Xmas Round up 2023
2023 is almost over and our major projects have been wrapped up in time for Xmas so we can all enjoy the festive period, as we celebrate the year and look forward to 2024 and whatever that may bring. Here is our brief look back over the last 12months.
January to March
We started the year fully focused on integrating the newly acquired Mid Coast IT clients, with a flurry of IT Audits. We needed to do this to better understand the IT maturity of what we had inherited and for the clients to visualise what they had and to understand where certain vulnerabilities might lurk. We documented like crazy what we could and advised accordingly where we couldn’t, firewalls and new back up policies saw a surge in installations.
In March we held a Cyber Security Educational Event at Charles Sturt as a Gold sponsor with Business NSW Port Macquarie which was extremely well attended. We covered a whole range of Cyber related issues and how we can prevent and insure against them. We also touched on Director’s liability and when a breach should be reported, within 72hours BTW. There were many highlights but front and centre was the human element, whereby 96% or breaches leverage phishing or malicious attachments as the first stage of an advance multi staged attack. As an IT Support business, we can report that a large number of our clients still do not have basic email filtering, MFA is not being used and backs up are on a rotating USB drive.
Just these 3 things would dramatically reduce risk, plus phishing training to bring down your insurance costs.
April to June
Integer went on to present at several events after we published a Chat GPT article on our website in April and our “Microsoft Log in Scam” article in May.
First up was a TAFE IT and Business Head Teacher forum in Port Macquarie at Rydges. We have been recruiting Cert 4 TAFE Students straight from college, and they were keen to know our experience on where we thought the industry was heading and what training needs, we think would assist. This was an excellent two-way event to understand ways to continually improve the educational process and future employer requirements.
Our next gig was a presentation to the Hastings Business Womens Network, specifically about AI highlighting its potential dangers as well as its delights. We also spoke about ID credential theft and how it occurs and heard a firsthand harrowing true story of the devasting impacts of such a theft on a local victim.
July to September
This was a busy period in the form of project delivery as IT budgets were released for the new financial year and several long-awaited projects received the accountant’s nod to proceed. Cyber events continued to be the norm and the one that stuck out for us, as it almost went under the radar, was the Home Affairs data leak we highlighted in August. The department inadvertently released personal data of 50 small companies that took part in a cyber security survey, I have no words!
We also presented at the Port Macquarie Business AGM, more cyber information, this time at both a business and personal level. The alarming news we unearthed for this one, is how all the major car companies collect data from our vehicle usage (a computer on wheels these days), who they sell this information to is a concern potentially under the Privacy Act because they can monitor what we all do in the confines of our vehicles.
October to December
Microsoft pulled the critical security updates and support of the much loved and deployed server operating system 2012 on 14th October. What that basically means is we are unable to apply security patches or update these Server environments as we have been doing several times a month for our managed clients. As it’s a widely used Operating System we do envisage these platforms being open to malicious intentions as vulnerabilities become apparent and we urge clients to make provisions to migrate away from them as soon as possible. Possible solutions include:
- Upgrade the hardware or software to the newest supportable versions.
- Migrate their data storage function to SharePoint.
- Subscribe to Microsoft Azure within virtual environments to fully host the functionality.
- Engage us to create extended Sophos support to cover Microsoft Server 2012 until migration occurs prior to any migration effort.
Much of the project related work over the last 6mths has been migration off this platform.
During November we received 2 separate calls from businesses who were not existing clients within the Mid North Coast seeking cyber assistance. They had both been locked out of the systems due to a Ransomware attack.
What they both had in common was:
- Systems were not security software patched.
- The backs up were not checked, and the recovery point from one of them was January.
- They were doing much of the IT themselves, whilst doing their normal day job.
In negotiation with the hackers, providing information of how they got in was sought so the vulnerability could be plugged.
Interestingly, but not a huge surprise, NAB would not aid the buying of Bitcoins to pay the ransom.
As the last trading date before the Xmas break is Friday 22nd December, please be very aware of incoming phishing attempts. Huge statistics at over 90% of attacks happen on Friday followed by a long weekend, as no one is working to prevent or mitigate the attack.
Our Sophos partnership arranges 24/7 Managed Threat Response as a service, pre, during and post attack. The quicker we know the better of course.
Finally, as we close out the calendar year, we have hired a few new starters that will enhance both our helpdesk and project teams in the New Year.
Thank you for your continuing support and we wish you all a happy festive season and bright 2024.
