Washington Works Blog

Having your team connected through mobile, especially with access to collaboration and communication tools, is the new normal in business. Many organizations take advantage of the ubiquity of smartphones and either provide mobile devices to their staff or utilize the built-in options on many of today’s newest mobile OSs that allow them to put an encrypted work profile on; effectively adding mobility to your business without a huge capital investment. Regardless of what option you choose, you need to have management software in place if you are going to trust your employees to have access to company information outside of the office. 

A business email compromise attack is a phishing scam in which a scammer uses email to take possession of capital—either in the form of data or actual finances—from the organization they choose to target. Lately, these scams have been observed to focus on schools.

Let’s review the situation at hand and what is at stake.

Most businesses these days utilize cloud computing in some way (about 90 percent, as a matter of fact). How is your business utilizing this technology? Regardless, you want to have security locked in for your cloud computing resources, which is what we want to focus on for today’s blog article.

Over a quarter of all data breaches target small businesses, and the cost of a breach can be devastating. To protect your business’ data and infrastructure, small businesses need a combination of effective technology tools and well-planned strategies. Here are some key steps your business can take to safeguard itself against digital theft.

Businesses face numerous challenges, many of which arise internally. Whether your business is dealing with cybersecurity threats, unhappy customers, or unreliable suppliers, leaders must navigate every threat. Among these, internal issues can often be the most disruptive. In this blog, we'll focus on two critical employee-related challenges that can significantly hinder business operations.

Of all your business’ potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities, one can more easily bring your organization to its knees than any other… but if this vulnerability is addressed correctly, you could instead see considerable benefits.

Of course, the vulnerability I’m referring to is your team itself. Human error, in its many forms, can easily leave you vulnerable if you aren’t careful about preparing yourself and the rest of your staff to act with cybersecurity in mind.

The NSA—the National Security Agency of the United States of America—are pretty well-known for their digital prowess. Therefore, when they provide a list of practices to help keep our increasingly crucial mobile devices secure, it only makes sense for us to listen. 

Data breaches are always a potential problem. They can cause all types of problems inside your business and can even cause strife should your customers need to be notified. In today’s blog, we thought we would review some of the largest and most noteworthy breaches in 2024.

Potential data breaches pose a growing threat to organizations, with phishing attacks being the most prevalent method hackers use to steal sensitive information. It has become one of the most widespread online dangers, and understanding how it works is crucial to protecting your users. Let's go into what phishing attacks are and explore some best practices to safeguard your network.

You or one of your employees may need to work while on the road for many reasons. Unfortunately, this can be dangerous if you aren’t careful. We wanted to take a few minutes to (hopefully) review some security best practices your entire team should follow should they ever find themselves working as they travel.

Multifunctional printers can be indispensable business tools. However, they also pose significant security risks, potentially serving as entry points for cybercriminals seeking to exploit vulnerabilities and pilfer sensitive data and resources. Safeguarding your organization against these threats is paramount. This blog post will explore key measures to fortify your networks against printer-based vulnerabilities.

Did you know that the first case of ransomware surfaced in 1989? Since then, it has grown far more dangerous and common. Let’s examine some of the numbers regarding ransomware and how you can avoid it affecting your organization. 

A new ransomware attack has surfaced, this time mostly targeting IT companies and their clients. The attack is specifically targeting the Kaseya platform. Kaseya is management software that many IT companies use to remotely manage and support technology. The attack in question attacked Kaseya’s supply chain through a vulnerability in its VSA software; this attack is notable because of how it targeted the supply chain, not only striking at the vendor’s clients—notably IT companies—but also their customers. Basically, this attack had a trickle-down effect that is causing widespread chaos for a massive number of businesses.

January 28th marks Data Privacy Day, a day intended to raise awareness of the importance of data privacy and educate users and business owners of its benefits. Spearheaded by the National Cyber Security Alliance, there are plenty of lessons the NCSA has to share with businesses as this day puts their, and their clients’, privacy in the spotlight.

Cyberattacks will not let up anytime soon, so businesses need to be prepared with the knowledge and expertise to combat them. Unfortunately, finding the right folks with the right expertise is hard. According to a report from Kaspersky titled “The Portrait of Modern Information Security Professional,” the world is short about 4 million security professionals, and even the existing professionals make grave errors in their first couple of years. Let’s take a look at some of these insights and see what we can learn from them.

Passwords are the most used account security apparatus. As such, it’s essential that everyone connected to your organization has your overall cybersecurity in mind and knows exactly how to secure the accounts they use. In today’s blog, we’ll look at some common passwords that don’t accomplish their stated purpose very well and how to change that.

There’s no question that modern businesses—-businesses just like yours—-cannot and should not function without cybersecurity protections. We will shout this from the mountaintops at every opportunity… so let’s go over why security is so important and what needs to be done to ensure yours.

July 18th, 2024 saw one of the most widespread and devastating outages in recent memory, as a global update from cybersecurity company CrowdStrike brought about significant impacts to major infrastructures and societal needs. All this occurred even though only 1% of Windows operating systems experienced the issue.

Email is undeniably a fantastic communication tool. However, there are certain things you should never share via email for safety reasons. Let’s explore what these are—because when it comes to security, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

COVID-19, or coronavirus, has been a major global health concern over the past couple of months. At this point, it is clear that this disease could have serious impacts on the workplace. We wanted to provide a brief rundown of good workplace and network health practices, as well as a few pointers on how you can handle health-based employee absences.