Acronis Cloud Protect: Part Three
Mustek
In our week three Cloudcast, Nick Keen, Solutions Engineer at Acronis, gives a deep dive into the Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud – Advanced Pack. Expand your services with advanced protection packs
Add additional powerful components to strengthen your services even further with advanced protection packs and unique cyber protection capabilities. This helps you control your costs by paying only for the functionalities your clients need.
Acronis Cloud Protect: Part two
Mustek
In week two of our Cloudcast, we expand on Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud offering.
Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud unites backup and next-generation, AI-based anti-malware, antivirus, and endpoint protection management in one solution. Integration and automation provide unmatched ease for service providers — reducing complexity while increasing productivity and decreasing operating costs.
Microsoft New Commerce Experience (NCE) FAQ
Mustek
Microsoft New Commerce Experience (NCE) FAQ
Q: Will the new commerce changes apply to all types of CSP partners?
A: Yes, all partner types in CSP (Indirect Provider, direct bill, indirect reseller) will be included in the new commerce experience.
Q: When will I be required to move existing subscriptions to new commerce?
A: Microsoft recognizes that CSP partners will need time to operationalize the provisioning, billing, and policy changes in new commerce and to migrate existing (legacy) subscriptions to the new commerce platform. A phased approach will be followed:
Phase 1 – March 10, 2022: Partners can no longer place new commercial subscription orders on the legacy platform.
Phase 2 – July 1, 2022: Partners can no longer renew legacy commercial subscriptions on the legacy platform. Please note that existing legacy subscriptions can remain in effect with the legacy billing date, pricing, and policies until they reach the end of the term, if the partner and customer so choose. But starting July 1, 2022, all legacy commercial subscriptions must be renewed on new commerce.
Q: Will I need to sign or accept any new or different agreements?
A: The Microsoft partner Agreement that partners accept to activate their CSP tenants will continue to be the standard agreement for partners. Customers will continue to accept the Microsoft Customer Agreement (MCA) that governs their purchases from CSP partners.
Q: Is Microsoft changing the focus on CSP with the new commerce experience?
A: No. We will continue to invest in the CSP program as one of our key sales motions for small and mid-sized businesses (SMB), as well as in Microsoft’s overall commerce experience, to provide the differentiated offers and capabilities partners need to grow their business?
Q: Will Microsoft automatically move all my subscriptions to the new commerce experience?
A: No, if partners wish to move to the new commerce experience, they will have to migrate existing subscriptions.
Q: Will all the offers in the existing CSP catalogue be available to sell in the new commerce experience catalogue?
A: With the October launch, only commercial offers are available for provisioning in new commerce. Government, education/academic, and charity/non-profit offers will be added to the new commerce catalogue in the future (date TBD).
Q: What products can be purchased under NCE for 3yr terms?
A: Currently only specific Dynamics 365 offers are available with three-year terms in new commerce (as is the case in legacy). In March 2022, the current plan is to offer three-year terms for M365 offers and possibly for other seat-based offer types.
Q: Will legacy and new commerce experiences coexist, and if so, for how long?
A: Legacy and new commerce offers will be available side by side for provisioning in CSP and Partner Centre for a period of time (the exact number of months is to be determined). We want partners to have ample opportunity to become accustomed to the new commerce features and functionalities, migrate legacy subscriptions to the new commerce experience, and adjust customer billing and accounting operations based on the standardized new commerce invoicing process and schedule. The formal announcement for sunsetting the legacy platform and offers will be announced at a later date.
SALES AND PROFITABILITY IN NEW COMMERCE
Q: How will the new commerce experience affect partner profitability?
A: The new commerce experience in CSP will help increase profitability for partners by providing a durable and scalable business model and improving operational efficiency in the CSP program. With the new cancellation policy and premium pricing for the new monthly term offers, the new commerce experience encourages customers to commit to long-term subscription ownership and leverage the CSP program benefits, including the partners’ bundling of Microsoft offers with their own solutions, IP, and value-added services. Partners will also be able to monetize the flexibility of the monthly subscription term, and to increase customer lifetime value with the ability to upgrade to Enterprise SKUs in the middle of the term (not enabled for Windows 365 offers). Finally, the new commerce experience will improve subscription-management capabilities, optimize offer ingestion, and increase accounting efficiency.
Q: What specific benefits will my company receive from this migration?
A: Some of the enhancements and benefits that partners and customers can take advantage of as a result of this transition:
- More flexibility in provisioning offers, such as a new monthly term that allows customers to cancel at the end of any month with no further payment obligation
- More customer billing options, such as annual billing for multi-year offers
- More options and flexibility in managing subscriptions (e.g., scheduling subscription changes such as SKU conversions at renewal, and the ability for the partner to suspend/resume subscriptions with no cancellation required)
- New subscription upgrade and seat assignment capabilities
Q: Which new capabilities and benefits will the new experience bring to customers?
A: In this release customers will get faster time to value with more efficient subscription management and offers to meet different customer’s needs. Customers will save time with automatic seat assignment for Enterprise level SKUs and trial auto-conversion (not enabled for Windows 365). New customers sensitive to cancellation flexibility will benefit from brand new monthly term offers that will allow to cancel a subscription in any month without penalty. All customers will have more billing options such as annual billing for multi-year term plans in addition to monthly and upfront billing and early payoff for an annual subscription. They will also be able to schedule trial conversion to a different seat count, billing, or term.
SCENARIOS
Q: With the new commerce experience for seat-based subscriptions, when a customer purchases an annual-term subscription from Partner A, are they allowed to move that subscription to Partner B within that year’s term? Or are they locked in with Partner A until the term ends at the end of the year?
A: No, moving subscriptions across partners is not a supported feature. Partners can cancel subscriptions but must adhere to the cancellation policies regarding their committed term. For example, if the customer purchases a subscription from Partner B after the first 72 hours of the term of the subscription purchased from Partner A, the Partner A will not be able to cancel that original subscription on behalf of the customer and there will not be any refund for the remainder of the annual term of the subscription with Partner A. In that case, it would be best for the customer to wait until the time of renewal of the Partner A subscription to purchase the same SKU from Partner B and then to not renew the subscription with Partner A.
Q: With an upgrade from E3 to E5, for example, how long does the customer have to move users to new SKU?
A: After an upgrade from E3 to E5 the customer might have more assigned seats than purchased seats for E3. There is no enforcement or duration within which the customer has to reassign licenses from E3 to E5, but they would get an alert message in M365 Admin Center saying that they are at risk of being non-compliant.
Q: Will I be able to sell Windows 365 as part of the new commerce experience in CSP?
A: Windows 365, announced in July 2021 and launched as a product in August 2021, is the world’s first cloud PC for every organization, securely streaming the Windows experience — including desktop, apps, processing power, storage, and more — to any customer device.1,2 The cloud PC experience can scale to fit customers’ needs and is easy to deploy without the need for VDI expertise.
CANCELLATION
Q: Does the new cancellation policy apply to all subscriptions in CSP?
A: No, it applies only to license-based/seat-based subscriptions such as M365, D365, and Windows 365, which are billed in advance. Azure subscriptions are billed based on consumption over the previous month, so cancellation would simply end consumption and therefore the billing.
Q: What are the refund policies for cancellation?
A: A partner can receive a prorated refund of the initial subscription payment of the term only within the first 72 hours after the order is placed or renewed. After 72 hours of the term, the subscription cannot be cancelled and payment for the remainder of the term must be made.
Q: Does the 72-hour window for cancellation and seat reduction in new commerce only apply to business days? For example, if I order a subscription on Friday, do I have until the following Wednesday to cancel? And does the cancellation window also exclude holidays?
A: The 72 hours at the beginning of each seat-based subscription term in new commerce, during which a partner can cancel the subscription or reduce seats on that subscription, includes all days of the week and does not exclude weekend days or holidays. So if a subscription is purchased on a Friday, the partner has until the following Monday to cancel or reduce seat counts. Note that the 72-hour cancellation and seat-reduction period begins at the time on the clock at which the subscription order or renewal is made.
BILLING
Q: When I transition legacy annual-term customers to new annual or multi-year offers, how can I explain why the cancellation policy will be enforced?
A: The cancellation-policy enforcement in the new commerce experience is aligned with similar standard policies both within Microsoft and of competitors. In the new commerce experience, customers are rewarded with more favourable pricing for longer terms in which pricing is locked in for the entire term, as opposed to monthly term subscriptions that have a higher price at time of purchase and are subject to price increases month to month.
Q: When I suspend a customer’s subscription for non-payment or if the customer is temporarily unable to use the subscription due to business disruption, how do I resume the active subscription when the customer is paying again or their situation returns to normal?
A: To resume a subscription, you would simply need to go to the subscription account in your tenant and change the status from “Suspended” to “Active.” The customer’s access to the subscription would then be restored with no loss of data or user accounts. You can perform this resumption step at any time during the subscription term, unlike the legacy experience in which a suspended subscription automatically expired 90 days after suspension. Note, however, that unlike legacy, the billing for the subscription will continue during the period of suspension.
Q: To which new commerce offers should I transition my legacy subscription customers?
A: The transition to the new commerce experience is the time to assess each customer’s needs and develop a holistic transformation strategy, including an opportunity to increase seat counts, plan for upgrades, and upsell other solutions and value-added services.
For example:
- Customers with a stable or expanding workforce will be attracted to annual or multi-year term offers due to price predictability. Even with the enforcement of the new cancellation policy in the new commerce experience, those customers will be able to cancel a subscription within first 72 hours of each annual term.
- Customers with variability in workforce due to seasonality or business uncertainty will likely prefer monthly term offers that allow cancellation or seat reduction in any month.
SUBSCRIPTION MANAGEMENT
Q: When all of the seat-based offers are added to new commerce, will I still be able to order subscriptions from the legacy system?
A: Yes, legacy and new commerce offer SKUs will exist side-by-side in the CSP subscription catalogue for a period of time (the exact number of months is to be determined). Any subscription order placed in the new commerce experience will be billed on the standard new commerce invoice schedule of the sixth to eighth day of every month, instead of the monthly billing date that the partner chose during enrolment.
Q: Can the customer combine annual and monthly terms – for example, if the customer had a core set of users on the annual term and more seasonal users on the monthly term?
A: Yes, the customer could have both a monthly term and an annual term subscription for the same seat-based offer at the same time with the appropriate number of seats in each term to accommodate its permanent and seasonal employees.
Q: Why do monthly term subscriptions cost more than annual-term ones in new commerce?
A: The new monthly term subscriptions in new commerce are billed by Microsoft at a 20% higher price than annual-term offers of the same type because they give the partner the ability to cancel on behalf of the customer at any time without incurring additional payments for the remainder of an annual term. The premium pricing is in line with standard practice in the Microsoft Web Direct program and in other industries – for example, an airline ticket with a higher price that’s refundable instead of a lower-priced non-refundable ticket.
Q: Can monthly term subscriptions be changed to annual term easily in new commerce? Some businesses need subscriptions or additional seats only during peak times of year, for example.
A: Yes, a customer’s subscription can be changed from monthly term to annual term in new commerce. The following month’s reconciliation file will include a credit for the prorated difference that is paid in advance (reflecting the 20% less expensive price for annual), and the annual term charge will be effective from the date the subscription term is changed.
Q: Can an Annual Term subscription be converted to Monthly term and Monthly to Annual?
A: Annual subscriptions cannot be converted to monthly. Also 3 years cannot be converted to monthly nor annual. It is allowed to convert monthly subscriptions to annual, also monthly and annual to 3 years. When a customer’s subscription is changed from monthly term to annual term, the following month’s reconciliation file will include a credit for the prorated difference that is paid in advance (reflecting the 20% less expensive price for annual), and the annual term charge will be effective from the date the subscription term is changed.
Q: Will a customer be able to increase or reduce seat counts on a subscription in the middle of the term in new commerce?
A: The seat count on a subscription can be increased during the middle of an annual term, with billing adjustments reflected on the next invoice and reconciliation file. But if more than 72 hours have elapsed since the subscription order was placed or renewed, the seat count cannot be decreased until next renewal of the subscription. This policy is in line with current market practices for per user subscription plans. For monthly term subscriptions, the seat count can be increased or decreased at any time. A seat-count decrease within the first 72 hours of a subscription term (after either initial purchase or renewal) can be made via self-serve in Partner Center or through the API.
Q: Can licenses be increased and decreased on demand?
A: Seat counts can be increased at any time during a subscription term in the new commerce. Reductions in seat counts can only be made during the first 72 hours after the initial order or renewal, or within the first 72 hours after an order
Q: What is the benefit of being able to purchase addons on their own?
A: The ability to purchase add-ons separately from base offers can be a benefit when the customer already has a prerequisite base offer (which can have been purchased from another partner or directly from Microsoft) and just needs the add-on from the specific partner. Note that in new commerce, it will be required that the customer has a prerequisite subscription in place in order for the partner to sell the add-on separately.
Microsoft’s New Commerce Experience(NCE)
Mustek
Microsoft’s New Commerce Experience(NCE) is the new billing platform for the Microsoft CSP program. To keep up with the changing business requirements and subsequent demands of the customers Microsoft has introduced the “seat-based” offers. The NCE is being offered for Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Windows 365, and Power Platform licenses from January 2022.
Click through to watch our latest webinar explaining What the Microsoft New Commerce experience (NCE) and how it is Helping partners unlock new business opportunities.
Transitioning to the New Commerce Experience positions you and your customers for future growth by providing partners in the CSP program with new sales capabilities and tools to manage subscriptions much more easily.
Learn about Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud
Mustek
Learn how Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud enables you to deliver better backup, anti-malware, and endpoint management with integrated cyber protection
Join experts from Mustek and Acronis’ Solutions Engineering team for a deep-dive into Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud, a comprehensive, integrated cyber protection solution that’s specifically designed for modern managed service providers (MSPs). You’ll get an inside look at all of the capabilities and streamlined management tools available through Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud – and how you control them all through a single user interface.
Ready to learn more about our #ADX #technology?
Mustek
Take a minute and learn more about BlackFog‘s #ADX #technology in this latest video.
Learn How to keep your business free from #ransomware #cybercrime #dataexfiltration
What's Next - In conversation with Mustek's JP Gough, and BlackFog's Darren Williams who discuss data exfiltration and cyber security.
Mustek
JP Gough is the Executive of Cloud, Software, and Solutions at Mustek, and Darren Williams is the CEO and founder of BlackFog.
Gough is an experienced software and solutions executive who has a demonstrable history of excellence in the IT industry. He has a particular passion for personal mastery.
Williams is a serial entrepreneur who has founded three technology startups over the past 20 years – two of which have since been sold to public companies.
He is responsible for the strategic direction and global expansion of BlackFog, and has pioneered data exfiltration technology for the prevention of cyber attacks across the globe.
In this What’s Next interview, Williams explains why organisations – such as Transnet and the Department of Justice – are still being caught out by cyber criminals despite a booming cyber security market.
He discusses why a new way of thinking is required to prevent data breaches and maintain data privacy, and explains why data exfiltration is central to this new strategy.
Gough then discusses Mustek’s new software and cloud business unit, which he will be leading, and explains how this will benefit Mustek resellers.
He explains why Mustek has brought BlackFog on as part of this new business unit, while Williams also explains why BlackFog signed this distribution agreement.
The pair close by discussing what the market can expect as a result of this partnership.
The full conversation between Aki Anastasiou, JP Gough, and Darren Williams is embedded below.
- To learn more please email cloudsales@mustek.co.za or visit Mustek’s blog at www.mustek.co.za/category/black-fog-awareness/
Cyber Threats Explained: What is Phishing, Unauthorised Data Collection and Profiling?
https://mustek.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/blackfog-unmask.mp4
Unmasking the Bogeyman – how hackers use cyber -intelligence and profiling to breach your network / device
Profiling: What It Is and How to Avoid It
The number of breaches and issue over the last few years have helped security professionals prove that the bogeyman is indeed real and that there are many real threats to organisations.
Just knowing about them is not enough, we need to be able to measure and quantify these threats in the context of our organisations. This is true for both emerging and realised threats.
As cybercrime is all about monetary gain, attackers know that the more intelligence they gather about their targets the easier it is to achieve a compromise. On the other hand, most people voluntarily share large amounts of personal information on social networks without fully appreciating the risks. In this post, we’ll find out how hackers use social media to profile targets and how you can protect yourself and your business.
What is Social Media Profiling?
Social media is all about sharing, whether it’s photos from the latest conference, overseas holiday or an important life event, or just trivia about your daily routines, the name of your pet cat, favourite soccer team or TV show; it’s all data that has value to someone. That someone may be a company that wants to sell you a new brand of cat food or an advertisement for a new season of that great TV drama, or it may be cybercriminals engaged in a spear phishing attack. The truth is that data from social media is a prime commodity, and that truth holds for hackers and threat actors just as much as legitimate marketeers.
Social media profiling, builds a composite of a person’s identity and lifestyle from the publicly available information, and is the latest trick in the cybercriminal’s armoury.
Mining social media for clues about people and their interests is a technique widely used by governments, businesses, and now threat actors. It is part and parcel of today’s reality of interconnectedness. Just as a marketing department may employ legitimate techniques to identify audiences that will be receptive to their brand messages attackers can use the same methods to identify likely targets, too.
So what kind of information can be gleaned from social media profiling? That all depends on how much you share. If you share a detailed CV or resumé online, that’s gold dust to profilers. If you likewise share information about special events, names of family members, places you’re visiting and such like on social media, that can add up to quite a detailed composite picture of you, your lifestyle and your background, particularly if that data is harvested over an extended period of time.
Similarly, it’s good for personal brand marketing to include a profile picture that’s a headshot, but that picture also identifies you to bad actors, and provides them with a picture they can scrape and use to impersonate you. With AI tech that can now generate entire bodies of people that don’t exist using an algorithm trained on tens of thousands of online photos, that may be more convincing than you think.
If this is a business-related profile, you’ll want most everything to be public…but don’t forget to interlink your profiles to each other. Many networks have places to include links to other networks, and you can and should use them whenever possible”
How Can Threat Actors Exploit Social Media?
Social media profiling was big news last year, when it emerged that Facebook had allowed a private company, Cambridge Analytica, to harvest data such as location, birth date, page likes and public profiles from tens of millions of users without their consent.
For criminals looking to steal either data and/or money, the very same kind of profiling can be used to craft targeted advertisements and phishing emails that can carry malware to infect the user’s machine. The techniques are identical; only the “payload” differs.
Sites like LinkedIn encourage users to be comprehensive in the details they provide as that can help in job recruitment, but that can also lead criminals to victims under the seeming pretext of offering employment. A LinkedIn advertisement for a software developer turned out to be a front for the hacker group.
It’s not just “business” sites where you have to think about what you share. What about online gaming communities? Millions of people play and chat within the gaming environments, and statistics suggest that only around 26% of them are teens. The rest are adults (average age: 26), employed (50%), married (36%) and have children (22%). But those percentages aren’t the point. The fact that those percentages can be gathered though, is. How much data are you giving away to online gaming providers and how secure is their handling of your data?
It’s important to remember that prior to the advent of the modern wired world, we were all reasonably careful about our personal information. We didn’t go around sharing details like our birth dates, jobs, and favourite animals with just anyone, and certainly not with just about everyone, as we do now via the internet. That was because prior to the advent of the connected world, we all implicitly understood the boundary between what was personal and what was public. Social media has broken that boundary down, but therein lies the danger. When it comes to cybersecurity, boundaries – and caution – are essential elements of defence.
Phishing attacks are one of the most common security challenges that both individuals and companies face in keeping their information secure.
Whether it's getting access to passwords, credit cards, or other sensitive information, hackers are using email, social media, phone calls, and any form of communication so that they can steal valuable data. Businesses, of course, are a particularly worthwhile target.
Here are some common types of Phishing attacks against businesses.
- Company Impersonation: is one of the most common forms of phishing is where attackers impersonate your brand. This is typically done with an email connected to a domain very similar to the target company (e.g., “first.name@amazon-support”). It’s also a difficult attack for companies to look out for due to the fact that you won’t know until someone falls for it or alerts you.
- “Spear” Phishing: This type of scheme involves using a fake company name (impersonation) but also key details about the target. Muck like in sales, a rep finds the name, position and other personalization and includes that in a pitch email. Attackers find those same tokens and use it to compel more victims into their trap. It’s an especially dangerous ploy.
- Email Takeovers: All members of your executive and management team are vulnerable. If a phishing scammer acquires the email credentials of high-profile leadership, it’s likely they’ll target anyone they can using that very email address. Potential targets would be; colleagues, team members and even customers (if they’ve already obtained this information via hack).
- Phone Phishing: Using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology, scammers, again, impersonate companies. This technique also employs the other types of phishing including using personal details about targets and impersonating individuals of the company (e.g., the CEO) in order to get a higher take on the overall scam.
Unauthorised Data Collection
Unauthorized data disclosure is exactly as it sounds, private data is released to an individual who is not authorized to see it. Of course a situation like this can happen by accident, or on purpose. When data is shared maliciously, there are a few techniques that are used: pretexting, phishing, spoofing, and sniffling.
Pretexting is when someone pretends to be someone else.
A telephone caller who pretends to be from a credit card company and tries to steal your credit card number, they do so by asking you to verify your credit card number.
Phishing is very similar to pretexting, except it is through e-mail also fits into the category of unauthorised data collection.
The “phisher” will pretend to act on behalf of a company, requesting confidential data.
Spoofing is another term for someone pretending to be someone else
If you pretend to be someone, you are spoofing that person.
Sniffling is technique used for intercepting computer communications. Sniffling requires a physical connection to the network. A physical connection is not needed with wireless networks.
Drive-by snifflers take computers with wireless connections to different areas and try to find an unprotected wireless network to connect to.
Solution: To avoid unauthorized data disclosure, be very careful of who you are interacting with. In a situation where your personal information is asked, avoid having that conversation over the phone or via e-mail. Try to go directly to the company and talk to a representative face to face. Always protect your network with a password to avoid intruders. Also do not click on any links or download any files that do not come from a reliable source.
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Cyber Threats Explained: What is Ransomware, Spyware and Malware?
Having an IT-support- provider to help protect your computers has, become a necessity. Even with the help of the best IT-managed service providers, one still needs to understand the difference between spyware, malware, and ransomware.
This blog will help you to map out the areas of highest risk and learn how to better protect yourself from harmful cyber-attacks.
What is Malware
Malware is a broad term that refers to any software that is designed to harm your computer. There are different types of malware, including spyware and ransomware. Cybercriminals use malware to gain unauthorized access to your device, corrupt your files, or even lock down your computer. Malware often operates undetected, and you will only know that your computer is infected when harm is already done.
Spyware
Spyware is a form of malware designed to spy on your computer activities. Once the spyware infects your computer, it tracks your passwords and your internet activities, such as the sites you visit most, as well as your social media accounts.
Ransomware
Ransomware is a new malware that is designed to extort you financially. Cybercriminals use ransomware to lock your computer and then ask for a ransom to unlock it. If you fail to comply with their demands, they can delete your files or corrupt your hardware.
As computing technology advances, the risks of ransomware attacks increase, meaning you need to be on a constant alert. A case-in-point example is hospital ransomware attacks, which use hospital computers to attack patients, or even shut down computer networks. However, before you comply with any ransomware demands, it is advisable to seek assistance on how best to resolve these attacks.
What are the differences between spyware, malware, and ransomware?
Intention of the malware
Malware is the general term for any harmful software that is used to attack your computer. Spyware is intended to creep through your files, passwords, and other sensitive information, while ransomware is designed to encrypt or lock down your computer. Ransomware attack data-recovery techniques involve either paying the ransom or engaging an IT team to decrypt the codes and restore normal operations, which is usually the preferred course of action.
Nature of harm
The intention of malware is to gain unauthorized access to your computer and carry out an attack. However, a key difference lies in the kinds of damage they can cause. For example, spyware will extract information about you and use it for malicious purposes, whereas ransomware seeks to extort money from you by either encrypting your files or locking down your computer until you pay to have them unencrypted or unlocked.
Magnitude of harm
Much like the type of damage, the extent of the damage different malwares can cause may differ. Spyware may be harmless if an employer installs it simply to monitor their employees’ activities. But, cybercriminals can still use it to steal passwords, log into email or social media accounts, and post malicious or damaging information about the users.
Even worse, these criminals can also use harmful ransomware attacks to lock down your entire computer network system until you meet their payment demands. And, worse still, these attacks may also extend to harm your clients.
For instance, hospital ransomware attacks may lock down your operations by denying access to patient files, thereby hindering patient care. Hospital ransomware attacks like these are quickly becoming the greatest threat of embracing the internet and social media as a point of contact between healthcare providers and their patients.
Alerts from the malware
Different kinds of malware will also differ in their alert systems. Spyware is silent and performs its malicious activities behind the scenes; its purposes are to quietly spy on your computer network and extract your credentials and other sensitive information about you. Ransomware, however, is loud. It will even display warnings on your computer, and it can also show a timer or a countdown to your computer crashing.
Resolving an attack
Finally, while anti-virus software can fix most malware issues, some may require a little more work. For example, spyware usually requires you to install an anti-spyware scan to detect and remove it. However, if you fall victim to a ransomware attack by more seasoned cybercriminals, resolving it may require more than a free or paid anti-virus alone. Without an in-house IT team, you will need assistance from outside it-managed service providers to resolve the attack and to teach you how to better protect your systems in the future.
How to protect from ransomware attacks
Ransomware attacks can be costly to your business and your clients. BlackFog provides on-device ransomware prevention and data privacy using behavioural analysis and data exfiltration technology to prevent cyberattacks, this is proudly distributed by Mustek
Bottom line
Regardless of how careful you are, chances are that malware can still infect your computer systems. Cybercriminals are crafty and will unleash their attacks in the most unsuspicious ways possible. When this happens, IT-support-managed service providers can guide you on how to resolve the problem. Knowing how to protect your computer is just the first step—allowing the experts to do it for you is the ultimate solution.
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How to Ensure What's on your Device Stays on Your Device
Where is the majority of exfiltrated data going?
According to recent BlackFog research, around 10% of all traffic is being exfiltrated to Russia and 17% is going to China. Data exfiltration to the Dark Web represented 7% of all traffic.
Is there increased risk of data exfiltration from a smartphone?
Yes, particularly with Android devices where malware can often be preinstalled. Earlier this year Google researchers identified preinstalled malware on more than 7.4 million Android devices. The malware had the ability to take over the device and download apps in the background.
Are Antivirus and Malware solutions enough to prevent data exfiltration?
Companies rely on a combination of technology, training, policies and trust to cope with data exfiltration. Intrusion detection systems such as Firewalls and Anti-Virus solutions that remove known infections are not enough to prevent attackers from infiltrating the company network. It is inevitable that attackers will find a way in, the key is to prevent the activation and removal of information using modern cyber security techniques. Organizations need to deploy a solution that prevents the exfiltration of data from every device on the network.
How can data exfiltration be prevented?
The inherent mobility of today’s workforce makes it difficult for companies to keep track of what’s happening on every device in the network. With a significant proportion of network transactions taking place in the background, without consent, it is important that organizations and individuals are closely monitoring this activity. Preventing the transmission of sensitive data to unidentified servers in regions where high levels of cyberattacks originate is paramount to protecting all network infrastructure. Modern attacks are predicated on the ability to communicate with third party servers to steal data. It is crucial that any cybersecurity solution is able to monitor, detect and prevent the unauthorized transmission of such data in real time.
How does BlackFog prevent data exfiltration?
Lots of cybersecurity firms can tell you when a breach or attack has taken place. BlackFog stops it from happening in the first place by focusing on preventing data loss, data profiling, and data collection. BlackFog protects from today’s modern threats by filling the gap between security solutions that focus on preventing access through intrusion detection systems, such as Firewalls and AV / Malware solutions that remove known infections after they have been discovered.
Through a layered approach, BlackFog spots, in real-time, when an attacker is trying to remove unauthorized data from a device or network and shuts them down before they get the chance to.
Why is BlackFog Different?
BlackFog is the only solution that provides on-device protection from data exfiltration, no data is ever sent to the cloud. BlackFog is also the only solution able to block outbound dataflow, ensuring what is on your device stays on your device. BlackFog also detects and blocks the transfer of data to the Dark Web in real-time, making it difficult for cybercriminals to extract data from your device. BlackFog’s multiple layers of defense protect you from ransomware, spyware, malware, phishing, unauthorized data collection and profiling.
To stay ahead of cybercriminals and protect your organization from data exfiltration, a multi-layered defense system preventing data loss, unauthorised data profiling and data collection is crucial. Only by monitoring the flow of outbound traffic and stopping attacks in real time can you ensure no unauthorized data will fall into the wrong hands.
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