NuTech Services Blog

What is your mother’s maiden name? What street did you grow up on? What is your favorite movie?

How about: What good do you really think these questions are going to do to help keep your accounts any more secure?

Businesses largely rely on their information systems and other technology tools, so you need to make sure they stay secure and far from the many threats out there. To this end, we recommend that you implement security systems that prioritize business continuity and data security. Let’s examine three ways you can keep your business’ IT safe and secure.

Passwords have been a staple in data security and user authentication for many, many years… to the point where the idea of using a password has become nearly synonymous with the concept of security. However, data has increasingly shown that alternative options are in fact more secure. Let’s examine some of these passwordless authentication methods, and their pros and cons.

Many organizations are pushing for two-factor authentication, and it is easy to see why. The benefits are so great and the risks so devastating (and unnecessary) that there is no good reason to not implement two-factor authentication. Let’s discuss what two-factor authentication is, why it matters, and how you can set it up for your Microsoft, Google, and Apple accounts.

Passwords are quite literally everywhere nowadays. With so much of modern life now controlled or held within user accounts, keeping your passwords both secure and straight in your head is crucial. Many web browsers now offer some built-in password management utility to help make this process more convenient for the user, but is this option available at the cost of security?

While we would strongly recommend that you update your passwords more than once a year, now is as good a time as any to do so. Reflecting on this, let’s go over how to fully lock down your Microsoft accounts.

If you haven’t taken the time to go through and update your passwords lately, particularly the one protecting your Google account, you should do so… despite it undeniably being a pain. After all, Google serves various purposes and is attached to many accounts for most. Considering the number of data breaches and other cybersecurity issues this potentially contributes to, you will want to ensure your Google account is properly locked down.

A lot is made about data breaches and hackers, but I think you’d be surprised to find out that over 80 percent of cyberattacks are the result of stolen authentication credentials. This has led many security-minded IT administrators to try and find a better way than the old username & password strategy that we’ve all been using for as long as there have been user accounts. One organization that is actively making waves trying to replace the username/password combo is Microsoft. They are at the forefront of the move to passwordless authentication.

Passwords are not a modern invention by any stretch, but as we have dealt with them for so long, there are a lot of bad habits that many people have adopted. That’s why we felt that it was appropriate for us to call out some of these habits and discuss some better options for you to adopt.

Passwords are hard to remember - there’s no denying that. However, there is also no denying how important it is to use different ones for each account, all sufficiently complex, and all the rest. The point is, a lot of people use bad password practices because (to be frank) good password practices are too intimidating. There has to be some kind of acceptable middle ground… right?

What would you do if a stranger claimed to have compromising webcam footage of you and threatened to share it with your contacts? A new, very convincing email scam is making some users very nervous.

In the wake of the Equifax data breach, which placed the personal information of 143 million users at risk, the issue of data security is at the forefront of social consciousness. Your organization needs to go about its daily business as if it will experience a data breach at any given moment. This involves looking at the worst-case scenario, and planning for it so that you’re never caught unaware.

Passwords are important for any online account (and for most accounts in general). Sometimes they might feel like inconveniences, but it’s crucial to remember that these passwords are often the first line of defense, if not the only line of defense, that stands between your data and hackers. We’ll discuss ways that you can augment password security with other powerful measures.

One of the main ways to keep an account’s credentials secure is by changing them consistently. However, we ran across an article recently that plays “devil’s advocate” on the password security issue, and they made some fair points about how changing passwords too frequently can lead to decreased security as a whole.

Password security is quite the conundrum. We want our passwords to be easy to remember, but the problem is that passwords that are easy to remember are often simple and insecure. Therefore, it becomes a best practice to use complicated passwords with both upper and lower-case letters, numbers, and symbols to compensate. The “passpoem” might resolve this issue in the most obvious way.

Your identity has quite a lot of value, especially in the wrong hands. Security firm ZoneAlarm put together some numbers in 2011 concerning identity fraud, and it even shocked us. Let's talk about a few of these statistics and what it means.