Category: IT Management

40% of Businesses Hit by Ransomware in the Last Year

Nearly 40 percent of businesses have experienced a ransomware attack in the last year, according to a new study.

Scary results from this study suggest that apart from the cost to productivity, more than 30% of businesses lost revenue and 20% had to stop business completely.

Despite the focus on updated malware protection, these attacks are still getting through.

Even more disturbingly the study suggests that 40% of victims are paying the ransom demand, and yet they should simply be able to restore from backups.

The fact that they don’t suggests that they don’t have adequate backups.

If you are not 100% sure your backups can protect you from ransomware losses, contact PASR today to ensure that if/when you are hit, you will not end up paying hundreds, or thousands, of $$$$$ to get your data back.

There is currently NO OTHER WAY to reverse the effects of this malware!

If you would like to discuss this issue and what it means for your business, please get in touch. Since inception in 1996, PASR Technologies has been providing SME business owners with a level of service and support to the SME business owner that is typically only directly available in very large organisations.

Servicing businesses from 10 to up to 200 employees, our clients range from local SMEs through to regional offices of larger MNCs, and include airlines.

At PASR Technologies, we solve your IT problems before you even realize you have one!

Too Small to be Hacked? [Think you are not at risk?]

The Internet is a dangerous, anarchic place, and we always adopt what we believe to be appropriate and effective security precautions for our clients’ system. However, as we are dealing with smaller clients in the 10-200 user space, many of these feel that they are simply too small to be targeted by hackers, and often request lowering of their security settings as they often find them a little cumbersome, and thus reduce ease of use of their systems.

They make this request to lower their security settings because they feel that they are simply too small to be targeted by hackers and that they are not at risk. In our opinion, nothing could be further from the truth!

72% of known hacker breaches impacted business with less than 100 employees.
50% of those small businesses felt they were too small to be hacked. *
Nearly 1 million new malware threats are released every day

Continue reading Too Small to be Hacked? [Think you are not at risk?]

Facebook Down VITAL KEY Communications Disrupted

So we hear that our beloved Facebook had a little problem today and went offline for a whole 30 mins. The end of the world is upon us! Armageddon is around the corner. Oh horror of horrors, I can’t post a picture of my noodle lunch and accompanying nutritious beverage!

But why does a respectable news site (Channel New Asia reporting off the AFP wire) suggest that Facebook has become a vital tool for countless businesses and organisations?

Come on! Get real! There is no doubt that the many and varied social media sites have made a huge impact on how we communicate socially – I love being able to catch up with old friends and contacts from prior lifetimes, BUT: a Vital tool, a Key Forum ?? I think not.

I’ve struggled for a long time to figure out how social media (read Facebook and similar) can assist me in promoting my business and services. I’ve gone with the public opinion – hype – and created my business page on Facebook. You can even find this post on Facebook! But I still cannot see the value in building sales in my business-to-business environment. Perhaps if my market was consumers (B2C) it might be different. Or perhaps I’m just a dinosaur scheduled for extinction during the next outage……………

So tell me:

Does your business benefit from a Facebook presence?
Did you find this post through Facebook or some other means?
Are you a B2B or B2C business?
Are you among the countless businesses & organisations considering winding up because of this major outage?
Did your Vital Tool go offfline today for 30 mins?
Did you consider hara kiri when you couldn’t log on?

I’d really like to know your views, ‘cos I just can’t see it.

PASR Technologies has been providing SME business owners with a level of service and support to the SME business owner that is typically only directly available in very large organisations.

In Cloud We Trust

Somewhere out there….

Everyone is talking about the ‘Cloud’ – which seems to be the greatest thing since sliced bread, and everyone thinks they should be making use of it, but how and for what?

Among the many possible usages of Cloud services, those that come most easily to mind are storage, backup, information sharing and email correspondence, but there are many more.

All of these share a common denominator – the storage of our own personal, corporate and/or proprietary information on some other organisation’s resources – located ‘somewhere out there’ – in the Cloud.

How secure is the Cloud?

So just how secure, and how private, is the information we store in this pervasive Cloud? Do we know where it might be, or who might have access to it, or how it might be disclosed or made available to further third parties over which we have no control?

While I’ve always been concerned about the overall security of cloud services, a particular blog post a few weeks back highlighted how available our cloud data can be. This particular post refers to Microsoft’s host email solutions Hotmail & Outlook.com, but this is not just about Microsoft – all cloud providers require the same concerns raised – and rather than reproduce this post, I encourage you to read it plus a number of the links provided.

Regardless of which cloud vendor you use, or are considering, I recommend you read carefully their provisions for security & privacy for your data. Below I’ve provided links to some to the major cloud vendors’ current statements – but do note that these are subject to regular revision.

Google: http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en-GB/trust/data_protection.html

Amazon: https://aws.amazon.com/security/

Azure: http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/support/legal/privacy-statement/

Key points to consider

Before you go and put your private, business confidential or client confidential data out there in the Cloud, be sure you understand:

Is your organisation subject to any professional or regulatory controls regarding location and access to your data?
Is the loss of absolute control of your data worth the potential savings in using Cloud services over in-house systems?
How would your clients react knowing that you store their information in the Cloud?