
Remote Workforce Security – Practical Guidance for Rapid Change
Businesses are rapidly shifting to work from home strategies in response to the current COVID-19 situation. Many are already adept at working from home and have strategies in place to protect networks, endpoints, and systems. They have proven…

VPN Service ≠ Invisibility Cloak
Third party VPN services do not secure your data. They may provide an additional brick in your security bunker but they are not the invisibility cloak they claim to be and in some cases they may actually do more harm than good. For starters,…

Follow FBI Guidance re: Business Cybersecurity
Today the FBI issued a renewed Public Service Announcement (PSA) warning to businesses regarding cyber crime, and more specifically ransomware risk. If you are not taking action, you are going backward. All businesses should be regularly…

Microsoft is actively fighting cybercrime for the greater good.
My tour of the @Microsoft Cyber Defense Operations Center (CDOC) this week was the highlight of my visit to the Microsoft campus in Redmond, WA. I was one of approximately 150 Microsoft partners invited to attend a small & medium sized…

Time’s Almost Up for Windows 7 & Server 2008!
Do you remember when Windows XP reached the end of its support lifecycle? We sure do, and it’s about to happen again with Windows 7 and Server 2008.
Microsoft supports their operating systems for a minimum of 10 years following public release,…

It’s on you!
I’m often contacted by CEOs or managers after a business experiences a cyber incident that results in real damages. After describing the event, they often ask if they should fire an employee who fell victim to a social engineering attack…

I hate being right, really!
I really hate hearing from customers and prospective customers that we were right and that they wish they had taken our advice to harden their systems and implement tighter security controls before their breach. Feedback from customers…

Please Implement Multi-Factor Authentication for Office 365, Please!
Your credentials can be phished, period. If you think you're above being phished, you're wrong. We all have weak moments and the criminals are really good at praying on our whims and emotions. Trust me, you can be phished. …

SOC Audits Drive Improvement
Go West IT just completed our second annual SOC 2, Type 2 audit. This is an expensive and time consuming process and it absolutely makes us better every single year.
SOC stands for Service Organization Controls and a Type 2 audit…