19May 2021 by nathan

May 2021 News & Updates

CTC NEWS, Industry News, Monthly Newsletters
Executive Summary May 2021 is proving to be a busy month (already) from a technology perspective. Between massive ransomware attacks on critical infrastructure (and $5M USD ransoms paid) to newly patched wormable vulnerabilities (that could easily be weaponized and used against other critical infrastructure targets) to the latest Windows Feature Release, IT Pros have certainly been tested. Regular site visits return - When we saw the potential for a fuel shortage and the subsequent rush on gas stations, we halted all non-critical site visits. With the fuel supply stabilizing, I'm happy to report that site visits are back to normal.Enhanced Patch Management - Cyber Security impacting the physical world - We have two cases where cyber attacks had real world impacts on the physical worldColonial Pipeline Breach - Details are…
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12May 2021 by nathan

Enhanced Patch Management Reboot Prompt

CTC NEWS, Tech news
Your computer may need to be rebooted for some important updates to be installed. Failing to restart and / or install these updates can leave your computer and the network of devices that it's connected to open and vulnerable to attacks like ransomware, viruses, data theft and more. Our Enhanced Patch Management system can install updates for more than 300 programs and applications and, if there is a need to restart, will prompt you to restart now (with a 60 minute countdown timer) and give you the option to postpone the restart for 4 or 6 hours or the next time that you log out. The default is to "Restart Now" with a 60 minute countdown timer. If no action is taken, the computer will restart and the updates will…
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11May 2021 by nathan

Important Notice Regarding Site Visits

CTC NEWS
Like everyone else, we are watching as the fallout from the Colonial Pipeline breach and subsequent shutdown ripples through every corner of commerce. Specifically, as we're already seeing widespread fuel shortages and stations simply out of fuel, we're looking at the cost and availability of fuel in the coming days and weeks. Effective immediately, we will be limiting site visits to matters that cannot be addressed remotely. We want to do what we can to conserve fuel for first responders and other essential workers. We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your understanding and support.
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18Mar 2021 by nathan

March 2021 News & Updates

CTC NEWS, Industry News, Monthly Newsletters, Tech news
Executive Summary A number of Windows Users, after installing the latest security updates, found that they were unable to print. In some cases, the symptom was simply that blank pages were printed and in some cases the computers would blue screen (crash) or freeze (requiring a power cycle). Additional information is available here.Four zero day vulnerabilities were published and publicly exploited in Microsoft Exchange servers including Exchange Server 2013, 2016 and 2019. The vulnerabilities were used extensively to target and attack US targets including healthcare, government and more. Additional information is available here.Microsoft's Azure Platform (Azure AD, AAD) suffered a pretty significant outage on 15 March starting at apparently 19:15 UTC and finally ending at approximately 09:37 UTC on the following day. Impacted users were unablet o access Azure resources…
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11Feb 2021 by nathan

February 2021 News & Updates

CTC NEWS, Industry News, Monthly Newsletters
Executive Summary A remote attacker was able to breach a water treatment facility in an attempt to poison the water supply. The facility was running Windows 7, using shared passwords, Teamviewer for remote access and had no firewall in place. Thankfully, the attack was thwarted. Additional information is available here and here.We are excited to announce that we will be looking into more / different / better ways to interact with you over the coming weeks and months. I don't have a lot of details available to share at the moment but announcements will be made on our website and mailing list as we're able to share more.Quite a few of you noticed some changes that we're making to the MyIT systems including the ability to push critical updates (like…
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15Jan 2021 by nathan

January 2021 News & Updates

CTC NEWS, Industry News, Monthly Newsletters, Tech news
Executive Summary Happy New Year. We hope that you were able to enjoy time with family, friends and loved ones over the holidays and that you're doing well in the New Year.Microsoft is getting the year off to a rough start, patching 80 vulnerabilities including one that is being actively exploited.Ubiquiti noted Monday that it had "…became aware of unauthorized access to its systems hosted by a third-party cloud provider…". Adobe Flash Player is officially end of life.We are excited to announce that we will be looking into more / different / better ways to interact with you over the coming weeks and months. I don't have a lot of details available to share at the moment but announcements will be made on our website and mailing list as we're…
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29Dec 2020 by nathan
Happy New Year

Happy New Year

CTC NEWS
All of us here at Cyber Tech Cafe would like to wish you a Happy New Year! We will be closed Friday, 1 January 2021 to celebrate with friends and family. We will reopen to normal business hours on Monday, 4 January 2021. All non emergency issues will be handled Monday morning on a first come, first served basis. In case of an emergency we will have an on-call technician available. We ask if it is an emergency that you put 'emergency' in the subject line of the email. Please note that any emergency support requests will be billed at our standard holiday rate with a 4 hour minimum. From all of us here at Cyber Tech Cafe, we wish you and yours a Happy New Year. Nathan and Kristy…
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21Dec 2020 by nathan

December 2020 News & Updates

CTC NEWS, Industry News, Monthly Newsletters, Tech news
Executive Summary We will be closed Thursday, 24 December and Friday 25 December to celebrate Christmas with family and friends. We will be closed on Friday, 1 January 2020 for New Years Day.Probably the biggest news for December (so far, 2020 isn't over yet) is what looks to have been a very successful compromise of SolarWinds with impacts reaching both far and wide including the Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration, Treasury and a who's who of other critical infrastructure and large enterprise. There's additional information from FireEye here and Krebs here but, short term, removing anything related to SolarWinds immediately would likely be a good plan. Microsoft patched 58 vulnerabilities this month with only nine listed (by both Microsoft and SANS) as critical and none currently being actively…
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