Category Archives: Blog

Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Four reasons to opt for the co-managed IT services model

Four reasons to opt for the co-managed IT services model

Co-managed IT services model is one in which the business has its own IT team, but still contracts with an external managed services provider for certain services. In this blog we discuss four benefits of a co-managed IT services model.

Expertise
Your in-house IT team may not have all the expertise needed to manage all your IT requirements. There are new developments happening in the tech space everyday and an MSP is better positioned to stay up-to-date with them as IT is their business.

Flexibility
Opting for a co-managed IT services model allows you the flexibility to scale your IT up or down based on your business requirements. This is especially useful for companies that experience seasonal spikes in their business, such as CPA firms, around taxation times, or retail businesses around the Holidays. You don’t have to hire new IT staff to handle the sudden extra load on your IT.

Lower costs
Choosing a co-managed IT services model saves you costs that you would otherwise incur when hiring new IT staff. Bringing someone on your payroll involves HR expenses including health insurance, 401 (k) etc., which can be avoided when bringing an MSP onboard.

Help your IT team focus better
Research indicates that in companies that have an in-house IT team, their IT specialists are so caught up with the day-to-day IT tasks that they don’t have the time to focus on new technology. Tasks like security patches, software updates, backups etc., keep them busy, so they don’t get time to research or learn about the latest on the tech front. This defeats the purpose of having an in-house IT team, doesn’t it? If you could have your MSP take care of the mundane IT routine, you will be enabling your in-house IT technicians to focus on new technology, which will help you become more efficient as a business.

If you already have an in-house IT team, it is not unusual to think you don’t need the services of a managed services provider. But, as you can see, co-managed IT has its advantages and you shouldn’t strike an MSP off your list completely just because you have your in-house IT technicians.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Last Year Microsoft Blocked More Than 25 Billion Hacker Attacks

Individual users often don’t have a good sense of the scope and scale of hacking attacks around the world.  The numbers may shock you.

According to Microsoft, in 2021 the company blocked more than 25.6 billion brute force authentication attacks against Azure AD users. They also and intercepted a staggering 35.7 billion phishing emails with Microsoft Defender for Office 365.

Vasu Jakkal is Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President for Security, Compliance, and Identity. Jakkal is both passionate and concerned about this subject.  The increase in the total number of attempts since the pandemic began has been breathtaking.

Unfortunately, Jakkal says that so far only a minority of Azure AD and Microsoft 365 users seem interested in taking steps to bolster their own security. Based on statistics gathered by Microsoft, only 22 percent of Azure AD users have activated MFA (multi-factor authentication) protocols. MFA  would keep their accounts safer and make it significantly more difficult for hackers to force their way in.

Here is how much more difficult it can be:

Google combined forces with researchers at New York University and the University of California to study that very topic. They discovered that MFA implementation can block up to 100 percent of automated bot attacks, 99 percent of bulk phishing attacks, and up to 66 percent of targeted attacks. That is an impressive level of protection for something that’s so simple to implement and make use of!

The two big takeaways here are:

  1. The total number of hacking attacks is increasing dramatically.
  2. Although automated tools are getting progressively better at preventing many of them, end users have an important role to play too. Unfortunately, as of right now they’re not.

Depressingly few users are taking even the most basic steps to better secure their accounts.  If you set one major IT security goal for the year, a very good one would be to do all you can to increase the percent of users at your firm who are taking advantage of MFA everywhere they can.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

More Scammers Are Using Social Media To Target Victims

An increasing number of scammers are using social media to target victims and relying on social engineering tricks to convince people to part with their personal information or money.  The problem has grown serious enough that the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) has issued a formal warning to consumers.

According to a recently released FTC report:

“More than 95,000 people reported about $770 million in losses to fraud initiated on social media platforms in 2021. 

Those losses account for about 25 percent of all reported losses to fraud in 2021 and represent a stunning eighteen-fold increase over 2017 reported losses. Reports are up for every age group, but people 18 to 39 were more than twice as likely as older adults to report losing money to these scams in 2021.

More than half of people who reported losses to investment scams in 2021 said the scam started on social media. Reports to the FTC show scammers use social media platforms to promote bogus investment opportunities and even to connect with people directly as supposed friends to encourage them to invest. 

People send money, often cryptocurrency, on promises of huge returns, but end up empty-handed.”

Overall cryptocurrency scams are regarded as the number one threat for investors in 2022, according to a new report from the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA). However, the FTC is cautioning all users to exercise caution and develop better habits when scrolling through their favorite social media platform.

They recommend setting limits on who can see your posts, taking advantage of increasingly robust privacy controls, opting out of targeted advertising, and doing more due diligence on any company you plan on doing business with before buying anything from them.

It’s good advice in general but it is especially important now given how prevalent social media-based attacks are becoming.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Microsoft Defender Adds Cross Platform Mobile Protections

Microsoft recently announced an important upgrade to Microsoft Defender.

It now supports vulnerability management for both Android and iOS.

The company’s announcement reads in part as follows:

“With this new cross-platform coverage, threat and vulnerability management capabilities now support all major device platforms across the organization – spanning workstations, servers, and mobile devices.

Threat and vulnerability management in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint continuously monitors and identifies impacted devices, assesses associated risks in the environment, and provides intelligent prioritization and integrated workflows to seamlessly remediate vulnerabilities.”

Although the new feature was introduced with very little fanfare, this is a significant change. This will make the lives of network admins much easier by significantly decreasing the surface attack area of mobile endpoints.

This is part of Microsoft’s broader strategy to expand the security platform’s capabilities across all platforms to provide endpoint users with a unified security solution.  Previous upgrades to Microsoft Defender’s capabilities included adding support for Linux users back in 2020.

Just one month later, the company added a “Microsoft Secure Score for Devices” feature. This is a feature that that allows network security professionals to evaluate the state of security of all devices connected to the enterprise network. It also includes a “recommended actions” section to further bolster security.

Then in October 2020 the company added another new feature that automatically generated reports to assist with the tracking of vulnerable Windows and macOS devices on the network. These included vulnerability severity levels, exploit availability, vulnerability age, and vulnerable devices sorted by OS.

All these changes are superb when evaluated individually but taken together they demonstrate just how serious Microsoft is taking matters of security. They also display the company’s clear commitment to provide cross-platform protection. This is all with the understanding that networks are no longer homogenous entities and are often made up of a wide range of different device types running a variety of operating systems.

Kudos to Microsoft for their ongoing efforts to make Microsoft Defender even more valuable than it already is.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Mac Malware Is Becoming A Bigger Threat For Users

In late 2020 a new strain of malware called UpdateAgent appeared and began infecting Mac users.

Initially the strain wasn’t all that worrisome.  It stole system information but it was by no means the worst threat on a Mac user’s radar.

Since that time, the hackers behind the malicious code have been busy. UpdateAgent has received a few developments, with each one adding a new element of danger to the equation.  As things stand now UpdateAgent should be considered a serious threat to Mac users.

As of its latest iteration UpdateAgent installs an annoyingly persistent adware strain called Adload. It has gained capabilities that make it easy for UpdateAgent to install other even more threatening and damaging payloads in the future.

Microsoft has been investigating and following the development of UpdateAgent.  The company has discovered that the hackers who created the strain are hosting a wide range of other payloads on Amazon Web Services’ S3 and CloudFront services. While these have not yet been tied to UpdateAgent, it’s a clear sign of the shape of things to come.

In addition to that, the code is now capable of fetching compressed zip files instead of .dmg files. It has been modified to prevent Gatekeeper from displaying pop-up warnings to users.  It can also inject persistent code inside background processes that are invisible to the user.

Microsoft had this to say about their study of the malware strain:

“UpdateAgent is uniquely characterized by its gradual upgrading of persistence techniques, a key feature that indicates this trojan will likely continue to use more sophisticated techniques in future campaigns. 

Like many information-stealers found on other platforms, the malware attempts to infiltrate macOS machines to steal data and it is associated with other types of malicious payloads, increasing the chances of multiple infections on a device.”

If UpdateAgent wasn’t on your radar before it certainly belongs there now.  It’s one to watch  out for in the year ahead.

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