Posted on Sunday March 10, 2019
AmiMoJo quotes Computerworld: Microsoft plans to start selling its Windows 7 add-on support beginning April 1. Labeled "Extended Security Updates" (ESU), the post-retirement support will give enterprise customers more time to purge their environments of Windows 7. From Windows 7's Jan. 14, 2020 end of support, ESU will provide security fixes for uncovered or reported vulnerabilities in the OS. Patches will be issued only for bugs rated "Critical" or "Important" by Microsoft, the top two rankings in a four-step scoring system. ESU will be dealt out in one-year increments for up to three years and support will be sold on a per-device basis, rather than the per-user approach Microsoft has pushed for Windows 10 licensing. Costs for ESU will start out low - $25 or $50 per year per device - but will double each year, ending at $100 or $200 per device for the third and final year.
Posted on Thursday March 07, 2019
Microsoft is reportedly working on a new, lightweight version of Windows. The operating system (OS), currently known as "Windows Lite," is said to be Microsoft's answer to Google's Chrome OS. There are still plenty of unanswered questions about the OS, but here's what we know so far.
Posted on Wednesday March 06, 2019
The financial sector has long been heavily targeted by cybercriminals. Over the years, the number of attacks that involved extortion, social engineering, and credential-stealing malware has surged rapidly. This means that financial institutions should strive to familiarize themselves with the threats and the agents behind them. Here are seven new threats and tactics, techniques, and procedures that security professionals should know about.
Posted on Tuesday March 05, 2019
Today's computer users often forget or are unaware of how much sensitive information their devices store. The ability to save passwords, credit card numbers, and personal messages is undeniably convenient, but it's also a huge liability. If you're thinking about getting rid of your Mac, make sure to follow these steps first.
Posted on Monday March 04, 2019
Cybercriminals are increasingly targeting the healthcare industry for its perceived vulnerability. Nowadays, more and more hospitals are realizing that overall patient care not only involves medical attention, but also entails securing patient data. For many healthcare organizations, it's crucial to work with the right managed services provider (MSP) to ensure transactions are seamless and patient data is constantly protected.
Posted on Saturday March 02, 2019
itwbennett writes: Security researchers at Varonis have uncovered a new attack using a new version of the venerable Qbot malware that "creates scheduled tasks and adds entries to the system registry to achieve persistence," writes Lucian Constantin, reporting on the attack for CSO. "The malware then starts recording all keystrokes typed by users, steals credentials and authentication cookies saved inside browsers, and injects malicious code into other processes to search for and steal financial-related text strings." The researchers "found logs showing 2,726 unique victim IP addresses," writes Constantin, but because "computers inside an organization typically access the internet through a shared IP address, the researchers believe the number of individually infected systems to be much larger." The malware first appeared in 2009 and was found to be uploading 2GB of stolen confidential information to its FTP servers each week by April 2010 from private and public sector computers, including 1,100 on the NHS network in the UK. A modified version of the malware resurfaced in April 2016 that was believed to have infected more than 54,000 PCs in thousands of organizations around the world. As Varonis now reports, Qbot is making yet another comeback.