Daily Cup of Tech

Urban legends are an excellent way to communicate information and advice to one another. The best part about urban legends is that it is in story format and we listen intently to see what happens in the end.

That is why I love the article Anatomy of a hijacking at ColoradoBiz Magazine. It is an open and honest account of what happened when their computer network was taken over by a malicious computer criminal. Here is a brief excerpt:

We were hacked.

And like a naive dueler who brings a knife to a gunfight, we were not prepared to deal with the hacker from Beijing who penetrated, infiltrated, took over and misused CoBizMag.com for the better part of a month. Computer security experts say it happens all the time, and they say, too, as we have reported in ColoradoBiz before, that small businesses are especially vulnerable to such attacks.

I really urge you to read through this article carefully because there are a lot of small companies out there that are finding themselves in similar situations. Take this precautionary tale to heart and make some changes today. As mentioned in the article:

Large companies are spending about 10 percent of their computer budgets on security, while small companies spend about 3 percent. As a result, small companies are the easier targets, Maciejewski added. He also cautioned that, if your firewall is more than two years old, it is vulnerable to attack because hackers have scanners that run 24 hours a day searching for vulnerable sites.

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