IVSComm Monthly Newsletter March 2019

Phone Terms Defined!

Latency: The time it takes for a packet to reach its destination. Higher delay times can be an issue, especially for VoIP, where voice delay can be recognized with latency higher than 150 milliseconds. Higher than 500 milliseconds and the conversation is going to be very problematic.

Attendant (Auto Attendant): An automatic response system, such as a voice presenting options such as press 2 for sales, 5 for Lisa, etc., which handles incoming calls and sends them to the appropriate phone or message.

Bandwidth: Usually measured in 1000 bits per second (kbps), it is the amount of data that can be carried from one point to another in a given time period.

In a modern security breach, you have 20 minutes to contain the infection.

A recent article in ZDNet (linked here) details how attacks in 2018 progressed from one infected PC to compromise the network in as little as 20 minutes. Your take-aways:

Sixty percent of all cyber-attacks involved a form of malware.
China and North Korea accounted for almost half of all the nation-state attacks in 2018.
Hacking supply chain companies instead of attacking targets directly has become a major trend.
Iran and Russia have focused hacking efforts on telecom firms.
Cybercrime groups are now increasingly using TTPs-for-hire (renting the services or tools provided by other groups, instead of creating their own).
On the ransomware scene, criminal gangs adopted the tactic of “big game hunting,” where they carry out targeted intrusion against large companies so they can extract bigger ransom demands at a time.

Protect yourself by not clicking on unknown links or documents, verifying the documents that you do receive, and backing up data you need to recover from a data loss.

Running out of Hard Drive space?

In Windows 10, it’s easy to free up hard drive space if you have another drive or partition to use. Right click on the Windows icon in the lower-left corner. Select Apps & Features. Under Apps & features (near the center of the window), select Sort By, and choose Size. For each program, click on it once and use the Move button if its available. It won’t be available for every app, but it should allow you to move enough to free up some space.

Quote of the Month

“Fascinations breeds preparedness, and preparedness, survival. —Peter Benchley