Blog
Identity Thieves Can Now Get Your Fingerprints From Digital Pictures
Improving technology and a social media habit are converging in an unfortunate way that is opening the door for a new kind of hacking. Now, not even your selfies are safe. Here’s what’s happening: Thanks to radical improvements in the quality of digital cameras in recent years, it’s possible to take crisper, clearer digital photos […]
FDA Issues Warning On Certain Cardiac Device Security Issues
In 2015, the FDA issued warnings about a pair of infusion pumps – “smart” medical devices that had demonstrated security flaws. It was the first time in history that security researchers demonstrated that a hacker could take control of these life-saving devices remotely and use them to kill the patients they were protecting. Since that […]
Upgrade To SSD Drives For Speed Boosts, Other Advantages
The spinning disk hard drive has been the reigning king of storage for almost as long as we’ve had desktop computers. All things end, though, and the HDD’s reign is officially coming to a close. It’s getting increasingly difficult to justify springing for an old-style hard drive when you can buy an SSD or a […]
Android And Oracle Top Most Vulnerable List
CVE Details is a website that tracks bugs in various software systems, aggregating the data and issuing an “award” for the software that has the most reported bugs in any given year. This year, Android topped the list by a wide margin, with a staggering 523 reported security issues. The runner up, Debian Linux, placed […]
Amazon Echo Data Called Upon In Criminal Case
Privacy has been on the endangered species list for a while now, but the growing number of smart devices in people’s homes is putting an increasing amount of pressure on what little privacy remains. Last year, electronics giant Samsung came under fire when it was revealed that its smart TVs recorded everything you said when […]
Ransomware May Be Coming To Your Smart TV
Darren Cauthon, a software developer, got a Christmas present this year he didn’t ask for and didn’t want. On Christmas day, his family downloaded and installed an app on their Android-based LG Smart TV and wound up getting a ransomware infection. He took a photo of his TV screen and published it as proof. It […]
Patient Information On Social Media Shows Need For Better Security
A very strange and disturbing case of the theft of protected health information has come from the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). The department recently reported on an incident that occurred in October 2015, in which a former psychiatric patient was able to access non-confidential information from a computer located in […]
Microsoft Could Add Mode To Windows 10 To Boost Gaming Performance
Microsoft has been hard at work experimenting with various ways to optimize performance. One of the most recent experiments to come to light is the advent of “Windows Gaming Mode.” Slated to be released to Windows Insiders users in January of this year, and the rest of the installed base sometime in the spring, the […]
Downloading Cracked Antivirus Software Could Get You Infected
File this one away under “it should go without saying, but…” One of the most amazing and disheartening aspects of internet use is that after all this time, a shocking number of people are still getting taken in by the lure of installing a “crack” for popular software. It should go without saying that installing […]
Cybersecurity Guidelines Being Set By FDA For Connected Medical Devices
The government is taking a more active hand in establishing security protocols for at least one part of the Internet of Things. Specifically, new guidelines are being drafted by the FDA to set minimum security standards for ‘smart’ medical devices. In recent months, a number of security researchers have demonstrated the ability to hack into […]
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.
