If you have not received a phone call by now claiming to be a representative from Microsoft stating your computer is at risk, then you are lucky. You’re much less lucky if you *have* received one of those calls and believed them. They sure sound convincing. The new fad is to send emails that look very convincing, with links to …
Send me Bitcoin or I will expose you for visiting porn sites – scam / sextortion
Hey friends, I woke to find an email from a client who said they were being extorted for thousands of dollars and wanted help in securing their computer. Turns out, I also received an email today from Spiceworks which addressed the exact same email… The email looks like this: — From: Ciel Quan <mxwendelcs@outlook.com> Date: July 12, 2018 at 12:43:49 PM EDT …
We’ve been nominated Best of the Upstate – Best Computer Services!
In this day and age, where the “big boys” are the only ones who can afford TV and print ads, it’s amazing when a small, local business gets a little blurb out there… Especially when it’s “free” so to speak…. You see, each year, for as long as I can remember, The Greenville News has sponsored a reader driven “Best …
We’re about to celebrate our NINTH YEAR!
Can you believe it? Homeland Secure IT opened our doors in 2009 and here it is 2018. When we took our first call it was during one of the worst economic times Pamela and I had seen. Businesses were closing, the market was flooded with IT professionals looking for work. But we didn’t let that deter us from taking the …
Stop using Microsoft IE right this minute – Exploit Warning
A few days back, security experts started reporting that an existing vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Explorer had been leveraged in a “Zero Day Exploit”. What does this mean for you? You could open a specially crafted document and become compromised. Microsoft has not released a patch as of this moment so they are advising the use of Microsoft Edge for …
Windows 10 mouse and / or keyboard stops working after reboot
We encountered a couple of clients who had something similar in common yesterday. They came into work and found that their mouse and/or keyboard was not functioning though they had not done anything different or applied updates. The culprit was an update from Feb 16 that simply had not applied until after the machine had rebooted. This was very frustrating …
Digium adds new product line of budget-friendly IP phones for Asterisk
On February 14th, 2018, Digium announced their latest product, the A-Series IP phone, aimed at the budget-conscious business. These phones were designed to work with your Asterisk IP PBX, including our personal favorite flavor, FreePBX. The line includes 4 models ranging from an entry level to an executive phone. The combination of open source Asterisk and the Digium A-Series IP …
Meltdown and Spectre CPU design flaws – massive security vulnerabilities for your business
The IT big news in 2018 has been about Meltdown and Spectre, two CPU design flaws that affect virtually every modern Intel processor with the exception of the Intel Itanium and Intel Atom prior to 2013. These flaws affect desktop computers, notebook & laptops, tablets, mobile phones, servers and even hosted servers “in the cloud”. What do you have to …