What are phishing emails? Phishing emails are sent to trick you into divulging a password of some kind or other personal details. Some estimates claim the number of fake emails sent each day is now in the billions. During these long periods of working from home due to Covid, many workers are unable to quickly ask a colleague if they … Read More
Criminals Are Using Coronavirus in New Email Phishing Scams
Since the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the Corona Virus as an international emergency at the end of January, cybercriminals have predictably encorporated it into their last scams. They have been sending out emails proporting to be from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the (fictional) Wuhan Medical authorities. These emails contain a link that will show an … Read More
Microsoft Office 2010 End of Life is October 2020
Office 2010 has now been around for 10 years but in October of this year Microsoft will stop supporting the software and no longer release security updates. As with Windows 7 and Server 2008 at the end of 2019 this means the software will be vulnerable to attacks through malicious code. Microsoft has released several versions since 2010 and these … Read More
Windows Server 2008 End of Life – Is Your Business Ready?
Windows Server 2008 end of life is happening on January 14th 2020 – this means Microsoft is stopping all official support for the operating system. There will be no further security updates for servers running it and they could be vulnerable to attack from outside sources. The operating system was first launched February 2008, so it has had a good … Read More
Windows 7 End of Life is January 2020 – is Your Business Ready?
End of life simply means that Microsoft no longer support the operating system and strongly recommends that all users upgrade to Windows 10. In practical terms it means that Microsoft will no longer release security updates or patches for Windows 7. This means that any existing vulnerability or any discovered in the future will not be fixed. The end of … Read More
How to use virtualisation for disaster recovery
* These are known as ‘hot sites’ if you’re interested! This is all very well if you are a multi-million-pound company but for most businesses it’s a ludicrous idea. What everyone wants is something that enables them to get back up and running as quickly as possible, in the event of something happening to their current office setup (flood, fire … Read More
Which VPN Software Should You Choose?
In this blog Josh Peacock, one of the network engineers here at Optima will compare 3 of the most popular VPNs on the market today. VPN stands for Virtual Private Network, it essentially adds you onto another Network and all your traffic goes through that Network. You can connect to a network in Hong Kong and all your out-going traffic … Read More
How to safely browse the internet
Now we use the internet to such an extent we need to make sure our details and browsing history is safe and secure. Cookies are used to track our browsing history and are used by companies to target advertising based of our searches. In some instances, this is useful as it shows us alternatives to our original search, very handy … Read More
New Voluntary Code for Banks to Repay Victims of Push Payment Scam
There is finally some hope for the thousands that have fallen victim to so called ‘push payment’ scams with the announcment of a new voluntary code for Banks. Push Payment scams are where a fraudster seems to highjack emails and ask people to pay an outstanding bill or invoice to a different Bank Account. The account in question is owned … Read More
Check if any of your online ‘identities’ have been compromised with Hack Notice
Have you ever wondered if your gmail account has been hacked? Or your Amazon account details leaked somewhere on the dark web? A website called Hack Notice can help you find out. Hack Notice is a website that allows you to enter in your “identities” to be monitored. These can be particular email addresses or freetext strings. They will then … Read More
New Scam Attempts to Blackmail People for ‘viewing Adult Content’
Scammers. The scourge of the internet! Always looking for new ways to make innocent people part with their hard-earned cash. A recent scam involves sending people an email claiming they visited adult websites. They pretend these websites downloaded malware that gave the scammer access to various aspects of the recipients computer. These include what they type and also access to … Read More
5 tips for keeping your network secure
It’s not just cyber criminals that can bring down your network and compromise data; careless users or disgruntled staff can be just as bad. Your network security is made up of hardware and software, policies and procedures which work to defend against threats to your systems. Layers of hardware and software can prevent threats from damaging computer networks and stop … Read More
Meltdown and Spectre
Many of the current generation of chips in our computers use what is called a cache to speed up processing. The vulnerability that has been announced in recent days is that under certain circumstances the content of this area can be read and over time passwords or encryption keys identified bit by bit by these exploits that have been named … Read More
How Ransomware Can Effect Your Business and What We Can Do to Help
Daylight robbery without the overheads of a horse or mask Ransomware is an ever-growing threat to businesses. In the last few months three of our clients have fallen victim. We’ve seen one strain of Cerber 4.0 and two Aleta infections. Both variants do not have a decryption tool available at the time of writing. In this blog we discuss just … Read More
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