Protecting email deliverability before and after a data breach
The financial impact of a data breach continues to climb for businesses. IBM’s 2018 Cost of a Data Breach Study placed the average total cost of a data breach at $3.86 million, an increase of more than six percent compared to 2017. Every stolen or lost record costs a company $148, putting a hefty price tag on breaches of any size.
Beyond immediate expenses, the required email notification to customers in the database can negatively contribute to a company’s ability to recover from the breach. FTC regulations require the company to contact every customer in their database via email or another method, such as direct mail. If there is a spike in undeliverable emails, mailbox providers (MBPs) will notice the spike, negatively impacting the company’s email deliverability. Thankfully, this impact can be reduced by minimizing unnecessary data before a potential breach and acting immediately after recognizing the breach.
What is a zombie (comatose) server, and why should I care?
Whatis.com states that "a zombie server is a physical server that is running but has no external communications or visibility and contributes no compute resources, that it consumes electricity but is serving no useful purpose."
In a time when a server was dedicated to running a particular application or performing a specific function such as the late 1990s or early 2000s, this definition of a "zombie" made sense. Generally speaking, zombie servers happened because they were forgotten, or never configured for the purpose for which they had been acquired (a dirty secret of the IT industry). In many cases, once plugged in, the server operating systems never allowed these servers to enter their sleep state, for fear that they would be too slow to respond. Identifying these systems as zombies was relatively easy -- their power consumption was constant (a flat line).
CCleaner 5.55 adds a software updater (but only in Professional)
Install software on your computer and you’ll be forgiven for not having the spare time to search for updates. Most applications do not have a software update facility, so unless you go checking, you’ll often never know it’s been updated.
With this in mind, and software developers running out of key ideas to add to future revisions to encourage paid upgrades, we’re seeing 'Software Updater' tools being released to the market or added to system maintenance applications. IObit recently released a standalone Software Updater tool this year which we wrote about this month.
Securely wipe your entire drive or individual files and folders using O&O SafeErase 14
We had a shock the other day when cleaning out the office. If you’re anything like us, you tend to hold on to old drives simply because it’s hard to dispose of the data securely.
You soon realize you have old hard drives you’ve never dealt with and even obscure NAS drives collected over many years. We found old drives going back to 2000. One solution is to pay for a professional company to pick up, wipe and dispose of these used drives, but this is a costly procedure. Why not do it yourself and save a ton of cash in the process?
Take your marketing automation further with AI
It’s been said that artificial intelligence is the future, but I’d argue that AI is very much a thing of the here and now. It’s playing an increasingly significant role in marketing efforts, and is taking marketing automation to the next level. And during an era when customers are demanding fast and hyper-personalized service, AI-based technologies couldn’t be more critical.
AI-based technologies bolster marketing automation efforts through personalized interactions. Your business can benefit on a multitude of fronts by embracing these game-changing advancements.
Creative destruction: Using data skills to rethink business cultures
Data should underlie every business decision. Yet too often some very human cultural artifacts really lead the business down certain routes where it moves away from modelling decisions on the best data. It’s only human. Yet to be a better human guiding the corporate machine we need to transcend the way "we’ve always done it".
In the data age gut, tradition, and inertia shouldn’t be why strategic decisions are made. And yet, hand on heart, we all continue to do it, because that’s part of being human. Well, it’s time to be more than human, time to get creative. Time to smash the way "we’ve always done it." Time to apply some creative destruction to break down the worst parts of making decisions within organizations, and start using the data, technology, and creativity that lies around us, untapped.
Captura 8 is a free app which will record your screen and so much more
Anyone who has had to handle software support will know that sometimes explaining by email or attempting to describe an action over the telephone can be a very frustrating experience.
We handle support queries on a daily basis and are still perplexed that some users still do not know how to enter their product key or where it should be entered. They attempt to type in the code, get a digit wrong, think they’ve been sold a duff code, won’t accept reason and get angry real quick. There’s now a cheap and easy solution.
The sci-fi of AI versus its intriguing reality
In sci-fi movies, machines work in choreographed grace, hovering gently, waddling cutely, and performing flawlessly. Computer interfaces seem minimalist with their floating touch interfaces and bluish color palettes. Wakanda of Black Panther, Cloud City in Star Wars, and New York City of The Fifth Element function so beautifully.
Here’s my question: Where the hell are all their IT people?!!
Secure BYOD, the BYOD way
Bring your own device (whereby employees work from personal devices like their mobile phones) is quickly becoming the norm in today’s business environment. Companies that embrace BYOD are able to give employees more freedom to work remotely, resulting in increased productivity, cost savings and talent retention. In fact, 85 percent of organizations now allow BYOD for at least some of their stakeholders, including employees, contractors, partners, customers and suppliers.
It is important to note that BYOD does change an organization’s threat landscape and requires security tools that are different than those that are used to protect managed devices. Unfortunately, a widespread misunderstanding about this point has contributed to an unfounded assumption that BYOD is inherently riskier than the traditional way of doing things. In reality, this is a myth fueled by companies that fail to implement proper security tools and processes for protecting data in BYOD environments. Consider the following findings from a recent report on BYOD and security:
How big data is fighting against gambling addiction
Technological evolutions have revolutionized the gambling industry. With the rise of gambling apps and live streams, people can now gamble anytime, anywhere with the press of a button.
Demographic gambling rates have since risen exponentially, with more women and young people taking part in the activity than ever before. In total, around 15 percent of the U.S. adult population has gambled in the past week alone. As more apps and fantasy sports teams gain popularity, the online gambling model appears to expect years of robust growth.
Three trends in tracking software delivery
Over the past decade, software has made giant leaps in allowing us to track, analyze and visualize the incredible amounts of data flowing across our organizations. Storage is rarely a bottleneck, advances in non-relational databases have helped capture growing volumes of data, and machine learning approaches promise to assist with deriving meaning and insight. Yet for the vast majority of large organizations, one kind of data seems immune to providing any kind of business intelligence -- the data for tracking software delivery itself.
Even organizations building the data analysis tools are struggling to find meaningful insights from the many tools and repositories that capture their own largest investment: building software. It would appear that the cobbler’s children have no shoes. Given all the advancements, how is this possible? And how can the situation change? If you have been tasked with providing insight or visibility into the data locked up in tools used to plan, code, deliver and support your organization’s software, here are three trends you should be aware of:
The three skills software developers need in 2019
Software Developer is one of the most sought-after enterprise roles out there. But it’s also among the most competitive -- especially in a candidate-driven market. No matter what stage they are in their careers, remaining competitive will require developers to refine skill sets that set them apart.
According to a data analysis conducted via PayScale data, full stack developer was determined to be the fastest-growing job of 2018. The analysis found that these developers are hired at a rate more than six times that of the average job in America. And salaries are a big inducement: Entry-level developers in the U.S. can expect to make an average annual salary of over $65,000 -- a mid-career equivalent in many other industries.
Cybersecurity statistics for 2019: The chances your business will be attacked
With every passing year, cybercrime gets worse. It makes sense: it’s lucrative. Cybercrime is estimated to be a $1.5 trillion industry, with some countries now basing their economy around cybercrime. As a result, cybercriminals are now emboldened with new technology that makes data breach attacks easier and more accessible.
With all of that in mind, you may be wondering whether your business, in particular, is likely to suffer an attack. And even though you may have seen some statistics, the answer is a little more complicated than it seems. Here are some important cybersecurity statistics that can shed some light on what you can expect in 2019.
Five steps to mitigating privileged account risks: Getting ahead of a security breach
Privileged accounts are a necessity in all enterprise IT environments. Administrators must have enhanced privileges to manage the environment. Unfortunately, these privileged accounts bring high risk to a company’s network; in fact, recent research shows that almost half (44 percent) of all security breaches that happened in 2017 involved privileged account access.
There are a number of reasons these privileged accounts bring such high risk with them. For example, something so simple as a password reset can mistakenly grant a user full administrative rights that can be misused either intentionally or accidentally. These accounts are also inherently difficult to manage due to the high volume of users and systems that need access to the same credentials, making it difficult to keep the credentials secure. Luckily, there are some concrete, critical steps that an organization can take to ensure risk on its network is minimized and protected from privileged account misuse.
Windscribe is a great VPN, and this is why you should be using it
Install the latest security software and most people would consider their system safe. Understandable as most modern suites cover almost every possible scenario from prevention against malicious software through to providing a secure way of interacting with your bank account.
There’s one area which is avoided and that’s a lack of a secure tunnel to the outside world and here’s the reason why this is so important.
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