Tech Talk – August 2018
A Note from the President
Hi from LMS:
On behalf of everyone at LMS Tech, I want to wish you a very Happy Labor Day weekend! Take advantage of the extra day off and recharge those batteries for a strong end of year finish, it is well deserved!
The LMS team had a busy summer, keeping our clients networks secure, performing, and up to date.
If you need anything as it relates to IT, Technology, and Security, we are there for you, as always with our Red Button App for your Mobile Device for immediate response and support!
Happy Labor Day and Thank you for everything!
Best,
Scott Shatzkamer
President
Fight breach fatigue: Protect your network endpoints today
used with permission from Tektonika (HP)
by Jasmine W. Gordon
With headlines rolling in almost daily about massive security breaches and threats on your network endpoints, IT security professionals are becoming desensitized to cyber risks. Last year saw a year-over-year growth in reported breaches of nearly 20 percent, hitting a record of over 5,200 incidents in 2017. That’s 7.8 billion exposed records, costing the global economy $600 billion.
Cybermiscreants are on a spree of smishing-ransomware-cryptojacking crime. When data breaches are a predictable daily occurrence, it’s hard to react with as much shock, horror, and vigilance as you should. Oh, a sophisticated social engineering attack coupled with a zero-day exploit? It’s just another Tuesday in 2018.
Feeling numb to cybercrime threats is such a common phenomenon it even has a name: breach fatigue. There’s too much crime to experience a blood pressure spike every time a new strain of malware is discovered, which happens every few seconds or so, but is there a middle ground you can reach?
How to protect against phishing scams
used with permission from Norton by Symantec
A tech support scam is a form of Internet fraud that is currently gaining momentum on the Internet. The scam implements social engineering and fear tactics in order to get the victim to take the bait. There are three main ways this scam is executed — via cold calls, pop-up messages on the computer and incorrect search engine results.
Cold Calls
Tech support cold calls are when an individual calls the target, claiming to be from a reputable company and states that they have found malware on the computer. The criminal will then try to get the user to install a type of remote desktop software under the pretext of removing the infestation, which would allow the attacker access to the computer in order to install real malware. In addition to attempting to install malware on the machine, these scammers will often ask for a fee to fix the issue.
Machine learning and deep learning 101
used with permission from HP Tech@Work
Need a primer? Here’s what you need to know about AI’s most buzzed-about fields
The term “artificial intelligence” has been around since the 1950s, but it’s taken more than half a century for it to finally have a transformative impact on everyday life.
But why? And why now? The short answer is that we finally have computers that are strong enough, data that is extensive enough, and learning models that are advanced enough to power the rapid growth of intelligent machines.
Andrew Ng, chief scientist at China’s search giant Baidu and one of the heads of the Google Brain project, put the recent AI explosion in easy-to-understand terms: “I think AI is akin to building a rocket ship. You need a huge engine and a lot of fuel,” he told Wired Magazine. “If you have a large engine and a tiny amount of fuel, you won’t make it to orbit. If you have a tiny engine and a ton of fuel, you can’t even lift off. To build a rocket you need a huge engine and a lot of fuel.”