IT Trends & Technology

What started as an average Monday at Yahoo headquarters in 2000 turned out to be one of the first widely reported distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. After an attacker took over and redirected a university’s computers to flood Yahoo’s internet portal traffic, the media company fell victim to a three-hour blackout that left many scratching their heads, wondering what had just happened.

The FBI estimates phishing scams have resulted in billions of dollars in fraud losses over the last five years. According to FNTS Information Security Architect Richard Kalinowski, there has been an increasing number of these targeted email cyberattacks across the globe, and phishing emails are sailing past spam filters and into company inboxes with more regularity.

From smart grids to smart meters, technology is transforming the way the utility industry does business. IT is being used to enhance operational processes and customer experience in a digital age where information security is trying to keep up with big data. To get an idea of the scope of data being collected, one only needs to look as far as the smart meters utilized by households. A single household smart meter can generate 400 megabytes per year. If you multiply that by 135 million smart meters in the United States, it equates to 54 petabytes, or a little more than half of the data uploaded to YouTube in a year. This data must be stored somewhere that is secure, so that if and when disaster strikes, it is protected.

Cybercrime is a continuous threat for organizations of all sizes and across all industries. If the news surrounding the data breaches at Marriott and Equifax are any indication, even global firms with large security budgets can still be vulnerable in the face of a seemingly endless barrage of sophisticated attacks. In fact, IndustryWeek recently reported a 350 percent increase in ransomware attacks against its members versus the year prior, as well as a 250 percent rise in email attacks.

Today’s Chief Information Security Officer, or CISO, is having a stronger and more strategic role in organizations due to more cyber threats, compliance standards, connected devices and stored data than ever before. However, according to a study done earlier this year by PricewaterhouseCoopers, almost half of average companies today don’t have a C-level security executive in place. Now is the time for organizations to evaluate their risk posture and invest in an information security team that can adopt a strong cybersecurity culture that aligns with their strategic business goals.

First National Technology Solutions (FNTS) welcomed visitors of all ages Friday for AIM’s Amazing Tech Race in downtown Omaha. The Amazing Tech Race is an annual tech-driven competition and scavenger hunt hosted by AIM Institute.

This year AIM invited First National Technology Solutions to participate in this exciting event, which gets more people throughout the Omaha community excited about technology. At FNTS, we believe in the importance of building and sustaining a strong tech workforce. Providing engaging learning experiences like the Amazing Tech Race are important due to the increasing demand of tech and STEM jobs across the country. A Global Information Security Workforce study indicates there will be 1.8 million open cybersecurity jobs by 2022 due to a large population of cyber professionals retiring over the next ten years. 

Do you know the true cost of a downtime event for your business? You may have run some numbers through a downtime calculator and have a rough estimate of the impact of downtime on your business. However, you are probably not considering some costs that are harder to quantify. And those costs could significantly affect your bottom line.

In today’s digitally-driven world, technology and internet connections are everywhere you turn. When you step out of your home in the morning and make your way to work, you encounter hundreds, if not thousands of Wi-Fi networks. Any device that has access to the internet or a Wi-Fi connection can be vulnerable to threats, hacks and security breaches.

Take a minute to think about all of the devices you have connected to the internet at home. Computers, laptops, tablets, webcams, cell phones, lighting systems, security alarms, televisions, set top boxes and even kitchen appliances can be controlled by Wi-fi signals as a way to make our lives easier. Now think of how this relates to business. In an effort to work smarter and faster, there are just as many, if not more devices for business. If your network is compromised, hackers can pick up on your Wi-fi signals as a way to monitor your every move and steal private information. With the Internet of Things (IoT) evolving, it is only becoming easier for digital thieves to spy on you if your electronics aren’t connected to a secure network.

Desktop anti-virus software is still an important component of a defense-in-depth posture and aids in keeping endpoints secured, but the vast majority of protection focus has shifted to securing information stored online, primarily on infrastructure in cloud environments. Because of the shift, precautions and safety measures need to be taken into consideration.