SCW Blog

Many individuals are concerned about the future of AI, including the White House, which encouraged companies like Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI to commit to helping with the management of artificial intelligence. Other companies, including Adobe, Cohere, IBM, Nvidia, Palantir, Salesforce, Scale AI, and Stability, have joined in this pledge to maintain “the development of safe, secure, and trustworthy AI,” according to the White House.

A major nonprofit has disclosed a major data breach that has affected 890 schools across the United States. The National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) has announced that they have been the victim of a data breach that has put its clients’ data at risk. Let’s take a look at what this means.

Let’s talk a little bit about deepfakes. If you aren’t aware of this technology, deepfakes are essentially synthetic media. Typically they come in the form of videos or images that use artificial intelligence (AI) to replace a person’s likeness with another’s. With deepfake technology, people can convince an audience that a person said something they didn’t say. This deliberate digital subterfuge can bring with it a whole lot of problems. This week we will outline a few of them.

With Cybersecurity Awareness Month just around the corner, now seems to be the appropriate time to consider your own business’ cybersecurity. While there are many, many factors that contribute to how protected your business is against threats, one of the most impactful and insidious is how receptive your employees are (or aren’t) to security-centric behaviors.

Data privacy has never been such an important issue for businesses and individuals alike. In some places, calls for overarching legislation to protect consumers have often been met with significant pushback by lawmakers who are reluctant to put extra regulations on businesses, while others have passed important laws dictating how organizations handle individual data. 

Encryption, like so many elements of cybersecurity, is often seen as just another buzzword that the public simply doesn’t need to concern themselves with… but as cyberattacks continue at their current rates, the opposite is the actual truth. Let’s talk about what encryption is, and why it has become more important than ever that it is put into practice in both professional and private life.

Data is commonly regarded as one of a business’ most valuable resources. As such, it is critical that you protect it from threats of all kinds, including data leaks. Data leaks are nothing to take lightly, as their impacts range from a serious hit to your business’ reputation to an equally serious hit to your business’ finances. Obviously, this is something to be avoided, so let’s discuss how you can do so.

Security is part of running your business where you have to adapt and make changes on the fly. One best practice that has always been a staple of any security infrastructure, however, is the virtual private network. The VPN might be important, but it’s one aspect of business technology that is changing thanks to the adoption of zero-trust access policies.

If you’ve spent any time at all reading our blog—or even looking at the topics we cover, for that matter—you’ve seen how often we talk about the importance of your business’s cybersecurity. The fact that we have to is frankly a little depressing. Trust me, I’d love to be able to spend all my time bringing your technology to the next level, instead of keeping ne'er-do-wells from undermining it. However, the reality is that every organization needs to focus on its cybersecurity, and this is becoming more and more the case all the time.

There are countless threats out there that can leave your business in a worse state than before, including viruses and malware, ransomware, data breaches, and other types of phishing attacks. It’s hard to go about your day without worrying about these types of threats, especially in today’s connected business world. However, the ones you need to watch out for most of all are the ones that are so personal you’d never expect them.

We aren’t shy in terms of talking about phishing, its dangers, and what can be done to prevent it. However, it can be too easy to focus directly on email phishing and exclude the many other forms that phishing can and often does take.

Take, for instance, smishing.

It’s more important than ever to know just how much your business currently spends (and should plan to spend) on cybersecurity, both of which can be addressed by understanding the goal of cybersecurity protections and how they affect your company’s defenses. Let’s consider how much you should spend on cybersecurity, as well as what protections that spending can afford.

Hackers and scammers are everywhere and are continuously littering your business with situations that could put its operations in jeopardy. One of the most hacked industries is healthcare, as hackers make a point at going after patient information. Let’s go through some of the reasons why hackers find health data so attractive. 

Cybersecurity is a complicated beast. Not only do you have to be sure that you’re protected from threats coming from outside your business, there are also a few very real threats that can originate from inside your business, too. Both are critical to prevent, which can be quite effectively accomplished via a zero trust approach to your security.

What happens when the tools designed to keep organizations safe from network breaches, are the victim of a cyberattack? After all, these tools are just applications, albeit sophisticated pieces of security software, they can run the risk of being exploited much in the same way any other software is. This is exactly what happened to cybersecurity giant Barracuda as it was the victim of a zero-day exploit. Let’s take a look at the hack and how you can protect your business from sharing the same fate.

A modern network, when properly configured and protected with modern cybersecurity tools, can be extremely secure. Since that’s been the trend for some organizations over the years, hackers have been looking for ways around the security many businesses have in place. If hackers can’t break in through normal means, they will turn to other, more insidious methods, like phishing attacks, to get what they are after.

Google is rolling out client-side encryption to Gmail and Calendar, which will allow users to create meeting events as well as send and receive emails that have been encrypted before being sent to Google servers. Client-side encryption will be available to organizations with Google Workspace Enterprise Plus, Education Standard, and Education Plus plans. All other types of Google Workspace accounts and personal Gmail accounts will not get client-side encryption.

The Federal Trade Commission has developed their Safeguards Rule for one purpose: To set up a guideline on how to interact, store, and use customer information. The FTC enacted the Rule in 2003, but it was heavily amended in 2021 to ensure that it keeps up with the technology used by businesses today. It outlines the policies and procedures that all covered companies need to enact.

Weak passwords are one of the leading causes of cybercrime, identity theft, and data breaches. Sure, it’s easy to say it, but this time we wanted to demonstrate just how easy it is to crack a wimpy password. 

For the growing business, doing the right things to secure your network and data is a constantly evolving situation. For larger businesses, they tend to approach the situation with a different perspective. They plan out the whole process. This is what is called enterprise security.  Let’s take a look at what enterprise security entails and how the little guy can benefit from doing things like larger companies do them.