Author Archives: thrivewpengine

Are you aware that October is National Cybersecurity Awareness month?  With the day to day security headlines year-round you may be thinking to yourself “I am sick of hearing about security”.  As we come to the end of the month, bear with me for just a second as I let you in on a little security gem.  While there are many different security solutions that exist, some cheap and many expensive, yet arguably one of the most important ones is free.  It is a phrase coined by the National Cybersecurity Alliance, “When in Doubt, Throw It Out”.  When at home or work, if you receive a piece of physical junk mail that that claims you have one a free trip to the Moon, what do you do?  Most likely, you throw it out in the trash as you know it is not true. (more…)

Second Annual List Honors Leading MSSPs & Cybersecurity Companies That Safegaurd Customers’ Digital Assets

MSSP Alert, published by After Nines Inc., has named Thrive 60^th on the Top 100 MSSPs list for 2018. The list and research identify and honor the top 100 managed security services providers (MSSPs) that specialize in comprehensive, outsourced cybersecurity services.

The Top 100 MSSP rankings are based on MSSP Alert’s 2018 readership survey combined with aggregated third-party research. MSSPs featured throughout the list and research proactively monitor, manage and mitigate cyber threats for businesses, government agencies, educational institutions and nonprofit organizations of all sizes.

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Over the course of this three-part series, we have explored security measures to help keep your organization better protected from cyber criminals. In part one, we examined the importance of patching, and in part two,we explored advanced email security. In this final part of the series we will cover security awareness training that should be implemented in every business. (more…)

Firewall management is a necessary, but tedious and time-consuming effort. It also requires industry-specific expertise in order to avoid costly security breaches which can jeopardize compliance requirements.

Meeting compliance requirements for your specific industry can occupy a significant amount of your IT professional’s time. Additionally, it can be difficult to find an IT expert with the appropriate industry experience to ensure all of your compliance requirements are met and your network is protected against unauthorized access. (more…)

With election campaigns and candidate advertisements running rampant, it makes sense to go into some basic dos and don’ts when surfing the Internet.  Once connected to the Internet, a majority of the sites are primarily free.  Although, most of these websites are not there just to help you out, they are there to make money.  A blogger, if they get enough viewers to their site, can sell ads that help pay them to write.  Home Depot’s site is there to educate you on what they sell and get you to go to the store.  Facebook and Google are there operate to make money off advertisements.

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Distributed denial of service or (DDoS) attacks typically make news when they are large enough to bring down a website, and the affected website belongs to a well-known organization. In 2017, the total number of DDOS attacks that were observed and reported was 7.5 million, up from 6.8 million in 2016. On average, companies are faced with 237 DDoS attacks per month. Most DDoS attacks are not large, volumetric attacks, and DDoS hackers target all kinds of organizations. No organization is immune to a DDoS attack, and any size DDoS attack should be cause for alarm.

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I still talk with people in the security industry that confuse a vulnerability scan with a penetration test.  These are very different yet complimentary tools.

A vulnerability scan can be run against your external IP range, as well as your internal IP range.  If you run it against your external IP range you will see what the hackers see when they look at your network from the outside.  If there are any known vulnerabilities, the scanner should pick it up and report it to you.  This would be the first step in getting your network more secure.

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IT executives and leaders are charged with building scalable, reliable, and secure environments.  As more sensitive, regulated, and business-vital documents and transactions are digitized, even traditional businesses must embrace cybersecurity as a way of life.  With this comes a mandate to develop and deploy a security program, which necessarily must include a component for continuous improvement.  Security threats are constantly evolving, and threat or security fatigue can increase the pressure on security teams to keep up.  Adding structure to the continuous improvement process can help relieve some of that pressure to “stay on top of everything” all the time.

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I have discussions with clients all the time about technologies that we recommend that will help protect their companies from hackers.  What most people do not understand is that technology itself will not protect a company.  Someone who is attacking your company is using technology to try to get into your systems, but they are the brains behind the attack.  If you put in a piece of equipment to stop the attack, but don’t have any “brains” that are orchestrating your defense, then you will fail.  Technology can only take you so far. (more…)

Inc. magazine has revealed that Thrive is No. 3248th on its 37th annual Inc. 5000, the most prestigious ranking of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies. Thrive has jumped over 150 spots on the list since its last publication in 2017. Being recognized to the Inc. 5000 two years in a row is an extraordinary accomplishment as only 1 out of 3 companies make the list twice. (more…)