Gadget of the Month

Pebble Steel

Page 3

Client of the Month

Oasis Family Life

Church

Page 2

RMS Declares

War on Ransomware!

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November 2014

Issue 2511

What’s

Inside

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you all have a great holiday filled with

good friends, family and food! Just thinking about Thanksgiving makes my

mouth water! Yum!

Any The Good Wife fans out there? I don’t watch it myself but some-

one told me about an episode a few weeks ago where Diane accidently down-

loaded a ransomware virus on her computer which held their entire network,

files, etc. hostage. For attorneys in the middle of cases, it was a catastrophe and

unfortunately, most of us don’t have a Kalinda working for us to save the day!

I’ve talked about this in the past but basically a hacker makes you pay them to

unlock your data files. And this isn’t just Hollywood, it really happens to busi-

nesses every day.

As it just so happens, this week we had a notebook in our office with

CryptoWall 2.0. It belongs to an independent contractor for one of our clients

who contracted this ransomware . With no recent backups the contractor is deciding whether to pay the

$500 ransom or lose her data. She has a week to decide before the ransom doubles to $1000. We feel

bad for her but are relieved she was not onsite at our mutual client when she clicked the wrong link!

Check out our articles in this issue of our newsletter to see how RMS can help keep you safe!

Randy A. Rowe

President

Antivirus Industry’s

Dirty Little Secret

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Will You be Held Up for Ransom?

“CryptoWall is now accelerating to become the largest and most destructive ran-

somware threat on the Internet.” Infosecurity Magazine August 2014

“Malvertising Campaign may have exposed three million users per day”

“Without having to click on anything, visitors to the impacted websites may be

stealthily infected with the CryptoWall 2.0 ransomware.”

Websites serving Malvertising: Yahoo! Finance, Fantasy &

Sports; AOL, The Atlantic, Match.com, etc.

Malvertising attacks use online advertising channels to infiltrate malware into comput-

ers of unsuspecting users by embedding malicious code within legitimate advertise-

ments on trusted websites. There is no visible indication that the trusted site is compro-

mised: simply by visiting a site, users can get infected via “drive-by download”.

What is Malvertising?

Antivirus alone doesn’t cut it anymore. (See my article about this on Page 3.) At

RMS we constantly look for new products, procedures and solutions to provide the best

protection possible for our clients for the ever-changing threats. Please check out the

latest weapon in our arsenal on Page 2.

Page 2

You might be my next Client of the Month

Watch for your name and picture here!

Every month I choose one very special person to be our Client of the Month. It’s my way of acknowledging clients and thanking those who

support me and my business with referrals and repeat business.

Oasis Family Life Church Pastor Anthony Murray and his wife Christina founded Oasis Family Life Church in Dallas in 2006. Oasis is a dynam-

ic, high energy church that welcomes everyone and gives all ages the opportunity to connect, grow, serve and go! It is one of

the fastest growing, multicultural congregations in metro Atlanta. With this growth comes challenges. With immediate sup-

port concerns and ever-increasing growth challenges, Paula Torres, Business Manager for Oasis contacted RMS for help. RMS

assessed Oasis' immediate needs and implemented a comprehensive plan to provide immediate assis-

tance as well as ongoing management of their growing IT needs. For more information, please check

their website at https://oasisfamilylife.com.

Pastor Anthony Murray

At RMS, we are constantly looking for ways to provide additional value and security to our clients.

Even with safe email and surfing habits you can still get infected with a virus or ransomware that can cause you

great suffering and expense. To further protect our clients against malware, botnets, drive-by attacks and

phishing we are offering an additional layer of defense to protect your PC’s. This protection is a combination

of configuration, software and website blocking at sites identified with malware.

For our Platinum clients we are in the process of rolling out this protection at no additional charge. For

our other clients we are offering this protection at $2.50 per PC per month, (with a minimum of 5 PCs). With

this service you can have peace of mind knowing your PC has additional protection from drive-by downloads,

CryptoWall and other dangers. Please contact us if you want to get this implemented before your company

gets hit!

The War on Ransomware!

November

Client of the Month

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Shiny New Gadget Of The Month

Pebble Steel does more

than just tell the time — this

smart watch displays e-mail,

text messages, caller ID and

other notifications from your

favorite apps, reading them

straight from your iPhone or

Android phone. Pebble

cleverly vibrates on your

wrist to alert you of incoming

calls, meeting reminders or

approved notifications. Leave

your phone in your pocket as

you go about your day-to-day

activities.

The long-lasting battery

life and the easy-to-use

design makes this watch both

stylish and necessary in this

day and age, and its e-Paper

screen makes it easy to see in

both direct sunlight and even

underwater.

Pebble Steel is available

on Amazon.com for $149.99.

With this gadget, whose

battery can go for a week

without charging, the

integration of technology in

your life will be smoother and

much more hands-free.

Pebble Steel

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Set To Expire In 2015

Microsoft has announced that as of July 14, 2015, it will discontinue support for

its 11-year-old server operation system, Server 2003. This follows in the wake of its

recent discontinuation of support for Windows XP this past spring. Failure to up-

grade your server off of this operating system dramatically increases any compa-

ny’s cyber-security risks.

End of support for Windows Server 2003 means:

No further updates or security patches released. 37 critical updates were

released for Server 2003 in 2013 alone. No updates will be released after

7/14/15.

Loss of compliance. Various industry regulations and industry standards will

no longer be able to be achieved if you are using Server 2003 actively on your

network.

Increased security risks. Any server running this operating system will be

completely exposed to serious hacker attacks aimed at taking control of your

network, stealing your data or crashing your systems.

Free Server 2003 Migration Plan Gets You Started

As your preferred Microsoft Partner, we are committed to helping your company

by offering a Windows Server 2003 Migration Plan for FREE.. To secure your FREE

Server 2003 Migration Plan, call us today at 770-988-9640.

An ti -Vir uses ’ D ir ty Li t t le Sec ret

The Antivirus industry has a dirty little secret that they really

don’t want anyone to know. Despite their claims, their prod-

ucts are not all that effective. Many of them only protect

against 80% - 85% of the threats out there at any time.

Let’s look at that in a bit more detail. Antivirus needs to pro-

tect against two types of threats: ones that are known and ones

that are unknown. The ones that are known have an identified signature so that anti-

virus programs can detect the threat and get rid of it. This is called reactive detec-

tion. Then, there are new threats that are unknown. AV products need to protect

against those in a proactive way, and antivirus software can be scored looking at

how many of these new threats they block.

This type of scoring on both reactive and proactive detection is actually being

done by the antivirus industry’s premier site for insiders: Virus Bulletin. They have

created so called RAP (Reactive and Proactive) averages. They test antivirus prod-

ucts every few months and measure how each product detects both known and

unknown threats using a large sample of data. Then they create a graph where

these scores are plotted for all tested products.

The results are not always pretty. And people wonder how PCs still get infected

by malware! Check out the test results at https://www.virusbtn.com/vb100/rap-

index.xml.

Simply having anti-virus protection alone creates a false sense of security. It’s

very important to use a comprehensive approach including employee training,

detection and protection at the edge of your network and on your PC’s and block-

ing malicious websites if the PC is compromised. Just one employee clicking on a

phishing email or going to a website that has been compromised, can cause untold

damage, losses of thousands of dollars and potentially legal bills. RMS can help

protect you from this danger — just ask us how!

We Would Love To Hear From YOU!

If you have noticed an RMS associate going above and beyond the

ordinary for you either on-site or over the phone, please let us know

so we may reward them! Please e-mail me at rrowe@rmsatl.com.

Thanks!

Page 4

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