Responding to a Different Kind of Infection

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Disclaimer: As I write this at 5am, please note that I’m groggy and still working on my first cup of Joe. Grammar and spelling are not the priority for this post… 🙂

We’ve all, heard about it. We’ve all seen the empty shelves and the strange madness that seems to come with panic. We’ve seen how the public is responding to all the media about Covid-19 and we’re beginning to see how the government is responding to the outbreaks. There have been quite a few articles that point out the ideas of working from home and a handful more telling us that the internet will crash and burn from all of the extra bandwidth being taken up. But have you considered what it would take to work from home and whether your business network is up to the task?

There are a lot of different ways to get to your data from an external location. Normally we focus on stopping external connections to our networks, but now we’re faced with trying to safely open the doors and allow a select few in. So, what ways can we get to our data without compromising it at the same time? Here are just some of the general ideas that companies use.

Lets start with some of the built in tools. If you use Windows Professional then there is already the beginnings of a solution built into your computer. It has a feature that can be enabled called Remote Desktop Protocol or RDP for short. RDP provides one of the best remote experiences out of all of the solutions. It is robust in many areas allowing you to copy files back and forth, print to a local printer, use the clipboard between the remote and local machines and even provides sound from the remote machine. But the technology has been around for a long time and has become a favorite attack vector for the bad guys. If you want to use RDP then there are some general precautions that need to be taken, such as strong passwords and fully updated computers. Still, one of the major requirements for RDP to work is that you forward a port on your firewall to the specific machine that will receive the connections. This can open the door for attackers to test your RDP setup with automated programs that can try to login tens of thousands times a day. Another downfall is that without a special server, RDP will only allow a single user to connect at a time.

Next on the list would be connections with Virtual Private Networks or VPNs. A VPN can be a great way to allow your employees to access data from a remote location. The connections are usually encrypted and can require multiple forms of authentication. There are vulnerabilities in VPNs, but in general they are still far more secure than a basic RDP session. What is better is that you can use a VPN to get into your network and then use RDP inside of the VPN to remote control a machine. Great, this must be the solution to go with! Well, the general downfalls are that it is usually more costly and complicated to setup. With complexity comes additional time for configuration.

So what’s next? Well there are a host of programs that provide remote connectivity through a service based webhost. What am I talking about? You might have heard of programs called Team Viewer, or ShowMyPC, or GoToMyPC, or LogMeIn? All of these provide some form of remote connectivity and may provide additional features such as screen sharing to groups for meetings. What they do provide is a machine to machine connection from your home to your work computer. They are generally efficient to use but most of these do have a monthly cost. I have found one of these that is currently free for use.

MSP360 ( https://www.msp360.com/remote-assistant.aspx ) can provide remote connectivity to a work computer. The software needs to be installed on both the remote and local machines to work. The software isn’t as robust as some of the paid subscriptions but it does appear to be functional. And considering the cost, it just may be what helps keep a business above water during this time of stress.

Note that I do not endorse or guarantee any of the software listed in this post. I simply chose to share information. If you are interested in using any of the methods listed here, or have other ideas and would like help implementing them, please let me know and we can discuss your specific needs.

It is Time to Begin Phasing Out Windows 7 and Server 2008 Computers

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Windows 7 and Server 2008 will lose support 1/14/20. What does this mean and why should you care? It means that in January of 2020 Windows 7 and Server 2008 will become more and more vulnerable to threats on the Internet. Microsoft will not release any further security updates, so any new vulnerabilities that are found will simply go unpatched leaving open doors for hackers, new viruses and other malware to attack the machine.

Anti-virus vendors will slow down their support for Windows 7 as well meaning the threat to your network will grow faster than ever. The risk will become impossible to mitigate without replacing or upgrading the system.

Here is a scenario, your company is running Windows Server 2008 and receives email for the company. It also works double duty for file and print sharing. This is a very common setup for Microsoft SBS 2011 based system. The fact that the machine is “listening” to the Internet for incoming email puts it in a pretty high risk category even with a good firewall guarding your network. A much simpler scenario would be an office worker doing research on the internet while using Windows 7. Both scenarios are unique but present the same hazard and can be equally devastating. Both machines would be prone to a virus infection even with appropriate anti-virus installed.

So, how can you tell if you have one of these vulnerable systems? If you hold down the “Windows” key on the keyboard ( between the CTRL and ALT ) and tap “R” you’ll see a dialog box. In that box type “winver” ( without quotes ) and press enter. A small program will open stating what version of Windows is running. If you see anything other than “Windows 8.1” or “Windows 10”, then you are probably in the high risk group and need to replace or upgrade your computer.

Note that this isn’t something that should be taken lightly. It could mean the difference between a great year in 2020 or seeing a business completely fail due to a major infection that wipes out financial data.

If you have any questions or concerns about the risks, please let us know. We would be glad to help you out and find the best solution for you.

What Would a Ransomware Infection Cost Your Business?

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Ransomware, that word is quickly becoming one of the biggest fears in the small business world.  Major networks such as the city of Atlanta ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Atlanta_cyberattack ), Colorado Department of Transportation (
https://www.govtech.com/security/Colorado-Hack-Offers-Larger-Lessons-for-Cybersafety.html ) and other sites have all been heavily impacted by ransomware infections. On the low end of the scale, just the ransom can cost in the area of $2,000 – $3,000 for a single infected workstation. For a full server that has been encrypted you can expect to pay $10,000 – $50,000 or more. Once the ransom has been paid and the files have been recovered ( Note that there is no guarantee that the files will ever be recovered. Remember that you are dealing with criminals. ) then the cleanup efforts can begin. Additional funds are spent determining how the system was infected in the first place and how to mitigate infections in the future. This process can cost as much as, if not more than the original ransom. Whats more frustrating is that your business might be at a standstill as the whole process can often take a few days or weeks to recover from.

What options are available in this situation? Well, the best option is to never get infected ( Can we get an overwhelming “Duh!” from the crowd? ). Beyond that, we need to take as many precautions as possible and answer some basic questions. Some of the obvious precautions are up to date anti-virus and have a good firewall in place. But even these aren’t bullet proof. New malware variants are released on a daily basis as the criminals try to get around anti-virus software. Another step is simple employee training. Again, this can prevent a lot of disasters but sometimes machines are infected through a popular website. In the end, there are no guarantees that your network won’t get infected regardless of what precautions you take.

So what are we to do? Well, one of the best defenses against ransomware is simply a good backup rotation. Don’t get me wrong, all of the other anti-virus protection, firewalls and employee training has a major impact on how vulnerable the overall network is, but having a backup of your data becomes invaluable during ransomware recovery. Why? Well, if you have a good daily backup of your data then you might lose a day or two of data and minimize your network downtime. There are some caveats to the backups. Physical backup drives shouldn’t be connected to the server when the infection hits. How do we ensure this? Having multiple backup drives that are swapped out on a daily basis. Many businesses don’t realize that their backup strategy can play heavily on their anti-virus mitigation as well. A computer can be cleaned or reinstalled from scratch if needed, but data ( especially financial data ) is incredibly difficult to recreate. The more varied your backup plan ( physical external hard drives, NAS and cloud usage ) the better chance of recovering from these vicious infections.

If you’d like to learn more about ransomware recovery and some of the options available to your unique situation, please send us an email or give us a call.

About The Website

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As a beginning I would like to make a note concerning the web page. We looked around for quite some time trying to determine what our website should look like. What we discovered is that many of the websites out there look pretty much the same. They have nice pictures of smiling people that don’t have anything to do with the business. They all have basic menu systems that lead to other pages that have smiling people on them as well. But in the end, we found very little tangible information about what the business does and how much it charges. Don’t get me wrong, there is some great work out there. But if everyone is copying that great work then it tends to lose the greatness.

So we’re trying to be a little different. It’s not “great” by any means and this site will always be under some sort of construction, but our goal is to provide information on what our business does, what it charges and who we cater to.

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please give us a call or send us an email. We would love to hear from you.