the place that hackers and other scammers look to as they attempt to steal what you have. This month, we thought it was important to provide you a few best practices to follow to keep your data and infrastructure safe. 

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Harden Your Security with a 2FA Authentication App

Harden Your Security with a 2FA Authentication App

Weak passwords are a huge problem, one that almost everyone is guilty of. Even if you think of yourself as being a diligent, security-minded person, you probably have at least one or two passwords that are common words, followed by a digit or two, followed by an exclamation point.

I’d be willing to bet that the digits in your password represent either your birthday, your anniversary, or your favorite football player’s jersey. With a little time, anyone could gain access to your account. That’s where two-factor authentication comes in.

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Tip of the Week: Simple Steps to Safer Email Practices

Tip of the Week: Simple Steps to Safer Email Practices

Security is always a business priority, and with so many business needs now fulfilled digitally, it is critical that cybersecurity has a strong presence in organizations big and small. Nowadays, collaboration solutions have also had even greater importance in the workplace, making tools like email completely essential. Unfortunately, this gives cybercriminals an increased opportunity to use it as a means of attack.

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Blockchain Is Changing the World, One Node at a Time

Blockchain Is Changing the World, One Node at a Time

Blockchain was all the rage for five years. You couldn’t talk about technology without someone bringing it up. At that point, it was listed as the remedy for all the world’s problems. Five years later, it’s not being mentioned quite as much, but it has been used to create some very useful products. Let’s take a look at what is going on with blockchain technology in 2020. 

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Is Blockchain Still a Big Deal? (It Sure Is)

Is Blockchain Still a Big Deal? (It Sure Is)

It seemed that, not so long ago, everything was going to be associated in some way to blockchain and blockchain technology. All online transactions and data were going to use the blockchain for security. However, as 2020 has provided some very effective distractions from the thought of blockchain, it seems to have slipped from the public consciousness. Let’s look at how blockchain is still being used today to drive innovation as a quick reminder.

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Improving Organizational Cybersecurity

Improving Organizational Cybersecurity

The nature of many of today’s businesses is building one product over and over and over. When you have that level of repetitiveness, it helps people find their niche, yes, but it can also result in the attention given to the task to suffer. While a disengaged employee is nothing new, they can cause some operational problems. By and large, a couple of staff hiccups won’t have a huge impact on your business, unless that lack of engagement impacts your cybersecurity. That’s because there are some threats out there that could absolutely cripple your business’ ability to sustain operations. Today, we’ll talk about how to get your staff to care about malware, hackers, and the like. 

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Employees Can Be Your Business’ Best Defense Policy

Employees Can Be Your Business’ Best Defense Policy

A business’ employees are perhaps its greatest weakness in terms of its cybersecurity, although they also have the potential to be one of its greatest advantages if trained properly. To demonstrate this, let’s consider a few examples that exemplify either case.

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Many Businesses are Still Using Windows 7...

Many Businesses are Still Using Windows 7...

So many organizations continue to use a decade-old operating system, and they really, really shouldn’t.

Here’s the thing: Windows 7 is dead and gone… and yet, as of July, it still had a market share of about 23 percent, making it the second-most-popular operating system. Here, we’ll be going over just why it is—if your company is still using Windows 7—that you need to update to Windows 10 immediately (if not sooner).

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Is My Smartphone Tracking COVID-19 Exposures Without My Consent?

Is My Smartphone Tracking COVID-19 Exposures Without My Consent?

Remember a few months ago when Google and Apple joined forces to come up with a system to help state and local governments establish a COVID-19 Exposure Notification system? If you didn’t, you aren’t alone. A lot has been going on lately. Just to catch you up, the two tech giants recently pushed out an update across nearly all modern smartphones so state and local governments can deploy apps to notify people when they may have been exposed to COVID-19. Let’s do a deep dive on what this means for your privacy.

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Exploring the Risk in Business VPNs

Exploring the Risk in Business VPNs

Small business owners are always looking for a way to improve their companies. It has been difficult to do so in 2020 as the COVID-19 shutdown has everyone playing defense. One way businesses have forged ahead is by allowing their staff to work from home. Many businesses use a VPN to facilitate this remote productivity, but there are business risks in doing so.

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Avoiding Cybersecurity Placebos in Your Business

Avoiding Cybersecurity Placebos in Your Business

When it comes to your business, especially its technology, some of the buzzwords you hear floating around can be pretty convincing, almost intoxicating. Unfortunately, like most buzzwords, many of these are aggrandized beyond their worth to the average small-to-medium-sized business. Let’s take a look at how this can impact a business’ perception of its cybersecurity, as well as dig into the reality behind these terms.

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Cybersecurity Training Must Be a Priority

Cybersecurity Training Must Be a Priority

The nature of many of today’s businesses is building one product over and over and over. When you have that level of repetitiveness, it helps people find their niche, yes, but it can also result in the attention given to the task to suffer. While a disengaged employee is nothing new, they can cause some operational problems. By and large, a couple of staff hiccups won’t have a huge impact on your business, unless that lack of engagement impacts your cybersecurity. That’s because there are some threats out there that could absolutely cripple your business’ ability to sustain operations. Today, we’ll talk about how to get your staff to care about malware, hackers, and the like. 

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Cyberattacks are Up at the World Health Organization

Cyberattacks are Up at the World Health Organization

The World Health Organization has been busy dealing with one of the biggest calamities in contemporary times, the COVID-19 pandemic that has had much of the world on pause for the past few months. Unfortunately, they’ve been dealing with an increase in cyberattacks. Today, we’ll take a look at some of the issues the WHO is having with cybercriminals. 

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Taking Data Security Seriously

Taking Data Security Seriously

If you don’t think that your business is at risk of cyberattack from the Internet, you are running your business on borrowed time. If you want to avoid this scenario, you will have to be prepared to do what you can to keep it safe.  This entails following some strict rules and being smart about where and when to deploy security checkpoints. We looked at what an organization needs to do in order to keep the threats that are bandying about from having a marked effect on your business.

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Remember the Equifax Breach? Here’s an Update

Remember the Equifax Breach? Here’s an Update

Spoiler alert: it isn’t good news.

On September 7th, 2017, it was made public that Equifax had suffered one of the largest cybersecurity breaches in history, and as a result, had left 145.5 million consumers in the United States vulnerable to identity theft. Due to a website application vulnerability, the personally identifiable information of these people was exposed from May until July of that year.

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Tip of the Week: Building Up Four Business Security Basics

Tip of the Week: Building Up Four Business Security Basics

With all the threats that stand to create problems for your business, it can be surprising to hear that some of your biggest security risks actually derive from your staff, and their exposure to your technology. Less surprising to hear: security issues interfere with the successful operation of your business. Here, we’ve shared a few tips to help your staff better adhere to security practices.

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Tip of the Week: Phishing Training Has to Be a Priority

Tip of the Week: Phishing Training Has to Be a Priority

When reading through Microsoft’s latest Security Intelligence Report you will quickly get the notion that phishing attacks are some of the most prevalent cyberattacks. With businesses forced to use technology to support a remote workforce, this is definitely still relevant information. It, then, becomes extremely important that your business does a quality job of training your employees to spot phishing attempts before they become a problem. Let’s take you through some of the telltale signs that you have received a phishing message.

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What You Need to Know to Manage a Remote Workforce

What You Need to Know to Manage a Remote Workforce

There are many reasons that your team may want (or need) to work from home, and there are many reasons to allow them to do so. A 2019 survey by OwlLabs indicated that 71 percent of remote workers are happy with their job (as compared to 55 percent of on-site workers); remote workers responded that they are 13   percent more likely than onsite workers to stay in their current job for five more years than onsite workers will; and when respondents claimed to be working longer than 40 hours per week, onsite workers were doing so out of necessity, while remote workers did so out of desire and enjoyment.

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The Employee’s Guide to Working Remotely

The Employee’s Guide to Working Remotely

It’s not uncommon where a situation arises and you will find yourself working from home. To make this work, it is important that you keep a few additional issues in mind so that you can make the most of it. We have put together a few simple best practices that you should keep in mind as you operate remotely.

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