Total Data Protection
According to FEMA, as many as 60% of small businesses never recover after a disaster and are forced to close, highlighting the importance of maintaining backups that can keep systems running. Businesses need infrastructure in place that provides total data protection for their critical components. Datto’s Unified Continuity product family offers the solutions necessary to protect businesses from data loss due to power failures, flooding, security breaches, and human error.
Protecting the Business Data No Matter Where It Lives
Datto Unified Continuity includes a layered approach to protecting all critical business data across server infrastructure or SaaS applications. In today’s business environment, critical data is stored in physical, virtual and SaaS environments, all of which are equally vulnerable to natural disasters and malware. If any of that data is lost or breached, companies are vulnerable to significant revenue loss and even failure. Unified Continuity protects against ransomware, accidental deletion and disasters, providing business owners with peace of mind knowing they can restore data in seconds.
Why Haven’t You Heard of Datto?
While Datto protects over 500,000 small-to-medium sized businesses (SMBs) with their technology, Datto is a channel-only company serving over 14,000 MSPs. That means you won’t be able to go online and buy a Unified Continuity product without working with on of our partners like Unique Computing Solutions. And we do that for good reason: our MSP partners have the skill and technical expertise needed to deploy our products. We choose to sell through this highly skilled channel in order to ensure you (business owners) are getting the service you need for your unique challenges.
Why haven’t you heard of Datto? Because your IT service provider is our customer. Aligning yourself with a Datto partner means you are aligning yourself with the best in continuity services. It means your critical data is backed up. It means you will stay in business no matter the data loss scenario.
The Best Total Data Protection Available
Reliable storage options that scale, extremely fast recovery times, and 24/7/365 Direct to Tech support.
Datto builds the world’s easiest to manage and most dependable business continuity and disaster recovery products available today. Offering data production solutions for businesses for every size, regardless of infrastructure. Datto Continuity services provide automated local backup on robust hardware purpose-built for data protection and replication to the secure Datto Cloud. With our Instant Virtualization technology, business can be up and operational within seconds of an incident. Our suite of business continuity products includes the DATTO SIRIS, DATTO ALTO and DATTO NAS, all managed within a single web portal.
All-in-One Business Continuity
Ensuring your customer’s business is always on and resilient to disasters, SIRIS is an all-in-one solution that includes verified backups, restore options for any scenario, instant virtualization, and ransomware protection. SIRIS is backed by Datto’s private cloud so backup, failover, and recovery can be performed locally or in the cloud with no additional configuration. Streamlined business continuity solutions save time, money, and headaches. Every component of the SIRIS stack is built by Datto to seamlessly work together, from the backup agent, to the SIRIS software platform, to the private Datto cloud.
Raising The Bar for Reliability
Reliability begins with knowing your backup is always good. Datto eliminates the need to worry if the system will boot or be recoverable by automatically verifying backups will boot with all data intact and no ransomware, giving you 100% confidence in your backups and ability to restore. With backup you can count on and the ability to failover and restore from anywhere, we can deliver a high level of service to our customers.
Maximizing Uptime
Going beyond simply recovering data, business continuity saves businesses by keeping them online in the face of otherwise devastating issues such as ransomware, malware, natural disasters, network downtime and costly human errors. Datto’s breadth of restore tools are fit for any job and designed to get you back to production faster by taking out the guesswork. Backups are stored so that any snapshot can be used to restore or virtualize. Restore options range from granular restores which can target specific files to full system restores which include instant virtualization to keep your customers online. With the ability to immediately get back up and running from the Datto Cloud, you will have an edge when local competitors lack the ability to bounce back as quickly.
With robust solutions, advanced security features, and state-of-the-art technology, Datto is a clear choice when building your Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Strategy. Unique Computing Solutions has been a provider of Datto Solutions for many years and we are proud to offer a product that exemplifies the core beliefs we rely on for supporting our clients and protecting their infrastructure. If you are in the midst of a disaster, looking to upgrade your BCDR Strategy or starting from the ground up, the team at UCS and Datto is here to help! Please contact our office to learn more about these solutions and how they can integrate with your business or industry.
Poison Attacks 101
Smart technology is everywhere. Not just in our offices, but even in our day-to-day lives with tools like Google Home and Alexa becoming a commonplace. With technology becoming smarter every minute, the risks are increasing by the minute as well. Cyber-criminals are finding new ways to corrupt our IT networks to disrupt our businesses, hold our data hostage and even clear out personal bank accounts. Some of the more overt, commonly known acts of cyber-crime include hacking, phishing, and ransomware attacks. This article discusses a lesser-known cyber-crime. Let's take a look at Poison Attacks 101.
What Are Poison Attacks
Poison attacks are attacks on the ability of a system to make smart decisions. Think about this for a second. How do systems make intelligent decisions? Based on the training or data they receive. This data is used to hone the artificial intelligence of the system to help make smart decisions. Poison attacks mess with the very base layer – the training data set - by skewing the system’s data model in such a way that the output is no longer as intended. They create a new normal for everything and are primarily used as a backdoor attack method. In a backdoor poison attack, the attacker creates a loophole in the core data rule and trains the system to adhere to that rule so it can be exploited at a later time.
For example, let’s say the access control for a particular file is set such that it will allow only those beyond the VP level to view the data. If someone changes the main parameter to include manager level access, the core data set is violated and the system will not detect an intrusion by someone at the manager level, even if they log in with their credentials.
Poison Attack Methodologies
Poison attack methodologies typically fall into one of the following 4 categories:
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- Logic Corruption
- Data Manipulation
- Data Injection
- DNS Cache Poisoning
Logic Corruption
In Logic Corruption, the attacker changes the basic logic used to make the system arrive at an output. It essentially changes the way the system learns, applies new rules and corrupts the system to do whatever the attacker wants.
Data Manipulation
In Data Manipulation, as the name suggests, the attacker manipulates the data to extend data boundaries that result in backdoor entries that can be exploited later. Unlike Logic Corruption, the attacker doesn’t have access to the logic, so they work with the existing rule and push data boundaries further with a view to accommodate them later.
Data Injection
In Data Injection, the attacker inserts fake data into the actual data set to skew the data model and ultimately weaken the outcome. The weakened outcome then serves as an easy entryway for the attacker into the victim’s system.
Protecting Yourself Against Poison Attacks
Data poisoning by way of logic corruption, data manipulation and data injection happens when the attacker finds a way to access your data set. The kind of poison attack varies depending on the level of access the attacker is able to achieve. Here’s what you can do to ensure such access is prevented:
- The data poisoning attacks discussed above adversely affect your IT system’s machine learning capabilities. So, the first logical step would be to invest in a good machine learning malware detection tool. These tools are different from the typical anti-malware tools you get in the market and are specifically designed to prevent machine learning capability poisoning.
- Always follow general IT security best practices such as:
- Training your employees to identify spam, phishing attempts, and possible malware attacks.
- Following good password hygiene, which means never sharing passwords and only using passwords that meet the required security standards.
- Having a powerful IT audit process, tracking and version control tools, so as to thwart any possible insider attack.
- Ensuring the physical security of your IT systems by way of bio-metric access, CCTV systems, etc.
DNS Cache Poisoning
In one of the most common poisoning attacks, the attacker poisons the DNS Cache with the aim of leading visitors to a fake website. In a DNS cache poisoning case, the attacker gains control of the DNS server and then manipulates cache data such that anyone typing the URL of the actual website is redirected to the fake one. This could be a phishing site where the attacker would have carefully laid out a trap to capture the unsuspecting victim’s personal data or secure information. For example, the visitor thinks they are logging into their bank’s website online, but are actually on the attacker’s phishing site, where they enter the login credentials.
Protecting Yourself Against DNS Cache Poisoning Attacks
As discussed before, one of the most common poisoning attacks are DNS attacks. You can prevent this by bringing a trained professional onboard for your DNS server set-up. An expert will know to set up your DNS server such that it has a minimum relationship with other, external DNS servers, thus limiting your attacker’s ability to corrupt your DNS server using theirs.
As a best practice, ensure that your DNS servers only store data related to your domain and not any other information. It is harder to corrupt the system when it focuses on a single element.
Another best practice is to ensure that you are up-to-date on all DNS security mechanisms and are using the most recent version of the DNS.
Ensure your site has an SSL certificate and is using HTTPS protocol. Using encryption, a site with HTTPS protocol allows for a more secure connection between its server and the internet and is better at keeping cyber-criminals out. Have an SSL certificate also ensures your site’s name shows up alongside the URL in the address bar. This is an easy way for visitors to identify if they are on a genuine site or not, thus helping them steer clear of phishing attacks and clone sites.
Data poisoning is one of the lesser-known and hence less talked about forms of cyber-crime. But, it can inflict great damage – perhaps even more damage than the other obvious threats such as viruses and ransomware, because, unlike a Denial of Service (DDoS) attack or a Ransomware attack where you know the moment the malware has hit your system, in a data poisoning attack, the malware is incorrect data that slithers into your system quietly and changes its overall functioning before delivering the big blow.
Preventing attacks on your data and infrastructure is where Unique Computing Solutions specializes with comprehensive Managed Security Service packages an a complete team of professionally educated technicians to back it all up. Give us a call today to see how we can help improve your security from day one: 708-922-9444
Cloud Security Essentials
More and more businesses are switching to the Cloud to store their data and rightly so. The Cloud offers numerous benefits over the traditional, physical on-site server, however it also comes with it's own potential issues. Follow along as we explore Cloud Security Essentials in the article below.
Employees and Cybersecurity
For any organization, employees are the biggest asset. But, what happens when your biggest assets also turn out to be your greatest threats and liabilities? Let's take a moment to talk about Employees and Cybersecurity. That is, after all, how cyber-crime can change the game.
IT Checklists for SMBs
Whether you have your own in-house IT Team, or have outsourced your IT needs to be taken care of by a Managed Service Provider, you need to have a bunch of ‘IT Checklists’ readily available...and that can be a daunting task. Stay tuned and follow along as we provide our Must-Have IT Checklists for SMBs that you can use for your own business.
SMB Security Tips - Our Top 7
A massive global shift to remote working environments has created an open-season for cybercriminals. No business - big or small - is safe. Small and medium businesses (SMBs) seemingly have a target on their backs, so strengthening your company's security posture is essential right now. This process doesn't have to be stressful or time consuming. There are simple ways to protect business data against ransomware attacks right away and long term solutions to help your business boost resilience to cyber attacks. Here are a few of our top SMB security tips and suggestions:
Windows Feature Updates - What, Why, How?
Over the past few years Microsoft has worked heavily on creating a new style of Windows OS that is packed full of features, applications and optimizations that have helped countless number of organizations and users transition into the modern, technology driven environment we all experience today. We’ve all seen the ads on TV, or the stickers on devices when you walk into an electronics store, and it’s likely that the most significant of these upgrades you have experienced in recent years was the move from Windows 7/8 to Windows 10.
On-Site Support Guidelines - COVID-19 Re-Opening Phase
Unique Computing Solutions has always taken pride in being able to lead the way in advanced network and IT solutions coupled with the superior customer service that our clients have come to expect. On the heels of several countries, states, and communities set to begin a strategic re-opening process, we wanted to keep you up to date on what we are doing internally and how we plan to move forward in this new normal.
The Value of RMM: Delivering Peace of Mind
As a Managed Service Provider, our top priority is effectively managing your network and technology assets to keep them safe and optimized so you stay productive.
The Value Of A Helping Hand
Small business owners are faced with quite the dilemma these days. While a reliable and secure network is a critical component to success, business owners are also being forced to scale back on costs and overhead as a means of basic survival in today's economy.