According to a Service Max survey, 75 per cent of people typically call out a field service technician because the product has broken, not for maintenance purposes. What this means for field service professionals is that when a customer calls, they’re likely needing a rapid fix. That’s why the first-time fix rate is the holy grail of field service providers. As head of managed service provider IT Specialists (ITS), I’ve found that to keep second site visits to a minimum and improve the customer experience, field service managers should avoid these mistakes. Mistake #1: Inefficiently Managing Spare Inventory The Service…
ISB Editorial Staff
The Register reported that Mattel had been hit by a ‘well-crafted’ phishing scam that almost cost the company $3m. Here to comment on this news is Richard Beck, Head of Cyber Security at QA, which you are welcome to use. Richard Beck, Head of Cyber Security at QA: “This attack is a prime example of how phishing scams are becoming more sophisticated, and better planned out. This is only going to get worse before it gets better. Recent research conducted by QA amongst IT security professionals showed that compromise through employees is the second biggest threat to corporate security this year.…
To work on the Incapsula team at Imperva is to be exposed to DDoS attacks all of the time. From watching 100 Gbps assaults making waves on computer screens around the office, to having our inboxes bombarded with reports of mitigated assaults, DDoS is just another part of our awesome daily routine. Yet, every once in a while an attack stands out that makes us really take notice. These are the ones we email each other screenshots of, discuss with the media and write about in our blog. Often, these assaults are canaries in a coal mine for emerging attack…
In advance of the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), bringing stricter EU data protection rules, now’s the perfect time to familiarise yourself with how to ensure that your business stays within the regulations. The below is a brief outline, but you’ll find more detailed information along with examples of good – and not so good – practice in this step-by-step guide. Step 1: Examine the data that you hold Your first port of call should be to have a thorough investigation of the data that you hold on your customers or the people within your email database,…
The Panama Papers, a collection of 11.5 million files leaked from Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca, have gone live online. The documents show in blistering detail just how exactly the world’s 1 percent – including Russian president Vladimir Putin – manipulate secretive offshore wealth. Here to comment on this news is cyber security expert Philip Lieberman, President of Lieberman Software. Philip Lieberman, President of Lieberman Software: “Irrespective of the data itself and its implications, we have seen a general increase in the cyber defense readiness of many law firms in the USA. Outside the USA there has been little interest by foreign law firms in…
Security researchers and hackers are caught up in an endless game of cat and mouse, with threats constantly evolving to thwart even the most stalwart of defences. Traditional methods of combatting new threats, reliant on signature based approaches to detecting malicious files, URLs, or IP addresses, are failing to block more sophisticated attacks resulting in an overwhelming number of attacks slipping under the radar. Even the much acclaimed sandbox approach has recently come under attack, as hackers are finding innovative new ways to detect that code is running in a virtual environment and to lay dormant until released from captivity.…
Dear Editor, The Panama Papers leak may have been the work of an insider or an external hacker; news reported suggests it could have been an external hacker. But in either case, this massive leak represents three major IT security trends that every enterprise needs to be aware of. It shows the perils of digitisation of sensitive data without adequate controls over who can access it. This is a common vulnerability that has been exploited by hackers in every major data breach over the last three years, from Target, to Sony, to the US Federal Government personnel office. It is…
Yesterday, the AP broke a disturbing story about a hacktivist who made public the personal data of almost 50 million Turkish citizens, lifting the information from a government database. The hacker also posted a taunting message to the Turkish government, referring to the agency’s sloppy data protections and a hardcoded password that allowed the entire unencrypted database to be easily picked up from government servers. “Bit shifting is not encryption, “ the message concluded This breach is twice the size of the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) breach, leading us to believe that no nation is safe – and…
Never before has Mac OS X been as heavily targeted by cybercriminals as now. Whereas infections like browser hijackers and ad-serving malware aren’t newcomers on the Mac arena, crypto ransomware appears to be making first baby steps toward the invasion of this huge niche. The term denotes a cluster of malicious programs that stealthily infiltrate into computers, encode the victim’s personal files and extort money, usually Bitcoins, in exchange for a secret decryption key. Windows users have been suffering from file-encrypting Trojan assaults for years, with the early incidents recorded back in 2011. As opposed to that, Apple’s strong focus…
Lieberman Software Survey Reveals Privileged Credential Security Threats Are Prevalent Results revealed today from a survey carried out by cyber security vendor Lieberman Software Corporation found that a majority (55%) of IT professionals make their users change their passwords more regularly than they change administrative credentials. The study that polled almost 200 IT professionals at RSA Conference 2016 also found that a worrying 10% of them never change administrative credentials at all. Meanwhile, 74% change administrative passwords on only a monthly or less frequent basis. “Administrative passwords are the most powerful credentials in an organisation – the keys to…