“A critical business function often overlooked by business and managed service providers. We’ve been providing this service for nearly 20 years, now it finally has a clever name.”

– Patrick Torney – eDot

The following article written by: Small Business Trends

Every small business – with dreams of growth and expansion – realizes technology enhances business productivity. For most small businesses, a virtual CIO is an exceptional alternative to re-staffing or expanding an internal IT department.

Virtual CIOs take care of everything from infrastructure management, firewall and virus protection to WAN/LAN health monitoring, disaster recovery, scheduled on-site support and more – all with a focus on keeping data safe, secure, and accessible. Virtual CIOs proactively monitor measure and maintain the IT health and security of a business at an IT budget structured and, in most instances, customized for today’s SMBs.

Virtual CIOs help small business in numerous ways, from technology roadmaps to IT infrastructure management and more. Virtual CIOs help today’s SMBs access and operate the innovative business technologies available to them, with remote and on-site support, consultation, and troubleshooting. Virtual CIOs also provide vision with IT plans and strategies that help small businesses leverage IT solutions to fulfill short- and long-term business goals.

Virtual CIOs deliver not only day-to-day monitoring and maintenance of IT performance and productivity but also comprehensive IT management to keep business processes functioning at peak efficiency and moving with the business towards the future.

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“As opportunistic attacks become more commonplace, discussions about best practice operational security should be on the agenda for all business owners.”

– Patrick Torney – eDot

The following article written by: Wired

The WannaCry ransomware attack has quickly become the worst digital disaster to strike the internet in years, crippling transportation and hospitals globally. As the unprecedented ransomware attack known as WannaCry unfolds, the cyber security community has marveled at the inexplicable errors the malware’s authors have made. Despite the giant footprint of the attack, which leveraged a leaked NSA-created Windows hacking technique to infect more than 200,000 systems across 150 countries, malware analysts say poor choices on the part of WannaCry’s creators have limited both its scope and profit. At last count, the group behind WannaCry has earned just over $55,000 from its internet-shaking attack, a small fraction of the multimillion-dollar profits of more professional stealthy ransomware schemes.

Over the weekend, Hickey dug into WannaCry’s code and found that the malware does not automatically verify that a particular victim has paid the demanded $300 bitcoin ransom by assigning them a unique bitcoin address. This does not bode well for the victim getting back their data and may limit WannaCry’s profits.

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