The IT Experts

While Skype can be very useful to those who want to use it, it can be an irritation to those that don’t. Fortunately, there are some settings you can adjust to conceal your contact information from others, helping to prevent unwanted Skype calls, messages, and requests from coming in.

First, you’ll need to access Skype, and once logged in (which you may be by default) you should check your Options by clicking the three-dot button, found in the top-left of the window.

From there, click into Settings, then Contacts before accessing Privacy. From here, you’ll want to deactivate a few options. To properly conceal your account from other users, make sure to do the following:

• Toggle Receive suggestions to off.
• Toggle Appear in suggestions to off.
• Toggle Appear in search results to off.
• Next to where your phone number appears, switch Enabled to Disabled.

This way, other users won’t be able to find your account through a simple search, effectively eliminating the chance that you’ll be disturbed by an unexpected Skype request.

At KB Technologies, we prioritize protecting your data and privacy, because it really is important to do. If you would like assistance in securing your business from data theft or other unfortunate circumstances, reach out to us at (954) 834-2800.

How Your Passwords Are Stored
When you input a password into a program or a website, it needs to be referenced against some record to ensure that it is the correct credential. That record contains your password in a mathematically-based scrambled form known as a hash.

Using a hash means that the password isn’t as easy for a hacker to intercept. However, this is not to say that an attacker has no options to leverage, either.

How a Hacker Can Use the Hash
Unfortunately, there are a few ways that a hacker can still work to crack your password. For instance, online attacks are typically leveraged with the assistance of social engineering or phishing efforts, with more likely passwords being deduced by the hacker before attempting any and inadvertently locking down the account.

There are also offline attacks where the hacker simply takes the hash and brings a copy offline to work at as they are able. These attacks are relatively effective against intercepted documents with password protections, although they are still far from easy.

Other Efforts a Hacker Makes
In order to effectively conduct an offline attack, the hacker may ultimately need to try out multiple passwords - numbers that can approach the millions and billions. However, hackers also have a few means to narrow down the possibilities, enabling them to greatly decrease the time it takes to crack the targeted account.

Dictionary Attacks
Many hackers have their own dictionaries of common passwords to test out, with entries like ‘admin,’ “12345,” and the old classic, “password.” Of course, their resources could contain millions of potential passwords and they usually utilize the computing power necessary to review them much faster than any human could unaided.

Character Set Attacks
If a password doesn’t appear in a hacker’s dictionary, they can instead utilize programs that enable them to cross-reference certain rules to identify a password’s contents. For instance, if they had the necessary information, a hacker could specify a certain number of characters are in a password, whether any letters are capitalized or lowercase, and many more specific details. This enables passwords to be cracked much more efficiently.

Brute Force Attacks
When a gentler touch fails them, a hacker can resort to performing a brute force attack on your password. These attacks try any combination of characters possible, until they either stumble upon the correct combination or simply overwhelm a system.

As you can see, there are plenty of ways that a password can be cracked, which is precisely why we encourage users to never use the same password twice, regularly change their passwords, and utilize 2-factor authentication whenever possible. This will ensure that even if your password gets stolen, there is a lower chance of it being used against you.

Reach out to us to learn more about your cybersecurity. Give KB Technologies a call at (954) 834-2800 today!

The environment within retail has seen a considerable shift in the last few years in its adoption of technology, yet there is still a lack of engagement from many leaders. This is somewhat ironic, as these leaders depend on the customer’s experience, which is more and more influenced by the technology that is leveraged. In many ways, retail is one of most dependent industries on technology today, with consumers demanding their experience to be greatly personalized, available to them in an instant through mobile apps and other e-commerce solutions.

The primary issue is the fact that many business owners take a step back from their technology, appreciating what it does with no appreciation for how it does it. As a result, IT has to approach business owners, especially those in retail, from a perspective that looks more and more at the macro effects and immediate budgetary impacts while overlooking the long-term benefits of adopting certain solutions. As technology has increasingly had to be passed through a business-focused lense, it has been described in increasingly standardized terms.

This wouldn’t normally be an issue, except that these terms have gradually eliminated any differentiation between solutions - and this has impacted the businesses making these decisions, especially those in the retail vertical. Looking at some of the biggest data breaches in recent years, we see names like Target, TJX Companies, Inc.(the company that powers Marshall’s, TJ Maxx, and Homegoods), and Home Depot. Each of these companies were victimized through their point-of-sale systems, each enabled by less-than-sufficient security solutions in place.

Unfortunately, this can be explained by the simple business principle of cutting costs wherever possible, or simply not putting enough resources into managing technology.

While there is no guarantee that sufficient IT services would have mitigated these events (or the many others that have struck in recent memory, or that haven’t been large enough to garner attention) there are so many examples of how businesses, including retail shops, could have benefitted from sufficient IT support and security.

With any luck, industry leaders will begin to pay attention to their technology and how it can really benefit them. At any rate, when they do, we’ll be here - ready to offer our services for the benefit of these businesses and their customers.

Interested in learning more about how our solutions can assist your business operations? Reach out to us! Call (954) 834-2800 today.