Independent – Page 71 – PossibleThreat Articles

Credit to Author: Evan Schuman| Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2022 03:31:00 -0800

When it comes to mobile security, users are routinely warned to be extremely careful, avoid suspicious links, emails, and attachments. But the growth of no-click attacks sidesteps these soft defenses.

Google recently drilled into one such attack, which happened to have hit an iPhone. “We assess this to be one of the most technically sophisticated exploits we’ve ever seen, further demonstrating that the capabilities (one vendor) provides rival those previously thought to be accessible to only a handful of nation states,” said the Google advisory.

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ComputerWorld Independent

Windows security in ’22 — you need more than just antivirus software

February 2, 2022 0 Comments Microsoft, Security, small and medium business, Windows, Windows 10, windows 11

Credit to Author: Susan Bradley| Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2022 06:10:00 -0800

Do you need antivirus in 2022 — especially when some options now come with a cryptominer built in?

Several antivirus vendors — some options free, others, paid — have begun bundling their antivirus products with software that generates virtual currency. Of all of the requirements for antivirus, using excess cycles on your computer to generate crypto-coins is not on my list of must-haves.

Recently, Krebs on Security noted that both Norton Antivirus and Avira have told users that versions of their respective software now include a cryptominer. While it’s not enabled by default, it still gives me pause; antivirus is supposed to protect us from such potentially unwanted software, and these two vendors are now including it in their wares.

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ComputerWorld Independent

Apple is sneaking around its own privacy policy — and will regret it

February 2, 2022 0 Comments Apple, Data privacy, Mobile, Privacy, small and medium business

Credit to Author: Evan Schuman| Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2022 03:04:00 -0800

Apple has a rather complicated relationship with privacy, which it always points to as a differentiator with Google. But delivering on it is a different tale.

Much of this involves the definition of privacy. Fortunately for Apple’s marketing people, “privacy” is the ultimate undefinable term because every user views it differently. If you ask a 60-year-old man in Chicago what he considers to be private, you’ll get a very different answer than if you asked a 19-year-old woman in Los Angeles. Outside the US, privacy definitions vary even more. Germans and Canadians truly value privacy, but even they don’t agree on what they personally consider private.

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ComputerWorld Independent

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint brings remote deployment to iOS

February 2, 2022 0 Comments Apple, endpoint protection, enterprise mobile management, iOS, Microsoft, Security

Credit to Author: Jonny Evans| Date: Thu, 06 Jan 2022 07:45:00 -0800

With the latest Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (MDE) preview for iOS, Microsoft has taken another step that should make life easier for IT administrators who need to secure remote iOS devices at the endpoint.

Endpoint protection without the user friction

The MDE preview includes a new capability to install Defender for Endpoint remotely and automatically on any devices enrolled in the service. The company first announced its intention to deliver the feature last month.

In practice, this seems relatively friction-free.

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ComputerWorld Independent

7 smart steps to get your Android phone in tip-top shape for 2022

February 2, 2022 0 Comments Android, google workspace, Mobile, Operating Systems, Privacy, Security, small and medium business

Credit to Author: JR Raphael| Date: Wed, 05 Jan 2022 03:00:00 -0800

Happy New Year! I don’t know about you, but I find the start of a fresh voyage around this shiny ol’ sun of ours to be a fine time for tidying up, optimizing, and getting good and organized for the months ahead. And while I’d love to pretend I’m the type of person who has one of those disgustingly pristine, clutter-free desks you see on the internet, let me be brutally honest: The physical space around me tends to resemble a half-abandoned hog parlor.

But my Android phone? My Android phone is as orderly as can be, gosh darn it. And if you ask me, that makes far more of a difference than the state of the physical space around me.

Our mobile devices are where we do so much of our actual work and contemplation these days, after all — and yet it’s all too easy to overlook the importance of maintaining an optimal arrangement for both productivity and security within ’em. So now, as we gaze ahead at the promise-filled 2022 calendar, join me in taking 10 minutes to get your own trusty Android phone fine-tuned and fully ready for the coming year.

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ComputerWorld Independent

How to manually update Microsoft Defender

February 2, 2022 0 Comments IDG Insider, Microsoft, Security, small and medium business, Windows, Windows 10, windows 11

Credit to Author: Ed Tittel| Date: Tue, 04 Jan 2022 03:00:00 -0800

Microsoft Defender is the built-in anti-malware package that’s included with modern Windows operating systems. It’s alternatively known as Windows Security (it shows up under Settings as Windows Security) or Windows Defender (sometimes with Antivirus at the end of the name, as in this Microsoft Docs page). But whatever you want to call it, for many Windows users, this tool is the go-to default for handling security on their PCs.

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(Insider Story)

ComputerWorld Independent

When biometrics can be outsmarted this way, we need to talk

February 2, 2022 0 Comments Mobile, Security, small and medium business

Credit to Author: Evan Schuman| Date: Mon, 03 Jan 2022 06:43:00 -0800

It’s one of the sad facts of mobile authentication that the industry tends to initially support the least effective security options. Hence, phones initially supported authentication based on fingerprints (which can be impacted by prescriptions, cleaning products, hand injuries, and dozens of other factors) and then moved on to facial recognition.

In theory, facial recognition is supposed to be more accurate. Mathematically, that’s fair, as it is examining far more data points than scanning a fingerprint. But the reality in the real world is much more problematic. It requires a precise distance from the phone and yet offers no pre-scan markers for the user to know when they hit it correctly. That’s one reason I see facial recognition reject a scan roughly 40% of the time — even though it will approve a positive scan two seconds later.

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Independent Krebs Security

Coronavirus Widens the Money Mule Pool

March 17, 2020 0 Comments A Little Sunshine, alex holden, bitcoin atm scam, coronavirus scam, globalgiving, Hold Security, holdsecurity.com, kevin conroy, Latest Warnings, vasty health care foundation, vastyhealthcarefoundation.com, Web Fraud 2.0

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Tue, 17 Mar 2020 22:11:46 +0000

With many people being laid off or working from home thanks to the Coronavirus pandemic, cybercrooks are almost certain to have more than their usual share of recruitable “money mules” — people who get roped into money laundering schemes under the pretense of a work-at-home job offer. Here’s the story of one upstart mule factory that spoofs a major nonprofit and tells new employees they’ll be collecting and transmitting donations for an international “Coronavirus Relief Fund.”

Independent Krebs Security

The Web’s Bot Containment Unit Needs Your Help

March 17, 2020 0 Comments cisco systems, richard perlotto, shadowserver foundation, The Coming Storm

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Mon, 16 Mar 2020 12:55:01 +0000

Anyone who’s seen the 1984 hit movie Ghostbusters likely recalls the pivotal scene where a government bureaucrat orders the shutdown of the ghost containment unit, effectively unleashing a pent-up phantom menace on New York City. Now, something similar is in danger of happening in cyberspace: Shadowserver.org, an all-volunteer nonprofit organization that works to help Internet service providers (ISPs) identify and quarantine malware infections and botnets, has lost its longtime primary source of funding.