The shiny new phishing tactic on the block is malvertising, or the efforts of threat actors to mimic a legitimate company’s website, landing pages, URL, and more. Google Ads has recently come under fire for their handling of final destination URLs, and the relative...
SpireTech Company News and Tips
Security
Latest LastPass data breach exposes user passwords: here’s what to do
The password manager LastPass has suffered a major data breach. Or, more accurately, another major data breach. Using information gained during a security breach in August 2022, threat actors were able to get a full copy of the data LastPass stores on a cloud-based...
The 200 Most Popular Passwords of 2022: Tips for Strong Password Protection
The NordPass Research team has published a list of the 200 most popular passwords. If you use any of these most popular passwords... don’t worry, we have recommendations to create strong passwords in 2023. NordPass Research partnered with independent researchers who...
Microsoft patches a zero-day vulnerability from October
In an update released December 2022, Microsoft patched a zero-day vulnerability that was exploited. A zero-day vulnerability refers to potential weak points in an update that could be exploited the day it is released. The fear is that someone could learn to exploit...
Emerging phishing tactics that bypass Multi-factor authentication
If you haven’t adopted multi-factor authentication (MFA) yet, what the heck are you waiting for? MFA curtails most malicious phishing attacks, as even if an attacker has access to your login credentials, they would not be able to access the MFA code, which changes...
Phishing Education: two case studies and tips
Continuous phishing education is important to anyone who uses the Internet. So, pretty much everyone. A "successful" phishing campaign can lead to the loss of sensitive data, personal information distributed, or extortion. People know not to click on spam messages, or...
Year-end checklist for small businesses
Be aware and be prepared! Whether you’re beginning to start a small business, or you are a fellow small business owner looking for guidance, please enjoy our checklist to help you through some year-end planning. IT Checklist Backup dataThe best way to ensure your...
SpireTech exiting hosting business to focus on Managed IT Services
Celebrating our 29th year in business, SpireTech has been making some moves. We are exiting our long-established hosting and datacenter businesses to focus exclusively on Managed Services and Microsoft 365 moving forward. Effective October 4,...
TikTok Hack Breaks Accounts
There was an exploitation available in the Android version of TikTok that would have allowed hackers to effectively take and shut down a user’s account with one click. This bug was present in just the Android version of the app. Luckily, the issue was found and...
Goodbye Basic Authentication, Hello Modern Authentication
Beginning on October 1, 2022, Microsoft is disabling the ability to connect to Microsoft services using legacy authentication protocols. Users are moving to modern authentication whether they want it or not. It is also up to the user to make the switch, and after...