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Millions Of Banner Health Members Affected By Latest Security Breach
Banner Health, based in Phoenix, AZ, has the dubious honor as having been the recipient of the largest healthcare related data breach so far in 2016. The cyberattack was launched on June 17, and potentially impacts 3.7 million Banner Health patients. Not only is the number of patient records exposed noteworthy and disconcerting, but so […]
Create An Email Policy For Your Employees To Protect Your Business
Does your company currently have a formal email policy? If you don’t, you need one, and sooner, rather than later. As the first “killer app” in the world of computing, email is, to this day, one of the most widely used communications tools in business. Unfortunately, it’s also the source of the most breaches and […]
A Number of Popular Wireless Keyboards Can Be Easily Hacked
In recent months, we’ve seen an upsurge in the number of attacks that have been executed by exploiting wireless peripherals attached to computers. Hackers can even intercept signals sent to your PC via wireless mouse and use them for their own purposes. If they can do it to a wireless mouse, then a keyboard is […]
Be Wary Of Open Public WiFi
Public WiFi is ubiquitous. Pretty much anywhere you go these days, you’re going to find a free network you can connect to. Stop in to grab some coffee, free WiFi. Grab lunch at the restaurant downtown? Free WiFi. It’s everywhere, and that’s at least part of the problem. At this year’s Democratic National Convention, security […]
New Form of Malware Used Ads To Infect Computers
The FBI has recently shut down a particularly nefarious ad server called the AdGholas group, which used a new and innovative method of infecting computers and managed to avoid detection for several months. The hackers employed advanced steganography techniques via code embedded in graphics files, which marks the first time in history that malware has […]
Hackers Are Using Netflix Price Raise To Steal Information
Video streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu Plus, and others are becoming so ubiquitous that they’re a fixture in everyday life for tens of millions of people. Unfortunately, hackers have proven incredibly adept at taking well known, popular trends and turning them against us. The latest example of this used Netflix as a springboard. […]
Verizon Unlimited Data? Your Account Might Get Closed
So what do you do when you offer an unlimited data plan and people actually take you up on your offer? Well, if you’re Verizon, you start banning them. Currently, Verizon is offering an “unlimited” plan. The problem, however, is that if you use large amounts of data, they’ll kick you off the network, and […]
4 out of 5 Business Networks Have Security Threats
According to security company Infoblox, a staggering 83% of the networks they’ve studied contain some form of malicious activity. The news is as staggering as it is grim, but if there’s a silver lining to be found in the report, it is that the company has broken out the biggest and most commonly found threats. […]
Data Breach Costs Up 30 Percent, Is Your Business Secure?
The annual “Cost of a Data Breach” study has been released, and the results aren’t pretty or encouraging. Between 2013 and now, the total cost to a company hit by a data breach is a staggering $4 million, which is a nearly 30% increase over the last three years. Worse, between 2014 and 2015, we […]
This Year’s Leap Second Could Cause Some Computers To Crash
System administrators have their hands full dealing with “Leap Seconds,” the extra second periodically added to the day by scientists working with UTC (Coordinated Universal Time), used by computer systems around the world. These leap seconds are necessary in order to keep clocks in step with the earth’s gradually slowing rotation. If these “extra” seconds […]
A Visionary Approach to Your Security
The purpose of an IT partner isn’t just to fix something when it is broken, it is to keep your people working and your data secure. Astral moves beyond traditional managed services by addressing all the key areas of cybersecurity in today’s complex landscape.
