It’s a Tuesday morning after a long weekend. You come into the office and note that a couple employees are struggling to log into their machines. You don’t think much of it. You go to your office, set your coffee down, and try to log into your desktop. It fails. 

Your first thought is that your whole day just went sideways. That’s just the start of it.

Cybersecurity is a critical consideration for businesses to make, as it isn’t hyperbolic to say that a cyberthreat could potentially end a business. Trust me, as a business owner myself, I’m not thrilled about the reality of the situation, but it’s too important for us not to discuss.

Spam is annoying. It’s so annoying that the majority of us have just learned to accept it and tune it out. We all get physical junk mail that just gets tossed in the trash, we get bizarre text messages that we just automatically ignore, our phones ring with telemarketers and scammers. We’re so used to it, and most people feel so confident in their abilities to ignore it, that we don’t stop and ask ourselves, “Why the heck is spam still a thing?”

It’s because people DO fall for it. Spam works…and when it does, it can be devastating.

Ransomware is perhaps the nastiest threat you can encounter, and the unprepared business could potentially be crippled beyond repair if it suffers from an attack like this. We’re here to demystify the inner machinations of a ransomware attack so you know better how to respond to it.

A ransomware attack took out the computer network of Atlantic General Hospital, as was discovered on January 29th of this year. While the situation was resolved as of February 13th and the impacted departments returned to full operation, there are bound to be lasting ripples that will continue on for some time.

Ransomware takes up a significant amount of our blog, and for good reason. It’s an incredibly scary threat to find yourself on the receiving end of, and modern businesses are, to be quite frank, often unprepared to handle it. We wanted to take today as an opportunity to discuss the negative effects you can expect from a ransomware attack—effects that will make you think twice about the current level of security on your infrastructure.

Ransomware is a serious issue for businesses. How serious?

Think “$265 billion in costs by 2031” serious. In light of this, every organization needs to do everything possible to avoid falling victim to ransomware. Let’s touch on a few practices that will help.

At the end of January, the Federal Bureau of Investigation went public with an announcement that they had taken down the servers and Dark Web sites utilized by the Hive ransomware gang. This is a major victory, in terms of fighting cybercrime, but a certain statistic from this operation shows a somewhat disconcerting trend.

When cyberattacks hit close to home; when an attack affects a large number of people, it really shows you just how much risk a business could be facing by not being prepared. Over Thanksgiving, a cybersecurity incident hit the Washington County government, and as of this writing, several services are still paused while things are getting restored.

The greater Baltimore area is no stranger to cyberattacks, but recent trends are pointing to an increased rise in attacks targeting businesses throughout the area. Let’s take a look at what businesses and other organizations have been experiencing.

Smartphones have managed to hold out against ransomware a bit longer than other hardware and operating systems, but those days are coming to an end. It’s important to remember that the average smartphone is not protected with antivirus software and thus remains threatened by your standard ransomware attacks. It is absolutely critical that your business doubles down on its protection against ransomware, especially in the mobile market.

Despite their best efforts, cybersecurity can be a major cause for concern for all kinds of businesses and organizations. Even with a full team of cybersecurity professionals, data breaches can occur, and many of the worst data breaches of 2022 have been quite devastating. Let’s take a look at some of the worst ones so far.

At the beginning of this year, Governor Larry Hogan approved $16 million in capital grants, distributed amongst 13 agreements. These grants were earmarked to benefit a variety of public facilities, from community centers to medical support and treatment centers, amongst others. 

While we recognize this as a great thing for the people of Maryland, we can’t help but hope that some of these funds are going to be used by the recipients to lock down their cybersecurity.

Ransomware is an incredibly disruptive threat that can put your business at risk, but it is increasingly becoming not just a fiscal risk to organizations, but also to the physical health and wellbeing of communities and individuals. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has issued a warning that should have everyone concerned about the future of ransomware attacks, not just in business, but in everyday life.

It’s easy to think of a data breach as something that only happens to massive companies like Netflix, Target, and Equifax. The reality is that, more often than not, small and medium-sized businesses are the target of cyberattacks, which makes the nonprofit sector a prime target as well. Here are three ways to protect your nonprofit from a bad actor.

Back in December of 2021, the Maryland Department of Health suffered a ransomware attack that rendered quite a few services unavailable. Let’s take a few moments to look back at this attack to see what can be learned from it.

We all know at this point how dangerous ransomware can be for businesses. It can lock down files, threaten operational continuity, and in some cases subject victims to brutal fines as a result of privacy breaches. One place where you might not expect ransomware to hit, however, is customer reviews, and it all stems from the big question: do you pay to resolve a ransomware attack or not?

A recent trend even amongst ransomware threats is that the FBI is issuing warnings regarding how dangerous it is or how difficult certain variants are. This particular threat—the OnePercent ransomware gang—is no exception. Let’s break down what you need to know about the OnePercent Group and how you can prepare to handle attacks not just from this threat, but most ransomware threats.

You’d think that cybercriminals would use ransomware to target high-profile businesses with loads of money to extort, but this is not always the case. Even a small business can fall victim to these particularly devastating threats. Ransomware, just like other threats out there, has continued to evolve and adjust its approaches based on the current cybersecurity climate, so what are some of the latest developments in ransomware?

Ransomware, and more specifically those who maliciously deploy and spread it, are shamelessly tactical in the industries targeted in their campaigns. Let’s examine how Maryland’s agricultural industry is at great risk of a malware attack, and why this is.