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FrugalBrothers Software, Inc. featured in GFI Software Case Study

Recently I had the opportunity to participate in a GFI case study for the popular GFI FaxMaker software. Last Tuesday March 10th 2015, a video production company visited me in my home office to record the case study. They carried with them a ton of lighting and state of the art video gear.

For those of you unfamiliar with the term “case study” here is the best way to explain it. A case study is an examination of how a customer uses a product, and how the product benefits their business, and or improves their business processes.

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A tale of two security approaches – and why you need both

Once upon a time, attacks on computers and networks were relatively simple. Our primary worry was viruses and their variants – worms, Trojans, rootkits. Their authors set out with malicious intent, to create software that can cause harm by shutting down a system or an entire network, destroying data and/or programs, or collect information and send it back to the attackers.

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Target’s tale: Lesson learned or will you be burned?

Written by: March Thaler

Turn back the clock to late last year. At the height of theshutterstock_125177096-300x255 holiday season, between November 27 and December 15, hackers certainly gave new meaning to the term “hit the bull’s-eye!”

Cybercriminals toyed with retail giant Target, known for the circular red and white logo that symbolizes its name. Information from 40 million guest debit and credit card accounts was stolen – or so it was thought. The initial estimate, already among the largest in U.S. corporate history, turned out to be a fraction of the total. Today, it ranges from 70 million to 110 million, depending on reports.

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Patching and antivirus tips every sys admin should know

Jenny Duncan on March 19, 2014

When you started out in IT, did you really want to spend allshutterstock_126121670-300x300 your life applying patches to PCs and checking if the antivirus product installed is up to date and working properly? Let’s be honest, these tasks get a little repetitive and monotonous, but if you drop the ball with either of these jobs, your IT department (and you) could end up in hot water. Taking shortcuts on patching and antivirus should never be an option.

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Hackers Find the Internet a Target-Rich Environment Thanks to Poor Patch Management

You would think that with things like automatic updates, applicationshackers-poor-patch-management that can automatically patch themselves, and the constant media attention towards security, hackers would be a dying breed, bereft of targets which they can exploit. Unfortunately, poor patch management practices across the board means that the ever-growing number of connected devices are providing hackers with and endless supply of fresh victims.

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The Problem with Patching Is – Not Patching!

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Patching is not something that the IT department really enjoys doing. It is complicated and ongoing. It takes forever and it doesn’t add any actual business value.

Meanwhile you have myriad systems to patch, and endless patches to test and then install. Then you have to do it all over again. And again. And again.

No wonder a recent study by the UK-based Federation of Small Business shows that little more than a third (36%) of small shops patch regularly. Then these shops wonder why they got compromised, or blame their software vendors, especially Microsoft® – a common security punching bag!

Patching, well, patching properly, solves the majority of security problems. In fact 90% of successful exploits are against unpatched systems.

Even environments that should presumably be highly secure too often fail to patch. Last year an audit at the U.S. Department of Energy found that some 60% of their desktops lacked important patches.

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Patch management: Fixing vulnerabilities before they are exploited

Introduction

Managing and administering software updates remains one of the most challenging and resource-intensive tasks an IT Department undertakes on a daily basis.

While software updates serve many important roles, be it delivering feature improvements or fixing bugs and security vulnerabilities, they bring with them a number of potential challenges for the IT Department in terms of ensuring systems are up-to-date, that new problems are not introduced by patches designed to fix things, and updates do not create compatibility or instability issues. All this needs to be done while ensuring that updates are pushed to PCs as quickly as possible to prevent vulnerabilities being exploited. The constantly evolving software landscape makes patch management an important consideration for all IT decision makers,regardless of organization size.

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