SpireTech Managed Services clients are now able to purchase a security essentials add-on for Microsoft 365 offered by SpireTech. This add-on, based on powershell and services running in Microsoft...
SpireTech Company News and Tips
Security
Zoom and Teams added to the list of software we support
With the recent news around Zoom and security updates, we have added it to the list of third-party software we automatically update. While we’ve supported Teams for some time, we’ve formally added it to the list of...
Windows 7 Contractual issues
We are going to remove Windows 7 systems from SpireTech support effective July 1, 2020. Microsoft ended support for Windows 7 on January 14th, 2020. We have been giving everyone some extra time to get those last...
Hackers breach Sophos firewalls to steal VPN usernames and passwords
The morning of Saturday the 25th of April, our technicians woke up to see an email in our boxes about a zero-day security breach of Sophos firewalls. A novice might read it and think “another boring security email” – we read it and thought immediately “this isn’t...
Changes needed in security policy due to WFH
Some of the security concerns we’ve been warning clients about recently have turned out to be true. Read on to hear about recent incidents, what we’ve already done, and are planning to do to further shore things up. Each Managed...
From the trenches: An IT worker’s perspective on WFH issues
IT workers around the world have been busy the last couple of weeks. At SpireTech, the service desk has been slammed with issues relating to everybody getting setup to work from home (WFH) and we apologize for any...
3 million SSL certificates abruptly revoked
Let’s encrypt, an industry nonprofit that issues free SSL certificates, had to revoke 3M certificates Wednesday March 4, 2020 due to a bug. SSL is the technology that gives websites the https “padlock” and is often used to secure other things like mail servers....
Implement Multi-factor authentication now
We’ve been recommending for quite a while that our clients implement multi-factor authentication (MFA) on their email and Office365 accounts – really, anything that can have MFA enabled should. You may have heard of two-factor authentication (2FA) before,...
Don’t let the old hardware blues undermine office security
used with permission from Tektonika (HP), by Karen Gilleland Unlike fine wine, your cyber assets don’t get better with age. Any PC more than four years old is not only costly to keep, but it’s also hack-friendly tech that could pose serious office security risk. Old...
What are cookies?
used with permission from Norton by Symantec Mention “cookies” and most people expect a chocolate chip treat to appear. When talking about computers, however, cookies aren’t on the dropdown menu. In fact, they’re not even physical objects. Yet they do a great deal of...