How many emails have you had in the last week? 20? 100? 1000? How many of them were spam email? On the surface most spam emails (if they get through your spam filter) seem harmless, almost a little pathetic. Looking through my junk folder this morning I can see the usual topics. ‘Grow your business today’, ‘Free Website Audit’, ‘Guarantee … Read More

* 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

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

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

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

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

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

Many current 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 ‘Meltdown’ and ‘Spectre’. The … Read More

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. Ransomware is a form of malware … Read More

Do you find yourself having to click the “Forgot Password” link often? The brain can only remember so much and each individual has different retention levels at which they can memorise and store information. If you use computers frequently it is likely you have a few passwords to remember. Assuming you use a different password for each service you use … Read More

Please be aware that there is a new variant of ransomware doing the rounds. This is called Locky and, as with other ransomware, it encrypts all the files not only on the PC but also on any mapped drives on servers. Once the files are encrypted the only way to get them back is to either pay the ransom or … Read More

Microsoft seem to be (finally) getting serious about providing antivirus and anti-spyware protection after a number of false starts. But is the new version of Windows Defender another of these or is it finally the software that will allow you to dump those costly subscriptions to premium third-party programs? Windows Defender, in name, has been around for a while. It … Read More

The nasty Ransom-ware virus know as CryptoWall / CryptoLocker has just updated to version 4.0. You can protect your PC from this destructive virus by following the steps below. We have advised all our clients to do this and have posted the guide below to help others. The first thing is to see if you already have CryptoProtect installed on … Read More

CryptoLocker is what is known as ‘ransomeware’. Basically this means that it infects a computer and restricts access to it in someway. They often also constantly harasses the user with annoyances such as popups. The aim of the software is to make the user pay a ransom to the operators of the malware to remove the restrictions. CryptoLocker is spread … Read More